Authors
Benchi Wang, Jan Theeuwes
Publication date
2020/10
Journal
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Volume
46
Issue
10
Pages
1051
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Description
Recently the signal-suppression account was proposed, positing that salient stimuli automatically produce a bottom-up salience signal that can be suppressed via top-down control processes. Evidence for this hybrid account came from a capture-probe paradigm that showed that while searching for a specific shape, observers suppressed the location of the irrelevant color singleton. Here we replicate these findings but also show that this occurs only for search arrays with 4 elements. For larger array sizes when both target and distractor singleton are salient, there is no evidence for suppression; instead and consistent with the stimulus-driven account, there is clear evidence that the salient distractor captured attention. The current study shows that the relative salience of items in the display is a crucial factor in attentional control. In displays with a few heterogeneous items, top-down suppression is possible. However …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
B Wang, J Theeuwes - … of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and …, 2020