Inhibitory template for visual marking with endogenous spatial cueing

ABSTRACT

Previewing distractors facilitates efficient detection of a target appearing subsequently with any remaining distractors. Visual marking, specifically, top-down inhibition of old items, is induced by the inhibitory template that forms while previewing old items, and continues to be maintained during the target search. Extant studies have examined inhibitory template characteristics using additional tasks or events. In the present study, an endogenous cueing paradigm was combined to examine the interaction between spatial facilitation of cueing and the ability to inhibit old items. An endogenous cue was presented during the preview period, resulting in competition between two top-down controls, endogenous orienting and the inhibitory template; endogenous spatial cueing and visual marking effects did not simply function concurrently. Rather, either of them could be effective alternately for one trial. These findings suggest that the inhibitory template cannot function concurrently with another top-down control for visual search, though it is not damaged.

KEYWORDS:

• Endogenous cueing
• inhibitory template
• visual marking

Acknowledgement

This study has been supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (17H0264807) to JK, (19J2061709) to KY, and Graduate Grant Program of Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University, Japan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in https://osf.io with the identifier [data doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/JB9MC].

Notes

1 Regarding Experiment 1, the description about the significant main effects of set size in each ANOVA were omitted in the main manuscript. These results were as follows: full vs. full-cue-valid vs. full-cue-invalid, F_2,38 = 230.15, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .92; preview vs. full, F_2,38 = 150.48, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .89; preview vs. half, F_2,38 = 138.84, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .88; preview-cue-valid vs. preview, F_2,38 = 81.11, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .81; preview-cue-valid vs. full-cue-valid, F_2,38 = 102.27, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .84; preview-cue-invalid vs. preview, F_2,38 = 55.95, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .75; preview-cue-invalid vs. full-cue-invalid, F_2,38 = 88.70, p < .01, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .82.

2 Regarding the 3 × 3 ANOVA in Experiment 1, we conducted multiple comparison analysis for the interaction effect; these results are described presently. When the set size was 4, response times under the full-cue-invalid condition were slower than those under the full condition (t (19) = 2.69, p < .05, d = 0.66) and full-cue-valid condition (t (19) = 2.12, p < .05, d = 0.66), although there was no significant difference between the response times under the full and full-cue-valid conditions (t (19) = 0.49, p = .63, d = 0.15). When the set size was 8 or 16, the response times under the full-cue-invalid condition were slower than those under the full condition (set size 8, t (19) = 3.83, p < .01, d = 0.90; set size 16, t (19) = 3.14, p < .01, d = 0.86), and those under the full condition were slower than those under the full-cue-valid condition (set size 8, t (19) = 2.27, p < .05, d = 0.63; set size 16, t (19) = 3.11, p < .01, d = 0.85).

3 We thank Kyle Cave for this interpretation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [grant numbers 17H0264807, 19J2061709].