THE ROLE OF ATTENTION IN ILLUSORY CONJUNCTIONS

In five experiments, we investigated the effects of attention on illus ory conjunctions formed between features of unrelated objects. The fir st three experiments used a weak manipulation of attention and found t hat illusory conjunctions formed either among features receiving high attentional priority or among features receiving low attentional prior ity were not more frequent than were conjunctions formed between mixed features of different attentional priority. The last two experiments used a strong manipulation of attention and failed to reveal any evide nce of true illusory conjunctions. The results are inconsistent with t he feature-integration theory, which predicts that when attention is f ocused on a subset of items, illusory conjunctions ought to occur with in and outside of the attended subset, but not between the attended an d unattended items.