Attentional suppression of highly salient color singletons.

Abstract

A longstanding debate in visual attention research has been whether physically salient objects have an automatic power to capture attention. Recent evidence has supported a hybrid model. According to the signal suppression hypothesis, salient items automatically attract attention but can be proactively suppressed via top-down control to prevent attentional capture. Although much recent evidence has suggested that salient items can be suppressed, many of these studies used color singletons with relatively low salience. It is therefore unknown whether highly salient color singletons can also be suppressed. The current study adapted the probe technique to assess capture by color singletons at large set sizes (10 or 30 items). In four experiments, we observed no evidence that highly salient color singletons captured attention and instead observed evidence that they were suppressed below baseline levels of processing. We did, however, find strong evidence of floor effects in probe report at high set sizes, which can be mitigated by limiting the number of items that are simultaneously probed. Altogether, the results support the signal suppression hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).