The effects of levels of information conflict on visual selection

Previous studies have reported an increasing monotonic relationship between stimulus incongruity and visual selection. The present investigation extended the former research to show the generality of this relationship by (1) using sets of stimuli with five increasing levels of novelty, (2) generating stimuli which have decreasing probabilities of occurring in the real world, and (3) extending the types of stimuli to include two new types of novelty-functional and role. The results support a theory of visual selection concerning the resolution of informational conflicts rather than a theory concerning optimal levels of arousal.