Attention Capture By Unconsciously Perceived Objects

Abstract

Attentional capture is defined as an involuntary shift in attention towards an irrelevant stimulus causing decreased performance on a central task. Through previous research, it is known that attention can be captured by a stimulus that is either masked or unmasked, when that stimulus is regarded as the figure/object in the visual field. Additionally, it has been shown that portions of familiar objects that are suggested, but not consciously perceived, on the groundside of figures can evoke semantic category activation. Here, we seek to determine whether portions of familiar objects that are suggested on the groundside of figures can capture attention in time, despite losing the competition for figural status in the scene. Using a 12 item RSVP stream, experimental trials displayed a distractor silhouette with a familiar object suggested on the groundside prior to a well-recognizable familiar figure target. Three other trial conditions were included: distractor-absent/target-present, distractor-present/target-absent, and distractorabsent/ target-absent. Participants first made a present/absent judgement for the target followed by target identification, if applicable. We observed a significantly lower proportion of targetpresent responses on distractor-present/target-present trials compared to distractor-absent/targetpresent trials, indicating that familiar objects suggested, but not consciously perceived, on the groundside of figures can capture attention in time. 199 words