RT list: relevance in visual attention

It should follow from the cognitive principle of relevance that attention
tends to go to the most relevant stimuli available (as opposed, say, to the
most salient). Here is a recent article that addresses the issue (using a
commonsense notion of relevance rather than Relevance Theory's, but the
results and discussion are pertinent all the same):

John M. Henderson and George L. Malcolm (2009). Searching in the dark:
Cognitive relevance drives attention in real-world scenes. *Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review*, 16, 850-856

Abstract:
"We investigated whether the deployment of attention in scenes is better
explained by visual salience or by cognitive relevance. In two experiments,
participants searched for target objects in scene photographs. The objects
appeared in semantically appropriate locations but were not visually salient
within their scenes. Search was fast and efficient, with participants much
more likely to look to the targets than to the salient regions. This
difference was apparent from the first fixation and held regardless of
whether participants were familiar with the visual form of the search
targets. In the majority of trials, salient regions were not fixated. The
critical effects were observed for all 24 participants across the two
experiments. We outline a cognitive relevance framework to account for the
control of attention and fixation in scenes."

-- 
www.dan.sperber.fr
www.cognitionandculture.net