Progress and remaining issues: A response to the commentaries on Luck et al. (2021)

ABSTRACT

Luck et al. (2021) reviewed evidence that observers can learn to suppress attentional capture by salient distractors. Several commentaries were written in response to this review paper, many of which raised important and interesting issues. Here, we respond to these commentaries. Although there has been substantial progress in the attentional capture debate, there are still remaining issues that need to be addressed before the debate is completely resolved. Specifically, we summarize the need for an independent measure of bottom-up salience and better metrics of how attentional control unfolds over time. Ultimately, the field may need a more refined theoretical model of visual attention that distinguishes between attentional priority, attentional orienting, and attentional engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional capture
• visual attention
• suppression
• salience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health [Grant Number R01MH076226]; National Science Foundation (NSF) [Grant Number BCS-2045624].