Abstract
Previous research suggests that attentional capture by abrupt onsets is contingent on top-down attentional control settings. Four experiments addressed whether similar contingencies hold for capture elicited by the appearance of new perceptual objects. In a modified spatial cuing task, targets defined by abrupt onset or color were paired with distractors consisting of an abrupt brightening of an existing object or the abrupt appearance of a new object. In Experiments 1 and 2, when subjects searched for an onset target, both distractor types produced evidence of capture. When subjects searched for a color target, however, distractors produced no evidence of attentional capture, regardless of whether they consisted of a new perceptual object or not. Experiments 3-5 showed that the lack of distractor effects in the color-target condition cannot be accounted for by rapid recovery from capture. It was concluded that attentional capture by new objects is subject to top-down modulation by attentional control settings.
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—Accepted by previous editor, Myron L. Braunstein
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Folk, C.L., Remington, R. Can new objects override attentional control settings?. Perception & Psychophysics 61, 727–739 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205541
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205541