The Attentional Window, Search Difficulty and Search Modes: A Reply to Commentaries on Theeuwes (2023)

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Abstract

With great pleasure I studied the commentaries of my esteemed colleagues to my opinion paper “ The Attentional Capture Debate: When Can We avoid Salient Distractors and When Not?” ( Theeuwes, 2023). I thought the comments were to-the-point and provocative and I believe that these kinds of exchanges will help the field to move forward in this debate. I discuss the most pressing concerns in separate sections where I have grouped commonly raised issues.

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Most cited references 30

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A feature-integration theory of attention

Anne Treisman, Garry Gelade (1980)

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Top-down and bottom-up control of visual selection.

Jan Theeuwes (2010)

The present paper argues for the notion that when attention is spread across the visual field in the first sweep of information through the brain visual selection is completely stimulus-driven. Only later in time, through recurrent feedback processing, volitional control based on expectancy and goal set will bias visual selection in a top-down manner. Here we review behavioral evidence as well as evidence from ERP, fMRI, TMS and single cell recording consistent with stimulus-driven selection. Alternative viewpoints that assume a large role for top-down processing are discussed. It is argued that in most cases evidence supporting top-down control on visual selection in fact demonstrates top-down control on processes occurring later in time, following initial selection. We conclude that top-down knowledge regarding non-spatial features of the objects cannot alter the initial selection priority. Only by adjusting the size of the attentional window, the initial sweep of information through the brain may be altered in a top-down way. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: evidence from visual search.

Steven Yantis, John Jonides (1984)

The effect of temporal discontinuity on visual search was assessed by presenting a display in which one item had an abrupt onset, while other items were introduced by gradually removing line segments that camouflaged them. We hypothesized that an abrupt onset in a visual display would capture visual attention, giving this item a processing advantage over items lacking an abrupt leading edge. This prediction was confirmed in Experiment 1. We designed a second experiment to ensure that this finding was due to attentional factors rather than to sensory or perceptual ones. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 and demonstrated that the procedure used to avoid abrupt onset--camouflage removal--did not require a gradual waveform. Implications of these findings for theories of attention are discussed.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Jan Theeuwes:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5849-7721

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Cogn

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Cogn

Journal ID (issn): 2514-4820

Title: Journal of Cognition

Publisher: Ubiquity Press

ISSN (Electronic): 2514-4820

Publication date (Electronic, pub): 06 July 2023

Publication date (Electronic, collection): 2023

Volume: 6

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: 40

Affiliations

[1 ]Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Author notes

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Jan Theeuwes Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands j.theeuwes@ 123456vu.nl

Author information

Jan Theeuwes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5849-7721

Article

DOI: 10.5334/joc.305

PMC ID: 10327826

SO-VID: f3cedd51-7364-4965-adf7-1b9559fa6413

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 02 June 2023

Date accepted : 18 June 2023

Funding

Funded by: European Research Council (ERC), doi open-funder-registry10.13039/open_funder_registry10.13039/501100000781;

Award ID: 833029

This work is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant 833029 – [LEARNATTEND] to Jan Theeuwes.

The Attentional Window, Search Difficulty and Search Modes: A Reply to Commentaries on Theeuwes (2023)

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Most cited references 30

A feature-integration theory of attention

Top-down and bottom-up control of visual selection.

Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: evidence from visual search.

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