Exogenous and endogenous control of attention: The effect of visual onsets and offsets
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Two experiments were carried out to investigate the relation between exogenous and endogenous control of visual attention. Subjects searched for a target letter among three nontarget letters that were positioned on an imaginary circle around a fixation point. At different cue-display intervals, a centrally located arrowhead cue reliably indicated the location of the target letter. At different SOAs, a peripheral line segment near one of the letters was either abruptly switched on (Experiment 1) or abruptly switched off (Experiment 2). Presenting the central arrowhead after display onset prevents attention from being focused in advance on the critical location. In this unfocused attentional state, both onset and offset transients attracted attention. When the central arrowhead was available in advance, the focusing of attention prior to display onset precluded attention attraction to the location of the onset or offset transient. Contrary to an offset transient, an onset transient presented at the attended location disrupted performance, indicating that an onset within the spotlight of attention attracts attention. The results are reconciled by means of the zoom-lens theory of attention, suggesting that outside the focus of attention, abrupt transients are not capable of attracting attention. Since the size of the zoom lens is under voluntary control, it can be argued that transients do not fulfill the intentionality criterion of automaticity.
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When attention is highly focused on a location in space, abrupt onset distractors presented elsewhere in the visual field cease to capture attention.
“when attention is highly focused on a location in space, abrupt onset distractors presented elsewhere in the visual field cease to capture attention (Theeuwes, 1991a; Yantis & Jonides, 1990)”
From Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention. (2018) · cites this paper as Theeuwes, 1991a
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- Authors
- Theeuwes, J.
- Affiliations
- Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Theeuwes, Jan
- ORCID
- Theeuwes, Jan
- Venue
- Perception & Psychophysics
- Published
- 1991-01
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83-90
- ISSN
- 0031-5117 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-5962
- OpenAlex
- W2061059521
- Cited by
- 814
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 36 · 2014: 35 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 44
- FWCI
- 13.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Perception & Psychophysics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- TNO Repository (submittedVersion)
- Repository hosted by TU Delft Library (TU Delft) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- bottom-up attention, top-down attention, visual attention, attentional capture, arrow cues, attentional spotlight, automaticity, visual search
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Attention, Discrimination Learning, Humans, Orientation, Pattern Recognition, Visual
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