Inhibition as a potential resolution to the attentional capture debate

• A simple suppressive mechanism could resolve the attentional capture debate. • Distractors with known features can be preemptively inhibited to prevent capture. • Suppression is triggered by recent experience rather than an act of will. • Suppression can be observed in psychophysics, eye movements, and ERPs. Physically salient stimuli, such as uniquely colored objects, seem to have an inherent power to capture our attention, but formal research on this topic has produced conflicting results and theories. Here, we review evidence that the attentional capture debate can be resolved by positing a new suppressive process. This suppressive process can occur before attentional shifting to prevent salient items from attracting attention. In the current article, we review converging evidence that salient items are suppressed to avoid attentional capture comes from studies of psychophysics, eye movements, single-unit recordings, and event-related potentials (ERPs). Crucially, the ability to inhibit salient distractors seems to be learned as participants gain experience with the simple features of the to-be-ignored stimuli.