The contingent capture account of involuntary attention claims that it is guided by top-down factors, such as volitional goals or task instructions. The contrasting rapid disengagement account holds that the contingent capture account relies on the spatial precueing paradigm, which is vulnerable to the elimination of the cue-validity effect through rapid attentional disengagement. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to examine whether a spatial cue presented in a target-defining or distractor-defining color that predicted the location of a subsequently presented target at the chance level involuntarily captures attention by measuring the cue-validity effect. Additionally, to examine the influence of cue–target compatibility as an alternative indicator of attentional capture, an object identical to or different from the target object was presented at the cued location in the cue display in all experiments. The results showed that the cue-validity effect and the cue–target compatibility effect were present only when the target-color cue was presented. The object of the target display presented at the location cued by the target color was recognized even on invalid trials. By contrast, the distractor color cue did not show any indication of attentional capture or postattentive inhibition. These results imply that preattentive selection and postattentive inhibition depend on top-down attentional control setting. Furthermore, the absence of a cue-validity effect with a distractor feature is not due to the inhibition of the cued location after attentional disengagement.

非自愿注意的特遣队俘获说明声称，它是由自上而下的因素指导的，例如自愿目标或任务指示。相反的快速脱离帐户认为，或有捕获帐户依赖于空间优先范式，这很容易通过快速注意力脱离来消除提示有效性效应。在本研究中，进行了五个实验以检查以目标定义或干扰因素定义的颜色显示的空间提示是否能通过测量提示有效性效应来自动预测随后出现的目标在机会级别上的位置，从而吸引注意力。此外，要研究提示与目标的兼容性作为注意力捕获的替代指标的影响，在所有实验中，都将在提示显示中的提示位置处显示与目标对象相同或不同的对象。结果表明，只有当目标色提示出现时，提示有效性效果和提示与目标的兼容效果才会出现。即使在无效试验中，也能识别出目标显示器提示的目标物体在目标颜色提示的位置。相比之下，干扰物颜色提示未显示出任何注意捕获或注意后抑制的迹象。这些结果表明，注意前的选择和注意后的抑制取决于自上而下的注意控制设置。此外，不存在具有干扰特征的提示有效性效果不是由于注意脱离后提示位置的抑制。