The effects of salience on saccadic target selection

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of saliency on saccadic target selection as a function of time. Participants were required to make a speeded saccade towards a target defined by a unique orientation presented concurrently with multiple nontargets and one distractor. Target and distractor were equally salient within the orientation dimension but varied in saliency in the colour dimension. Within the colour dimension, the target presented could be more, equally, or less salient than the distractor. The results showed that saliency played a large role early during processing while no effects of saliency were found in later processing. Results are discussed in terms of models on visual selection.

Notes

Please address all correspondence to Wieske van Zoest, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

Given that ample evidence suggest the existence of a tight coupling between attention and eye movements (e.g., Deubel & Schneider, 1996; Hoffman & Subramaniam, 1995; Kowler, Anderson, Dosher, & Blaser, 1995; McPeek, Maljkovic, & Nakayama, 1999; Moore & Armstrong, 2003) a greater understanding in the role of bottom‐up and top‐down activations in eye movements is expected to lead to a greater understanding of the role of bottom‐up and top‐down activation in the field of attention.