We live in a busy and complex world, so the ability to focus our attention on relevant information at the expense of the irrelevant is essential in allowing us to avoid distraction. However, it is also important that our attention be captured by external stimuli that, although irrelevant to the task at hand, may nevertheless provide information about important changes to our immediate environment. This capture/orienting of attention is an involuntary, fundamental, and biological mechanism necessary for survival. The present thesis employed event-related potentials (ERPs), the minute responses of the brains electrical activity, to examine how changes in the acoustic environment can lead to the capture of attention. Study 1 examined an ERP component, the P3a, which is associated with the processes that lead to the forced capture of attention by external stimuli. This intrusion into consciousness can be studied using an auditory sequence, the oddball paradigm, which consists of a frequently occurring and homogenous ‘standard’ stimulus. At times, a feature of the standard is changed to form a rarely occurring ‘deviant’. If the extent of change between standard and deviant is large enough, processes associated with attention capture may be activated. Study 1 of this thesis employed a more time-efficient multi-feature optimal paradigm, which allows for the presentation of numerous deviants in one auditory sequence. The standard stimulus was a pure tone. Four of the six deviants were created by changing a single feature of the standard (frequency, duration, increase and decrease in intensity), while the remaining two deviants varied on more than one feature from the standard (environmental sounds, white noise). Results revealed that only the environmental sounds (i.e. animal sounds, human voices, musical instruments) and white noise bursts, elicited the P3a, while the other four deviants did not. Studies 2 and 3 determined whether the attention capture processes associated with the P3a could be observed during the sleep onset and sleep periods, where awareness of the external environment is diminished. For sleep to be of benefit it needs to remain as undisturbed as possible, without constant awakenings by irrelevant external input, however, the sleeping organism must still have the ability to become conscious of possibly relevant input that requires immediate action. In Study 2, a P3a was elicited again following only the environmental sound and white noise deviants across wakefulness and the sleep onset period. Surprisingly, during definitive sleep, the environmental sounds continued to elicit a P3a suggesting that attention capture processes may still remain active during sleep. Nonetheless, only the first 30 minutes of sleep were examined. Study 3 was then conducted to examine the P3a across the entire night. Results revealed that the environmental sounds did, in fact, elicited a P3a during both NREM and REM sleep. The present thesis demonstrates that attention capture mechanisms, observed during wakefulness, are also active during sleep onset and sleep when awareness of the external environment is diminished. This is especially critical because the sleeping organism may be vulnerable to external danger, requiring the immediate ability to orient attention to incoming information, leading to awaking and conscious awareness.

The efficiency of human visual information processing is supported by numerous attentional resources. These resources ensure that behaviourally relevant information within visual scenes is selected for detailed processing, while behaviourally irrelevant information is ignored. One of these attentional resources—reflexive visuospatial attention—operates by prioritising locations in visual space in response to the appearance of salient stimuli. The purpose of the present dissertation was to examine how this type of attention contributes to the efficiency of visual processing by asking: How is processing altered for information presented at the location of attention? To develop some initial evidence of the stage of processing affected by reflexive visuospatial attention, Chapters 1 to 6 assessed whether this attentional resource is related to four other stimulus-driven effects that are each associated with a specific stage of visual processing: identity processing, object filtering, visual working memory (VWM), and response generation. Based on the observation that only the stimulus-driven effects on VWM are related to reflexive visuospatial attention (i.e., only those effects were contingent on attentional control settings), a VWM model of reflexive visuospatial attention was proposed in Chapter 7, and tested in Chapters 8 to 11. According to this model, reflexive visuospatial attention alters visual processing by triggering VWM to update. Thus, the effect of reflexive visuospatial attention is to speed the encoding of attended information into VWM. As a result, this information is more likely than unattended information to bias our behaviour, in particular those behaviours that depend on VWM. Further, by biasing VWM, reflexive visuospatial attention can interact with other attentional resources that have also been associated with VWM. In this way, these attentional resources can coordinate in optimising the process of selection, thus, contributing to the efficiency of the human visual system.

The efficiency of human visual information processing is supported by numerous attentional resources. These resources ensure that behaviourally relevant information within visual scenes is selected for detailed processing, while behaviourally irrelevant information is ignored. One of these attentional resources—reflexive visuospatial attention—operates by prioritising locations in visual space in response to the appearance of salient stimuli. The purpose of the present dissertation was to examine how this type of attention contributes to the efficiency of visual processing by asking: How is processing altered for information presented at the location of attention? To develop some initial evidence of the stage of processing affected by reflexive visuospatial attention, Chapters 1 to 6 assessed whether this attentional resource is related to four other stimulus-driven effects that are each associated with a specific stage of visual processing: identity processing, object filtering, visual working memory (VWM), and response generation. Based on the observation that only the stimulus-driven effects on VWM are related to reflexive visuospatial attention (i.e., only those effects were contingent on attentional control settings), a VWM model of reflexive visuospatial attention was proposed in Chapter 7, and tested in Chapters 8 to 11. According to this model, reflexive visuospatial attention alters visual processing by triggering VWM to update. Thus, the effect of reflexive visuospatial attention is to speed the encoding of attended information into VWM. As a result, this information is more likely than unattended information to bias our behaviour, in particular those behaviours that depend on VWM. Further, by biasing VWM, reflexive visuospatial attention can interact with other attentional resources that have also been associated with VWM. In this way, these attentional resources can coordinate in optimising the process of selection, thus, contributing to the efficiency of the human visual system.

The main focus for this thesis was cross-modal attention capture by sudden and unexpected sounds and vibrations, known as deviants, presented in a stream the same to-be-ignored stimulus. More specifically, the thesis takes a multisensory perspective and examines the possible similarities and differences in how deviant vibrations and sounds affect visual task performance (Study I), and whether the deviant and standard stimuli have to be presented within the same modality to capture attention away from visual tasks (Study II). Furthermore, by presenting spatial deviants (changing the source of the stimuli from one side of the body to the other) in audiotactile (bimodal), tactile, and auditory to-be-ignored, it explores whether bimodal stimuli are more salient compared to unimodal (Study III). In addition, Study III tested the claims that short-term memory is domain-specific. In line with previous research, Study I found that both auditory and tactile deviants captured attention away from the visual task. However, the temporal dynamics between the two modalities seem to differ. That is, it seems like practice causes the effect of vibratory deviants to reduce, whereas this is not the case for auditory deviants. This suggests that there are central mechanisms (detection of the change) and sensory-specific mechanisms. Study II found that the deviant and standard stimuli must be presented within the same modality. If attention capture by deviants is produced by a mismatch within a neural model predicting upcoming stimuli, the neural model is likely built on stimuli within each modality separately. The results of Study III revealed that spatial and verbal short-term memory are negatively affected by a spatial change in to-be-ignored sequences, but only when the change is within a bimodal sequence. These results can be taken as evidence for a unitary account of short-term memory (verbal and spatial information stored in the same storage) and that bimodal stimuli may be integrated into a unitary percept that make any change in the stream more salient.

The temporal specificity of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is limited by a sluggish and locally variable hemodynamic response trailing the neural activity by seconds. Here, we demonstrate for an attention capture paradigm that it is, never the less, possible to extract information about the relative timing of regional brain activity during cognitive processes on the scale of 100 ms by comparing alternative signal models representing early versus late activation. We demonstrate that model selection is not driven by confounding regional differences in hemodynamic delay. We show, including replication, that the activity in the dorsal anterior insula is an early signal predictive of behavioral performance, while amygdala and ventral anterior insula signals are not. This specific finding provides new insights into how the brain assigns salience to stimuli and emphasizes the role of the dorsal anterior insula in this context. The general analytic approach, named “Cognitive Timing through Model Comparison” (CTMC), offers an exciting and novel method to identify functional brain subunits and their causal interactions.