Secondary capture: Salience information persistently drives attentional selection.

What is it about?

Salient items in our visual environment automatically capture our attention. This is the concept behind, for instance, the use of fluorescent vests by highway workers: such salient colors are thought to automatically capture attention while driving and are an important tool for attracting our attention to hazards in our built environments. It is widely believed that if there is a competition between salient items, attention will move first to the most salient item, and then to the next, and onward down the salience hierarchy. However, previous research suggested that salience only affects the first eye movement, meaning that if an important sign is not the absolute most salient thing in our environment then people will likely miss it. Here we show in a series of experiments that people do attend to the second most salient item after initial capture. This implies that designers need not worry that an important sign needs to be the most salient item in a continuously escalating attentional arms race. Instead, being sufficiently salient in our environment should be enough to attract attention in a timely manner, even if attention is first captured by more salient advertisements

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