Oculomotor consequences of abrupt object onsets and offsets: Onsets dominate oculomotor capture
DOI: 10.3758/bf03193543
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Summary
This study investigates whether abrupt object onsets (appearances) and offsets (disappearances) exert similar influences on oculomotor capture, specifically examining if both transients can interrupt goal-directed eye movements. While previous research established that both onsets and offsets capture covert attention, the oculomotor consequences of offsets remained uncertain. The authors sought to determine if the visual system prioritizes new objects over disappearing ones in overt eye movement control, testing the "new-object theory" of attentional capture. The researchers conducted a series of experiments using an eye-tracking paradigm. Participants performed a visual search task, making goal-directed saccades to a uniquely colored singleton target containing a letter. On experimental trials, a task-irrelevant distractor either appeared (onset) or disappeared (offset) simultaneously with the target’s color change. Crucially, these transients were antipredictive, meaning they never coincided with the target location, ensuring that any capture was stimulus-driven rather than strategic. Experiment 1 utilized complete object onsets and offsets. Experiment 2 employed partial contour onsets and offsets, leaving residual visual information at the offset location to test if the absence of a physical object prevented oculomotor capture. Subsequent experiments varied luminance directions and timing, while Experiment 5 examined covert attention via reaction times. The results demonstrated a clear asymmetry in oculomotor capture. In Experiment 1, abrupt onsets significantly disrupted goal-directed saccades, with eyes erroneously moving to the onset location on 27% of trials. These saccades had short latencies, indicating reflexive capture. In contrast, complete offsets had no significant effect on saccade direction or latency; eyes rarely moved to the offset location (<1% of trials). Experiment 2 yielded similar findings: partial contour onsets captured the eyes (15.8% of trials), while partial offsets did not. Furthermore, reaction time analyses in Experiment 5 showed that antipredictive onsets slowed target identification, whereas offsets produced little to no cost. The findings indicate that onsets dominate oculomotor capture, while offsets demonstrate little to no ability to interrupt goal-directed eye movements. This asymmetry persists even when offsets leave residual visual information, suggesting that the oculomotor system is not equally sensitive to appearances and disappearances. The authors conclude that these results support a new-object theory of attentional capture, positing that the visual system grants attentional priority to the appearance of new objects, likely because onsets signal potentially significant environmental changes requiring immediate action, whereas offsets do not carry the same imperative for overt orienting.
Key finding
Abrupt object onsets capture eye movements and covert attention far more strongly than offsets when distractors are antipredictive; offsets produce minimal oculomotor capture (<2%) except weak pre-target disruption.
Methodology
lab_experiment
Sample size: Five experiments: N=12 each (Experiments 1–3), N=24 (Experiment 4), N=29 (Experiment 5; 30 recruited, 1 excluded)
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 24 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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