Abstract
Attention capture is often operationally defined as speeded search performance when an otherwise nonpredictive stimulus happens to be the target of a visual search. That is, if a stimulus captures attention, it should be searched with priority even when it is irrelevant to the task. Given this definition, only the abrupt appearance of a new object (see, e.g., Jonides & Yantis, 1988) and one type of luminance contrast change (Enns, Austen, Di Lollo, Rauschenberger, & Yantis, 2001) have been shown to strongly capture attention. We show that translating and looming stimuli also capture attention. This phenomenon does not occur for all dynamic events: We also show that receding stimuli do not attract attention. Although the sorts of dynamic events that capture attention do not fit neatly into a single category, we speculate that stimuli that signal potentially behaviorally urgent events are more likely to receive attentional priority.
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This research was supported by NIH/NIMH Grant R01 MH63773-01 to D.S. D.S. was also supported by a fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and S.F. was supported by an NDSEG fellowship.
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Franconeri, S.L., Simons, D.J. Moving and looming stimuli capture attention. Perception & Psychophysics 65, 999–1010 (2003). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194829
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194829