title: Stimulus-driven attentional capture by a static discontinuity between perceptual groups.
abstract: After C. L. Folk, R. W. Remington, and J. C. Johnston (1992) proposed their contingent-orienting hypothesis, there has been an ongoing debate over whether purely stimulus-driven attentional capture can occur for visual events that are salient by virtue of a distinctive static property (as opposed to a dynamic property such as abrupt onset). The present study identified 3 methodological criteria for establishing that attentional capture is stimulus driven and not contingent on top-down attentional control settings. In 5 experiments, attentional capture occurred for a static discontinuity at the boundary between one group of homogeneous items (red Xs) abutted next to a group of homogeneous items that were featurally different (green Xs) within a single row. Experiment 1 intentionally violated one of the criteria for demonstrating stimulus-driven capture so as to establish that contingent attentional capture can occur for this novel type of static cue. In the remaining 4 experiments, even with all 3 criteria for stimulus-driven capture partially or completely satisfied, the static discontinuity captured attention. These attentional capture effects are the first to be obtained when all 3 criteria for establishing that they are purely stimulus driven have been satisfied.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Albany, State University of New York, USA. attention.perform@gmail.com
authors.forename: Bryan R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Burnham
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Neely
authors.forename: Yelena
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Naginsky
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thomas
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D014796:Visual Perception