Overriding stimulus-driven attentional capture

Bacon, William F.; Egeth, Howard E. · 1994 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03205306

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Summary

This paper investigates the debate regarding whether visual attention is controlled solely by bottom-up stimulus salience or if it can be guided by top-down, goal-directed processes. Specifically, it addresses findings by Theeuwes (1992), who argued that attentional selection is determined exclusively by stimulus-driven factors, as irrelevant singletons (e.g., a unique color among uniform shapes) distracted observers even when the target’s specific features were known. The authors propose an alternative explanation: subjects in Theeuwes’s experiments may have adopted a "singleton detection" strategy (searching for any odd item) rather than a "feature search" strategy (searching for a specific known feature). They hypothesize that if subjects are forced to use the feature search mode, top-down control can override stimulus-driven capture. To test this, the authors conducted three experiments. Experiment 1 replicated Theeuwes’s findings using a visual search task where subjects identified the orientation of a line within a green circle target among green diamond distractors. As expected, the presence of a red diamond (an irrelevant color singleton) significantly increased response times, confirming the distracting effect of the singleton. In Experiments 2 and 3, the authors modified the task to discourage the singleton detection strategy. In Experiment 2, they introduced trials with multiple target circles, ensuring the target was not always the unique form. In Experiment 3, they further constrained the strategy by requiring subjects to search for a specific color singleton among distractors of the same color but different shapes, making form-based singleton detection ineffective. These modifications forced subjects to rely on the specific featural identity of the target. The results from Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that when the singleton detection strategy was discouraged, the distracting effect of the irrelevant color singleton disappeared. Response times were not elevated by the presence of the red distractor, despite the displays being physically identical to those in Experiment 1. This indicates that subjects successfully employed a feature search mode that was immune to interference from irrelevant dimensions. The study concludes that goal-directed selection of a specific known featural identity can override stimulus-driven attentional capture. This finding challenges the claim that top-down selectivity is impossible during visual search and supports the existence of distinct search modes. It suggests that the locus of visual attention is not determined solely by bottom-up salience but can be effectively controlled by top-down goals, provided the observer employs a strategy that focuses on specific feature values rather than general discrepancies.

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Topics

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• visual search
• attention selective divided
• inattentional change blindness
• attention
• visual
• peripheral attention