Distractor rejection in parallel search tasks takes time but does not benefit from context repetition^*

* The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on the Open Science Framework at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZWXBH, reference number ZWXBH.

ABSTRACT

When the spatial configuration of a search display is presented repeatedly, response times to finding the target within that configuration are shorter compared to completely novel configurations, even though observers do not have explicit recognition of the repetition. This phenomenon is known as Contextual Cueing and selective attention is thought to be necessary for the effect. Previous research has suggested that repetition of the context of unattended items does not appear to improve performance; only repetition of attended items does. It has been proposed that this occurs because unattended items are pre-attentively filtered and thus do not contribute to performance. Here we demonstrate that so-called “unattended” items do contribute to performance, just not to contextual cueing. We approach this question from the perspective of the parallel processing of the scene that unfolds at the start of each item and that has been recently modelled by the Target Contrast Signal Theory. We show that the processing time per item during parallel evaluation of the scene is not affected by context repetition, suggesting that the locations of the items rejected in this stage are not integrated into the memory representation underlying contextual cueing. Other alternatives are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Contextual cueing
• visual search
• target contrast signal theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on the Open Science Framework at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZWXBH, reference number ZWXBH.

1 Jiang and Chun (2001) referred to these as the “attended” and “unattended” color respectively. However, we prefer to use the term “candidate” to describe a distractor that is very similar to the target such that selective attention is required to distinguish it from the target, and the term “lure” to describe a distractor that is sufficiently different from the target such that the visual system can distinguish it from the target in peripheral vision without the need for focused selective attention (Buetti et al., 2016; Lleras, Buetti, & Mordkoff, 2013; Neider & Zelinsky, 2008).