How does attention learn to suppress salient information?

I am a Ph.D. student in Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, where I work with Dr. Nicholas Gaspelin in the Attention & Distraction Lab. I began the Ph.D. program in Fall 2024 after completing my master's degree at Guangzhou University with Dr. Shimin Fu.

During my master's training, my research focused on how salience affects attentional capture and suppression. With support from a competitive scholarship, I conducted a six-month visiting project in Nick's lab, where we examined how task relevance determines whether salience shapes attentional selection.

Since beginning my Ph.D., my work has focused on the mechanisms by which individuals learn to suppress salient information. Using a short-run technique to track rapid learning over just a few exposures, my current research asks how experience can reshape attentional control, with a particular focus on the idea that an initial instance of attentional capture may act as a learning signal that promotes later suppression.

I test these questions using behavioral methods, eye tracking, and event-related potentials. Across this work, I aim to understand how initial capture shapes the attentional control processes that prevent future distraction.

Education

Under review

• Initial capture as a learning signal for attentional suppression
  Zhang, Y., Luck, S. J., & Gaspelin, N.
  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Journal Publications

Author order reflects contribution. * These authors contributed equally to this research.

2026

• Learned suppression of salient distractors is rapid and highly flexible
  Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2026b)
  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition pdf
• From capture to control: Initial capture increases learned suppression
  Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2026a)
  Psychological Science, 37(4), 227-242 pdf

2024

• Relative saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of color and face singleton distractors: Evidence from event-related potential studies
  Zhang, Y., Zhang, H., & Fu, S. (2024)
  Cerebral Cortex, 34(4), bhae176 pdf
• Salience effects on attention are enabled by task relevance
  Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2024)
  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 50 (11), 1131-1142 pdf
• Suppression on the basis of template for rejection is reactive: Evidence from human electrophysiology
  Pang, C.*, Chen, Y.*, Zhang, Y.*, Nan, W., & Fu, S. (2024)
  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 86, 1148-1162 pdf
  * Equal contribution / co-first authors.

2023

• Attentional suppression of salient distractors in visual search: Proactive or reactive?
  Zhang, Y. (2023)
  Advances in Psychology, 13(9), 3726-3732 pdf
• Saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of abrupt-onset and color singleton distractors: Evidence from event-related potential studies
  Chen, X., Xu, B., Chen, Y., Zeng, X., Zhang, Y., & Fu, S. (2023)
  Psychophysiology, 60(8), e14290 pdf

2022

• Visual mismatch negativity reflects enhanced response to the deviant: Evidence from event-related potentials and electroencephalogram time-frequency analysis
  Zeng, X., Ji, L., Liu, Y., Zhang, Y., & Fu, S. (2022)
  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 16, 800855 pdf

Conference Presentations

• Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2026, May). Initial capture increases learned suppression. Talk presented at the Annual Meeting of Show-Me Mental State Conference, Missouri, MO.
• Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2025, November). Attentional capture is necessary to initiate learned suppression. Talk presented at the Annual Meeting of Psychonomic Society, Denver, CO.
• Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2025, May). From capture to control: Initial capture leads to learned suppression. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg, FL.
• Zhang, Y., & Gaspelin, N. (2024, November). Salience effects on attention are enabled by task relevance. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of Psychonomic Society, New York City, NY.
• Zhang, Y., Zhang, H., & Fu, S. (2024, October). Relative saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of color and face singleton distractors: Evidence from event-related potential studies. Poster presented at the National Academic Conference of Psychology, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.
• Zhang, Y., & Fu, S. (2023, April). Task difficulty modulates the effects of relative salience on attentional capture and suppression: An ERP study. Poster presented at the Academic Annual Conference of Psychology, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China.

Honors & Awards

• 2026 J. Frank Yates Student Travel Award Psychonomic Society
• 2026 Josephine Mitchell Smith Summer Fellowship University of Missouri
• 2024 Outstanding Graduate Award Guangzhou University
• 2024 Excellent Master's Thesis Award Guangzhou University
• 2023 First Prize, Learning Scholarship Guangzhou University
• 2022 Third Prize, Learning Scholarship Guangzhou University
• 2021 Third Prize, Learning Scholarship Guangzhou University