Attentional misguidance in visual search

Todd, S.; Kramer, Arthur F. · 1994 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03213898

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Summary

This paper investigates whether task-irrelevant visual features, specifically unique color or luminance, can capture attention in visual search tasks, challenging previous findings that only sudden onsets trigger such capture. While Yantis and Jonides (1984) demonstrated that sudden onsets involuntarily draw attention, Jonides and Yantis (1988) found that unique color or luminance did not. However, Folk et al. (1992) argued that attentional set determines capture, suggesting unique features capture attention only if they match the target’s defining properties. Todd and Kramer hypothesize that irrelevant unique features may still influence attention through "attentional misguidance," where salient distractors serve as landmarks for top-down search strategies, particularly as display complexity increases. The authors conducted two experiments using visual search tasks with varying display sizes (4, 9, 16, and 25 items). In Experiment 1, participants searched for a target letter among distractors, with one distractor possessing a unique color (red or green) irrelevant to the task. Displays were randomly positioned to prevent patterned scanning. Results showed that while unique color did not produce the zero-slope reaction time (RT) characteristic of pure attentional capture, RTs for uniquely colored targets were significantly faster than for nonunique targets in larger displays (16 and 25 items). A follow-up assessment confirmed that subjects noticed the unique color more frequently in larger displays, indicating increased salience. Experiment 2 replicated this design using unique luminance (bright vs. dim) instead of color. Similar to Experiment 1, unique luminance did not capture attention in small displays but facilitated faster detection in larger sets, with bright unique items showing a stronger effect than dim ones. The findings indicate that task-irrelevant unique features do not trigger involuntary, stimulus-driven attentional capture in the same manner as sudden onsets. Instead, they exert an influence termed "attentional misguidance." This effect is not absolute but progressive, becoming more pronounced as the number of distractors increases. The authors argue that as display size grows, the relative salience of the unique item increases due to local lateral inhibition and reduced ability to group distractors. Consequently, observers increasingly use these salient landmarks to guide their search, even though the feature is irrelevant to the target definition. This suggests that attentional control involves an interplay between stimulus-driven salience and goal-directed strategies, where irrelevant features can misguide attention when they become sufficiently conspicuous within the visual array.

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Topics

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• visual search
• inattentional change blindness
• attention selective divided
• conspicuity in litigation
• useful field of view