Displaywide visual features associated with a search display’s appearance can mediate attentional capture

Burnham, Bryan R. · 2007 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03194082

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Summary

This review article addresses the longstanding debate regarding whether attentional capture is driven solely by bottom-up stimulus salience or mediated by top-down attentional control. The author evaluates two primary hypotheses: Folk et al.’s (1992) Contingent Involuntary Orienting Hypothesis (CIOH), which posits that capture depends on a cue’s similarity to target-localizing features, and Gibson and Kelsey’s (1998) Displaywide Contingent Orienting Hypothesis (DCOH). The DCOH extends the CIOH by proposing that attentional sets can also include features associated with the general appearance of the target display, such as dynamic changes or global color shifts, rather than just specific target-defining features. The motivation for this review is to determine if previously reported instances of capture, particularly those involving nonlocalized targets or irrelevant singletons, are truly stimulus-driven or if they can be explained by the broader top-down mechanisms described by the DCOH. The methodology involves a comprehensive review and logical application of the DCOH to existing empirical literature on attentional capture. The author categorizes experiments into three main paradigms: spatial precuing, irrelevant singleton, and distractor interference. The analysis utilizes a factorial design comparing the predictions of the CIOH and DCOH across four cells: where both predict capture, where both predict no capture, and where their predictions diverge. The author examines prototypical experiments from each paradigm, such as those by Jonides (1981), Yantis and Jonides (1984), Theeuwes (1992), and Gibson and Kelsey (1998), to assess whether observed capture effects align with top-down mediation via displaywide features. The findings indicate that the DCOH can account for capture effects that the CIOH cannot explain, specifically in cases where the target is not localized by a unique feature or when distractors share a feature dimension with the display’s onset. For instance, capture by color singletons in displays where the target is defined by form, or capture by onset cues in displays with nonlocalized targets, are shown to be consistent with attentional sets based on displaywide feature changes (e.g., "color change" or "onset"). The review concludes that there is no compelling evidence for purely stimulus-driven attentional capture. Instead, all reviewed capture effects can be explained by top-down control settings that include features relevant to the target display’s appearance, not just the target itself. The significance of this work lies in challenging the validity of stimulus-driven capture theories and highlighting the underutilized explanatory power of the DCOH. By demonstrating that the DCOH subsumes the CIOH and accounts for a wider range of empirical results, the author argues that attentional capture is always mediated by top-down control. This implies that observers automatically incorporate displaywide features into their attentional sets to signal the onset of a search display, thereby precluding the possibility of involuntary capture by irrelevant, salient stimuli. The paper calls for greater recognition of the DCOH in the field, suggesting that previous interpretations of stimulus-driven capture were likely due to an incomplete understanding of how attentional sets are formed.

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Topics

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• attention selective divided
• visual search
• inattentional change blindness
• multisensory crossmodal
• visual