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Attentional capture by abrupt onsets: new perceptual objects or visual masking?
1Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218-2685, USA. yantis@jhu.edu
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
|December 1, 1996
Summary
New objects appearing abruptly are easily found in visual search compared to those that appear gradually. This difference is due to attentional capture by new objects, not masking effects.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Visual Perception
- Attention Studies
Background:
- Objects with abrupt onsets are efficiently detected in visual search.
- No-onset stimuli, appearing gradually, are less efficiently detected.
- Gibson (1996) proposed forward masking as an explanation for this difference.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the reasons behind the differential efficiency in visual search for abrupt onset versus no-onset stimuli.
- To challenge the forward masking hypothesis proposed by Gibson (1996).
- To identify the underlying mechanisms responsible for efficient detection of abrupt onset stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Visual search experiments comparing the detection of abrupt onset stimuli with no-onset stimuli.
- Designing experiments to specifically test and rule out the influence of forward masking.
- Conducting three new experiments to further investigate the processing differences.
Main Results:
- Forward masking is unlikely to be the primary factor influencing the detection efficiency.
- Abrupt onset stimuli are processed more efficiently than no-onset stimuli.
- Three new experiments provided evidence against Gibson's masking account.
Conclusions:
- The enhanced detection of abrupt onset stimuli is attributed to attentional capture by new perceptual objects.
- The slower processing of no-onset stimuli is linked to a less efficient updating of existing object representations.
- The findings highlight the role of attentional mechanisms in visual search efficiency.
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