nonsalient

Nonsalient is an adjective describing something that is not salient, i.e., not easily noticed or considered important within a given context. The term derives from the negation of salient, which comes from the Latin salire, meaning “to leap,” and describes something that does not leap out to attract attention.

In psychology and cognitive science, salience refers to the prominence of a stimulus in perception. Nonsalient elements may be ignored or processed without conscious focus. In experiments, nonsalient cues typically produce weaker attentional capture than salient cues. In linguistics and discourse analysis, a nonsalient feature is one that has little impact on interpretation or is not the focus of attention.

In data analysis and machine learning, feature salience or importance measures how much a feature contributes to a model’s predictions. Nonsalient features contribute little to performance and may be discarded through feature selection. In design and user experience, nonsalient controls are used to stay unobtrusive, allowing users to concentrate on primary actions or information.

Usage of the term generally contrasts with salient, indicating either perceptual prominence or relevance within a given task, context, or evaluation. The concept is cross-disciplinary, applying to perception, communication, analytics, and interface design.