In summary, the present experiments evidenced the genuine long-lasting effects of salience postulated by classical models of visual selective attention (e.g. Itti & Koch, 2001; Koch & Ullman, 1985; Michael et al., 2006; Theeuwes, 1993). Moreover, they showed that these effects could be dramatically modulated by relevance and by perceptual priming. We suggested that perceptual priming and relevance could concern a particular feature (e.g. a given size), and that the priming effects varied according to the prime-target similarity. Yet an alternative hypothesis was recently proposed by Becker (2008, 2010), and should be considered6.
We are grateful to Ulrich Ansorge for mentioning this alternative account and the work of Stefanie Becker.