Novelty biases attention and gaze in a surprise trial

While the classical distinction between task-driven and stimulus-driven biasing of attention appears to be a dichotomy at first sight, there seems to be a third category that depends on the contrast or discrepancy between active representations and the upcoming stimulus, and may be termed novelty, surprise, or prediction failure. For previous demonstrations of the discrepancy-attention link, stimulus-driven components (saliency) may have played a decisive role. The present study was conducted to evaluate the discrepancy-attention link in a display where novel and familiar stimuli are equated for saliency. Eye tracking was used to determine fixations on novel and familiar stimuli as a proxy for attention. Results show a prioritization of attention by the novel color, and a de-prioritization of the familiar color, which is clearly present at the second fixation, and spans over the next couple of fixations. Saliency, on the other hand, did not prioritize items in the display. The results thus reinforce the notion that novelty captures and binds attention.