Ignoring Salient Distractors Inside and Outside the Attentional Window

Abstract There has been much debate about whether salient stimuli have an automatic power to distract us, with many conflicting results. The attentional window account proposes a potential resolution by suggesting that capture depends on the breadth of attentional focus. According to this account, when attention is broadly focused, salient stimuli will fall inside the attentional window and generate a salience signal that captures attention. When attention is narrowly focused, salient stimuli presented outside the window of attention cannot generate a salience signal that attracts attention. If true, this could explain many otherwise-contradictory findings, but this account has not been widely tested. The present study used a shape discrimination task to manipulate the spread of spatial attention and tested whether salient distractors inside versus outside the attended region capture attention. Attentional capture was assessed by the N2pc component and behavioral measures. Contrary to the predictions of the attentional window account, we found no evidence that capture by salient distractors depended on whether the salient distractor was inside or outside the attended window. Instead, our findings support models of attention, which allow feature-based control mechanisms to prevent capture by salient distractors.