It’s under control: Top-down search strategies can override attentional capture

Leber, Andrew B.; Egeth, Howard E. · 2006 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03193824

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Summary

This paper addresses the debate regarding whether attentional capture by featurally salient distractors is automatic or subject to top-down control. Specifically, it challenges Theeuwes’s (2004) model, which posits that salient distractors automatically capture attention if they fall within a spatial window of attention during parallel search. Theeuwes argued that previous evidence for voluntary override (Bacon & Egeth, 1994) was confounded by serial search strategies or reduced distractor salience. Leber and Egeth aim to demonstrate that observers can override involuntary capture even when search is parallel and distractor salience is high, supporting the view that top-down strategies can suppress stimulus-driven attention. To test this, the authors conducted an experiment with 30 participants divided into two groups: a "singleton group" and a "feature group." Both groups underwent a 480-trial training phase followed by a 480-trial test phase. In the training phase, the singleton group searched for unpredictable targets among homogeneous distractors, encouraging a salience-based strategy. The feature group searched for a consistent target shape among heterogeneous distractors, encouraging a feature-based search strategy. In the test phase, both groups performed identical parallel search tasks (searching for a circle among squares) with flat search slopes, ensuring parallel processing. Crucially, the test phase included trials with a highly salient red color singleton distractor. This design ensured that any difference in distractor interference between groups could not be attributed to serial search or low distractor salience. The results showed that during the test phase, both groups exhibited flat search slopes, confirming parallel search. However, the groups differed significantly in their susceptibility to the distractor. The singleton group, trained to rely on salience, suffered significant interference from the red distractor (20 msec cost). In contrast, the feature group, trained to use a feature-based strategy, showed no significant interference (6 msec cost, not statistically significant). This indicates that the feature group successfully ignored the salient distractor despite the conditions favoring automatic capture according to Theeuwes’s model. The findings contradict Theeuwes’s claim that attentional capture is automatic within an attentional window during parallel search. Instead, they support Bacon and Egeth’s proposal that observers can adopt top-down search strategies (feature search mode) that override stimulus-driven capture. The study demonstrates that the ability to ignore salient distractors is not merely a byproduct of serial search or low salience but reflects genuine top-down control. This implies that attentional selection is flexible and dependent on the observer’s strategic goals, rather than being strictly determined by the physical salience of stimuli within the visual field.

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Topics

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• visual search
• attention selective divided
• inattentional change blindness