When a reappearance is old news: visual marking survives occlusion.

Journal article

Performance in a visual search task becomes more efficient if half of the distractors are presented before the rest of the stimuli. This "preview benefit" may partly be due to inhibition of the old (previewed) items. The preview effect is abolished, however, if the old items offset briefly before reappearing (D. G. Watson and G. W. Humphreys, 1997). The authors examined whether this offset effect still occurred if the old items undergo occlusion. Results show that a preview benefit was found when the old items were occluded but not otherwise, consistent with the idea of top-down attentional inhibition being applied to the old items. The preview benefit is attenuated, however, by movement of the irrelevant stimuli in the displays.

Authors: Kunar, M; Humphreys, G; Smith, K; Watson, D

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 185-198
• Publication date: 2003-02-01
• DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.29.1.185
• EISSN: 1939-1277
• ISSN: 0096-1523
• Language: English
• Keywords: Visual Fields; Inhibition (Psychology); Analysis of Variance; Female; Reaction Time; Adolescent; Attention; Male; Humans; Adult; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Lighting; Time Factors