There has been a long-lasting debate about whether salient stimuli, such as uniquely
colored objects, have the ability to automatically distract us. To resolve this debate, it has …

Hypothesis-driven research rests on clearly articulated scientific theories. The building
blocks for communicating these theories are scientific terms. Obviously, communication–and …

During visual search, it is important to reduce the interference of distracting objects in the
scene. The neuronal responses elicited by the search target stimulus are typically …

Do salient distractors have the power to automatically capture attention? This question has
led to a heated debate concerning the role of salience in attentional control. A potential …

Although in many cases salient stimuli capture attention involuntarily, it has been proposed
recently that under certain conditions, the bottom–up signal generated by such stimuli can …

The current review presents an integrated tripartite framework for understanding attentional
control, emphasizing the interaction and competition among top-down, bottom-up, and …

A recent paper has reported, for the first time, that people are capable of suppressing salient
singleton distractors of unknown color if the search task requires them to search for the most …

We examined whether proactive suppression can be applied on demand. A prompt cue
indicated the to-be-ignored distractor color for each trial. Participants needed to use this cue …

Researchers have long debated how humans select relevant objects amid physically salient
distractions. An increasingly popular view holds that the key to avoiding distractions lies in …

Goal-directed behavior requires the effective suppression of distractions to focus on the task
at hand. Although experimental evidence suggests that brain areas in the prefrontal and …