| ISLE | Chapter 9
| Stimulus Salience
Stimulus salience refers to the features of objects in the environment attract our attention. Salience can be any number of features—bright colors, fast movement, personal relevance, or, in the nonvisual domain, a loud or distinctive sound or smell. Think about nodding off during a boring lecture in class, and then the professor calls your name. Hearing your name is a salient stimulus, and you are immediately paying attention—why has she called on me? Another example might be seeing a person streaking by without clothes in your university library. Because this image (positive or negative) is novel, surprising, and potentially important, your attention is immediately diverted from your calculus homework to the sight of the person streaking by. In general, stimuli that are novel or unexpected will act to divert our attention to them. The process by which a stimulus causes us to shift attention is called attentional capture (Anderson & Yantis, 2013).
Use this illustration to track you scanning of an image. After the scanning is done consider if there are parts of the image you spend more time. These areas are the salient areas. Then you should consider what it was about the image that drew your attetion. What was salient about that part of the image?
To see the illustration in full screen, which is recommended, press the Full Screen button, which appears at the top of the page.
On the Illustration tab, you can adjust the parameters and start a simulation of dark adaptation.
Below is a list of the ways that you can use the illustration. The settings include the following:
Choose a Preselected Image: select from a pre-selected list of images.
Each will ask you a particular task to accomplish list above under the word 'Question'.
How long to sample: use this slider to determine how long
the sample period will be.
Show sample points select to have small red dots show each point in time
your position was sampled in addition to green dots showing your pauses as simulated fixations.
Use Your Own Image: allows you to upload your own image. You will
have to determine your own task to scan the image.
Start: start the sampling process.
Pressing this button restores the settings to their default values.