Scene (picture) perception is genotypically much older than text perception. It relies more on peripheral and pre- attentive processes that are automatic, parallel, fast, and less effortful (Loftus 1983; Öhman, Flykt, and Esteves 2001; Stolk, Boon, and Smulders 1993), and this may have established an attentional priority for it. In addition, pictures are often perceptually more distinct than words

(Childers and Houston 1984), which draws bottom-up attention. We expect that this jointly contributes to a picture superiority effect on baseline attention, independent of the size of the pictorial.

Text perception is genotypically more recent. It relies more on focal attentive processes, which are voluntary, ser- ial, slow, and effortful (Loftus 1983; Rayner 1998; Reichle et al. 1998).