Visual attentional guidance during smooth pursuit eye movements: Distractor interference is independent of distractor‐target similarity

In the current study, we used abrupt-onset distractors similar and dissimilar in luminance to the target of a smooth pursuit eye-movement to test if abrupt-onset distractors capture attention in a top-down or bottom-up fashion while the eyes track a moving object. Abrupt onset distractors were presented at different positions relative to the current position of a pursuit target during the closed-loop phase of smooth pursuit. Across experiments, we varied the duration of the distractors, their motion direction, and task-relevance. We found that abrupt-onset distractors decreased the gain of horizontally directed smooth-pursuit eye-movements. This effect, however, was independent of the similarity in luminance between distractor and target. In addition, distracting effects on horizontal gain were the same, regardless of the exact duration and position of the distractors, suggesting that capture was relatively unspecific and short-lived (Experiments 1 and 2). This was different with distractors moving in a vertical direction, perpendicular to the horizontally moving target. In line with past findings, these distractors caused suppression of vertical gain (Experiment 3). Finally, making distractors task-relevant by asking observers to report distractor positions increased the pursuit gain effect of the distractors. This effect was also independent of target-distractor similarity (Experiment 4). In conclusion, the results suggest that a strong location signal exerted by the pursuit targets led to very brief and largely location-unspecific interference through the abrupt onsets and that this interference was bottom-up, implying that the control of smooth pursuit was independent of other target features besides its motion signal.