Abstract
Is attentional capture contingent on top-down control settings or involuntarily driven by salient stimuli? Supporting the stimulus-driven attentional capture view, Schreij, Owens, and Theeuwes (2008) found that an onset distractor caused a response delay, in spite of participants’ having adopted an attentional set for a color feature. However, Folk, Remington, and Wu (2009) claimed that this delay reflects separate, nonspatial filtering costs instead, because the onset effects were additive with color-based capture effects, and capture should have caused underadditivity. The present Experiment 1 shows that contingent capture caused by additional color cues is also additive, just like the onset effect. This makes additivity a dubious diagnostic with regard to spatial capture. Experiment 2 demonstrates that it is possible to obtain underadditivity when attention-demanding distractors have sufficient capturing power. Experiment 3 shows that the abrupt onset interference turns into a benefit when the locations of the onset and the target coincide. Together, these results argue in favor of stimulus-driven attentional capture by abrupt onsets.
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This work was supported by VIDI Grant 452-06-007 from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) granted to C.N.L.O.
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Schreij, D., Theeuwes, J. & Olivers, C.N.L. Abrupt onsets capture attention independent of top-down control settings II: Additivity is no evidence for filtering. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 72, 672–682 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.72.3.672
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.72.3.672