Seeing an Event Isn't Enough: Phenomenal Causality Modulates Attentional Capture but Not Automatically

We examine whether phenomenal causality, a spontaneously perceived relation by physical cues, can restructure memory representations to modulate attention and whether it occurs automatically. Among 3 experiments (with 32 participants per experiment), we manipulated the presence of causality and found that causality can indeed modulate VWM-guided attention but not automatically.