Can new objects override attentional control settings?

Previous research suggests that attentional capture by abrupt onsets is contingent on top-down attentional control settings. Four experiments addressed whether similar contingencies hold for capture elicited by the appearance of new perceptual objects. In a modified spatial cuing task, targets defined by abrupt onset or color were paired with distracters consisting of an abrupt brightening of an existing object or the abrupt appearance of anew object. In Experiments 1 and 2, when subjects searched for an onset target, both distracter types produced evidence of capture. When subjects searched for a color target, however, distracters produced no evidence of attentional capture, regardless of whether they consisted of a new perceptual object or not. Experiments 3-5 showed that the lack of distracter effects in the color-target condition cannot be accounted for by rapid recovery from capture. It was concluded that attentional capture by new objects is subject to top-down modulation by attentional control settings.