Why salience is not enough: reflections on top-down selection in vision.

The target article represents a distillation of nearly 20 years of work dedicated to the analysis of visual selection. Throughout these years, Jan Theeuwes and his colleagues have been enormously productive in their development of a particular view of visual selection, one that emphasizes the role of bottom-up processes. This work has been very influential, as there is substantial merit to many aspects of this research. However, this endeavor has also been provocative—the reaction to this work has resulted in a large body of research that emphasizes the role of top-down processes. Here we highlight recent work not covered in Theeuwes’s review and discuss how this literature may not be compatible with Theeuwes’s theoretical perspective. In our view this ongoing debate has been one of the most interesting and productive in the field. One can only hope that in time the ultimate result will be a complete understanding of how visual selection actually works.

[1]  J. Theeuwes,et al.  The role of stimulus-driven and goal-driven control in saccadic visual selection. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[2]  J. Theeuwes.  Top-down and bottom-up control of visual selection. , 2010, Acta psychologica.

[3]  Jan Theeuwes,et al.  The size of an attentional window modulates attentional capture by color singletons , 2007, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[4]  Andrew B. Leber,et al.  Made you blink! Contingent attentional capture produces a spatial blink , 2002, Perception & psychophysics.

[5]  J. Theeuwes.  Perceptual selectivity for color and form , 1992, Perception & psychophysics.

[6]  S. Luck,et al.  Feature-based attention modulates feedforward visual processing , 2009, Nature Neuroscience.

[7]  Ken Nakayama,et al.  Attentional requirements in a ‘preattentive’ feature search task , 1997, Nature.

[8]  Dominique Lamy,et al.  Effects of task relevance and stimulus-driven salience in feature-search mode. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[9]  J. C. Johnston,et al.  Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[10]  H. Egeth,et al.  Attention on autopilot: Past experience and attentional set , 2006 .

[11]  J. Theeuwes,et al.  Visual search for featural singletons: No top-down modulation, only bottom-up priming , 2006 .

[12]  H. Egeth,et al.  Overriding stimulus-driven attentional capture , 1994, Perception & psychophysics.

[13]  S. Hillyard,et al.  Selective attention to color and location: An analysis with event-related brain potentials , 1984, Perception & psychophysics.

[14]  Carly J. Leonard,et al.  Attentional guidance in singleton search: An examination of top-down, bottom-up, and intertrial factors , 2008 .

[15]  Carly J. Leonard,et al.  The role of attention in subitizing: Is the magical number 1? , 2008 .

[16]  D. Sagi,et al.  Vision outside the focus of attention , 1990, Perception & psychophysics.

[17]  H. J. Muller,et al.  Visual search for singleton feature targets across dimensions: Stimulus- and expectancy-driven effects in dimensional weighting. , 2003, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[18]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  The physiological basis of attentional modulation in extrastriate visual areas , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[19]  R. Desimone,et al.  Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. , 1995, Annual review of neuroscience.

[20]  J. Gallant,et al.  Time Course of Attention Reveals Different Mechanisms for Spatial and Feature-Based Attention in Area V4 , 2005, Neuron.

[21]  Dominique Lamy,et al.  Effects of search mode and intertrial priming on singleton search , 2006, Perception & psychophysics.

[22]  Hidehiko Komatsu,et al.  Target Selection in Area V4 during a Multidimensional Visual Search Task , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[23]  Jan Theeuwes,et al.  Target uncertainty does not lead to more distraction by singletons: Intertrial priming does , 2005, Perception & psychophysics.

[24]  G. Boynton,et al.  Feature-Based Attentional Modulations in the Absence of Direct Visual Stimulation , 2007, Neuron.