S. Yantis et Ap. Hillstrom, STIMULUS-DRIVEN ATTENTIONAL CAPTURE - EVIDENCE FROM EQUILUMINANT VISUAL OBJECTS, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 20(1), 1994, pp. 95-107
Previous work has shown that abrupt visual onsets capture attention. P
ossible mechanisms for this phenomenon include (a) a luminance-change
detection system and (b) a mechanism that detects the appearance of ne
w perceptual objects. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that attention is c
aptured in visual search by the appearance of a new perceptual object
even when the object is equiluminant with its background and thus exhi
bits no luminance change when it appears. Experiment 3 showed that a h
ighly salient luminance increment alone is not sufficient to capture a
ttention. These findings suggest that attentional capture is mediated
by a mechanism that detects the appearance of new perceptual objects.