FIGURE 1.

Experimental paradigm. (A) Course of an example trial. Participants viewed a fixation cross, followed by a letter display which was masked afterward. Then they were to report the presented letters. On 10% of all trials, events consisting in brief luminance increases of the fixation cross occurred. Participants had to respond to luminance increases in the low-salient event and high-salient event condition, but not in the control condition. Luminance increases were greater in the high-salient event compared to the other two conditions. (B) Letter displays could be of three different types, enabling the estimation of attentional components (Vangkilde et al., 2011). (C) Across each condition, waiting periods to events approximated the non-aging geometric distribution.