Attention capture and the ability to ignore unique changes in visual search

A sudden change in color is typically less salient in capturing attention than is the onset of a new object. However, a closer look at results reported in the literature and a meta-analysis of existing data suggest that color changes capture attention to a lesser degree. Reanalyzing the data of four experiments (N = 46) revealed a strong capture effect for both color changes and onsets, but only in the first half of the experiment. In the second half, the capture effect for color changes (but not for onsets) disappeared. Further data splitting even suggests that color capture occurred only in the first 90 trials. A new account is proposed, based on a learning-to-ignore process, where the automatic capture of attention is “overridden” when the change is not relevant for the current task. In line with this argumentation, I will also challenge current explanations for the exceptional role of onsets in attention capture