Stimulus-driven capture and attentional set: selective search for color and visual abrupt onsets

J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1994 Aug;20(4):799-806. doi: 10.1037//0096-1523.20.4.799.

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that attentional capture is contingent on the attentional control setting induced by the task demands (C. L. Folk, R. Remington, & J. C. Johnston, 1992). Because the experiments on which these conclusions are based can be criticized for several reasons, the contingent capture hypothesis was tested using 2 visual search tasks in which subjects searched multielement displays in which a color singleton and onset singleton were simultaneously present. Both experiments show that the contingent capture hypothesis does not hold: Irrespective of attentional set, attention was captured by the most salient singleton. The findings suggest a stimulus-driven model of performance in which selection is basically determined by the properties of the featural singletons present in the visual field.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Attention*
  • Color Perception*
  • Humans
  • Photic Stimulation*
  • Reaction Time