Abstract
To investigate if top-down contingent capture by color cues relies on verbal or semantic templates, we combined different stimuli representing colors physically or semantically in six contingent-capture experiments. In contingent capture, only cues that match the top-down search templates lead to validity effects (shorter search times and fewer errors for validly than for invalidly cued targets) resulting from attentional capture by the cue. We compared validity effects of color cues and color-word cues in top-down search for color targets (Experiment 1a) and color-word targets (Experiment 2). We also compared validity effects of color cues and color-associated symbolic cues during search for color targets (Experiment 1b) and of color-word cues during search for both color and color-word targets (Experiment 3). Only cues of the same stimulus category as the target (either color or color-word cues) captured attention. This makes it unlikely that color search is based on verbal or semantic search templates. Additionally, the validity effect of matching color-word cues during search for color-word targets was neither changed by cue-target graphic (font) similarity versus dissimilarity (Experiment 4) nor by articulatory suppression (Experiment 5). These results suggested either a phonological long-term memory template or an orthographically mediated effect of the color-word cues during search for color-words. Altogether, our findings are in line with a pronounced role of color-based templates during contingent capture by color and do not support semantic or verbal influences in this situation.
Highlights
To investigate if top-down contingent capture by color cues relies on verbal or semantic templates, we combined different stimuli representing colors physically or semantically in six contingent-capture experiments
What is true of visual search in general is true of contingent capture by color: Currently, it is not known what kind of template is underlying the contingent-capture effect by uninformative color cues
To check for advantages in perception and processing of word cues presented on the right side that could have been due to more parafoveal preview benefits for word cues on the right versus left, we conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA), including cue-side as an independent variable
Summary
To investigate if top-down contingent capture by color cues relies on verbal or semantic templates, we combined different stimuli representing colors physically or semantically in six contingent-capture experiments. The validity effect of matching color-word cues during search for color-word targets was neither changed by cue-target graphic (font) similarity versus dissimilarity (Experiment 4) nor by articulatory suppression (Experiment 5). These results suggested either a phonological long-term memory template or an orthographically mediated effect of the color-word cues during search for color-words. Participants search for a red target that in each trial can likely occur at one of four positions and report the target’s shape In this situation, target-similar, top-down matching cues presented prior to the targets capture attention: Valid cues (presented at target position) facilitate search as compared with invalid cues (presented away from the target). It has been shown that words can capture attention, even if task-irrelevant (e.g., Stein, Zwickel, Kitzmantel, Ritter, & Schneider, 2010)
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