title: Absence of attentional capture in parallel search is possible: a failure to replicate attentional capture in a non-singleton target search task.
abstract: The notion of a singleton versus a feature search mode (Bacon & Egeth, 1994) in visual search is generally widely accepted. Yet Theeuwes (2004) claimed a different, potentially more parsimonious position. He suggested that the size of an attentional window is under top-down control and that salient distractors within this window capture attention. We report on four experiments. The first two experiments represent our various initial attempts to replicate the crucial Experiment 1 in the Theeuwes (2004) study, all of which were not successful. In Experiment 3, we showed that our distractor was able to yield attentional capture in a situation promoting the use of the singleton search mode (Bacon & Egeth, 1994). Experiment 4 was similar to Experiment 1 but incorporated further details that may account for the discrepant findings. Still, no attentional capture was found. In sum, it was not possible to replicate a crucial piece of evidence for the attentional window hypothesis, and our results are more consistent with the assumption of two different search modes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Ergonomics, Berlin Institute of Technology, Franklinstraße 28/29, 10587 Berlin, Germany. carolin.wienrich@tu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Carolin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wienrich
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Janczyk
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception