Joe Opdenaker¹, Chloe Paredes¹, Miranda Scolari¹; ¹Texas Tech University

Spatial cues determine the breadth of the attentional window, prompting observers to adopt either a narrowly focused or widely dispersed selection strategy. According to zoom-lens and gradient theories, this cue-driven adjustment shapes how visual information is prioritized and processed. Previous work shows that narrowly focused attention can make individuals susceptible to reorienting toward nearby (<1°) salient distractors compared with diffuse deployment, calling into question the stability of an attentional spotlight. To test whether this reorienting is salience driven, we used a flanker task (n = 25) in which a focal or diffuse pre-stimulus cue preceded a target T and flanking distractor Ts that were either matched in contrast to the target (black or gray) or mismatched (high-contrast black targets with low-contrast gray distractors; or low-contrast gray targets with high-contrast black distractors). This design isolated the effect of salience on distractor suppression. Consistent with prior work, a significant interference effect was detected for uniform displays when a focal pre-cue was provided, but not following a diffuse cue. Furthermore, low-contrast distractors failed to interfere with high-contrast target processing, whereas high-contrast distractors generated strong interference effects when paired with a low-contrast target, regardless of cue condition. These results replicate prior work by demonstrating that attentional reorienting occurs in a crowded flanker task when attention is initially narrowly focused. This reorienting is likely driven by the relative salience of the distractors, rather than an inherent instability of the attentional spotlight.