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Size Matters: Large Objects Capture Attention in Visual Search Michael J. Proulx* Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom Abstract Can objects or events ever capture one’s attention in a purely stimulus-driven manner? A recent review of the literature set out the criteria required to find stimulus-driven attentional capture independent of goal-directed influences, and concluded that no published study has satisfied that criteria. Here visual search experiments assessed whether an irrelevantly large object can capture attention. Capture of attention by this static visual feature was found. The results suggest that a large object can indeed capture attention in a stimulus-driven manner and independent of displaywide features of the task that might encourage a goal-directed bias for large items. It is concluded that these results are either consistent with the stimulus-driven criteria published previously or alternatively consistent with a flexible, goal-directed mechanism of saliency detection. Citation: Proulx MJ (2010) Size Matters: Large Objects Capture Attention in Visual Search. PLoS ONE 5(12): e15293. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015293 Editor: Matthieu Louis, Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain Received August 16, 2010; Accepted November 4, 2010; Published December 23, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Michael J. Proulx. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The author has no support or funding to report. Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: ulx@qmul.ac.uk Introduction