Stimulus-driven attentional capture is contingent on attentional set for displaywide visual features.

Abstract

This research showed that the current criterion for stimulus-driven attentional capture is not sufficient to rule out goal-directed processes that are critical for producing attentional capture. This was shown by demonstrating a contingency between displaywide visual features (i.e., features that signal the appearance of the task-relevant target display as a whole) and the features that capture attention. In Experiment 1, the target display was signaled by both color and onset; in Experiment 2, the target display was signaled only by onset. As expected, Experiment 1 showed that task-irrelevant color and onset distractors both captured attention, whereas Experiment 2 showed that only onset distractors captured attention. These contingencies suggest that the strongest evidence currently available for stimulus-driven attentional capture may be caused by goal-directed processes.