According to the bottom-up theory of attention, unconscious abrupt onsets are\r\nhighly salient and capture attention via the Superior Colliculi (SC). Crucially, abrupt onsets\r\nincrease the perceived contrast. In line with the SC hypothesis, unconscious abrupt-onset\r\ncues capture attention regardless of the cue color when participants search for abrupt-onset\r\ntargets (Experiment 1). Also, stronger cueing effects occur for higher than lower contrast\r\ncues (Experiment 2) and for temporally, rather than nasally, presented stimuli\r\n(Experiment 3). However, in line with the known color-insensitivity of the SC, the SC\r\npathway is shunted and unconscious abrupt-onset cues no longer capture attention when\r\nthe participants have to search for color-defined targets (Experiment 4) or color-singleton\r\ntargets (Experiment 5). When using color change cues instead of abrupt-onset cues, the\r\ncueing effect also vanishes (Experiment 6). Together the results support the assumption\r\nthat unconscious cues can capture attention in different ways, depending on the exact task\r\nof the participants, but that one way is attentional capture via the SC. The present findings\r\nalso offer a reconciliation of conflicting results in the domain of unconscious attention.
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