Attentional processes are generally assumed to be involved in multiple object tracking (MOT). The Attentional Capture (AC) paradigm is regularly employed to study conditions of attentional control. It has up to now not been used to assess influences of sudden onset distractor stimuli in MOT. We investigated whether AC does occur in MOT: Are onset distractors processed at all in dynamic attentional tasks? We found that sudden onset distractors were effective in lowering probe detection thus demonstrating AC. Tracking performance as dependent measure was not affected. The AC effect persisted in conditions of higher tracking load (experiment 2) and was dramatically increased in lower presentation frequency (experiment 3). Tracking performance was shown to suffer only when onset distractors were presented serially with very short time gaps in between thus effectively disturbing reengaging attention on the tracking set (experiment 4). We discuss that rapid dis- and reengagement of attention on a target object and stable representation of the tracking array in visual working memory allow managing strong disruptions of attention during tracking.

Dataset for: Pichlmeier, S., & Pfeiffer, T. (2021). Attentional capture in multiple object tracking. Journal of Vision, 21(8), 16. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.8.16