Top–down contingent attentional capture during feed-forward visual processing.

Comments on an article by Jan Theeuwes (see record [rid]2010-20897-002[/rid]). Theeuwes summarizes an impressive number of studies demonstrating interference by irrelevant visual singletons in computer experiments with humans. Theeuwes assumes that this salience-driven capture of attention is fast and occurs within 150 ms since singleton onset, during the feed-forward phase of visual processing. In contrast to Theeuwes, we think that top–down contingent capture is the rule and explains initial and fast attention capture effects in the first feed-forward phase of visual processing. During a later phase and under some conditions exogenous capture of attention possibly follows. At the same time, we propose that the evidence presented by Theeuwes fails to support exogenous orienting because it fails to exclude a top–down contingent capture explanation. We present our arguments in two sections. One major source of evidence for top–down controlled attentional capture during the feed-forward