Shattering the Attentional Window: What Really Determines Capture by Abrupt Onsets and Color Singletons?

Abstract

There is emerging evidence that suppressing distractors occur to prevent capture by those distractors. Theeuwes (2022) claimed that the absence of capture is not because of suppression but rather because a difficult, serial search causes salient distractors to fall outside of the attentional window. Here, we question this attentional window view by describing evidence that (a) for color singletons, capture fails to occur with an easy search, and (b) for abrupt onsets, capture does occur in a difficult search. We argue that the critical factor determining capture by salient distractors is not the attentional window or search difficulty but rather target search mode (singleton vs. nonsingleton).

Keywords

• attention capture
• target search mode
• singleton detection
• feature search
• attentional window