Psychological Review Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association

2005, Vol. 112, No. 1, 217–242 0033-295X/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.112.1.217

What You See Is What You Set:

Sustained Inattentional Blindness and the Capture of Awareness

Steven B. Most and Brian J. Scholl Erin R. Clifford

Yale University Harvard University

Daniel J. Simons
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

This article reports a theoretical and experimental attempt to relate and contrast 2 traditionally separate
research programs: inattentional blindness and attention capture. Inattentional blindness refers to failures
to notice unexpected objects and events when attention is otherwise engaged. Attention capture research
has traditionally used implicit indices (e.g., response times) to investigate automatic shifts of attention.
Because attention capture usually measures performance whereas inattentional blindness measures
awareness, the 2 fields have existed side by side with no shared theoretical framework. Here, the authors
propose a theoretical unification, adapting several important effects from the attention capture literature
to the context of sustained inattentional blindness. Although some stimulus properties can influence
noticing of unexpected objects, the most influential factor affecting noticing is a person’s own attentional
goals. The authors conclude that many— but not all—aspects of attention capture apply to inattentional
blindness but that these 2 classes of phenomena remain importantly distinct.

“It is against state policy to pave over a deer,” said . . . an engineer for quences are usually insignificant, sometimes the results can be
the department. “If in fact the deer was in the work area, it should ludicrous: The accidental paving over of a dead deer by a Penn-
have been removed before the work was done.” sylvania highway crew would seem to fall into this latter category.
—Associated Press, August 22, 1996, reporting on road workers Unfortunately, the results can also be tragic. In 2000, for example,
who failed to see and thus paved over a dead deer
an American naval submarine rammed a Japanese fishing vessel,
People fail to notice things all the time, even when there are no killing 9 Japanese crew members and students on board. Accord-
obvious factors hampering their vision. Although the conse- ing to one account, despite a quick sweep with the periscope, the
commander failed to notice the fishing trawler nearby (Sciolino,
2001). More commonplace examples can be found in traffic acci-
Steven B. Most and Brian J. Scholl, Department of Psychology, Yale
University; Erin R. Clifford, Department of Psychology, Harvard Univer-
dent reports, which are replete with accounts of drivers failing to
sity; Daniel J. Simons, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at see obvious obstacles in their way (e.g., McLay, Anderson, Sid-
Urbana–Champaign. away, & Wilder, 1997).
Steven B. Most was supported by an Eliot Dissertation Completion Inattentional blindness is a striking phenomenon in which peo-
grant from Harvard University and by National Institutes of Health (NIH) ple fail to notice stimuli appearing in front of their eyes when they
Grant 1 F32 MH66572-01A1; Daniel J. Simons was supported by NIH are preoccupied with an attentionally demanding task (Mack &
Grant RO1-MH63773 and by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; and Rock, 1998). Although conscious perception is a complicated
Brian J. Scholl was supported by NIH Grant RO3-MH63808-01 and by matter—perhaps more of a graded phenomenon than all or noth-
National Science Foundation Grant 0132444.This research was conducted
ing, in which case one can never rule out the possibility of some
as part of Steven B. Most’s dissertation while at Harvard, except for
level of subjective experience—the extent to which people appear
Experiment 3, which was conducted as part of Erin R. Clifford’s senior
honors thesis at Harvard. Poster presentations of portions of Experiments incapable of reporting salient stimuli is intuitively surprising.
1 and 4 appeared at the 8th annual workshop on Object Perception and Furthermore, empirical evidence and everyday experience suggest
Memory in New Orleans, November 2000, and were briefly described in that inattentional blindness is more than merely a failure to report
Most and Simons (2001). Portions of Experiment 3 were presented at the a stimulus: Indices of such perceptual deficits include failures to
first annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Sarasota, Florida, modify actions as well as subjective report. For example, in one
May 2001. experiment, professional airline pilots operated a flight simulator
We thank Steve Franconeri, Jason Freidenfelds, Danielle Hobeika, Ste- in which flight console information was projected directly onto the
phen Mitroff, Julie Schwab, Jason Tajima, Joe Vuckovich, and Beata cockpit windshield (Haines, 1991). Presumably, this “heads-up”
Ziolkowska for helping collect data; Alfonso Caramazza, Patrick Ca-
display should have decreased pilot errors because the pilots could
vanagh, Marvin Chun, Richard McNally, Stephen Mitroff, Liz Spelke, and
Daniel Wegner for helpful feedback and discussions; and Alyssa Bernstein,
view both the console information and the external world simul-
Daniel Bosch, and Sue Carey for comments on drafts. taneously. However, some of the pilots attempted to land the plane
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Steven B. even though the runway was clearly obstructed by another air-
Most, Department of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208205, New plane. When queried afterward, these pilots reported having never
Haven, CT 06520-8205. E-mail: [email protected] been aware that there had been any obstruction at all. In other

217
218 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

words, by their own reports—and as evidenced by their actions— attention capture, to distinguish them from instances in which
they never saw the other airplane despite looking directly at it. there is evidence of awareness, or explicit attention capture (Si-
Perception is impoverished without attention, but researchers mons, 2000). Although inattentional blindness research has
still know little about the factors involved in directing attention to yielded information about the conditions under which people can
the unexpected. This is an important issue, both theoretically and or cannot report visual stimuli, it has been less successful in
practically. From a standpoint most applicable to everyday life, the illuminating the mechanisms underlying the guidance of attention
question of why people fail to notice unexpected items can be to unexpected things. Implicit attention capture research, con-
inverted, rephrased to inquire, “What kinds of stimulus properties versely, has yielded numerous insights about the conditions under
and/or perceiver-controlled processes influence the likelihood that which unplanned shifts of attention will occur, but few attempts
someone will notice an unexpected object or event?” (i.e., what have been made to link such shifts to subsequent awareness (but
will capture awareness; in this article we refer to inattentional see Gibson & Peterson, 2001; Lamme, 2000). Thus, research on
blindness and the capture of awareness as inverses of each other). implicit attention capture alone is of uncertain practical relevance
This article pursues these questions from two perspectives. Theo- to everyday life. If a child runs in front of your car as you are
retically, we argue that an understanding of attention and aware- fiddling with the radio, it is important that you notice the child, not
ness requires a combination of insights from the literatures on that you are slower in turning the knob.
attention capture and on inattentional blindness. We suggest that Although it seems logical that the two lines of research should
both types of phenomena can be accommodated under a model engage in a fair amount of cross talk, within each literature little
influenced by the notion of a “perceptual cycle” (Neisser, 1976). reference has been made to the other. In effect, the literature lacks
Experimentally, we then report the results of a systematic explo- a shared theoretical framework that incorporates inattentional
ration in which several of the most important themes from the blindness and attention capture. Constructing that framework re-
attention capture literature are tested in inattentional blindness quires that insights from one literature be tested in the other, and
experiments, presenting a series of studies investigating both how one goal of this article is to set this process in motion.
properties inherent in a stimulus can affect whether people notice The distinction between implicit and explicit attention capture
it (i.e., bottom-up properties) and how processes under the control reflects a fundamental paradox concerning the nature of attention.
of a perceiver can affect what he or she notices (i.e., top-down On one hand, people engaging in challenging tasks must often
processes). These studies provide additional experimental “glue” maintain focus, effectively ignoring irrelevant information that
that helps to support our primary theoretical conclusions: Although might distract them from their goal. Thus, teachers will often
some stimulus properties (e.g., uniqueness) can affect noticing, to admonish their students to pay attention in class and not be
a larger extent the unexpected objects that people consciously see distracted by their classmates. Inattentional blindness research
depend on the ways in which they “tune” their attention for underscores this aspect of attention. On the other hand, attention
processing of specific types of stimuli—that is, on the attentional must be distractible; if potentially dangerous or behaviorally rel-
set that they adopt. evant objects appear, they should divert cognitive resources. At-
tention capture research emphasizes this aspect of attention. A
Across the Great Divide: Implicit Versus Explicit Capture complete explication of attention must incorporate both these
seemingly conflicting requirements (Allport, 1989), but unfortu-
Two substantial lines of research—inattentional blindness and nately, attention research has tended to pursue these two aspects
attention capture — have provided insights relevant to the noticing independently.
of unexpected stimuli. Attention capture refers to instances in It is possible, of course, that one need look no further than the
which stimuli draw a person’s attention without that person’s implicit attention capture literature to infer what captures aware-
volition (see Folk & Gibson, 2001). These kinds of attention shifts ness— once a person has shifted attention to an object, he or she
have alternately been referred to as reflexive, involuntary, or might necessarily become aware of it. However, this is unlikely to
automatic. Research on inattentional blindness and attention cap- be true. Whereas the time courses of automatic attention shifts are
ture have illuminated different processes relevant to the noticing of largely transient (e.g., Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Nakayama &
unexpected objects. Whereas inattentional blindness research di- Mackeben, 1989), visual awareness might arise through a tempo-
rectly probes whether participants notice unexpected stimuli, at- rally sustained process involving higher level cognitive activity.
tention capture research traditionally relies on implicit measures Such activity might involve preconscious cycles of interpretation
rather than awareness— observations of response times and eye and verification or the mapping of visual information onto repre-
movements, for example—to infer shifts of attention (e.g., Jonides sentations in long-term memory (e.g., Di Lollo, Enns, & Rensink,
& Yantis, 1988; Theeuwes, Kramer, Hahn, & Irwin, 1998). This 2000; Minsky, 1975; Neisser, 1976; Potter, 1993).
difference in measurement has important consequences for the Indeed, as mentioned earlier, stimuli do sometimes engage
kinds of conclusions that can be generalized from one branch of attention implicitly without reaching subjective awareness (e.g.,
research to the other. For example, the kinds of stimuli that have Kentridge, Heywood, & Weiskrantz, 1999, 2004; Lambert, Naikar,
been found to capture attention implicitly might not also capture McLachlan, & Aitken, 1999; McCormick, 1997; Naccache,
awareness; indeed, there have been reports of stimuli in such Blandin, & Dehaene, 2002; Woodman & Luck, 2003; Yantis,
experiments affecting response times without people becoming 1993, Footnote 2). For example, in one study, participants fixated
aware of them (e.g., McCormick, 1997; Yantis, 1993, Footnote 2; on a point between two potential target locations and were in-
see also Posner, 1980). Because of this potential divergence, formed that antipredictive cues would precede the targets. That is,
instances in which stimuli affect performance without necessarily when a cue appeared in one of the two locations, the actual target
impinging on awareness might appropriately be called implicit was most likely to appear in the opposite location. When a cue was
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 219

presented in a suprathreshold manner, participants were faster to insufficient to infer automatic attention capture. Because the ob-
respond to the target when, as expected, it appeared at the opposite server is actively looking for the target, his or her attention is
location. Because they were aware of the cue, the participants were presumably broadly and purposefully distributed throughout the
able to use this information to shift their attention strategically to display (see Mack & Rock, 1998; Yantis & Egeth, 1999). Further-
the opposite location. However, when the cue was presented more, because the observer knows the identity of the target, the
subliminally, participants were faster to respond to the target when match between the target and the observer’s perceptual readiness
it appeared at the same location as the cue (McCormick, 1997). In to locate it certainly enhances search efficiency.
other words, participants oriented to the subliminal cue, but be-
cause they were not aware of it, they did not shift their attention Attention Cuing
strategically. Although implicit shifts of attention may often coin-
cide with awareness, such incidents of noncoincidence underscore The attention cuing paradigm has also served as a basis for
the need to assess awareness directly, rather than relying on much implicit attention capture research. As in visual search,
implicit measures of attention capture to infer what might capture participants look for and explicitly report a predetermined target.
awareness. In the following sections, we review research on im- Often the target appears as the only item in the display, and it is
plicit and explicit manifestations of attention capture respectively, preceded by a cue indicating its likely location. When the cue
and we begin to explore how they might be related. accurately predicts the target’s location, participants are quick to
respond to the target. However, when the cue is misleading,
Implicit Attention Capture: The Search for Automaticity response times are slowed (e.g., Colegate, Hoffman, & Eriksen,
1973; Eriksen & Hoffman, 1972; Jonides, 1981; Posner, 1980;
in Orienting
Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980). This pattern of results is the
Attention is central to visual processing, and if someone is to root of the notion that response times can be used in place of
notice an object or event that is unexpected, then attention pre- awareness as an index of attention shifts. Two types of cues—
sumably must first shift to that stimulus. However, when a stim- central and peripheral— have been used in such experiments, and
ulus is unexpected, observers cannot shift their attention to it they have different consequences for the efficiency of target de-
intentionally. Here, the notion that attention can shift automati- tection. Central cues can appear anywhere other than at the poten-
cally, drawn entirely by bottom-up stimulus features, can usefully tial target locations. Thus, for the cue to predict the target location,
bypass this dilemma, but this notion has proven controversial. it must symbolically represent where the target is most likely to
Although some evidence suggests that particularly salient objects, appear (e.g., a symbol indicating the location; see Posner, 1980),
sudden onsets, and some motion signals can automatically draw requiring participants to actively interpret the meaning of the cue.
attention (e.g., Abrams & Christ, 2003; Franconeri & Simons, In contrast, peripheral cues appear at one of the potential target
2003; Theeuwes, 1992; Yantis & Jonides, 1984), it has been locations and therefore do not need to be interpreted prior to an
difficult to rule out the possible involvement of top-down guid- attention shift (see Jonides, 1981; Posner, 1980). Attention shifts in
ance. In fact, as we discuss below, some results have thrown the response to peripheral cues tend to be faster and more effortless
very notion of completely automatic orienting into question (e.g., than those in response to central cues, and they are also difficult to
Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992). inhibit. Thus, attention shifts to peripheral cues are said to be
A number of different implicit tasks have been used in the relatively automatic (Jonides, 1981). This discovery paved the way
endeavor to find evidence of automatic attention capture, with for subsequent studies using implicit measures of attention capture,
varying degrees of success. In large part, they emerged from the and new approaches have both directly elaborated on the attention
use of two traditional attention paradigms, visual search and cuing paradigm (e.g., Folk et al., 1992) and combined it with the
attention cuing. Both paradigms tend to rely on explicit target visual search paradigm to study attention capture with increased
detection to infer attentional engagement, but response times rigor (e.g., Theeuwes, 1992; Yantis & Jonides, 1984).
sometimes stand alone as an index of attention shifts, thereby
seeming to obviate the need to use explicit report about a stimulus The Additional Singleton Task
to infer that it has captured attention.
One example of a hybrid paradigm is the additional singleton
Visual Search task (e.g., Theeuwes, 1992, 1994). In this task, participants search
for a unique target in an array of distractors and report the orien-
Visual search tasks typically require participants to look for a tation of a line embedded within the target. For example, in a
predetermined target embedded within a display of distractors, and display of green diamonds, participants report on the line con-
the time it takes to complete this kind of visual search normally tained within the only green circle. On some of the trials, an
increases as the number of distractors increases. However, some additional unique property is present—for example, one of the
classes of features seem to defy this pattern, and participants tend distractor diamonds might be unique in color—whereas other trials
to respond quickly to targets containing these features regardless contain no unique property. When the additional property was a
of the number of display items. In these cases, attention is thought unique color, a unique shape, or contained a sudden onset, re-
to prioritize the target features over any of the distractors, and such sponse time in the primary search task was slowed compared with
features are said to “pop out” (Treisman & Gelade, 1980). Al- response time in trials containing no unique distractor (Theeuwes,
though pop out search has sometimes been interpreted as evidence 1992, 1994). Furthermore, the degree to which the unique distrac-
that a target has automatically captured attention (e.g., Öhman, tor affected response time depended on how salient it was com-
Flykt, & Esteves, 2001), in a strict sense this kind of evidence is pared with the target. When the target– distractor discrimination
220 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

was easy (e.g., a green target among red items), an additional objects (Yantis & Hillstrom, 1994). This implies that any obvi-
unique shape did not affect response times. However, when the ously new object will become the focus of visual attention. How-
target– distractor discrimination was harder (e.g., a yellowish- ever, recent studies have given reason to doubt the primacy of new
green target among yellowish-red items), response times were visual objects, showing that some motion signals might capture
slowed in the presence of the unique additional shape (Theeuwes, attention nearly as well as onsets do (Abrams & Christ, 2003;
1992). Irrelevant eye movements have also been examined within Franconeri & Simons, 2003).
this type of paradigm as an index of involuntary attention shifts
(Theeuwes et al., 1998).
Results from the additional singleton paradigm have been the Attentional Set and the Irrelevant Precue Task
focus of some debate, and they illustrate a nuanced distinction
between automatic and voluntary attentional shifts. Because par- Although sudden onsets and motion signals often appear to
ticipants knew that their target would be characterized by a unique receive attentional priority, the orienting responses they elicit are
property, they might have entered into a so-called singleton detec- not immune to top-down influence. For example, when observers
tion mode, whereby they readied themselves to attend to any know in advance where the target will appear, sudden onsets
unique singleton appearing within the display (Bacon & Egeth, occurring elsewhere in a display do not capture attention (Yantis &
1994). If so, the observed shifts of attention might have depended Jonides, 1990). In fact, results from a third paradigm, the irrele-
on strategic influences and thus would no longer qualify as being vant precue task, suggest that all implicitly measured shifts of
strictly automatic. Indeed, when the task was changed so that the attention might be contingent on the expectations of the observer
target was embedded in a display filled with heterogeneous dis- (e.g., Folk et al., 1992). In raising this possibility, these results
tractors, rather than homogeneous ones, unique colors and shapes throw into question the very notion that attention can shift to a
no longer affected response time (Bacon & Egeth, 1994). The stimulus automatically, drawn overwhelmingly by the properties
singleton detection mode was no longer an effective strategy, and of the stimulus itself. In this task, sudden onsets do not affect
unique features no longer captured attention. This finding implies performance unless participants expect that their target will also be
that attention shifts revealed in the additional singleton paradigm characterized by a sudden onset. When observers know in advance
are strategic in nature. Nevertheless, the line between automatic that the target will be characterized instead by an alternative
and voluntary shifting is fuzzy. For example, the effects of unique property, such as a unique color, onsets no longer affect response
distractors on response times persisted across over 2,000 trials time (Folk et al., 1992). Participants looked for a target in one of
(Theeuwes, 1992), indicating that participants could not learn to four potential target locations, and just prior to the target presen-
ignore them. The adoption itself of a singleton detection strategy tation a cue was presented at one of the four locations. When
might be automatic and occur because of the nature of the task. participants knew the target would be an item with a sudden onset,
uniquely colored precues did not affect response time whereas
precues with sudden onsets did. When participants knew that the
The Irrelevant Feature Task target would have a unique color, the reverse result emerged:
A second implicit attention capture paradigm is the irrelevant Precues with sudden onsets did not affect response time, but
feature task, in which observers typically search for a target letter precues with unique colors did (Folk et al., 1992).
embedded among varying numbers of distractor letters. In contrast It seems that when observers adopt a specific attentional set—
to the additional singleton task, a unique but irrelevant feature is whereby they ready themselves to receive a specific type of
present on every trial. Also unlike the additional singleton task, the information—this top-down constraint overrides the capturing
unique property can sometimes belong to the target; however, it power of other, irrelevant information. The possibility does still
belongs to the target of the search only 1/n of the time, where n is remain that sudden onsets and motion signals capture attention in
the total number of letters in the display. If display size does not the absence of any top-down attentional set (Yantis, 1993). How-
affect search time when the irrelevant property belongs to the ever, one of the enduring dilemmas plaguing research on attention
target, attention capture by the target is inferred. With this task, capture is the seeming impossibility of ever ruling out the chance
unique colors, luminances, and even some motion signals do not that an observer is exercising some sort of expectation during a
appear to capture attention, but objects with sudden onsets do task (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1993).
(Hillstrom & Yantis, 1994; Yantis & Hillstrom, 1994). For exam- Despite the complications inherent in arguing for strong forms
ple, when testing the influence of sudden onsets, each trial begins of automatic attention capture, the experiments conducted within
with all letters masked by a figure eight. After 1 s, segments of this tradition have provided important insights into the conditions
these figure eights disappear to reveal letters, and simultaneously, under which attention is most likely to shift without a person’s
an additional letter appears abruptly at a previously unoccupied intent. The influence of top-down guidance might be difficult to
location. When this new letter happens to be the target of the rule out, but accumulated evidence suggests that some kinds of
search, response times are relatively unaffected by variations in the properties— onsets, motion signals, and perhaps uniqueness—are
number of items in the array (Yantis & Jonides, 1984). especially likely to become targets of unplanned shifts of attention.
The apparent failure of motion signals other than abrupt onsets Furthermore, top-down expectations appear to play a substantial
to capture attention within this paradigm (e.g., Hillstrom & Yantis, role in both inhibiting and facilitating implicitly measured shifts of
1994) runs contrary to many previous intuitions (e.g., James, attention. Surprisingly, although such investigations have success-
1890/1950). One proposed interpretation of this pattern of results fully documented factors contributing to implicitly measured shifts
is that sudden onsets are especially prioritized by the attention of attention, with few exceptions (see Mack & Rock, 1998) no
system because they signal the appearance of new perceptual such systematic investigations have explored the factors underly-
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 221

ing inattentional blindness— or its converse, the capture of unexpected events is informative and surprising: Observers were
awareness. aware of both video clips from the start and were looking directly
at them. This experiment demonstrated how people are able to
Selective Looking and Inattentional Blindness filter out information when they actively try to ignore it.
An even more interesting finding emerged when a completely
The dissociation between subjective awareness and implicitly new, unexpected object appeared during an ongoing selective
measured shifts of attention (e.g., Kentridge et al., 1999; Lambert looking task. Although attention is often thought to prioritize new
et al., 1999; McCormick, 1997; Woodman & Luck, 2003) under- information (e.g., Yantis & Hillstrom, 1994), when the new object
scores the importance of studying factors leading to subjective was unexpected, people often failed to become aware of it at all.
noticing separately from those eliciting attention shifts. Attention For example, in an extension of the selective looking paradigm,
shifts alone may not be sufficient to push a stimulus into aware- observers engaged in a task involving three superimposed video
ness, but attentional selectivity does help govern what people recordings (Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979). One
become aware of. At any given moment, a person’s senses are was of a group of people in white shirts interweaving and passing
bombarded with more information than he or she can possibly take a basketball among themselves. The second was of the same
in, and through attention the person selects only subsets of this people passing a basketball, but now wearing black shirts. Partic-
information for further processing. Information that does not re- ipants simply attended to one of the two teams and indicated each
ceive such further processing often fails to reach awareness. The time that the designated team passed the ball. Partway through the
well-known cocktail party effect, in which one’s own name is task, a third recording—that of a woman with an open umbrella
detected even when embedded within a previously ignored audi- walking across the screen—was superimposed as well. Though the
tory stream, suggests that especially meaningful information might woman’s presence was obvious to anyone not engaged in the
have a low threshold for entrance into awareness (e.g., Moray, tracking task (Neisser, 1979), people engaged in the task rarely
1959). This, in turn, raises the possibility that even information not noticed her. In one study, for example, only 21% detected her
reaching awareness does receive some degree of processing. How- (Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979), and in another
ever, most kinds of ignored information fail profoundly to impinge 35% noticed her (Becklen & Cervone, 1983). The surprise ex-
on subjective awareness (Cherry, 1953; Treisman, 1964; but see pressed by participants who reviewed the tape afterward reflected
Holender, 1986). Such failures within the visual modality—inat- the degree to which they had failed to detect her initially (Neisser,
tentional blindness—are particularly striking because they violate 1979). Note that in this case, the failure to notice the new object
the intuition that people should see whatever they direct their did not result from the intent to ignore it, because observers never
eyes to. knew that it would appear.
In this section, we describe work on selective visual processing Contrary to hypotheses suggesting that a lack of expectation is
that began in the mid-1970s, ranging from early, video-based the major cause of inattentional blindness (e.g., Braun, 2001), the
experiments on selective looking (in which participants intention- availability of attention (or lack thereof) has emerged as a crucial
ally ignore subsets of information) to more recent, computer-based factor as well. For example, in the selective looking experiments,
experiments on inattentional blindness (in which participants do observers who were practiced at selectively tracking the passes
not expect an additional stimulus and thus cannot ignore it inten- made by one of the two basketball teams were twice as likely to
tionally). In contrast to research on implicit attention capture, this notice the unexpected umbrella woman as were novice observers
work focuses on subjective awareness. In the course of this dis- (Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979). Presumably,
cussion, we introduce a framework loosely based on the perceptual practice reduced the attentional demands of the selective task,
cycle model (Neisser, 1976), which has implications for how thereby freeing more attention resources for processing of the
insights from the implicit attention capture literature can be used to unexpected object. This interpretation is consistent with evidence
make specific predictions regarding the capture of awareness. that the distracting influence of irrelevant information is greater
Although this formulation presaged many findings garnered well under conditions of low, rather than high, perceptual load (Lavie,
after it was developed, to our knowledge it has not been discussed 1995). Furthermore, the availability of attention in a selective
in relation to attention capture until now. looking task is affected not only by task demands but also by
factors subject to voluntary control, such as the observer’s beliefs
Video-Based Studies of Selective Looking and and motivations about the difficulty of the task. Participants who
Inattentional Blindness were told that they were engaged in a practice trial or that the task
was easy were somewhat more likely to notice the umbrella
In an early series of selective looking studies, observers watched woman (Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979).
a monitor displaying two video clips that were superimposed such Some recent studies have begun to explore whether the unusu-
that each clip had a transparent, ghostlike appearance (Neisser & alness of an unexpected object or its visual relationship to other
Becklen, 1975). One of the clips was of a group of people passing display items influences the likelihood of detection. For example,
a basketball, and the second was a close-up view of two sets of in a replication and extension of the selective looking paradigm, a
hands engaged in a hand-slapping game. Observers selectively person in a black gorilla suit, instead of a woman with an umbrella,
attended to one of these two clips and their awareness of unex- walked through the middle of two groups of ball players. In some
pected events in the unattended clip was subsequently probed. For conditions, as in the earlier studies (Becklen & Cervone, 1983;
example, when attending to the basketball game, observers failed Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979), all the figures were
to notice that the hands in the other clip stopped slapping each transparent. Despite the striking and unusual spectacle, 73% of
other and engaged in a handshake. This failure to notice the observers failed to notice the gorilla (Simons & Chabris, 1999). In
222 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

contrast to some earlier results (see Neisser, 1979), the rate of

noticing seemed to depend in part on which of the two groups
observers tracked. Specifically, 8% of the observers in this condi-
tion who counted the passes made by the players in white noticed
the black gorilla, whereas 46% of those attending to the team in
black noticed it (Simons & Chabris, 1999). These results suggest
that similarity to other items in a scene can influence the likelihood
of noticing an unexpected object. However, the study was not
designed with this question in mind, and the video display was not
optimal for addressing this possibility.

Computerized Studies of Inattentional Blindness

To elucidate more precisely the factors that lead to noticing of
unexpected objects, recent studies of inattentional blindness have
turned to more controlled computer-based tasks (e.g., Mack &
Rock, 1998; Most, Simons, Scholl, & Chabris, 2000; Most et al.,
2001; Newby & Rock, 1998; Rock, Linnett, & Grant, 1992). Initial
studies used brief presentations of simple shapes (e.g., Mack &
Rock, 1998; Newby & Rock, 1998). In a typical experiment,
observers engaged in a perceptual discrimination task for several
trials: A cross appeared at fixation for 200 ms per trial before being
Figure 1. Example of a typical inattentional blindness trial from Mack
replaced by a mask, and participants indicated for each trial
and Rock (1998). On each trial, participants judge whether the horizontal
whether the horizontal or vertical component of the cross was
or vertical part of the cross is longer. On the first few noncritical trials,
longer. On the first few trials, nothing unexpected occurred. On a nothing unexpected appears. However, on a critical trial, an unexpected
critical trial, however, an additional, unexpected item appeared shape appears in one of the cross’s quadrants. Regardless of whether the
simultaneously with the cross in one of the cross’s quadrants (see unexpected object has a unique color, shape, or motion signal, participants
Figure 1). Participants were then asked whether they had seen fail to notice it about 25% of the time. From Inattentional Blindness (p. 7)
anything on that trial other than the cross. Regardless of whether by A. Mack and I. Rock, 1998, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Copyright
the unexpected items contained a unique color, orientation, or 1998 by MIT Press. Adapted with permission.
motion signal, about 25% of the participants reported no awareness
of the item (Mack & Rock, 1998). As it turned out, some mean-
ingful stimuli, such as the participant’s own name or a schematic It is important, then, to assess the factors that might lead to
happy-face icon, were detected with greater frequency, indicating noticing under more sustained and dynamic conditions.
that high-level analyses could help determine awareness. And,
counterintuitively, higher rates of inattentional blindness (75%) Sustained Inattentional Blindness and the Role of
were found when the cross appeared peripherally and the unex-
Similarity
pected item appeared at fixation, suggesting that participants had
actively inhibited processing at fixation to focus attention on their To address this and other questions directly, we developed a
assigned target (Mack & Rock, 1998). sustained and dynamic computerized task in which we were able to
Findings from this paradigm provide valuable insights into keep parameters such as similarity under tight control (Most et al.,
awareness. However, how well they generalize to more realistic 2000, 2001; Scholl, Noles, Pasheva, & Sussman, 2003). In a
perceptual situations is an open question. Objects in the real world typical task, participants viewed a display in which four black
rarely appear for just 200 ms, and they are rarely masked. These items and four white items moved on haphazard paths, occasion-
caveats are particularly important, considering that temporally ally bouncing off the edges of the display. For each 15-s trial,
extended processes might be required to establish a conscious participants were asked to count the total number of bounces that
percept. Although unexpected objects that were salient or moving either the white items or the black items made. For the first two
did not appear to enter awareness any more than nonmoving, trials, this is all that happened. During the motion on the third (i.e.,
nonsalient stimuli did, it is possible that under less constrained the critical) trial, however, a unique item unexpectedly entered the
conditions, such stimuli would effectively trigger the cascade of display from the right, traveled horizontally across the display for
processing that would lead to greater noticing. The short duration 5 s (passing behind a fixation point), and exited the left side of the
of the stimulus presentation is also problematic because it leaves display (see Figure 2). This technique proved effective in inducing
this paradigm particularly vulnerable to claims that participants inattentional blindness: Even when the unexpected item had both
might have seen the unexpected object but then forgotten about it a unique shape (a cross among circles and squares) and a unique
by the time awareness was probed (inattentional amnesia; Wolfe, color (red in a field of black and white items), almost 30% of
1999). This alternative explanation would be consistent with find- participants failed to detect it (Most et al., 2001, Experiment 3).
ings that whereas identification of rapidly presented pictures may Note that although participants were counting bounces made at the
occur within 125 ms, consolidation of such stimuli in memory edges of the display, the unexpected object traversed the middle of
requires up to 300 ms (Potter, 1975, 1976; Potter & Levy, 1969). the display, potentially too far from the locus of attention to be
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 223

(Most et al., 2000). When the unexpected object appeared, it

traveled on a path parallel to the line, either on the line or at
varying distances away from it (see Figure 3). Presumably, the line
or the area around it marked the spatial focus of attention. By
systematically varying the unexpected object’s distance from the
line, we examined the influence of spatial proximity on detection.
The results from this study suggested that spatial proximity to the
focus of attention plays some role in determining whether unex-
pected objects will be noticed. However, the effect was relatively
small and could not entirely explain noticing rates. In particular,
even when the object traveled on the line, fewer than 50% of the
participants detected it on the critical trial.
Featural similarity. Spatial attention seemed to account only
for a small degree of variation in noticing, leaving open the
possibility that featural similarity might also play a role. In an
experiment designed to test this possibility (Most et al., 2001,
Experiment 1), participants counted the number of times that either
a black subset of items or a white subset of items bounced off the
edges of a display window (with both subsets present in all
displays). When participants were counting the number of bounces
made by white items, almost all of them (94%) reported seeing the
unexpected item when it also was white. Conversely, when the
unexpected item was black and participants were attending to the
white subset of shapes, only 6% reported seeing it. The rates of
noticing for light- and dark-gray unexpected items were interme-
diate. Furthermore, when participants were counting the number of
bounces made by the black subset of items, rather than the white
subset, these rates of noticing were qualitatively reversed— even
though the physical display was identical. Thus, the more similar
Figure 2. Still frames from Most et al. (2001, Experiment 3; arrows were an unexpected item was to a set of already-attended items and the
not present in actual display). On each trial, four black and four white less similar it was to a set of distractor items, the more likely it was
shapes moved on haphazard paths, frequently bouncing off the display’s
to be noticed (see Figure 4).
edges. Participants counted the bounces made by either the black or white
shapes. On the first two trials, nothing unusual happened. On the critical
trial an unexpected red cross (depicted here in black) traversed the display.
Even though it was bright red, 28% of participants failed to notice it.

sufficiently processed. However, an advantage of this computer-

ized paradigm is that it allows the systematic manipulation of a
number of parameters to look at issues such as this. For example,
we subsequently tested two different ways that similarity between
an unexpected object and other display objects might influence
noticing rates: (a) similarity in terms of spatial proximity and (b)
similarity in visual features.
In the first case, to the extent that attention acts like a meta-
phorical spotlight, illuminating objects and features that fall within
its “beam,” noticing rates might vary as a function of the distance Figure 3. Still frame from a critical trial in Most et al. (2000). Four black
that an unexpected object appears away from some spatial focus of and four white shapes moved haphazardly and frequently made contact
attention (Newby & Rock, 1998). Alternatively, to the degree that with the horizontal line bisecting the display. On the critical trial, an
attention selects for objects or features rather than location (e.g., unexpected cross traversed the display on a path parallel to the line, either
Duncan, 1984; Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994; Kanwisher & Driver, on the line or at varying distances away from it (here, the arrows indicate
1992; for a review see Scholl, 2001), noticing might vary as a the possible paths). More people noticed it as its path became closer to the
function of the unexpected object’s featural similarity to other line, but over half of the participants still failed to see it even when it
traveled on the line, which was presumably close to the focus of attention.
items in the display.
The noticing rates at each distance are shown on the right. Adapted from
Spatial proximity. The first, location-based hypothesis is cer- “Sustained Inattentional Blindness: The Role of Location in the Detection
tainly plausible (e.g., Eriksen & St. James, 1986; Posner, 1980). To of Unexpected Dynamic Events,” by S. B. Most, D. J. Simons, B. J. Scholl,
test the role of distance, we modified the task so that a horizontal and C. F. Chabris, 2000, Psyche, 6(14), Figure 1. Copyright 2000 by
line bisected the display, and participants were asked to count the Steven B. Most, Daniel J. Simons, Brian J. Scholl, and Christopher F.
number of times a subset of items came into contact with the line Chabris.
224 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

The Perceptual Cycle Framework: A Foundation for

Integrating Implicit Attention Capture and Awareness
It may be fruitful to describe a view of attention and perception
called the perceptual cycle (Neisser, 1976). Although rarely dis-
cussed in the context of attention capture—indeed, work on atten-
tion capture had barely begun when it first was proposed—the
perceptual cycle framework was an attempt to reconcile stimulus-
driven and strategic attentional processing in vision. Neisser
(1976, 1979) suggested that this model could account for success-
ful perception as well as for failures to notice unexpected objects
and events. More central to our purpose, the perceptual cycle
account provides the basis for a framework integrating implicit
attention capture with the capture of awareness, one that generates
predictions about the conditions under which awareness will occur.
According to the perceptual cycle view, conscious perception
emerges through a temporally extended and active engagement
with the environment. Items do not leap into awareness on initial
attentional engagement. Rather, a cyclical process of visual inter-
pretation and reinterpretation ultimately determines our conscious
percepts. Some kinds of information impinge on the senses and
Figure 4. Percentage of observers who noticed the unexpected object on elicit an orienting response, but information that is processed only
the critical trial in Most et al. (2001, Experiment 1). As the unexpected in this way is fragmentary and transient, incapable of forming the
object’s luminance became more similar to that of the attended items, it basis of a conscious representation. Once attention has been ori-
was noticed by more people. From “How Not To Be Seen: The Contribu- ented, expectations, or anticipatory schemas, based on limited
tion of Similarity and Selective Ignoring to Sustained Inattentional Blind- preconscious information, serve as the vehicle for attentional ex-
ness,” by S. B. Most et al., 2001, Psychological Science, 12, p. 12. ploration. Each attention shift yields information that modifies the
Copyright 2001 by Blackwell. Adapted with permission. observer’s interpretation of what stimulus might be present and
guides subsequent attentional exploration. This cycle of attentional
This similarity effect may have been driven by active selection guidance continuously enriches the emerging representations and
of stimuli resembling the targets, but it also may have stemmed in modifies the observer’s expectations, eventually leading to a con-
part from the active suppression of stimuli resembling the distrac- scious percept. Depending on the complexity of the scene, this
tors. The two possibilities have different implications. In the first whole process can occur within milliseconds, and indeed, observ-
case, observers would be expected to process only those items ers appear able to identify pictures presented for less than 125 ms
resembling the attended targets. In the second case, observers (Intraub, 1980, 1981; Potter, 1975, 1976; Potter & Levy, 1969).
would be expected to process all items except those akin to the The central claims and implications of the perceptual cycle
distractors. We addressed this issue using a variation of the basic model include the following:
task: Observers attended to gray items moving on a blue back-
ground and ignored a distractor set composed of either white items 1. Environmental cues can trigger automatic orienting re-
or black items. Depending on the condition, the unexpected object sponses, but these reflexive responses by themselves do
itself was either white or black. Thus, the unexpected object was not directly produce awareness.
always different from the gray target items but was either similar
2. Conscious percepts require sustained attention and an
to or different from the distractor set. We reasoned that if noticing
iterative process of interpretation and reinterpretation.
relied critically on the unexpected object’s similarity to the target
items, then observers should be equally likely to notice it across all 3. Preconscious information processing guides sustained at-
conditions. However, if noticing was also influenced by the ob- tentional selection. Because the model suggests that pro-
ject’s similarity to the distractor items, then people should be more cessing of the immediate past helps guide processing of
likely to notice it when it was different from the distractor items the immediate future, it yields the somewhat counterin-
than when it was similar to them. In fact, the results matched this tuitive notion that implicit memory may sometimes pre-
latter prediction well: When the unexpected item was the same cede conscious perception.
luminance as the distractor items, only 6% of the observers noticed
it on average. However, when the unexpected object was different 4. Visual stimuli that do not become part of a cycle of
from the distractors, 81% noticed it (Most et al., 2001, Experiment expectation, exploration, and reinterpretation may never
2). Although these findings support the notion of a role for active be noticed at all.
ignoring in inattentional blindness, this conclusion is tentative.
Because the unexpected object was actually more salient when it Although the proposed iterative nature of the perceptual cycle is
was different from the distractors—and thus unique in the dis- consistent with evidence elsewhere in the literature (e.g., Di Lollo
play—it may be that salience was the underlying factor leading to et al., 2000), the aspects of the model most relevant to the current
greater noticing. discussion are (a) its distinction between attentional orienting and
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 225

active, extended attentional engagement with the environment and out is revealed in series of visual search trials in which the
(b) its emphasis on the role of expectations. likelihood of the target identity changing from trial to trial is
varied. When two trials contain targets with similar attributes,
Setting the Stage for Reformulation: Revising the visual search for the second is facilitated even when the trials are
Perceptual Cycle Framework in Light of Recent Evidence separated by several intervening ones. Contextual cuing is also
revealed through a series of visual search trials; here, various
Although the mechanisms underlying the perceptual cycle ac- aspects of the distractors (e.g., their spatial layout in the display)
count are vague, it does fit well with findings garnered years after vary, and facilitation occurs when a target appears in an array with
it was originally proposed. The notion that iterative and reciprocal a repeated context. Such facilitation occurs even when participants
processes underlie conscious perception has support from neuro- fail to notice the repetition of arrays and fail to identify in a forced
physiological evidence for cortical feedback from higher cortical choice the patterns they had previously seen. Both phenomena
areas to earlier visual areas (e.g., Hochstein & Ahissar, 2003; demonstrate a role for implicit memory mechanisms in helping
Lamme, 2000, 2003; Zeki, 1993; Zeki & Shipp, 1988). Moreover, guide attention independent of the observer’s explicit search strat-
the relatively recently discovered phenomenon of object substitu- egies (see Chun & Nakayama, 2000).
tion masking is thought to depend on recurrent, cyclical processing In summary, the original perceptual cycle framework proposed
(see Di Lollo et al., 2000). When two nonoverlapping but proximal that objects are consciously perceived only if they are incorporated
stimuli appear together and one of them disappears immediately, into a cyclical interaction among bottom-up sensory information,
the resulting percept is often of just the remaining stimulus. The top-down interpretations of this information, and strategic deploy-
transitory, vanished stimulus is not identified, suggesting that it ments of attention based on these preconscious interpretations.
was overwritten by the remaining one (Di Lollo et al., 2000; Enns Although it is possible to identify mechanisms in the literature that
& Di Lollo, 1997; Giesbrecht & Di Lollo, 1998). Yet, perception might be integral to such a cycle, Neisser’s (1976) original for-
of the same stimulus is unimpaired if the two objects disappear at mulation did not specify the factors that allow an unexpected
the same time (Di Lollo, Bischof, & Dixon, 1993; Di Lollo et al., object to become incorporated into the process in the first place.
2000). This finding is consistent with a perceptual cycle interpre- Nevertheless, the perceptual cycle framework serves as a useful
tation: Ascending, feedforward signals provide the basis for a inspiration for the formulation of a more specific and detailed
crude and tentative visual representation, and feedback signals model because its strength lies in its treatment of a potentially
serve to confirm or modify these signals in a cyclical process deadlocked issue in the attention literature: the degree to which the
leading to awareness. If the higher level interpretation matches the allocation of attention is stimulus-driven or strategically deter-
feedforward information, then processing continues. When both mined (e.g., Folk et al., 1992; Theeuwes, 1992). Proponents of the
the mask and the target disappear simultaneously, a veridical notion that attention can be captured automatically might argue
visual percept of the target may still be constructed, as there is that certain stimuli will become incorporated into visual awareness
nothing remaining in the display that would overwrite the initial through brute force, via the power of their inherent properties. In
bottom-up information. However, if the target disappears before this case, attentional set should play little to no role in determining
initial top-down interpretations can be verified, leaving the mask in awareness. In contrast, those favoring the primacy of top-down
the display, then a match cannot be found between higher level and constraints might argue that only stimuli consistent with expecta-
lower level representations. Processing must proceed on the mask tions will reach awareness. By treating the allocation of attention
alone, and this is what is consciously perceived (Di Lollo et al., as an extended, multistage process, the perceptual cycle frame-
2000). work provides guidance for how these perspectives can work in
Although intriguing, the potentially cyclical nature of processes tandem. Our own approach follows this example. We root our
underlying conscious vision is tangential to our formulation of the approach in the distinction between implicit attention capture and
relationship between implicit attention capture and visual aware- the capture of awareness (e.g., Simons, 2000), and we argue that
ness. In our approach, other aspects of the perceptual cycle frame- attentional set functions as the critical link between them. In the
work are more central, and they too are supported by extant data. following section, we outline this view.
For example, the perceptual cycle distinguishes between an ori-
enting response and the more extended processing necessary for Reframing the Perceptual Cycle Framework: A Linchpin
subjective awareness, and existing evidence supports a distinction Account of Attentional Set
between transient and sustained components of attention. These
two components are associated with reflexive and voluntary atten- The vagueness of Neisser’s (1976) original formulation, and the
tion shifts, respectively (e.g., Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Nakayama degree to which it accommodates a range of phenomena, prompts
& Mackeben, 1989). That is, transient shifts of attention can be justifiable questions regarding its falsifiability. Although the per-
relatively automatic, but sustained shifts are more open to the ceptual cycle notion presaged later distinctions between different
influence of strategic processes. Components of attention associ- types of attention shifts, it was less successful in describing how
ated with transient and sustained shifts might have different con- and why different types of attention shifts do or do not give rise to
sequences for visual perception (e.g., Briand & Klein, 1987). awareness. Our reformulation of the perceptual cycle framework
The perceptual cycle framework also suggests that precon- synthesizes work on implicit attention capture and inattentional
sciously processed information may guide attention, a notion sup- blindness with the goal of making specific predictions about the
ported by the phenomena of priming of pop out (Maljkovic & conditions likely to lead to the noticing of unexpected objects.
Nakayama, 1994, 1996, 2000) and contextual cuing (e.g., Chun, The initial model suggests that the process begins with a tran-
2000; Chun & Jiang, 1998; Olson & Chun, 2001). Priming of pop sient orienting response, which—although not sufficient for reg-
226 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

istering a stimulus in awareness— can lead to the allocation of tions: (a) Sustained shifts of attention are critical for a person to
further attentional processing. For our purposes, this transient become aware of an unexpected object—transient shifts (typically
orienting response can be linked to the type of attention shift measured in implicit attention capture studies) are not sufficient;
measured in implicit attention capture studies. This link is (b) an unexpected object will become the focus of sustained
strengthened by findings that automatic shifts of attention are attention only after it has induced a transient shift; (c) when
themselves of a transient nature (Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Na- engaged in an attention-demanding task, a person’s attentional set
kayama & Mackeben, 1989) and can be dissociated from visual is one of the most important factors determining whether a tran-
awareness (e.g., McCormick, 1997). sient attention shift leads to the sustained deployment of attention
Given the distinction between transient and sustained attention and ultimately awareness; and (d) although implicit indices of
as well as the possibility that the latter is required for awareness of attention capture are not always accompanied by awareness, evi-
an unexpected object, the question naturally arises as to what dence for the conscious detection of an unexpected object should
determines whether a transient shift is followed by sustained always be accompanied by evidence of implicit attention capture.
allocation of attention. Neisser (1976) proposed that a person’s
own expectations of what belongs in a scene, influenced by the Experimental Support
relatively sparse information gleaned through a transient shift,
determine how sustained attention is directed. Less broadly, we Twenty-five years ago, Neisser (1979) wrote, “we do not know
propose that the linchpin connecting transient and sustained atten- what preattentively noted fragments of information lead to notic-
tion shifts is an attentional set. If a new stimulus induces a ing . . . . We do not know what a perceiver must bring to a situation
transient, implicit shift of attention while a person is actively if he or she is to notice what another equally skilled perceiver
attending to the properties of another stimulus or searching for a would overlook” (p. 218). Despite the intervening decades, these
particular property in a display, then the degree to which the sentiments are still applicable today. In the following sections, we
properties of the new stimulus match those of the target stimuli begin to remedy this situation by putting some of the predictions of
determines whether it becomes the focus of sustained attention. If our theoretical framework to the empirical test. Whereas our
the properties do not match, then attentional processing will likely previous research validated the current sustained inattentional
end after the transient shift. If the properties do match, however, blindness paradigm— demonstrating its usefulness in exploring the
then more sustained attentional processing follows the transient roles of unique features, luminance similarity, and distance— here
shift. The closer the match, the more likely it is that the new object we systematically begin to explore the relative contributions of
will become the object of sustained attention, eventually leading to bottom-up and top-down factors to the capture of awareness. In
conscious awareness. Experiments 1–3 we explore the contribution of attentional set.
The feasibility of this relationship is bolstered by evidence that Our earlier finding of a luminance similarity effect (Most et al.,
sustained shifts of attention are typically associated with a fair 2001) could reflect something about a privileged place of lumi-
degree of strategic control (e.g., Nakayama & Mackeben, 1989). nance in visual processing (e.g., Marr, 1982). However, it is also
We have already described evidence for a role of attentional set in possible that variations in luminance made a large difference
implicit attention capture, in which stimuli are more likely to because luminance happened to be the dimension along which
capture attention if they are similar to a person’s actual target (e.g., participants could differentiate the attended and ignored items.
Folk et al., 1992). Because the additional processing required to That is, perhaps participants were able to establish an attentional
bring a stimulus to awareness would seem to leave open more set allowing for some kinds of features to draw processing re-
opportunity for influence by top-down processes, we expect the sources while filtering others out. This attentional set could be
role of attentional set in awareness to be even more profound than based on whatever feature dimensions are critical to an attention-
in implicit attention capture. ally demanding task.
Unexpected stimuli containing properties found to capture at- Although we noted that reflexive orienting to a stimulus does
tention implicitly might be more likely than other stimuli to spark not necessarily lead to conscious awareness of the stimulus, it is
the processing required for noticing. Such stimuli may enjoy some possible that such transient shifts trigger the start of more sustained
benefit in becoming noticed, even given the power of attentional processing, which in turn leads to conscious awareness. Therefore,
sets, because people are unlikely to sustain attentional sets in per- in searching for bottom-up factors that increase the chances of
fect, unwavering form for extended periods. However, because tran- detection, it seems logical to begin with those properties that have
sient shifts of attention do not always lead to subsequent sustained been shown to draw attention implicitly. In Experiment 4, we test
attention, the properties robustly found to capture attention implicitly the effect of salience on noticing by manipulating the unexpected
will not be as effective at capturing subjective awareness. Instead, object along a dimension orthogonal to the one distinguishing the
one’s attentional set will be the dominating determinant of visual attended from the ignored sets of items. In addition, we demon-
awareness. This should be especially apparent in experimental situa- strate the usefulness of this paradigm for investigating the role of
tions in which attentional set is carefully controlled (e.g., Most et al., sudden onsets in capturing awareness. Because sudden onsets have
2001; Simons & Chabris, 1999). Stated succinctly, unexpected ob- a robust effect on implicit measures of attention capture (e.g.,
jects containing the kinds of features found to capture attention Yantis & Jonides, 1984), in Experiments 5–7 we investigate the
implicitly might more likely be noticed than other unexpected objects, possibility that stimuli with sudden onsets may be noticed most of
but the influence of such features should pale in comparison to the the time. Finally, in Experiment 8, we begin to explore a potential
influence of attentional set. relationship between implicit and explicit forms of capture by
In summary, our account of the relationship between implicit examining participants’ performance on the primary counting task
attention capture and awareness provides several testable predic- both when they do and when they do not notice the unexpected
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 227

object. If counting performance in the primary task is affected by full-attention trial, they responded to probes identical to those after the
the presence of the unexpected object even when the object goes critical and divided-attention trials. We used this trial as a control to ensure
unnoticed, this could be taken as an index of implicit attention that they could understand and follow task instructions (see also Mack &
capture. In summary, our aim is to begin to apply a systematic Rock, 1998). Accordingly, observers who failed to report seeing the
now-expected additional object on this trial were replaced, and their data
exploration, characteristic of the implicit attention capture work, to
were excluded from the analyses.
the capture of awareness.
After completing all five trials, observers answered follow-up questions
designed to gather demographic information and to determine if they had
General Method been familiar with this or other related experiments (e.g., Becklen &
Cervone, 1983; Most et al., 2001; Simons & Chabris, 1999). If they
Except where noted, all experiments used variants of the same basic spontaneously mentioned experiments from the selective-looking or inat-
sustained inattentional blindness paradigm. tentional blindness literatures prior to debriefing, they were considered to
be familiar with the paradigm, and their data were excluded from the
Materials and Procedure analyses (because we wanted observers to have no prior expectation that
another object might appear). Participating in the experiment took 5–10
Stimuli were presented on a Macintosh G3 PowerBook with a 14.1-in. min, and observers were debriefed afterward.
(35.8-cm) active matrix display, with custom software written with the
VisionShell C libraries (Comtois, 2002). Observers sat at a comfortable
distance from the display (on average, approximately 35 cm), and head Data Analyses
position was not fixed. Except in Experiment 3, all of the events on each
The measure of primary interest was whether participants were aware of
trial took place against a gray 13.4- ⫻ 17.8-cm display window (lumi-
the unexpected object on the critical trial. We coded a participant as having
nance ⫽ 32.1 cd/m2) with a small blue fixation point located at its center.
seen the object if they responded “yes” when asked whether they had
In Experiment 3, the background was white (luminance ⫽ 88.0 cd/m2)
noticed anything other than the original target and distractor items and if
instead of gray. (Note that luminance values are approximate and vary with
they were able to report at least one accurate detail, such as its shape, color,
the orientation of the monitor relative to the viewer.) Within this window,
direction of motion, or that something had exited the display. Most par-
eight items moved independently on haphazard paths at variable rates. Four
ticipants who responded affirmatively were able to report at least one
of the items were designated as target items, and four were designated as
accurate detail. We refer to participants who saw the unexpected object on
distractor items. The featural differences between these two sets varied as
the critical trial as noticers. Those who failed to see it on the critical trial
a function of the experimental condition (e.g., the target and distractor sets
we refer to as nonnoticers. Reported noticing rates are rounded to the
might differ from each other in shape or in luminance). As they moved,
nearest whole percentage point.
each item periodically bounced off the edges of the display window. Each
Throughout the experiments, we also kept track of the accuracy with
trial lasted for a total of 15 s, and each observer completed five trials.
which participants were able to count the number of bounces made by the
Observers were instructed to fixate on the central point and keep a silent
target items. Thus, for each participant, we calculated a weighted error
tally of the total number of times that the designated target items bounced
index for each trial: We took the absolute value of the difference between
off the edges of the display window during each trial. Following each trial,
the actual number of target bounces and the reported number and divided
observers indicated the number of bounces they had counted by typing a
this difference by the number of actual target bounces. The higher this
number in response to a computer prompt.
number, the less accurate a participant was on a given trial. The error index
Except for Experiment 8, which was run as a control condition, the
record allowed us to ensure that noticers and nonnoticers did not differ
sequence of trials was modeled after previous inattentional blindness
from each other in the degree of attentional effort devoted to the task, as
experiments (Mack & Rock, 1998; Most et al., 2000, 2001). The first two
indexed by their accuracy on the second, precritical trial. The error index
trials contained no unexpected event. Five seconds into the third trial (the
also allowed us to gauge the effect of the unexpected appearance of an
critical trial), an additional item unexpectedly entered the display from the
additional object on attentional performance in the primary counting task,
right, moved on a horizontal linear path across the center of the screen,
both when participants did and when participants did not see it. Error
passed behind the fixation point, and exited the left side of the display.
indices pertaining to such possible effects are presented and addressed in
During this trial, the additional item was visible for 5 s. Because observers
Experiment 8. We report the error indices as percentages and round them
were not forewarned about this event, its occurrence was unanticipated.
to the nearest whole percentage point. All t tests conducted throughout the
After the critical trial, observers responded to questions probing whether
experiments are two-tailed.
they had seen anything in the display that had not been there before.
Depending on the experiment, the questions appeared either in a five-item
booklet, on a two-item questionnaire, or as two interactive prompts on the Experiment 1: Attentional Sets for Shape and Luminance
computer screen (see the Appendix for the printed five- and two-item
sequences; the interactive computer prompts are described in Experiment Previous experiments showed that when people attended to
2). In all cases, the observers were asked to report the details of whatever black items and ignored white items, they were likely to notice an
unexpected object they had seen. Observers then completed a fourth trial additional, unexpected black item and were likely to miss seeing
on which the additional item again appeared. Although they were not an additional, unexpected white item. When they were attending to
explicitly told to look for the additional item, the probes after the previous white items instead of black items, these results were reversed
trial had alerted them to the possibility that an additional object might (Most et al., 2001). If these findings reflect a general, flexible
appear. Therefore, this trial tested perception under divided-attention con- ability to filter information on the basis of attentional set, then we
ditions. After completing this trial, observers responded to the same probes
should find the same pattern when observers distinguish between
as in the previous trial.
On the fifth trial, observers were told, “On this trial, the instructions are
attended and ignored objects along a different dimension, such as
slightly different. As before, keep your eyes fixated on the fixation point, shape. Alternatively, if this effect is specific to the luminance
but this time don’t count the bounces any of the shapes make. Simply dimension, then we should see no attentional set effect when the
watch the display.” Because observers did not have to count bounces, they target and distractor items are distinguished from each other on the
could devote full attention to the formerly unexpected object. After this basis of shape. This alternative is plausible, given the important
228 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

role of luminance in scene perception (e.g., Marr, 1982). In the

current experiment, all the items in the display, including the
unexpected object, were identical between conditions. The only
manipulated variable was which subset of items observers attended
to. Thus, we specifically explored the effect of attentional set on
awareness of an unexpected object.

Method
Participants. Eighty-five observers were tested in exchange for candy.
Data from 20 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge of
similar experiments (n ⫽ 7) or failure to report the unexpected object in the
final control trial (n ⫽ 13). The remaining 65 participants (37 men, 28
women; mean age ⫽ 20.1 years) were distributed across the four experi-
mental conditions (described in the next section).
Materials and procedure. In the gray rectangular background, four
black items (luminance ⫽ 1.2 cd/m2) and four white items (luminance ⫽ Figure 5. The effect of attentional set on the critical trial in Experi-
88.0 cd/m2) all moved independently on haphazard paths. The items in the ment 1. The unexpected object was always an additional black circle.
display consisted of two black squares, two black circles, two white When participants were attending to black shapes or to circles, almost all
squares, and two white circles, and thus the display items could be parsed of them noticed the unexpected black circle. When they were attending to
into two groups on the basis of either luminance or shape (e.g., black vs. white shapes or to squares, nearly all of them failed to notice it.
white or squares vs. circles). Each shape had a height and width of 1 cm.
Participants were placed in one of four conditions, defined by their primary
task for the duration of the experiment: (a) Count the number of bounces
circles, so we did not compare accuracy between the conditions in
made by all the black shapes (both circles and squares); (b) count the
which observers attended on the basis of shape. However, across
number of bounces made by all the white shapes (both circles and squares);
(c) count the number of bounces made by all the circles (both black and the attend-black and attend-white conditions there was no signif-
white); or (d) count the number of bounces made by all the squares (both icant difference in accuracy during the second, precritical trial
black and white). On the critical trial (and subsequent trials), the unex- between noticers and nonnoticers (mean error for noticers ⫽ 10%,
pected object was an additional black circle. Note that the display items SD ⫽ 10%; mean error for nonnoticers ⫽ 14%, SD ⫽ 8%), t(30) ⫽
were identical across all conditions. Only the participants’ understanding of 1.22, p ⫽ .231. Thus, differences in noticing rate on the critical
what constituted the target set was manipulated. After each critical trial, trial were not likely due to different levels of initial attentional
divided-attention trial, and full-attention trial, participants’ awareness of investment in the primary task.
the unexpected circle was probed with a two-item questionnaire (see the
Appendix).
Discussion
Results Earlier findings had shown that similarity in the luminance of an
unexpected object to the luminance of attended and ignored items
Results demonstrated a clear effect of attentional set on the
had greatly affected the likelihood that people would notice the
subjective awareness of an unexpected object, and this effect
unexpected object (Most et al., 2001). Here, the similarity effect
generalized to instances in which the attentional set was based on
was not limited to the luminance dimension. Instead, when the
shape as well as luminance. Replicating our earlier findings (Most
attended items were distinguished from ignored ones on the basis
et al., 2001), participants who attended to the subset of black
of shape, then shape was the dimension that affected noticing.
shapes were likely to notice the additional black circle on the
These results suggest that when observers are engaged in a chal-
critical trial (88% noticing). In contrast, nobody who attended to
lenging task that requires selective processing, they establish an
the white shapes reported noticing the unexpected black circle.
attentional set on the basis of the dimension critical to proper
Similarly, participants who attended to the subset of circles (both
selection. When an unexpected object matches the preset charac-
black and white) were likely to see the additional black circle (81%
teristics of the attentional set, then a person is likely to notice it.
noticing), whereas those who attended to the subset of squares
However, when it does not match the attentional set, detection is
(both black and white) were unlikely to notice it (6% noticing; see
unlikely.
Figure 5 and Table 1). These differences in noticing rate were
One confound in the present study stems from the fact that, other
reliable for observers attending on the basis of luminance, ␹2(1,
than its trajectory of motion, the unexpected object was identical to
N ⫽ 32) ⫽ 24.36, p ⬍ .001, and for those attending on the basis
some items already in the display. It is not clear whether those who
of shape, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 33) ⫽ 19.19, p ⬍ .001. Strikingly, this pattern
failed to report it actually failed to process it to a conscious level
of results remained consistent on the divided-attention trial as well,
or whether they did notice it but then disregarded it, assuming it
for observers attending both according to luminance, ␹2(1, N ⫽
was merely one of the to-be-ignored items present from the start of
32) ⫽ 18.29, p ⬍ .001, and according to shape, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 33) ⫽
the trial. Note that when observers are tracking a set of four items,
22.11, p ⬍ .001 (see Table 1).1 This is informative, as it demon-
strates a strong role for attentional set even with heightened
expectations. 1
In both the attend-squares and attend-black conditions, 1 person who
Because of experimenter error, counting accuracy in the primary had seen the unexpected object on the critical trial failed to see it on the
counting task was not available when observers attended to the divided-attention trial.
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 229

Table 1 is new. This scenario paints a very different picture than one in
Percentage of Observers in Experiments 1–7 Who Noticed the which the observer is inattentionally blind to the new object. This
Unexpected Object in the Critical and Divided-Attention Trials had not been a problem in the previous experiments demonstrating
a role for luminance similarity (Most et al., 2001, Experiment 1)
Trial type because the unexpected object had always been unique in shape,
Unexpected Divided
thereby minimizing the likelihood that it would be mistaken for
object Attended set n Critical attention one of the distractors. In Experiment 2, we seek to replicate the
effect of shape similarity while ensuring that the unexpected object
Experiment 1 contains a feature making it unique in the display.
Black circle White shapes 16 0 19
Black shapes 16 88 94 Experiment 2: Attentional Set for Shape
Squares 17 6 12 Despite Featural Uniqueness
Circles 16 81 94
Method
Experiment 2
Participants. Thirty-eight observers were tested in exchange for
Gray circle Squares 14 7 21 candy. Data from 10 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge
Circles 14 86 100 of similar experiments (n ⫽ 8) or failure to notice the unexpected object on
the final control trial (n ⫽ 2). The remaining 28 participants (16 men, 12
Experiment 3
women; mean age ⫽ 20.0 years) were distributed across the two experi-
Caucasian face Caucasian 25 68 96 mental conditions (described in the next section).
African 25 40 80 Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure were identical
American to those in Experiment 1, with three exceptions. First, the unexpected circle
African American Caucasian 25 56 88 was gray (luminance ⫽ 19.2 cd/m2) instead of black. This ensured that it
face African 27 81 93 was distinct from the other items in the display and, if seen, would not be
American mistaken for one of the circles that had been present at the start of the trial.
Second, participants were placed in one of only two conditions: Either they
Experiment 4
counted the number of bounces made by the black and white circles, or
White triangle Black circles 22 68 77 they counted the bounces made by the black and white squares. Third, after
(ignore the critical, divided-attention, and full-attention trials, participants an-
black swered questions in response to a computer prompt (instead of a printed
squares) questionnaire). The first question asked them, “On the last trial, did you see
Black triangle 21 38 43 anything that had not been present during the original two trials (e.g., other
than the black and white circles and squares)? Press ‘y’ if yes, ‘n’ for no.”
Experiment 5
If participants indicated that they had not seen anything different, no
Gradual onset further questions were asked, and the next trial commenced. If participants
gray Black shapes 22 36 73 indicated that they had seen something different, they were then instructed,
Sudden onset “We would now like you to briefly describe the additional item that you
gray 22 41 77 saw on the previous trial.”

Experiment 6
Results and Discussion
Gradual onset
As in Experiment 1, we found a strong effect of attentional set
black White shapes 22 23 77
Sudden onset based on shape. Of the observers attending to the circles, 86%
black 23 43 48 noticed the unexpected gray circle, but only 7% (1 observer) who
attended to the squares noticed it, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 28) ⫽ 17.37, p ⬍ .001
Experiment 7 (see Table 1). This pattern carried over to the divided-attention
Gradual onset trial as well, with those attending to circles more likely to notice
black Circles 21 67 76 than those attending to squares, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 28) ⫽ 18.10, p ⬍ .001
Sudden onset (see Table 1).
black 22 50 64 Counting accuracy on the precritical trial was no different for
noticers and nonnoticers (mean error for noticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽
11%; mean error for nonnoticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 13%). Thus,
they can generally keep track of the location of each target item differences in noticing rate on the critical trial were not likely due
(Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988), and this has also been demonstrated for to different levels of initial attentional investment in the primary
the very same motion algorithm used in our study (Scholl, Pyly- task.
shyn, & Feldman, 2001). Therefore, if an observer is tracking Together with the results from Experiment 1, the current results
circles and another circle unexpectedly appears, the observer might indicate that people are able to establish attentional sets on the
see it and recognize it as not being one of the target circles. basis of shape as well as luminance, and they support the notion
However, if the observer is tracking squares and an unexpected that attentional sets may be established on the basis of a number of
circle appears, the observer might notice it but, having not kept different dimensions. Such attentional sets strongly mediate the
track of where the other circles are, might not realize that this one kinds of unexpected objects and events that reach awareness, a
230 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

finding that is analogous to the role of attentional sets in influenc-

ing implicit attention capture (Folk et al., 1992). This experiment
also helps rule out the possibility that participants in Experiment 1
had actually seen the additional, unexpected circle but had mis-
taken it as belonging to the ignored set in the display.

Experiment 3: Attentional Set for Complex Features

Experiments 1 and 2, together with previous findings (Most et

al., 2001), demonstrate that people can establish attentional sets on
the basis of simple features—luminance and shape— by which
only certain aspects of the environment gain admittance into Figure 6. The African American face and Caucasian face used in Exper-
subjective awareness. Beyond the purposeful attending to or ig- iment 3. Each face is a computer-morphed average of 16 same-race
noring of visual stimuli that one is already aware of, such preset exemplars, and they are balanced with each other for mean luminance,
attentional parameters also influence the likelihood that someone hairline, contrast, size, and external shape. These stimuli were created and
provided by Daniel T. Levin (Levin, 1996; Levin, 2000). Adapted from
will notice a completely new and unexpected object. But how
“Race as a Visual Feature: Using Visual Search and Perceptual Discrim-
applicable is this finding to everyday life? There are occasions ination Tasks to Understand Face Categories and the Cross-Race Recog-
when people distinguish between objects in the world on the basis nition Deficit,” by D. T. Levin, 2000, Journal of Experimental Psychology:
of simple features; when a person looks for a black and white General, 129, p. 562. Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological
speed limit sign while driving, he or she might fail to notice an Association.
unexpected red stop sign. However, most of the people, animals,
and objects in the world consist of more than uniform, simple
visual features. For example, faces are not distinguished from each
other merely on the basis of color or luminance; they also differ in Results and Discussion
their unique arrangements of surfaces, shadows, protrusions, and As in Experiments 1 and 2, the induced attentional set had a
internal features. Can people establish attentional sets that influ- substantial impact on the likelihood of noticing the unexpected
ence awareness of unexpected objects on the basis of complex face. More people noticed the additional Caucasian face when they
arrangements of features? We tested this question by increasing were attending to Caucasian faces (68%) than when they were
the visual complexity of the target, distractor, and unexpected attending to African American faces (40%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 50) ⫽ 3.95,
objects in the selective counting task. Each item was either a p ⫽ .047. This result was reversed for the unexpected African
grayscale African American face or a grayscale Caucasian face, American face, with more people noticing it when attending to
equated with each other for overall mean luminance, hairline, and African American faces (81%) than when attending to Caucasian
external shape (see Figure 6). Evidence suggests that race may be faces (56%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 52) ⫽ 3.96, p ⫽ .047 (see Figure 7 and
encoded as a single feature dimension, even if only internal facial Table 1). The pattern of results in the divided-attention trial fol-
features are available (Levin, 1996, 2000). lowed the same trend but was nonsignificant for both the unex-
pected Caucasian face (Fisher exact test ⫽ .084) and the unex-
pected African American face, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 52) ⫽ 0.32, p ⫽ .575
Method (see Table 1). It is interesting that although the effect of attentional
Participants. One hundred and eleven Caucasian observers were tested set in this experiment is consistent with those in Experiments 1 and
in exchange for candy. Data from 9 observers were dropped because of 2, the size of the effect is noticeably smaller. One potential
prior knowledge of similar experiments (n ⫽ 6), unusual visual impairment explanation is that as a critical stimulus and the items surrounding
(n ⫽ 1), or failure to report awareness on the final trial (n ⫽ 2). The it become more complex, more processing is required before a
remaining 102 participants (59 men, 43 women; mean age ⫽ 19.5 years)2 person can compare the critical stimulus to his or her own atten-
were distributed across the four experimental conditions (described in the tional set. Because such a comparison takes place later in the
next section). stream of processing, there is less subsequent processing prior to
Materials and procedure. Four identical African American male faces
awareness that can potentially be affected by the person’s atten-
and four identical Caucasian male faces moved on haphazard paths across
tional set. On another note, it is also interesting that overall, more
a white background (luminance ⫽ 88.0 cm/m2), bouncing off the display
edges in the same manner as stimuli in the previous two experiments. Each
participants noticed the unexpected African American face on the
face was about 1.3 ⫻ 1.8 cm and was a computer-morphed average of 16 critical trial (69%) than the Caucasian face (54%), although this
same-race exemplars, balanced for mean luminance, contrast, hairline, size, difference was not statistically significant, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 102) ⫽ 2.50,
and external shape (Levin, 2000).3 Thus, only the internal arrangement of p ⫽ .114. This trend is consistent with findings that people are
facial features could be used to distinguish between the two sets. Depend- typically faster to locate a cross-race face among same-race ones
ing on the condition, the unexpected object was either an identical, addi- than vice versa; it has been suggested that race may be processed
tional African American face or an identical, additional Caucasian face.
The four experimental conditions consisted of a 2 (attend Caucasian, attend
2
African American) ⫻ 2 (unexpected Caucasian face, unexpected African Three participants neglected to report their age.
3
American face) design. Awareness of the unexpected face was probed We thank Daniel Levin, the creator of these stimuli (e.g., Levin, 1996,
using a two-item printed questionnaire (see the Appendix). 2000), for his permission to use them.
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 231

two groups of faces. For example, although the hairlines, lumi-

nances, and external shapes of the two sets of faces were equated,
observers could still rely on individual parts of the faces, such as
the nose or eyebrows, to discriminate the sets. However, this
strategy would require more focused, rather than diffuse, attention.
A third alternative is that observers might have seen the additional
face in all conditions, but when it was the same as the distractor
faces, they did not realize that the unexpected shape was new to the
display. As with the confound in Experiment 1, observers might
have known where all their target shapes were during the trial, so
when an additional face identical to the targets appeared, they
realized it was not one they had been tracking before. However,
when a new face identical to the distractors appeared, there was no
basis for judging whether it was one of the distractors that had
been there all along. Despite these alternatives, attentional set
influenced the likelihood that observers could report the presence
Figure 7. Effect of attentional set to complex features on the critical trial of a new object. Thus, the results extend the potential implications
in Experiment 3. More people noticed the unexpected African American of attentional set to detection of more complex stimuli.
face when attending to other African American faces than when attending
to Caucasian faces. More people noticed the unexpected Caucasian face
when attending to other Caucasian faces than when attending to African
Experiment 4: A Bottom-Up Role for Stimulus Salience
American faces. In the previous experiments (and in earlier ones; Most et al.,
2001), variations along the dimension critical to distinguishing
between the attended and ignored items played a large role in
as more of a feature for cross-race than same-race faces (Levin, determining awareness. However, the unexpected objects were
2000). often unique on dimensions unrelated to the critical dimension. For
Across the four conditions, there was no significant difference in example, when observers were selectively attending on the basis of
counting accuracy in the precritical trial between noticers and grayscale luminance, the unexpected objects sometimes contained
nonnoticers (mean error for noticers ⫽ 26%, SD ⫽ 15%; mean a unique color or shape (Most et al., 2000, 2001). Despite their
error for nonnoticers ⫽ 24%, SD ⫽ 19%), t(99) ⫽ 0.71, p ⫽ .447; uniqueness, these properties did not cause the items to pop into
so, differences in noticing rate on the critical trial were not likely awareness; it was the item’s consistency with the observers’ at-
due to different levels of initial attentional investment in the tentional set that seemed to influence awareness. Thus, one open
primary task. question is whether variations along a dimension irrelevant to the
The results of this experiment support the notion that people can attentional set can affect noticing at all. That is, can some
establish effective attentional sets on the basis of more than simple bottom-up properties force their way into subjective awareness
features. The two sets of faces in the display differed from each regardless of a person’s attentional set? On the basis of the earlier
other only in their internal facial structures; yet, observers ap- results, we could reasonably predict that irrelevant variations
peared capable of filtering visual information on the basis of this should not affect noticing. However, this would be inconsistent
relatively complex visual information. Although the additional with suggestions derived from implicit attention capture research
face in each condition conspicuously entered and exited the dis- that property salience is a factor in capturing attention (e.g.,
play, remained visible for 5 s, traveled on a unique path of motion, Theeuwes, 1992). To the degree that salient stimuli capture atten-
and crossed over a point of fixation, these attributes did not tion implicitly, we predict that such stimuli will have an increased
guarantee conscious detection. It is interesting to note that as chance of being noticed. However, the benefit to noticing derived
stimuli become more complex, it becomes more difficult to argue from such bottom-up properties should not be as profound as those
that they are processed preattentively. The fact that attentional set conferred when a stimulus matches a person’s attentional set. In
wielded influence even when stimuli represented complex arrange- Experiment 4, we directly examine the effect of variations along a
ments of features supports notions that the unexpected stimuli in noncritical dimension, which nonetheless alter the salience of the
this paradigm receive some degree of attentional processing. unexpected object.
The possibility that people can filter unexpected information on
the basis of complex arrangements of features holds important Method
implications for everyday life, but there are alternative interpreta-
tions for the pattern of results in this experiment. For example, Participants. Fifty observers were tested in exchange for candy. Data
rather than establishing an attentional set on the basis of complex from 7 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge of similar
experiments (n ⫽ 6) or failure to report awareness on final trial (n ⫽ 1).
features, participants might have selected information for aware-
The remaining 43 participants (18 men, 25 women; mean age ⫽ 21.8
ness on the basis of category membership. That is, rather than years) were distributed across the two experimental conditions (described
selectively processing information on the basis of visual similarity, in the next section).
noticing may have been influenced by whether the unexpected face Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure were identical
could be placed into one racial category or another. Alternatively, to those for Experiment 1, with two exceptions. First, all the target and
observers may have used one particular feature to differentiate the distractor items were black, distinguished from each other solely on the
232 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

basis of shape. Four black squares and four black circles moved through the noticed it. However, when it was white, 68% noticed it, ␹2(1, N ⫽
display, and participants counted the number of bounces made by the 43) ⫽ 3.90, p ⫽ .048. This pattern of results remained consistent
circles. Second, the nature of the unexpected object was different. In one for the divided attention trial, with 43% noticing the black triangle
condition the unexpected object was a black triangle (luminance ⫽ 1.2 and 77% noticing the white triangle, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 43) ⫽ 5.32, p ⫽
cd/m2), and in the other condition it was a white triangle (luminance ⫽ 88.0
.021. It is interesting to note that of the people who had seen the
cd/m2). Thus, the unexpected item was always the same shape (the critical
dimension) but was either identical in luminance to all other items in the
unexpected item on the critical trial, 1 person in the white triangle
display or was unique in luminance (see Figure 8). Awareness of the condition and 5 people in the black triangle failed to see it in the
unexpected object was probed using a two-item printed questionnaire (see divided-attention trial. Across both conditions, counting accuracy
the Appendix). was no different for noticers and nonnoticers in the precritical trial
If variations only along the critical dimension affect the likelihood of (mean error for noticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 12%; mean error for
noticing, then there should be no difference in noticing between the two nonnoticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 13%).
types of unexpected objects. Alternatively, if salience or distinctiveness in Experiments 1–3 demonstrated that attentional sets could
the display plays a role independent of attentional set, then the white wield considerable power over the likelihood that observers
triangle should be noticed more. A third possibility is that because partic- would notice an unexpected moving object. The difference in
ipants are more likely to notice objects similar to the attended objects, more
noticing rate ranged from 0% to nearly 90% depending on
people should notice the black triangle.
whether the unexpected object’s properties matched those of the
attended items or those of the distractor items. Furthermore, the
Results and Discussion magnitude of the effect of shape-based attentional set was
Variations along an irrelevant dimension did affect noticing. almost identical in Experiments 1 and 2, although the unex-
When the unexpected triangle was black, 38% of the observers pected object was more distinctive in the latter experiment.
Although attentional sets play a strong role in detecting unex-
pected stimuli, evidence from the implicit attention capture
literature suggests that particularly salient stimulus properties
might be noticed more often than nonsalient ones, regardless of
attentional set (e.g., Theeuwes, 1992). Indeed, in the current
experiment, we found that variations along an irrelevant dimen-
sion do wield some influence over detection: More people
noticed the salient and distinctive white triangle than noticed
the black triangle. Still, it is striking that the noticing rate for
the white triangle wasn’t higher. Although salience appears to
increase the likelihood of detection, it does not seem to match
the power of attentional set in influencing detection.

Experiments 5–7: An Especially Powerful Role for

Sudden Onsets?
Results from Experiment 4 indicate that salient irrelevant
features do affect the probability of noticing an unexpected
object and, hence, that certain environmental cues are more
likely than others to enter awareness. This is consistent with the
notion that stimulus-based properties can draw automatic shifts
of attention. Even if such shifts are not sufficient in themselves
for awareness to occur, they might trigger chains of processes
that do lead to awareness. Among the properties that have been
shown to draw attention automatically within the implicit at-
tention capture literature, sudden onsets seem to do so most
robustly (e.g., Jonides & Yantis, 1988; Yantis & Jonides, 1984).
On the basis of the implicit attention capture results alone, one
might predict that suddenly onsetting stimuli will be noticed by
most participants. In the following experiments, we test this
prediction by having the unexpected objects appear suddenly in
the display, rather than emerging via gradual disocclusion from
Figure 8. Schematic diagrams of critical trial from the two conditions in one of the display’s edges.
Experiment 4. Note that the attended items are distinguished from distrac-
tor items only on the basis of shape (squares vs. circles). Between the two
conditions, the unexpected triangle differs only in luminance (black vs. Experiment 5: Sudden Onsets
white), which is presumably a dimension orthogonal to the participants’ Method
attentional set. The white triangle was noticed by 68% of participants,
whereas the black triangle was noticed by 38%. Thus, variations along Participants. Fifty-four observers were tested in exchange for candy.
task-irrelevant dimensions do affect noticing. Data from 10 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge of
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 233

similar experiments (n ⫽ 6), failure to complete the experiment (n ⫽ 1), Results and Discussion
tracking of the wrong set of shapes (n ⫽ 2), and accidental viewing of a
final forced-choice question4 prior to answering the open-ended questions The larger transient signal of the unexpected black cross did
(n ⫽ 1). The remaining 44 participants (31 men, 13 women; mean age ⫽ seem to influence noticing more than the weaker onset signal of
21.8 years) were distributed across the two experimental conditions (de- the gray cross. However, the increase in noticing fell short of
scribed in the next section). statistical significance. When the black cross emerged gradually
Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure for this exper-
from the side of the display, 23% of the observers reported seeing
iment were almost identical to those of Experiment 1. Four black circles
and squares and four white circles and squares moved on haphazard paths
it; when it onset suddenly in the display, 43% noticed it, ␹2(1, N ⫽
within the display, and participants were instructed to count the number of 45) ⫽ 2.18, p ⫽ .140 (see Table 1). Although not statistically
bounces made by the black shapes. On the critical trial, an unexpected gray significant, this relative increase in noticing supports the notion
cross (luminance ⫽ 49.3 cd/m2) appeared and traveled across the display. that sudden onsets may provide unexpected stimuli with an advan-
The two experimental conditions varied only in the manner in which the tage in being seen but that they do not guarantee noticing. Oddly,
cross first entered the display. In the gradual onset condition, the cross this pattern reversed in the divided-attention trial, with 77% no-
emerged gradually from the right edge of the display before traveling on a ticing the gradual onset and 48% noticing the sudden onset, ␹2(1,
horizontal path and exiting the left side of the display. In the sudden onset N ⫽ 45) ⫽ 4.15, p ⫽ .042 (see Table 1). Five of the participants
condition, the cross appeared abruptly, its center 7.4 cm away from the who had noticed the sudden onset on the critical trial failed to see
fixation point and 1.5 cm away from the right edge of the display. As in the
it on the divided-attention trial. Across both conditions, counting
gradual onset condition, the cross then traveled in a linear, horizontal path
and exited the left side of the display.
accuracy was no different for noticers and nonnoticers in the
precritical trial (mean error for noticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 14%; mean
error for nonnoticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 13%).
Results At first glance, Experiments 5 and 6 suggest that, consistent
In contrast to implicit attention capture work showing that with implicit capture research (e.g., Yantis & Jonides, 1984),
abrupt onsets reliably divert attention, the abrupt onset did not unexpected objects that appear suddenly might gain attentional
increase rates of noticing. When the unexpected gray cross ap- priority more than unexpected objects that appear gradually do.
peared as a sudden onset, only 1 more observer noticed it than Although we found no such effect with the gray cross, the larger
when it emerged gradually from the side of the display (41% vs. transient signal of the black cross led to somewhat higher rates of
36%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 44) ⫽ 0.10, p ⫽ .757 (see Table 1). In the noticing. Yet, this effect was not large: Over half of the observers
divided-attention trial, again only 1 more person saw the cross in failed to notice the black cross with the sudden onset. Indeed, it is
the sudden onset condition than in the gradual onset condition striking that participants were less likely to notice the sudden onset
(77% vs. 73%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 44) ⫽ 0.12, p ⫽ .728 (see Table 1). than the gradual onset in the divided-attention trials of this exper-
Across both conditions, counting accuracy was no different for iment. It is possible that the sudden onset would have led to a
noticers and nonnoticers in the precritical trial (mean error for greater increase in noticing had the black cross not contained
noticers ⫽ 15%, SD ⫽ 11%; mean error for nonnoticers ⫽ 16%, features similar to the ignored set (observers attended to white
SD ⫽ 11%). shapes and ignored black shapes). Investigations of this possibility
could reveal whether the current findings reflect a weak ability of
sudden onsets to draw awareness or, rather, the top-down overrid-
Experiment 6: High-Contrast Sudden Onsets ing of an otherwise more powerful ability to draw awareness.
Although the sudden onset in Experiment 5 did not lead to Another possibility, given the thus far insignificant effect of sud-
greater noticing relative to a gradual onset, the sudden appearance den onsets, is that when Experiments 5–7 are combined, no evi-
of a gray cross against a gray background might not have produced dence will emerge for a benefit of sudden onset in noticing. In
a large enough transient signal to capture awareness. To explore Experiment 7, we modify the experiment to eliminate attentional
this possibility, Experiment 6 introduced the sudden onset of a sets against the unexpected black object.
black cross. This larger transient signal better tests the prediction
that sudden onsets will capture attention explicitly. In this case,
Experiment 7: High-Contrast Sudden Onsets Irrelevant to
participants attended to the white subset of items. Therefore, the
Attentional Set
unexpected object simultaneously contained a large onset and was
featurally more similar to the ignored set of items than to the The stimuli in this experiment were identical to those in Exper-
attended set of items. iment 6, with the unexpected object a black cross that appeared
either suddenly or gradually from the side. The only difference in
Method this experiment is that rather than counting the number of bounces
made by white shapes and ignoring black shapes, participants
Participants. Forty-nine observers were tested in exchange for candy.
counted the number of bounces made by the black and white
Data from 4 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge of similar
experiments. The remaining 45 participants (24 men, 21 women; mean circles while ignoring the black and white squares. The purpose of
age ⫽ 21.1 years)5 were distributed across the two experimental this modification was to eliminate the establishment of task-
conditions. induced attentional sets against the processing of black shapes.
Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure were identical
to those in Experiment 5, with the exception that the unexpected cross on
4
the third, fourth, and fifth trials was black (luminance ⫽ 1.5 cd/m2) instead See the five-item questionnaire in the Appendix.
5
of gray. One participant neglected to report their age.
234 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

With no attentional set against black shapes and the relatively large difference in the number of people who noticed the unexpected
onset signal created by black shape against a gray background, the objects with sudden onsets (45%) than those with gradual onsets
chances of finding benefits of a sudden onset for noticing should (42%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 132) ⫽ 0.14, p ⫽ .707. Furthermore, in no
be maximized. experiment did more than half of the participants notice the object
with the sudden onset. This is in marked contrast to the implicit
attention capture literature, in which sudden onsets seem to capture
Method
attention consistently.
Participants. Forty-eight observers were tested in exchange for candy. Although the current experiments provide no evidence that
Data from 5 observers were dropped because of prior knowledge of similar sudden onsets capture awareness, several qualifications must be
experiments (n ⫽ 3); failure to follow instructions (n ⫽ 1); or because the noted. First, it is possible that the transient signal caused by the
unexpected object onset on top of another black item, thereby eliminating abruptly appearing object was too small in all three experiments.
the appearance of an abrupt onset (n ⫽ 1). The remaining 43 participants
Even when the unexpected object was black, it still appeared
(23 men, 20 women; mean age ⫽ 19.8 years) were distributed across the
two experimental conditions. Because of experimenter error, 1 partici-
against a gray background, yielding a smaller transient signal than
pant’s counting accuracy data in the divided-attention trial of the gradual it would have had it appeared against a white background. It is
onset condition were discarded. possible that with a larger luminance difference between the un-
Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure were identical expected object and the background, objects with sudden onsets
to those in Experiment 6, with the exception that participants attended to would have been noticed more often. Note, however, that in the
the subset of black and white circles rather than the subset of white shapes. implicit capture literature, sudden onsets have been found to cap-
Thus, the only difference here was the participants’ attentional set. ture attention even when the display objects are equiluminant with
the background (Yantis & Hillstrom, 1994). Second, when the
Results and Discussion unexpected object appeared abruptly, its position in the display
was more peripheral than in most implicit attention capture para-
Contrary to our expectations, the transient signal of the unex- digms. It is possible that awareness of the unexpected object would
pected black cross did not lead to increased noticing when partic- have been more influenced by sudden onsets if they took place
ipants had no attentional set against black items. Even more closer to the center of the display. Third, although the properties of
unexpectedly, the black cross with the sudden onset was noticed the unexpected object were carefully controlled across trials and
slightly (although not significantly) less than the gradually emerg- experiments, the trajectories of the attended and ignored shapes
ing black cross on the critical trial, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 43) ⫽ 1.23, p ⫽ .268 were randomized by the computer. Thus, the proximity of the
(see Table 1). When the black cross emerged gradually from the unexpected object to the other items in the display was random,
side of the display, 67% of the observers reported seeing it on the and there was a small probability that the unexpected object could
critical trial. This is consistent with the prediction that more people appear on top of another display item. It is possible that the
would see it than in the gradual onset condition in Experiment 6, transient signal created by the sudden onset of the unexpected
␹2(1, N ⫽ 43) ⫽ 8.41, p ⫽ .004. However, when it onset suddenly object was masked by the motion signals of other objects nearby.
in the display, only 50% noticed it, not much more than the sudden Most implicit attention capture experiments contain sudden onsets
onset condition in Experiment 6, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 45) ⫽ 0.19, p ⫽ .661. appearing within otherwise static displays. It would be worthwhile
In the divided-attention condition, too, a greater number of partic- to investigate whether the robust effect of sudden onsets on im-
ipants noticed the unexpected object in the gradual onset condition plicit indices of attention capture diminish when they appear
(76%) than in the sudden onset condition (64%), though this within displays containing other motion. Fourth, in studies of
comparison fell short of statistical significance, ␹2(1, N ⫽ 43) ⫽ implicit attention capture, sudden onsets do not affect performance
0.80, p ⫽ .370 (see Table 1). Three of the participants who had if participants know in advance where their target will appear (e.g.,
noticed the sudden onset on the critical trial and 2 who had noticed Yantis & Jonides, 1990). In our current experiments, participants
the gradual onset on the critical trial failed to see it on the maintained focused attention on their four moving targets. This
divided-attention trial. Across both conditions, counting accuracy leaves open that possibility that sudden onsets could more effec-
was no different for noticers and nonnoticers in the precritical trial tively capture awareness when attention is more diffuse. Despite
(mean error for noticers ⫽ 16%, SD ⫽ 12%; mean error for these qualifications and especially in light of previous work dem-
nonnoticers ⫽ 20%, SD ⫽ 23%), t(41) ⫽ 0.68, p ⫽ .503. onstrating the power of sudden onsets to capture attention, it is
It is important to note that the decrease in noticing in the sudden striking that no more than 50% of participants noticed the objects
onset condition, relative to the gradual onset condition, throws into containing sudden onsets in any of our experiments. It is interest-
question the notion that suddenly onsetting stimuli have an advan- ing to note that whereas most attention capture studies have tended
tage in grabbing visual awareness, at least within dynamic scenes. to rely on response times averaged across trials, one benefit of the
We expected that sudden onsets should have the largest effect on current type of trial-by-trial examination is the demonstration that
noticing in this experiment; as in Experiment 6, the unexpected such capturing effects might not occur on all— or even nearly
stimulus was black and thus constituted a large transient signal all—trials.
when it appeared. However, unlike in Experiment 6, participants Most generally, these less-than-striking effects for sudden on-
had no attentional set against processing of black items. One sets emphasize the importance of studying attentional capture in a
possibility is that the apparent benefit of sudden onsets in Exper- variety of paradigms and using a variety of dependent measures.
iment 6 was an aberration. When combined across all three onset The role of sudden onsets in attentional capture has been studied in
experiments, Experiments 5–7, no benefits of sudden onsets dozens of articles, but typically using only the few paradigms
emerge. Across all three experiments, there was no significant discussed in the introduction. Nearly all of these articles measure
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 235

only the effects of an onset on performance, with little mention of Table 2

the impact of onsets on awareness. Given that perceivers likely Mean Error Rates in the Bounce-Counting Task
need awareness to change their behavior in response to a critical for Each Experiment
event, the lack of awareness in our studies suggests that attention
capture, as measured in many visual search tasks, might not Counting error rates (%)
measure the most ecologically important aspect of attention cap- Noticers Nonnoticers
ture. More broadly, the fact that onsets had so little power to
capture awareness in the present studies underscores the need to Precritical Critical Precritical Critical
study attentional capture in its most general form across many Experiment trial trial trial trial
particular instantiations, rather than limiting such study to only a
1 10 25 13 17
few closely related paradigms. 2 16 30 16 17
3 26 31 24 27
4 16 28 16 27
Experiment 8: Attention Capture Without Awareness? 5 15 19 16 19
6 16 26 16 18
One of the major themes of our discussion so far has been the 7 16 17 20 21
distinction between implicit attention capture and awareness. This 1–7, pooled 19 26 18 21
has largely been a theoretical distinction, and only a handful of
studies have specifically explored whether attention shifts can Precritical trial Critical trial
8 (control) 17 15
occur without awareness of the shift-eliciting stimulus (e.g., Ken-
tridge et al., 1999; Lambert et al., 1999; McCormick, 1997; cf. Note. Higher numbers indicate less accurate performance. For Experi-
Naccache et al., 2002; Woodman & Luck, 2003). Virtually no ments 1–7, error rates increased among both noticers and nonnoticers from
studies have explored the functional relationship between implicit the precritical trial to the critical trial (which contained the unexpected
and explicit attention capture. One possibility, consistent with both object). Only in Experiment 8, when no unexpected object appeared during
the critical trial, did error rates not increase.
the original perceptual cycle model (Neisser, 1976) and our refor-
mulation, is that implicit shifts of attention generally precede
explicit capture, even though such shifts do not guarantee that the unexpected object invariably made its first appearance on the
awareness will follow. If this proposal is accurate, then evidence of third trial. Thus, it is possible that something else about this trial
implicit attention capture should be observable both when observ- caused an increase in error rates—participants might have lost
ers notice an unexpected object and when they do not. Some early motivation or become fatigued by the third trial. Therefore, we ran
inattentional blindness experiments found no implicit evidence of a control condition in which no unexpected object appeared on the
distraction caused by an unexpected object, but these measures third or fourth trials, appearing at last only on the final, full-
may have been relatively insensitive (Rock, Linnett, & Grant, attention trial.
1992).
Records of the observers’ counting accuracy throughout Exper-
iments 1–7 provide a potential means to search for such an effect. Method
If participants’ counting accuracy suffers in the presence of an Participants. Thirty-seven observers were tested in exchange for
additional, unexpected object, this might reflect an implicit shift of candy. Data from 7 observers were dropped: Two observers were dropped
attention. Although counting accuracy is a qualitatively different because of prior knowledge of similar experiments, and 3 others were
index than changes in response time during a search task, it seems dropped because of difficulty in understanding the instructions. The data
to be an equally valid measure of attention in principle. An effect from a 6th participant were discarded because he spontaneously explained
that he had changed his criteria for counting bounces between the second
on attentional performance without awareness would further un-
and third trials. Data from the 7th participant were improperly saved and
derscore the need to understand the capture of awareness indepen-
thus were lost. All participants (18 men, 12 women; mean age ⫽ 20.4
dently of implicit attention capture. years) saw the unexpected object on the final, full-attention trial.
Throughout the previous experiments, participants’ counting Materials and procedure. The materials and procedure were identical
accuracy often decreased in the third, critical trial (containing the to those in Experiment 2, with the exception that the unexpected object
unexpected object) compared with accuracy on the second, pre- appeared only during the fifth trial. Four black squares and circles and four
critical trial (see Table 2). Although, across all experiments, this white squares and circles moved within the display, and observers counted
effect was most pronounced for noticers (mean error on precritical the bounces made by the circles. Although no unexpected object appeared
trial ⫽ 19%, SD ⫽ 14%; mean error on critical trial ⫽ 26%, SD ⫽ on the third or fourth trials, after each of these trials observers nevertheless
17%), t(169) ⫽ 5.36, p ⬍ .001, it was also evident among those responded to two-item questionnaires probing whether they had been
aware of any new items (see the Appendix). On the final, full-attention
who did not see the unexpected object (mean error on precritical
trial, an additional gray circle (luminance ⫽ 19.2 cd/m2) traveled across the
trial ⫽ 18%, SD ⫽ 15%; mean error on critical trial ⫽ 21%, SD ⫽
screen in a manner mirroring the previous experiments, and observers’
14%), t(181) ⫽ 2.90, p ⫽ .004. The relative change in accuracy awareness of it was probed at the end of the trial.
was significantly greater for noticers than for nonnoticers,
t(350) ⫽ 2.15, p ⫽ .032. The decrease in accuracy from the
Results and Discussion
precritical to the critical trials among nonnoticers might support a
dissociation between awareness and implicit attention capture, but Consistent with the possibility that in the previous experiments,
this suggestion is tentative because of the absence of a control decreased accuracy on the critical trial among nonnoticers was
group. In every condition throughout the preceding experiments, caused by the appearance of the unexpected object, no such de-
236 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

crease occurred in this control condition. The mean error was 17% and it constitutes only a rough index of attentional distraction.
on the second trial (SD ⫽ 13%) and 15% on the third trial (SD ⫽ Observers’ strategies for the counting task may have varied; for
10%), t(29) ⫽ 0.59, p ⫽ .560. In comparison with this control example, 1 participant remarked that she had added bounces to her
condition, the decrease in counting accuracy from the second to the reported counts in case she had missed a few, and another com-
third (critical) trials across the previous experiments was signifi- mented that his strategy had changed from the second to the third
cant both for noticers (U ⫽ 1757.0, z ⫽ ⫺2.71, p ⫽ .007) and for trial. (This participant was part of the control group and was
nonnoticers (U ⫽ 2104.5, z ⫽ ⫺2.01, p ⫽ .045; both Mann– removed from the analysis.) Furthermore, it is possible that de-
Whitney tests were two-tailed; see Figure 9 and Table 2). creased accuracy on the critical trials of Experiments 1–7 reflected
The results from this experiment support two conclusions about a filtering cost rather than a shift of attention; in contrast to the
the relationship between implicit attention capture and awareness. preceding trials, the critical trial contained five nontarget items
First, implicit and explicit attention capture appear to be disso- rather than four. This interpretation would be consistent with
ciable from each other: Counting accuracy decreased on the crit- earlier findings that inattentional blindness results partly from
ical trials across Experiments 1–7, even when observers did not active ignoring of irrelevant stimuli (Most et al., 2001, Experiment
notice the unexpected object (indeed, this trend was apparent 2). Note, however, that this interpretation can be applied to some
within all of these individual experiments), but no decrease oc- traditional implicit attention capture paradigms as well (e.g.,
curred in the control condition. In fact, had the accuracy change Theeuwes, 1992, 1994).
between trials in the control condition been significant, it would Despite drawbacks of counting accuracy as an index of atten-
have suggested improvement of accuracy on the critical trial. tional distraction, the decreased accuracy in the critical trials—
Second, the fact that accuracy decreased among those who noticed even in the absence of noticing— drives home the necessity of
the unexpected object as well as those who did not suggests that directly studying the capture of awareness instead of relying on
implicit attention capture and awareness might not be entirely implicit measures to infer what might capture awareness. At most,
independent of each other. Instead, consistent with the perceptual these results demonstrate that implicit attention capture can occur
cycle framework (Neisser, 1976), implicit attention shifts might without awareness, and they suggest a functional nature to the
precede and contribute to awareness of an unexpected object relationship between the two phenomena as well. Further research
without necessarily guaranteeing awareness of it. Two interpreta- should seek to elucidate this relationship, perhaps using more
tions might account for the larger decrease in accuracy among rigorous indices of implicit capture.
noticers than among nonnoticers. One possibility is that allocation
of attention to the unexpected object was sustained only once General Discussion
observers noticed it, thereby detracting further from performance
on the counting task. Alternatively, the likelihood that observers Recall a scenario described earlier: A child unexpectedly runs in
would notice the unexpected object might have depended on how front of a car while the driver is fiddling with the radio. At least
much attention was initially diverted to it. In this case, the larger two different indices can be examined to determine whether the
drop in accuracy among noticers might reflect a larger attention child has caught the driver’s attention: One is the driver’s aware-
shift, which subsequently allowed them to notice the unexpected ness of the child, and the other is the effect of this unexpected
object. Both interpretations open interesting avenues for future event on the driver’s radio-tuning performance. Important insights
research. about the mechanisms of attention shifting can be drawn from the
It is important to note that counting accuracy throughout these latter index, but what is crucial in this situation is that the driver
experiments was not recorded with this kind of analysis in mind, notices the child. Traditional attention capture research parallels
the assessment of the driver’s radio-dial manipulation—for exam-
ple, changes in response times on a primary task are used to infer
whether a task-irrelevant event automatically diverted attention
(e.g., Folk et al., 1992; Theeuwes, 1992, 1994; Yantis & Jonides,
1984). From a practical standpoint, a weakness of this approach is
that its findings might not generalize to the capture of awareness.
Conversely, research on inattentional blindness directly probes
awareness, demonstrating that people often fail to notice unex-
pected objects and events when their attention is preoccupied (e.g.,
Becklen & Cervone, 1983; Mack & Rock, 1998; Neisser & Dube,
1978, cited in Neisser, 1979; Simons & Chabris, 1999). This
research seems especially ecologically valid and could even play
an important role in public policy decisions. For example, recent
research using the computerized sustained inattentional blindness
paradigm has demonstrated that the degree of inattentional blind-
Figure 9. Mean error rates on the bounce-counting task across the pre-
ness increases when observers are simultaneously talking on a
critical and critical trials. When no unexpected object appeared on the
critical trial, no decrease in counting accuracy occurred (control group in
cellular telephone (Scholl et al., 2003; see also Strayer, Drews, &
Experiment 8). However, combined across Experiments 1–7, a decrease Johnston, 2003). Despite this ecological relevance, this literature
occurred on the critical trial even among those who did not notice the has yielded only limited insights into the factors that determine
unexpected object. The decrease in accuracy was greatest for those who did whether an unexpected object in a dynamic scene captures
notice the unexpected object. awareness.
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 237

A major goal of this article has been to theoretically bridge these This appeared not to be the case for sudden onsets, however.
two fields of research. Studies using implicit measures have de- Taken together, Experiments 5–7 suggested that abrupt onsets
tailed complex interactions between top-down and bottom-up within dynamic scenes provide little or no benefit for the noticing
properties underlying unplanned, transient shifts of attention. Ap- of unexpected objects. Initially, it appeared that sudden onsets, if
plying such an understanding to the problem of inattentional constituting large enough transient signals, could draw awareness
blindness helps illuminate mechanisms of visual awareness, essen- somewhat more effectively than gradual onsets. When a relatively
tially shifting the emphasis of the field from demonstrations of low-contrast gray cross suddenly appeared against a gray back-
perceptual failure to investigations of factors underlying successful ground in Experiment 5, it was not noticed more than a gradually
noticing. The lack of connection between these two fields may be appearing gray cross; but the abruptly onsetting black cross in
in part due to an underestimation of the chasm between implicit Experiment 6 was noticed slightly more than one that gradually
attention shifts and awareness, although recent studies have begun appeared. However, our first interpretation of this as being due to
to demonstrate the separability of the two fields (e.g., Kentridge et a presumably larger transient signal was not confirmed in Exper-
al., 1999; McCormick, 1997; Woodman & Luck, 2003). Conse- iment 7, in which the unexpected object was again a suddenly
quently, virtually no experiments have explored functional rela- onsetting or gradually emerging black cross. Because participants
tionships between them. In this article, we have attempted to (a) presumably did not establish an attentional set against black items
highlight the gulf between research on implicit attention capture in Experiment 7, we had expected that the effect of sudden onset
and inattentional blindness, as well as the need to bridge it; (b) would be even stronger. Instead, even fewer participants noticed
show how bringing together the two fields can elucidate factors the black cross with the sudden onset than noticed the black cross
determining visual awareness of unexpected objects and events, as with the gradual onset. When the results from all three sudden
well as suggest functional links between implicit and explicit onset experiments were pooled, there appeared to be no reliable
attention capture; and (c) put such ideas into practice by noting effect of onset at all. Although several factors need to be better
some of the most important factors that determine the capture of controlled in future onset experiments, the current results provide
awareness. an intriguing contrast to the conclusions that might be drawn by
In Experiments 1–3, we found that the likelihood of noticing an much of the implicit attention capture literature, in which sudden
unexpected object was powerfully mediated by a person’s atten- onsets appear consistently to capture attention. In particular, future
tional set. When the unexpected object was visually similar along experiments should investigate more carefully the role of static
a critical dimension to an attended set of items, people were likely versus dynamic displays when assessing the impact of sudden
to notice it. However, noticing greatly decreased when the unex- onsets. The current experiments suggest that attention capture due
pected object was similar along the critical dimension to the to sudden onsets may not always occur as robustly in dynamic
distractors, even when the object contained a unique feature (Ex- displays (a result with obvious ecological implications). In sum-
periment 2) and even though it always traveled on a unique path of mary, in the experiments presented in this article, the most impor-
motion. It is important to note that this attentional set effect tant single factor influencing noticing rates was the attentional set
generalized across several dimensions. Experiments 1 and 2 dem- of the participants. Quite literally, the probability that people will
onstrated that people could establish effective attentional sets on notice an unexpected object depends largely on what they have set
the basis of simple features like luminance and shape. In Experi- their minds to see.
ment 3, we found evidence that such attentional sets could also be
based on complex features, such as those that differentiate between Integrating Implicit Attention Capture and Inattentional
faces. In summary, people appear capable of establishing an at- Blindness
tentional set—successfully filtering even unexpected information
from conscious awareness— on the basis of a range of features that In addition to predicting the factors that mediate the awareness
might distinguish attended from ignored items during a selective of unexpected objects, the theoretical framework discussed here—
looking task. and the experiments presented in support of it— demonstrates how
How strong is this effect of attentional set? The strongest a relationship can be forged between implicit attention capture and
prediction would be that only variations along a dimension rele- awareness. First, the fact that counting accuracy decreased on the
vant to attentional set affect noticing and that irrelevant variations critical trials even when observers failed to notice the unexpected
have no bearing on what enters awareness. Indeed, support for this objects lends empirical support to the contention that awareness of
notion came from a comparison of results in Experiments 1 and 2. an unexpected object requires more than an implicitly measured
In both studies, the unexpected object was an additional circle attention shift. Second, the fact that a decrease in accuracy also
among black and white shapes, but in Experiment 2 the additional occurred among those who noticed the unexpected object suggests
circle was gray, making it more distinctive than the black unex- that the dissociation between implicit and explicit attention capture
pected circle in Experiment 1. Despite its greater distinctiveness, might not work both ways. That is, whereas an implicit shift of
the gray circle was not noticed substantially more than the unex- attention might occur without resulting in awareness, noticing of
pected black circle had been. However, the results of Experiment an unexpected object might likely be preceded by an implicit
4 demonstrated that bottom-up properties beyond attentional set, attention shift, or orienting (see also Posner et al., 1980).
such as salience, can wield some influence over noticing. Partic- This proposal for a functional relationship might prove useful in
ipants were more likely to notice a salient, unexpected white finally integrating the fields of implicit attention capture and
triangle among black targets and distractors than an unexpected inattentional blindness. If it is applied to our data while taking into
black triangle, even though their attentional sets were based on account earlier insights from the implicit attention capture litera-
shape rather than luminance. ture, a tentative picture begins to emerge of how a person who is
238 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

engaged in a selective attention task might become aware of an unavoidable, given that the research question involves the percep-
unexpected object. When a new, unexpected object enters a scene, tion of unexpected things; asking observers ahead of time to
it might capture attention implicitly and automatically. This shift is indicate when they see something new would render the critical
likely to be transient (e.g., Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Nakayama & item expected. Some studies have tried to minimize this problem
Mackeben, 1989) and possibly insufficient to serve as the basis of by stopping the trial before the unexpected item has exited the
a conscious percept. Neisser’s (1976) perceptual cycle suggests display (e.g., Becklen & Cervone, 1983) and by using particularly
that conscious perception results from temporally extended pro- unusual unexpected items (e.g., Simons & Chabris, 1999). For
cesses beyond transient shifting, but it remains vague about what example, it is difficult to believe that observers would forget
determines whether a transient shift of attention is followed by having seen a gorilla walk through a group of basketball players
additional sustained processing. We propose that the linchpin once they have fully perceived it (Simons & Chabris, 1999).
connecting the transient, automatic shift to a subsequent sustained, Neither stopping a trial early nor increasing the strangeness of the
more voluntary shift is a person’s own attentional set. If the unexpected object increases rates of noticing.
properties of the unexpected object gleaned through a transient The suggestion that people simply fail to remember the unex-
shift match the person’s attentional set, then attentional processing pected object despite having been fully aware of it has merit when
of the object is sustained, increasing the likelihood that it will be applied to studies using briefly presented stimuli (e.g., Mack &
noticed. If the properties of the object do not match the person’s Rock, 1998). Studies using rapid stimulus presentations have dem-
attentional set, then attentional processing ends with the transient onstrated that pictures can be identified when flashed at a rate of
shift. Note that this model is also consistent with other notions of less than 125 ms per item but that representations of these items
iterative processes in perception (e.g., Di Lollo et al., 2000). It quickly fade or are overwritten; pictures must be processed for
must be noted that this model applies to situations in which a about 300 ms if they are to be consolidated into explicit memory
person is (a) not expecting a new stimulus, (b) already engaged in (e.g., Potter, 1975, 1976; Potter & Levy, 1969). (This is consistent
an attentionally demanding task, and (c) actively using an atten- with the phenomenology of rapid serial visual presentation,
tional set to achieve their goal. Failure to meet any one of these wherein one feels that all stimuli are seen, but in a fleeting sense
conditions can change the nature of the processes dramatically. such that the stream cannot be recalled.) Therefore, instant forget-
In summary, our model makes several predictions. Central
ting remains a serious alternative explanation for studies of inat-
among these is the prediction that when people are engaged in
tentional blindness that use briefly flashed stimuli (Mack & Rock,
attention-demanding tasks, their attentional sets will be one of the
1998; Newby & Rock, 1998) as well as other paradigms—such as
most important factors determining whether they become aware of
the attentional blink (Chun & Potter, 1995; Raymond, Shapiro, &
unexpected objects. Consistent with this prediction, we found that
Arnell, 1992) and repetition blindness (Kanwisher, 1987)—that
attentional set powerfully mediated awareness: In Experiments 1
investigate perception under severe temporal constraints.
and 2, manipulations of attentional set alone determined whether
In contrast, studies like the ones presented here, in which
the unexpected object was noticed by almost everyone or by
unexpected objects are present for longer periods of time, are less
virtually nobody. We also predicted that because people may be
open to this alternative explanation. To apply the amnesia hypoth-
unable to maintain an unwavering attentional set, properties that
esis to the current experiments, for example, one must argue that
draw attention implicitly—for example, salience or sudden on-
sets—might lead to increased noticing but that these benefits although people saw the unexpected objects while they were
would be small compared with the influence of attentional set. visible, top-down constraints continuously inhibited their consol-
Consistent with this prediction, increased salience in Experiment 4 idation into memory over the course of 5 s. This argument would
led to increased noticing, although nearly a 3rd of the participants need to be made about previous sustained inattentional blindness
still failed to notice even the most salient unexpected object. In studies as well (e.g., Becklen & Cervone, 1983; Most et al., 2000,
contrast, sudden onsets in Experiments 5–7 did not lead to a 2001; Neisser & Dube, 1978, cited in Neisser, 1979; Scholl et al.,
reliable increase in noticing. Finally, we suggested that transient 2003). This is conceivable, but such an explanation obscures the
shifts of attention alone are not sufficient for noticing unexpected meaning of conscious perception. If, as in another experiment
objects; instead, transient shifts must be followed by more sus- (Haines, 1991), airline pilots using a flight simulator engage in
tained allocation of attention. We thus predicted that it would be landing procedures despite the obstruction caused by another air-
possible to find evidence of implicit shifts of attention even in the plane on the runway, then suggestions that they saw the obstruc-
absence of awareness, and the results of Experiment 8 were con- tion but did not remember it are of limited practical interest. That
sistent with this. said, from a theoretical standpoint it must be noted that visual
awareness may not be an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The possi-
bility remains in our experiments that people became aware that
Inattentional Blindness Versus Inattentional Amnesia
something was moving across the display, but they did not encode
One of the most pointed issues surrounding inattentional blind- the properties necessary to register that the item was something
ness research is whether such findings reflect an actual failure of new, different, or noteworthy. This could be considered, perhaps,
perception or, instead, a failure of memory (e.g., Moore, 2001; a form of inattentional agnosia (see Simons, 2000). Future re-
Moore & Egeth, 1997; Wolfe, 1999). In other words, instead of search should delineate the fine distinctions along the way from
failing to perceive the unexpected object, perhaps observers simply attending to encoding to full subjective awareness. To date, inat-
do not remember having seen it. This possibility is difficult to rule tentional blindness research informs us about the latter aspects of
out because most procedures probe awareness after the unexpected this spectrum, providing insight into conditions under which peo-
object has come and gone. Of course, this limitation is virtually ple can respond to stimuli or report them appropriately.
 INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS AND CAPTURE OF AWARENESS 239

Conclusion Chun, M. M., & Jiang, Y. (1998). Contextual cueing: Implicit learning and
memory of visual context guides spatial attention. Cognitive Psychology,
Implicit attention capture and inattentional blindness have tra- 36, 28 –71.
ditionally constituted parallel lines of research within the attention Chun, M. M., & Nakayama, K. (2000). On the functional role of implicit
literature, but the insights of one have rarely been applied to the visual memory for the adaptive deployment of attention across scenes.
other. This is unfortunate because studies using implicit measures Visual Cognition, 7, 65– 82.
of attention capture have revealed important mechanisms under- Chun, M. M., & Potter, M. C. (1995). A two-stage model for multiple
lying unplanned shifts of attention, and such mechanisms might target detection in raped serial visual presentation. Journal of Experi-
inform us of how people become aware of unexpected objects and mental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 109 –127.
events in the world. However, because this line of research relies Colegate, R. L., Hoffman, J. E., & Eriksen, C. W. (1973). Selective
on measures of performance to infer attentional shifts, rather than encoding from multielement visual displays. Perception & Psychophys-
ics, 14, 217–224.
on awareness directly, its current revelations might not generalize
Comtois, R. (2002). VisionShell PPC [Software libraries]. Cambridge,
directly to how we consciously notice unexpected things. Indeed,
MA: Author.
we have reviewed evidence— both in previous research and in our Di Lollo, V., Bischof, W. F., & Dixon, P. (1993). Stimulus-onset asyn-
own data—that implicitly measured attention shifts can occur chrony is not necessary for motion perception or metacontrast masking.
without awareness. In contrast, research on inattentional blindness, Psychological Science, 4, 260 –263.
with its focus on the relationship between attention and awareness, Di Lollo, V., Enns, J. T., & Rensink, R. A. (2000). Competition for
is more directly relevant to everyday life. Inattentional blindness is consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant
ubiquitous, and depending on the context, its consequences can be visual processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129,
trivial, humorous, embarrassing, or tragic. Yet, research on this 481–507.
phenomenon has not made the same progress as implicit attention Duncan, J. (1984). Selective attention and the organization of visual
capture research in detailing the mechanisms involved. information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 501–
In this article, we forged a link between these two fields. We 517.
Egly, R., Driver, J., & Rafal, R. D. (1994). Shifting visual attention
first highlighted the gap between them, then bridged this gap with
between objects and locations: Evidence from normal and parietal lesion
an experimentally supported theoretical framework. The result
subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 161–177.
illustrates how top-down and bottom-up processes combine to Enns, J. T., & Di Lollo, V. (1997). Object substitution: A new form of
determine the capture of awareness. Some bottom-up properties, masking in unattended visual locations. Psychological Science, 8, 135–
such as salience, influence the likelihood that someone will notice 139.
an unexpected object, but the most powerful mediator appears to Eriksen, C. W., & Hoffman, J. E. (1972). Some characteristics of selective
be the attentional set adopted by the individual. Furthermore, by attention in visual perception determined by vocal reaction time. Per-
considering our findings, as well as previous research, within the ception & Psychophysics, 11, 169 –171.
context of a model influenced by the notion of a perceptual cycle Eriksen, C. W., & St. James, J. D. (1986). Visual attention within and
(Neisser, 1976), we have taken steps toward integrating implicit around the field of focal attention: A zoom lens model. Perception &
capture and inattentional blindness into a unified theoretical frame- Psychophysics, 40, 225–240.
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action: Multiple perspectives on attentional capture (Vol. 133). Amster-
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dam: Elsevier.
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everyday life, where the difference between comedy, tragedy, and covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of
fortune often rides on whether one sees the unexpected. Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18,
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(Appendix follows)
242 MOST, SCHOLL, CLIFFORD, AND SIMONS

Appendix

Questionnaires

The following questionnaires were administered after each critical, 2. If you did see something on the last trial that had not been present
divided-attention, and full-attention trial. The two-item questionnaire was during the first two trials, please describe it.
used in Experiments 1, 3, and 4, and the five-item questionnaire was used 3. If you did see something on the last trial that had not been present
in Experiments 5 and 6. Participants in Experiment 2 responded to a during the first two trials, what color was it? If you did not see something,
computer prompt instead of a printed questionnaire (described in Experi- please guess.
ment 2). Note that the precise wording of the first question varied slightly 4. If you did see something during the last trial that had not been present
as a function of the target and distractor items in the display. For example, in the first two trials, please draw an arrow on the “screen” below showing
on the two-item questionnaire in Experiment 3, “the 4 circles and the 4 the direction in which it was moving. If you did not see something, please
squares” was replaced with “the 4 Caucasian faces and the 4 African guess.
American faces.” Participants answered each question in sequence. On the 5. If you did see something during the last trial that had not been present
five-item questionnaire, they did not see any question before answering the during the first two trials, please circle the shape of the object below. If you
previous one. Question 5 (the forced-choice question) in the five-item did not see anything, please guess.
questionnaire was included to provide pilot data for future experiments.
However, it was not counterbalanced across participants, and results from
this question were not used in the current analysis.

Two-Item Questionnaire
1. On the last trial, did you see anything other than the 4 circles and the
4 squares (anything that had not been present on the original two trials)?

Yes No

2. If you did see something on the last trial that had not been present
during the original two trials, please describe it in as much detail as
possible.

Five-Item Questionnaire
1. On the last trial, did you see anything other than the black and white Received October 17, 2002
circles and squares (anything that had not been present on the first two Revision received March 19, 2004
trials)? Accepted March 19, 2004 䡲