In this chapter, the experimental paradigms traditionally used to evaluate perceptual inhibition, and therefore selective attention, were briefly presented: The Stroop, Flanks, and Conjunction Visual Search paradigms. The Conjunction Visual Search paradigm was analyzed in greater detail, and the main studies in recent years that use it as a measure of perceptual inhibition in one or more stages of the life cycle were shown. At the same time, the methodological limitations of these works were raised: the scarcity of studies that address the analysis of the development of the process throughout the life course and the diversity in the use of paradigms to evaluate the same process in different evolutionary stages.
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You are in a class and suddenly, a person begins to ring the cell phone loudly, the most probable thing is that this noise manages to capture their attention in a capricious, involuntary and automatic way, strongly compromising the understanding of what the teacher says…. Fortunately, we have inhibition, which, although not enough to avoid the effect of the attentional capture initially generated by noise, will allow us to ignore or attenuate its disruptive effect on the task in course, for example, listen and understand the concepts taught. Thus, the ability to remaining focused uses inhibition to maintain optimal performance in demanding situations, such as those mentioned.
When we think about stopping or slowing down a certain behavior, the concept of inhibition comes to mind. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this cognitive function may differ according to the type of suppressed information and the stage of processing at which control must be exercised (Casey et al., 2000; Casey, 2005). In this regard, one of the most widespread classifications is that which postulates the existence of three inhibitory processes: perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition (Dempster & Corkill, 1999; Harnishfeger, 1995; Nigg, 2000). Perceptual Inhibition (PI) is the most relevant process involved in selective visual attention (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Treisman & Sato, 1990), which acts at the perceptual level and is responsible for suppressing the activation generated by the irrelevant stimuli of the environment, facilitating the focus on the relevant stimuli (Diamond, 2013). Other authors call it resistance to distractor interference (Friedman & Miyake, 2004), interference control (Nigg, 2000), or access inhibition (Hasher et al., 2007). The PI has already been defined and analyzed in several chapters of this Handbook, so we will not dwell on its definition and analysis.
In the traditional paradigms used to assess the PI, the participant must identify a target which is presented together with a variable amount of distracting stimuli that are irrelevant depending on the purpose or activity (already mentioned in the chapter: The relationships between inhibitory processes and selective attention: studies and paradigms). Among the paradigms most commonly used to evaluate PI, and hence selective attention, stand out: (1) the Stroop paradigm (Stroop, 1935), (2) the Flanks paradigm (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), and (3) the Conjunction Visual Search paradigm (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) (for more paradigms see Introzzi et al., 2021; Treisman & Sato, 1990).