Capture of Attention to Threatening Stimuli without Perceptual Awareness. Lin, J. Y., Murray, S. O., & Boynton, G. M. Current Biology, 19(13):1118–1122, July, 2009. ![Capture of Attention to Threatening Stimuli without Perceptual Awareness [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex Summary Visual images that convey threatening information can automatically capture attention [1], [2], [3] and [4]. One example is an object looming in the direction of the observer–presumably because such a stimulus signals an impending collision [5]. A critical question for understanding the relationship between attention and conscious awareness is whether awareness is required for this type of prioritized attentional selection [6]. Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously perceived events [7], we show that automatic allocation of attention can occur even without conscious awareness of impending threat. We used a visual search task to show that a looming stimulus on a collision path with an observer captures attention but a looming stimulus on a near-miss path does not. Critically, observers were unaware of any difference between collision and near-miss stimuli even when explicitly asked to discriminate between them in separate experiments. These results counter traditional salience-based models of attentional capture, demonstrating that in the absence of perceptual awareness, the visual system can extract behaviorally relevant details from a visual scene and automatically categorize threatening versus nonthreatening images at a level of precision beyond our conscious perceptual capabilities.
@article{lin_capture_2009,
title = {Capture of {Attention} to {Threatening} {Stimuli} without {Perceptual} {Awareness}},
volume = {19},
issn = {0960-9822},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VRT-4WH1H67-1/2/8f7ff7aa2ba198cdf8c527e8d976f93c},
doi = {10.1016/j.cub.2009.05.021},
abstract = {Summary
Visual images that convey threatening information can automatically capture attention [1], [2], [3] and [4]. One example is an object looming in the direction of the observer--presumably because such a stimulus signals an impending collision [5]. A critical question for understanding the relationship between attention and conscious awareness is whether awareness is required for this type of prioritized attentional selection [6]. Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously perceived events [7], we show that automatic allocation of attention can occur even without conscious awareness of impending threat. We used a visual search task to show that a looming stimulus on a collision path with an observer captures attention but a looming stimulus on a near-miss path does not. Critically, observers were unaware of any difference between collision and near-miss stimuli even when explicitly asked to discriminate between them in separate experiments. These results counter traditional salience-based models of attentional capture, demonstrating that in the absence of perceptual awareness, the visual system can extract behaviorally relevant details from a visual scene and automatically categorize threatening versus nonthreatening images at a level of precision beyond our conscious perceptual capabilities.},
number = {13},
urldate = {2009-07-31},
journal = {Current Biology},
author = {Lin, Jeffrey Y. and Murray, Scott O. and Boynton, Geoffrey M.},
month = jul,
year = {2009},
keywords = {SYSNEURO},
pages = {1118--1122},
}
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Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously perceived events [7], we show that automatic allocation of attention can occur even without conscious awareness of impending threat. We used a visual search task to show that a looming stimulus on a collision path with an observer captures attention but a looming stimulus on a near-miss path does not. Critically, observers were unaware of any difference between collision and near-miss stimuli even when explicitly asked to discriminate between them in separate experiments. 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