- Because movement is a particularly salient cue, animation captures and directs attention.
- Text with a distinct format (whether in color, size, or font) draw attention.
- Visual disparities draw attention. For example, a wedge in a pie chart depicting a certain section will catch a person’s attention because the boundaries within the pie have been disrupted. 
- If salience is aligned with importance, the more important aspects of the slide (like the title or topic sentence) or of an illustration (graphs and diagrams) draw the audience members’ attention – which will also enhance later memory for those aspects.
- A special case of salience arises with colors: because of a quirk in how the corneas diffuse light and project it onto the retinas, “warm” colors (like those with relatively long wavelengths, such as red) seem closer to the viewer than do “cool” colors (like those with relatively short wavelengths, such as blue). Thus, if warmer colors are used for lines that pass beneath other lines, viewers will experience an annoying illusion in which material at the back appears to be struggling to move forward.


The Principle of Salience’s Corollaries

The P.S. states that attention is drawn to large perceptible differences. The superior colliculus section of the brain operates as attentional reflex, automatically drawing visual attention to large differences among stimuli.

Ohio State University, Columbus

After visual patterns are encoded, they need to be integrated. In a typical presentation, material needs to be integrated in working memory over the course of multiple slides. The integration process is a prelude to completely comprehending both individual displays and the whole presentation. The following two principles fall under working memory: Limited Capacity and Informative Change.

Working Memory

Kosslyn, S. M., Kievit, R. A., Russell, A. G., & Shephard, J. M. (2012, July 17). PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and failures: A psychological analysis. Frontiers. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00230/full 

PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis

The P.I.C. entails that people expect changes in perceptual properties to carry information, and expect every necessary piece of information to be conveyed by such a perceptible change. 

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