Standing out in a small crowd: The role of display size in attracting attention

ABSTRACT

Strong evidence supporting the top-down modulation of attention has come from studies in which participants learned to suppress a singleton in a heterogeneous four-item display. These studies have been criticized on the grounds that the displays are so sparse that the singleton is not actually salient. We argue that similar evidence of suppression has been found with substantially larger displays where salience is not in question. Additionally, we examine the results of applying salience models to four-item displays, and find prominent markers of salience at the location of the singleton. We conclude that small heterogeneous displays do not preclude strong salience signals. Beyond that, we reflect on how further basic research on salience may speed resolution of the attentional capture debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention
• vision
• salience

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due Danny Jeck and Takeshi Uejima for help in applying saliency models to sample stimuli.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NIH [grant number R01DA040990]; NSF [grant number 1835202]; NIH [grant number 5R01MH113652-04].