The contribution of color to attention capture effects during search for onset targets

Abstract

The literature on top-down contingent capture is concerned with the question of what constitutes a search set. Is it restricted to single stimulus properties such as color or onsets, or can such sets be more complex? In nine experiments (N = 140), we tested whether cueing effects during search for onset targets were affected by cue color. According to the classic theory of contingent capture (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 1030-1044, 1992), during search for onset targets, cues capture attention on the basis of a match between the cue's onset and top-down control settings directed to the target onsets. However, such cueing effects were based on cues of a color similar to the target color. Therefore, matches of the cue color to the target color could have contributed to the effects. Indeed, here we found cueing effects when the cues and targets were of the same color, but not when they were of different colors (Exps. 1a, 1b, 4a, and 4b). In addition, same-color cueing effects were stronger than different-color cueing effects (Exps. 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, and the white-target conditions of Exp. 5). In Experiment 5, we also identified efficient search for only one target color as a critical prerequisite for the differences between cueing by color-similar and -dissimilar onset cues. We conclude with a discussion of the contributions of cue-to-set color matches, deallocation of attention, and intertrial priming to what appear to be top-down contingent-capture effects based on abrupt onsets.

Keywords: Attention capture; Color; Contingent capture; Cueing; Onset.