Top-down influences on attentional capture by color changes.
Previous studies have shown that a change in an existing object is not as effective in capturing attention as the appearance of a new object. This view was recently challenged by Lu and Zhou (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 12:567-572, 2005), who found strong capture effects for an object changing its color. We suspected that this finding critically depends on a procedural particularity in Lu and Zhou's study, namely that the color of the unique item and the color of the no-unique items randomly switched between trials. In the current study we replicate Lu and Zhou's capture effect (Experiment 1) and show that no capture occurs when the color-to-stimuli assignment is fixed (Experiment 2). Two further experiments suggest that the capture effect in Experiment 1 is not because the unique item switched color (Experiment 3), but because all the no-unique items switched color (Experiment 4). The results are discussed considering top-down modulation and inter-trial priming effects.
von Mühlenen
Adrian
A
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. a.vonmuhlenen@warwick.ac.uk
Conci
Markus
M
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003116:Color; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*