Abrupt onsets capture attention independent of top-down control settings

1. Abrupt onsets capture attention independent of top-down control settings Daniel Schreij, Caleb Owens and Jan Theeuwes Perception & Psychophysics 2008, 70 (2), 208-218

2. Take home message • Abrupt onsets capture attention independent of top-down control settings

3. Introduction • Are we able to control what we select for attention from our environment? • The properties of the stimulus field • The goals or beliefs of the observer • bottom-up and top-down attentional control

4. Attentional capture • When objects or events receive priority of processing, independent of the observer’s goals and beliefs, this is attentionalcapture • less controversy about attentionalcapture by abrupt onsets

5. onset stimuli were detected faster than the no-onset counterparts (Todd &Van Gelder, 1979) • abrupt onsets also have the ability to capture the eyes. (Theeuwes et al., 1998; Theeuwes, Kramer, Hahn, Irwin, & Zelinsky, 1999) • irrelevant salient static singletonsonly captured attention, not the eyes. (Theeuwes, de Vries, & Godijn, 2003)

6. onsets are accompanied by luminance transients (Jonides & Yantis, 1988; Theeuwes, 1990, 1994, 1995; Yantis & Jonides, 1984) • Regardless of the underlying mechanism, it’s generally agreed that onsets have the ability to capture attention in an exogenous manner

7. Challenge • Whether attentional capture by onsets is truly exogenous? • Folk, Remington, and Johnston (1992) • involuntary contingent-orienting hypothesis

10. Only when the cue was for the same dimension as the target element was a considerable validity effect of the cue found. • When the cue was not for the target dimension, it did not affect the RT to the target, regardless of its validity. • However, there is one important difference between the paradigms favoring capture by onsets as well as by salient singletons

12. Aim • To further explore the ability of abrupt onsets to capture attention while still using the classic precuing paradigm of Folk et al. • presented the abrupt onset simultaneously with the search display

13. Method

14. EXP 1

15. Results

16. EXP 2 • The EXP 1 showed an effect of the appearance of an onset distractor. • one could argue that in Exp 1, the participants were set to look for onsets

18. Results

19. EXP 3 • One still could argue that the 15~25 ms cost caused by the onsets has nothing to do with attentional capture. • The presence of the abrupt onset may have slowed the deployment of attention to the target item by requiring an effortful and time-consuming filtering operation.

20. To determine whether the performance costs due to the onset are the result of attentional capture or filtering costs • Identity intrusion technique (Theeuwes,1996) • the element inside the abrupt onset was either compatible or incompatible with the target

21. Results

22. EXP 4 • one still may rescue the contingent-capture hypothesis by assuming that in Experiments 1–3, participants engaged in singleton detection mode (Bacon & Egeth, 1994) • Singleton mode • Feature mode

23. Results

24. General discussion • Though participants have a clear attentional set for color, they cannot prevent attentionalcapture by an irrelevant abrupt onset. • However, this does not imply that onset capture is never under top-down control. • Theeuwes (1991b): 100% validity cue • Boot, Brockmole,& Simons (2005): auditory task

25. Conclusion • Since the abrupt onset or new object in the experiments was always irrelevant for the task and was presented at an empty location that never contained a target, so this attentional capture is genuinely exogenous.