Citation

Yantis S, Johnson DN. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1990; 16(4): 812-825.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1990, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2148594

Abstract

When a single abrupt onset occurs in a multielement visual display, it captures attention, possibly by generating an attentional interrupt that designates onsets as being of high priority. In 3 experiments, the mechanisms subserving attentional priority setting were investigated. Subjects searched for a prespecified target letter among multiple distractor letters, half of which had abrupt onsets and half of which did not. The target, when present, was equally often an onset element and a no-onset element. Several models for attentional priority, differing in how many onset elements have priority over no-onset elements, were assessed. The data support a model in which approximately 4 onset stimuli are processed before any no-onset stimuli are processed. Two attentional priority mechanisms are proposed: (a) queuing of a limited number of high-priority elements and (b) temporally modulated decay of attentional priority tags.

Language: en