Secondary capture: Salience information persistently drives attentional selection.

Abstract

It is well known that attention is captured by salient objects or events. The notion that attention is attracted by salience information present in the visual field is also at the heart of many influential models of attention. These models typically posit a hierarchy of saliency, suggesting that attention progresses from the most to the least salient item in the visual field. However, despite the significance of this claim in various models, research on eye movements challenges the idea that search strictly follows this saliency hierarchy. Instead, eye-tracking studies have suggested that saliency information has a transient impact, only influencing the initial saccade toward the most salient object, and only if executed swiftly after display onset. While these findings on overt eye movements are important, they do not address covert attentional processes occurring before a saccade is initiated. In the current series of experiments, we explored whether there was evidence for secondary capture-whether attention could be captured by another salient item after the initial capture episode. To explore this, we utilized displays with multiple distractors of varying levels of saliency. Our primary question was whether two distractors with different saliency levels would disrupt search more than a single, highly salient distractor. Across three experiments, clear evidence emerged indicating that two distractors interfered more with search than a single salient distractor. This observation suggests that following initial capture, secondary capture by the next most salient distractor occurred. These findings collectively support the idea that covert attention traverses the saliency hierarchy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).