Effects of salience are long-lived and stubborn

What is it about?

Objects that stand out from their surround often grasp attention. This effect of salience has been used to avoid harm. For instance, safety equipment is often made of reflective material with bright unnatural colors (e.g., a lifebuoy). However, previous reports of effects of salience lasting for only a few hundred milliseconds and being quickly overridden by goal-driven processes, render this effort questionable: why bother if salience plays a role only for a glimpse? The present study shows that effects of salience last for a long time; even after 3 s and more they are not completely overridden by experience or volition. Thus, salience plays a much larger role for human cognition than has been previously assumed.

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Photo by Fredy Jacob on Unsplash

Photo by Fredy Jacob on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Research on attentional selection previously assumed that effects of salience are very short-lived. Here we show that while the effect of salience on attentional selection might be short-lived, it still has a long-lasting influence on further processes such as visual working memory.