Bs. Gibson et Em. Kelsey, STIMULUS-DRIVEN ATTENTIONAL CAPTURE IS CONTINGENT ON ATTENTIONAL SET FOR DISPLAYWIDE VISUAL FEATURES, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 24(3), 1998, pp. 699-706
This research showed that the current criterion for stimulus-driven at
tentional capture is not sufficient to rule out goal-directed processe
s that are critical for producing attentional capture. This was shown
by demonstrating a contingency between displaywide visual features (i.
e., features that signal the appearance of the task-relevant target di
splay as a whole) and the features that capture attention. In Experime
nt 1, the target display was signaled by both color and onset; in Expe
riment 2, the target display was signaled only by onset. As expected,
Experiment 1 showed that task-irrelevant color and onset distracters b
oth captured attention, whereas Experiment 2 showed that only onset di
stracters captured attention. These contingencies suggest that the str
ongest evidence currently available for stimulus-driven attentional ca
pture may be caused by goal-directed processes.