Exploring the link between sensory habituation in everyday life and attentional control abilities

Sensory habituation, the reduction of physiological and behavioral responses to repeated stimuli, enables adaptation to environmental inputs and shares mechanisms with attentional control. Despite this overlap, the relationship between habituation and attentional processes remains underexplored. The study investigated this link in 143 adult participants, who completed the Sensory Habituation Questionnaire (S-Hab-Q), measuring adaptation time to sensory input in everyday contexts, along with an interference control task, requiring the detection of targets while ignoring global or local stimulus features. Sensory sensitivity and autistic traits were also assessed using the Sensory Perception Quotient (SPQ) and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The findings demonstrated that participants who reported generally taking a long time to adapt to environmental sensory stimuli (S-Hab-Q) were less accurate in detecting global targets when local features had to be suppressed, as well as individuals with higher sensory sensitivity (SPQ). Conversely, they responded faster on non-target trials, which did not require suppression of the irrelevant stimulus dimension, as well as individuals with higher autistic traits (AQ). Overall, the study reveals a close association between individual sensory habituation profiles and attentional control abilities, underscoring the importance of considering both factors in understanding individual sensory sensitivity profiles, particularly in neurodiverse populations.