Such control is also most needed when a great deal of computation is required prior to response generation, for example, during information processing in the presence of salient task-irrelevant distracters.
For example, short-latency saccadic eye movements that are started soon after stimulus presentation are deployed to the location of a salient, task-irrelevant object before being redirected to the target.
Often the target was the only singleton in the display, but in many trials one of the distractor stimuli was given a unique colour, in this way defining a salient, task-irrelevant colour singleton.
The importance of salience in neural competition is consistent with the body of literature suggesting that salient, task-irrelevant visual objects can capture attention to their location during visual search (e.g., Hickey, McDonald ,& Theeuwes, 2006; Theeuwes, 1991, 1992; for recent reviews, see Burnham, 2007; Rauschenberger, 2003; Theeuwes, 2010).
Early behavior problems and difficulties navigating stage-salient tasks such as developing a secure attachment can initiate a negative developmental cascade in a young child (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010).
The results from the latter paradigm are particularly useful as they show that rotigotine had a specific effect in improving selective attention to task-relevant targets, over detection of salient, but task-irrelevant targets.
With few exceptions, inattentional blindness has been studied in a laboratory context using computerized presentations and videos, and most such studies examine the detection of salient, but task-irrelevant unexpected objects.
Recent models suggest that the insula is an attentional 'hub' that assists central executive networks in generating accurate responses to salient or task-relevant events [46], [47].
This leads to competition between sensory information that is relevant for top-down goals and sensory information that is perceptually salient, but task-irrelevant.
We report both stimulus- and saccade-locked processes in scalp EEG and ERP that differentiate between trials in which the first saccade is captured by a salient, but task-irrelevant stimulus, versus voluntarily directed to the target.
