Can new objects override attentional control settings?

Previous research suggests that attentional capture by abrupt onsets is con tingent on top-down attentional control settings. Four experiments addresse d whether similar contingencies hold for capture elicited by the appearance of new perceptual objects. In a modified spatial cuing task, targets defin ed by abrupt onset or color were paired with distracters consisting of an a brupt brightening of an existing object or the abrupt appearance of anew ob ject. In Experiments 1 and 2, when subjects searched for an onset target, b oth distracter types produced evidence of capture. When subjects searched f or a color target, however, distracters produced no evidence of attentional capture, regardless of whether they consisted of a new perceptual object o r not. Experiments 3-5 showed that the lack of distracter effects in the co lor-target condition cannot be accounted for by rapid recovery from capture . It was concluded that attentional capture by new objects is subject to to p-down modulation by attentional control settings.