Reevaluating the disengagement hypothesis.

Despite extensive research, the question of the relative contributions of stimulus-driven and goal-directed factors to the allocation of attentional priority at the preattentive stage remains highly controversial. Theeuwes (2010) claims that within a spatially defined window of attention, the most salient object is always granted attentional priority mandatorily and irrespective of the observer's goals. At the other end the spectrum, Folk and colleagues' (e.g., Folk, Remington & Johnston, 1992; Anderson & Folk, 2010) increasingly popular account postulates that salient information in a visual scene can be ignored when it does not match the attentional set of the observer. In this commentary, I suggest that in linewith the core assumption ofmost leadingmodels of visual search, attention is guided by both stimulus-driven and goaldirected factors (e.g., Bundesen, 1990; Wolfe, 1994).