Beyond guidance: It’s time to focus on the consequences of attentional capture

ABSTRACT

Attentional capture is assumed to automatically trigger attentional engagement, which gates working memory access. However, recent studies show that engagement is not a necessary outcome of capture and can be disrupted by manipulations that leave capture intact. In this commentary, I suggest that these findings have important implications for the capture debate. Mainly, they suggest that capture may have different consequences under different conditions. Moreover, they caution against interpreting the absence of evidence for engagement as evidence that capture did not occur. Finally, they open the door to future investigation about factors that determine and modulate engagement, independently from capture.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional capture
• attentional engagement
• attentional blink
• spatial cuing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy Post Doctoral Fellowship [grant number NIF\R1\180384 to A. Zivony].