Cite as:
Wykowska A A, Schubö A, 2010, "Attending to what is relevant! Irrelevant singletons do not capture attention but can produce filtering costs" Perception 39 ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 117

Attending to what is relevant! Irrelevant singletons do not capture attention but can produce filtering costs

A A Wykowska, A Schubö

It has not yet been established whether spatial attention is automatically driven to the most conspicuous items in a given context. Some authors postulate that most salient items capture spatial attention, eg Hickey, McDonald, & Theeuwes (2006 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18 604-613) whereas others, eg Folk & Remington (2006 Visual Cognition 14 445-465) argue that conspicuous irrelevant items can produce only nonspatial interference. The present ERP studies examined the deployment of attention in visual search displays that contained an additional salient irrelevant singleton. N2pc locked to the search display showed that attention was allocated to the target but not to the irrelevant singleton. As the onset of the target-N2pc was delayed when the irrelevant singleton was presented in the opposite hemifield, the irrelevant singleton presumably produced some (nonspatial) interference. ERPs were also analysed relative to the onset of probe that was presented subsequent to the search display. Probe-locked P1 showed sensory gain for probes located at the target position but not for irrelevant singletons in the additional singleton condition. Taken together, the present data show that irrelevant singletons do not necessarily capture attention but can produce nonspatial filtering costs.
[Supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Res Group 480, SCHU 1330 2-1]

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