Salience

Salience stimulus is basically defined as the objects that are the most noticeable or important to our eye. I always wondered what caused my eye to focus on certain object when I first looked at a picture and what is important in that picture. The brain processes incoming data so that it can be managed meaningfully. Salience stimulus allows the mind to interpret the so-called data stream and to filter out the irrelevant, leaving only the salient signs.
Chapter 6 talks about saliency maps and I believe that bright colors and contrasts seem to protrude out of pictures first. Saliency typically arises from contrasts between items and their neighborhood, such as a red dot surrounded by white dots, a flickering message indicator of an answering machine, or a loud noise in an otherwise quiet environment. Saliency detection is often studied in the context of the visual system, but similar mechanisms operate in other sensory systems.
I think I experience this every time I go to a supermarket. Merchandisers use salience in ways to advertise their products because they know consumers make purchases based on what looks pleasant to the eye. This helps explain to some degree why big brands are big and small brands are small: if no one thinks about you at the moment of buying truth, your brand is going to be relegated to the dustbin of small and unnoticed brands. When I was younger in the cereal aisle, I used to grab the box of cereal with the most exciting colors, regardless if it was Captain Crunch or Fruit Loops. I sometimes find myself still grabbing the most colorful items when I’m at the m market