We have recently published work in Psych Science and JEP:LMC showing a surprising relationship between initial capture and learned suppression of salient distractors. Ultimately, this has led us to believe that attentional control is much more flexible than often assumed. Read more on my blog!

From Capture to Suppression: How Distraction Shapes Attentional Control

By Nick Gaspelin and Yue Zhang Zhang, Y. & Gaspelin, N. (2026a). From capture to control: Initial capture increases learned suppression. Psychological Science. 37(4), 2…

gaspelinblog.wordpress.com

Fun times giving a talk on Signal Suppression 2.0 and attentional capture in Jeremy Wolfe's lab this morning. Thanks for the invitation and excellent questions! I feel like a real grown-up now. :)

More fun photos from the Show-Me Mental State conference.

Great success at the Show-Me Mental State conference! So many great talks on attention, working memory, cognitive control, long-term memory, linguistics, and more. Special thanks to Ed Awh for the wonderful keynote! My first shot at conference organizing.

I am excited to announce that Steeven Chaloyard has won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in my lab next year. He recently obtained his PhD at the University of Rouen in Normandy, France where he studied with Dr. François Maquestiaux. Look out for some cool forthcoming work from us soon!

A cool additive color mixing demonstration inherited from Mizzou from the 1940s/50s. Manufactured by General Electric! It consists of 3 light bulbs (R,G,B) and control knobs to adjust the intensity of each bulb. This allows you to produce any possible color combination on an opaque filter.

Thanks to everyone who applied to our NSF-funded "R Programming for Psychology and Neuroscience" virtual summer workshop. This year, we had over 150 applications from outstanding applicants around the world! We truly appreciate the investment and it is humbling to see so many great applicants.

A cool Müller-Lyer illusion inherited from Nelson Cowan! You can adjust the length of the line via a slide rule and the back has a ruler to measure how far the estimate of equal length was from reality. More cool perception gadgets that I inherited to come!

Collin Scarince and I have a new paper out in QJEP. This is an impressive feat by Collin to modify the Guided Search model with a multidimensional scaling "plug in" that helps extend computational capacity to capture performance with featurally complex stimuli. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The ADAM lab is hiring a Research Specialist to join us! This role involves conducting human subjects research (EEG experiments on attention + working memory) and assisting with the execution and administration of ongoing projects. Job posting: emdz.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Research Specialist

The Attention, Distractions, and Memory (ADAM) Lab at Rice University is recruiting a full-time Research Specialist (Research Specialist I). The ADAM Lab (PI: Kirsten Adam) conducts cognitive neurosci...

emdz.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com

Congrats to the honors students and McNair scholars from our lab! Nice work presenting your final projects and enjoy graduation!

Last chance to apply for our virtual summer workshop on R Programming for Psychology and Neuroscience. Funded by NSF, this FREE workshop provides direct training in using R to analyze data from psychological experiments. Open to students from any university. Apps due May 15! rworkshop.missouri.edu

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This virtual workshop teaches basic principles of computer programming for psychology and neuroscience. Specific emphasis is given on the skills needed to analyze data from psychological tasks using R...

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Such a wonderful talk from Keisuke Fukuda. Really cool work on working memory and metacognition! Thanks so much visiting us at Mizzou! @keisukefukuda.bsky.social

A very interesting paper introducing a new technique to manipulate salience during search!

Wouter Kool@wouterkool.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We introduce a new search task that manipulates salience (via minority & majority groups) and statistical regularities that incentivize different search strategies. In Experiment 3, we use an attention probe (à la @ngaspelin.bsky.social) to track how attention is allocated across the display.

Just a few more days left to apply! Come join our lab!🥳

Working Memory, Cognition, & Development Lab@womcogdevlab.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We are looking for a new colleague!🧠🇨🇭🦩 A new post doc position is available in our lab - check the link for more details! www.unige.ch/fapse/womcog...

Excited to see this work out! We show that attention can rapidly learn to ignore salient distractions within 1-2 exposures. Interestingly, this learned suppression is highly contingent on an initial instance of capture! More to come! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @yuezhang-mu.bsky.social

From Capture to Control: Initial Capture Increases Learned Suppression - Yue Zhang, Nicholas Gaspelin, 2026

Salient stimuli have the potential to distract us from our immediate goals. Much research has therefore aimed to understand how we learn to use attention to res...

journals.sagepub.com

Hi Colleagues who use eyetracking! 👋 👀 @shen4brains.bsky.social , @jordwynn.bsky.social, Zhong Xu Liu and I are guest editing a Special Issue for Neuropsychologia on Contributions of eyetracking to cognitive neuroscience.

The Graduate Student and Postdoc Committee is looking to fill three vacancies on the committee this year. Applications are due by April 1. Learn more and express your interest here: buff.ly/0rZ3Udb

Want to learn R? 📊 Join our NSF-funded "R Programming for Psychology and Neuroscience Workshop"! This virtual workshop is completely free and teaches junior scientists the basics of coding for data analysis. Apply by May 15th! rworkshop.missouri.edu #RStats #Psychology #Neuroscience

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This virtual workshop teaches students basic principles of computer programming for psychology and neuroscience. Specific emphasis is given on the skills needed to analyze data from cognitive tasks us...

rworkshop.missouri.edu

Does salience boost object representations in working memory, or is it just a visual search artifact? In two new studies w/ Nelson Cowan, we challenge some recent studies for a more flexible model of working memory. Read about it on my blog! gaspelinblog.wordpress.com/2026/03/11/f...

Flexibility in Working Memory: Overcoming Salience

Gaspelin, N. & Cowan, N. (2025). Restoring a top-down control assumptions: Salience effects in working memory are overcome with time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.&nbsp…

gaspelinblog.wordpress.com

Honored to be an APS fellow! Thanks to those who nominated me. And congrats to the others who were also inducted. www.psychologicalscience.org/members/fell...

APS Fellows

Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application.

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❗New paper published in Cognition❗ "A common signal-strength factor limits awareness and precise knowledge of multiple moving objects across the adult lifespan" from Iris Wiegand, Igor S. Utochkin, Ava Mitra, Chia-Chien Wu, and Jeremy M. Wolfe authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Elaine (my daughter) is officially the mascot for our Linux-based stimulus machines in the lab. All coding frustrations can now be addressed by viewing this picture. >> sudo get-cuteness

Here's a new paper in which we analyzed >700,000 eye movements to understand attentional suppression of distracting stimuli. This large dataset helps resolve some longstanding questions about the timing and learning of suppression. @kaitlyndrennan.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What can a half-million saccades tell us about distractor suppression?

Salient distractions in the environment compete for attention and have the potential to interfere with our goals. An abundance of research has therefo…

sciencedirect.com

new paper in TICS officially out today. great learning from and writing with Anastasia, and super cool cover art from Prof. Pinar Yoldas. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory

A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to occur in part by recruiting early...

cell.com

What can we learn from >700,000 eye movements about distractor suppression? Tonight, Kaitlyn Drennan will present a large data set that aims to resolve difficult-to-answer questions about distractor suppression. Stop by her poster to see beautiful data! ​

Are working memory representations feature-based or object-based? This afternoon, Chenye Bao will present some awesome ERP work using the CDA component to test between these accounts. She finds an interesting discrepancy between behavior and ERPs. Don't miss her talk! @chenyebao.bsky.social

How do we learn to ignore salient distractors? This morning, Yue Zhang will be present fascinating work suggesting successful ignoring actually requires an initial instance of capture. This learning can occur rapidly within 1-2 trials! Don't miss her talk. @yuezhang-mu.bsky.social ​

Great keynote by Joy Geng at OPAM! Super cool research and great early career advice. Very inspiring and motivational to see!

Does the breadth of attentional focus determine whether salient stimuli capture attention? Theeuwes has suggested prior evidence of signal suppression can be explained by parallel search. Xiaojin Ma put this to the test. Stop by her poster to learn more! @xiaojinma.bsky.social