Sclodnick, Sun, & Milliken; A Novel Demonstration of Preparation in Pop-out Search

Abstract

There is ongoing debate among visual attention researchers about whether top-down processes contribute to pop-out search. In the present study we describe a new method to orthogonally manipulate top-down preparation and feature priming in a pop-out search task. On each trial, participants viewed a single item (randomly blue or orange) followed by a pop-out search display (randomly blue target with orange distractors, or vice versa). Preparation was induced by instructing participants to respond to the single item only if it was a particular colour, and to ignore it otherwise. Participants then responded on all trials to the odd-coloured item in the following pop-out search display. This method allowed us to examine whether top-down preparation for the single item influenced subsequent pop-out search. Our results revealed a large effect of preparation for the single item on subsequent search RTs. We discuss this result in relation to the interplay between top-down control and selection history effects in pop-out visual search.