Print Email Facebook Twitter Attentional control during visual search: The effect of irrelevant singletons Title Attentional control during visual search: The effect of irrelevant singletons Author Theeuwes, J. Burger, R. TNO Technische Menskunde Publication year 1998 Abstract Four experiments investigated whether a highly salient color singleton can be ignored during serial search. Observers searched for a target letter among nontarget letters and were instructed to ignore an irrelevant, highly salient color singleton that was either compatible or incompatible with the response to the target letter. The results indicate that it was possible to prevent attentional capture by the irrelevant singleton only when both the target and the distractor color were known. When either the color of the target or the color of the to-be-ignored singleton were varied over trials, the irrelevant singleton captured attention. The ability to selectively filter singleton distractors during serial search depends on the presence of an attentional set for a specific feature value of both target and distractor. In the absence of a consistently predictable feature value of both target and distractor, top-down control is not possible. Subject Perceptionadolescentadultanalysis of variancearticleassociationattentioncognitioncolor visionexploratory behaviorhumaninhibition (psychology)pattern recognitionperceptive discriminationphysiologyreaction timeAdolescentAdultAnalysis of VarianceAttentionColor PerceptionCuesDiscrimination (Psychology)Exploratory BehaviorHumansInhibition (Psychology)Pattern Recognition, VisualReaction TimeVolitionvisual search To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:77adaf79-e762-48c5-af5b-c0d76bff6e1f TNO identifier 16326 Source Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24 (5), 1342-1353 Document type article Files To receive the publication files, please send an e-mail request to TNO Library.