Can new objects override attentional control settings?
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.
Folk
C L
CL
Department of Psychology, Villanova University, PA 19085, USA. cfolk@email.vill.edu
Remington
R
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011601:Psychophysics; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014836:Volition / Q000502:physiology*