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The visual marking mechanism (Watson & Humphreys, 1997) allows new objects to be prioritized by applying top-down inhibition to a set of previewed distractors, increasing the efficiency of future visual search. However, if this inhibition results in little or no search facilitation, do people continue to apply it or do they strategically withhold i...
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... were no outliers in the data (RTs 200 ms or 10,000 ms). Mean correct RTs for jump and standard trials are shown in Figure 7, and Table 9 shows the search slope statistics. Mean correct RTs were analyzed using a 2 (cue validity: valid or invalid) 2 (trial type: jump or standard preview) 3 (display size) within-subjects ANOVA. ...
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... This is based in part on the finding that the preview benefit is abolished when stimuli are isoluminant with their background and do not therefore generate abrupt luminance signals (e.g., Donk & Theeuwes, 2001 but see also Braithwaite, Hulleman, Watson, & Humphreys, 2006;von Mühlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013). In contrast, a role for a limited capacity inhibitory mechanism comes from: (1) Findings evidencing inefficient search in preview conditions when performing a dual-task (Watson & Humphreys, 1997;Humphreys et al., 2002) and during the attentional blink (Olivers & Humphreys, 2002); (2) Experiments in which detecting a probe-dot is more difficult if it falls at the location of an old item compared with falling at the location of a new item (Watson & Humphreys, 2000;Humphreys, Stalmann, & Olivers, 2004;Osugi, Kumada, & Kawahara, 2009; but see also Agter & Donk, 2005); (3) Results showing that location or feature-based changes to old items can destroy the preview benefit (Watson & Humphreys, 1997;Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015) unless the semantic meaning of the objects are maintained (Osugi, Kumada, & Kawahara, 2010), 4) Evidence for the carry-over of feature-based inhibition from old items to new items that share a common property (Braithwaite, Humphreys, & Hodsoll, 2003, 2004Andrews et al., 2011; see also Donk, 2017), and 5) the finding of flexible modulation of time-based visual selection when it is inconsistent with the goal state (Watson & Humphreys, 2000) or when contextual factors, such as the presence of highly salient targets, do not require it (Zupan et al., 2015). The most likely position is that the active inhibition of old stimuli helps to amplify the signals associated with bottom-up mechanisms related to the appearance of new items. ...
... This is based in part on the finding that the preview benefit is abolished when stimuli are isoluminant with their background and do not therefore generate abrupt luminance signals (e.g., Donk & Theeuwes, 2001 but see also Braithwaite, Hulleman, Watson, & Humphreys, 2006;von Mühlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013). In contrast, a role for a limited capacity inhibitory mechanism comes from: (1) Findings evidencing inefficient search in preview conditions when performing a dual-task (Watson & Humphreys, 1997;Humphreys et al., 2002) and during the attentional blink (Olivers & Humphreys, 2002); (2) Experiments in which detecting a probe-dot is more difficult if it falls at the location of an old item compared with falling at the location of a new item (Watson & Humphreys, 2000;Humphreys, Stalmann, & Olivers, 2004;Osugi, Kumada, & Kawahara, 2009; but see also Agter & Donk, 2005); (3) Results showing that location or feature-based changes to old items can destroy the preview benefit (Watson & Humphreys, 1997;Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015) unless the semantic meaning of the objects are maintained (Osugi, Kumada, & Kawahara, 2010), 4) Evidence for the carry-over of feature-based inhibition from old items to new items that share a common property (Braithwaite, Humphreys, & Hodsoll, 2003, 2004Andrews et al., 2011; see also Donk, 2017), and 5) the finding of flexible modulation of time-based visual selection when it is inconsistent with the goal state (Watson & Humphreys, 2000) or when contextual factors, such as the presence of highly salient targets, do not require it (Zupan et al., 2015). The most likely position is that the active inhibition of old stimuli helps to amplify the signals associated with bottom-up mechanisms related to the appearance of new items. ...
... A trial in the FEB condition consisted of a blank screen for 500 ms, followed by a fixation cross for 750 ms, after which a search display of 4, 8, or 16 items was presented. Search displays remained visible until the participant indicated the location of the target by pressing the Z key if the target was on the left side of the display, or the M key if it was on the right side of the display, on a standard computer keyboard (see e.g., Blagrove & Watson, 2010, 2014Zupan et al., 2015, for previous uses of this approach). The participant's response triggered the next trial. ...
In time-based visual selection, task-irrelevant, old stimuli can be inhibited in order to allow the selective processing of new stimuli that appear at a later point in time (the preview benefit; Watson & Humphreys, 1997). The current study investigated if illusory and non-illusory perceptual groups influence the ability to inhibit old and prioritize new stimuli in time-based visual selection. Experiment 1 showed that with Kanizsa-type illusory stimuli, a preview benefit occurred only when displays contained a small number of items. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a set of Kanizsa-type illusory stimuli could be selectively searched amongst a set of non-illusory distractors with no additional preview benefit obtained by separating the two sets of stimuli in time. Experiment 3 showed that, similarly to Experiment 1, non-illusory perceptual groups also produced a preview benefit only for a small number of number of distractors. Experiment 4 demonstrated that local changes to perceptually grouped old items eliminated the preview benefit. The results indicate that the preview benefit is reduced in capacity when applied to complex stimuli that require perceptual grouping, regardless of whether the grouped elements elicit illusory contours. Further, inhibition is applied at the level of grouped objects, rather than to the individual elements making up those groups. The findings are discussed in terms of capacity limits in the inhibition of old distractor stimuli when they consist of perceptual groups, the attentional requirements of forming perceptual groups and the mechanisms and efficiency of time-based visual selection.
... If an abrupt onset is all that is required to automatically guide attention to new items and induce the Preview Benefit, then an additional load task would not be expected to interfere with the benefit. However, a wealth of literature points to, at least in part, a Visual Marking account of Preview Search involving topdown inhibitory control (e.g., Braithwaite, Humphreys, Watson, & Hulleman, 2005;Emrich, Ruppel, Al-Aidroos, Pratt, & Ferber, 2008;Kunar et al., 2003aKunar et al., , 2003bKunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Hulleman, 2003;Kunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Watson, 2003;Kunar, Thomas, & Watson, 2017;Olivers & Humphreys, 2002;Watson & Humphreys, 1997;Watson et al., 2003;Watson & Kunar, 2010;Watson & Kunar, 2012;von Mühlenen et al., 2013;Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015). ...
... by default has been previously examined (e.g., Kunar et al., 2017;Watson & Humphreys, 2000;Zupan et al., 2015). For example, Watson and Humphreys (2000) argued that Visual Marking can be flexibly applied depending on the particular goals of the search task at hand. ...
... This was taken as evidence that Visual Marking can be applied flexibly, only when the task conditions make it a viable strategy to adopt. Similarly, Zupan et al. (2015) reported that that the strategic use of Visual Marking may depend on several factors such as the type of stimulus and the complexity and composition of the task. As noted previously, the data from Experiments 5 and 6 showed conflicting results when the preview duration was set at 250 ms. ...
Previous research has shown that talking on a mobile phone leads to impairments in a number of cognitive tasks. However, it is not yet known whether the act of conversation disrupts the underlying cognitive mechanisms (the Cognitive Disruption hypothesis) or leads to a delay in response due to a limit on central cognitive resources (the Cognitive Delay hypothesis). We investigated this here using two cognitive search tasks that investigate spatial learning and time-based selection: Contextual Cueing and Visual Marking. In Contextual Cueing, responses to repeated displays are faster than those to novel displays. In Visual Marking, participants prioritize attention to new information and deprioritize old, unimportant information (the Preview Benefit). Experiments 1 to 3 investigated whether Contextual Cueing occurred while people were engaged in a phone conversation, whereas Experiments 4 to 6 investigated whether a Preview Benefit occurred, again while people were engaged in conversation. The results showed that having a conversation did not interfere with the mechanisms underlying spatial learning or time-based selection. However, in all experiments there was a significant increase in response times. The results are consistent with a Cognitive Delay account explaining the dual-task cost of having a phone conversation on concurrent cognitive tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... The original account (visual marking) proposes that new objects are prioritized via top-down inhibition of old items (Watson & Humphreys, 1997. This inhibitory process is flexible and goal-directed, strategic (Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015) but resource-consuming, as shown by dual-task paradigms (Humphreys, Watson, & Jolicoeur, 2002;Watson & Humphreys, 1997). As such, the mechanisms that underlay its operation may require the development and operation of executive functions (EF)-switching, inhibition and working memory (Miyake et al., 2000). ...
Adults can ignore old and prioritize newly arriving visual stimuli, enabling optimal goal-directed search (visual marking; Watson & Humphreys, 1997). However, the ability to use time of appearance to enhance visual search is currently absent in work on attentional development in children. Experiment 1 examined children’s (6-, 8-, and 12-year-olds) and adults’ ability to ignore old and prioritize new stimuli and the relationship of this ability to executive functions. Experiment 2 examined whether the components involved in ignoring old items (encoding and maintenance) change across age, by presenting old stimuli for relatively short (500 ms), medium (1,000 ms) or long (1,500 ms) durations. On average, all age groups could ignore old items presented for 1,000 ms to some degree, however 25% of 6-year-olds were not able to prioritize new items effectively. No relationship was observed between the development of this ability and measures of executive function. On average, all age groups could ignore old items presented for short durations, however, 6-year-olds had difficulty ignoring stimuli presented for long durations. The findings suggest that the ability to ignore old items in order to prioritize search through new information is relatively weak in 6-year-olds, especially when ignoring items over longer durations. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the encoding and maintenance components involved in prioritizing new items might follow distinct developmental trajectories.
... However, because the inhibitory template is item-(location) based, and influences the subsequent search process, I would suggest that here "the item" (and its location) continues to play a crucial role in the subsequent search process itself. Indeed, if the locations of the old items change when the new items arrive, the preview benefit disappears (e.g., Zupan et al. 2015). In contrast, when preview items move, inhibition is applied mostly to feature maps (Andrews et al. 2011;Watson & Humphreys 1998), removing the need to track, localize, or process individual items (an example of part of a search theory in which the item is explicitly not important). ...
This call to revolution in theories of visual search does not go far enough. Treating fixations as uniform is an oversimplification that obscures the critical role of the mind. We remind readers that what happens during a fixation depends on mindset, as shown in studies of search strategy and of humans' ability to rapidly resume search following an interruption.
... However, because the inhibitory template is item-(location) based, and influences the subsequent search process, I would suggest that here "the item" (and its location) continues to play a crucial role in the subsequent search process itself. Indeed, if the locations of the old items change when the new items arrive, the preview benefit disappears (e.g., Zupan et al. 2015). In contrast, when preview items move, inhibition is applied mostly to feature maps (Andrews et al. 2011;Watson & Humphreys 1998), removing the need to track, localize, or process individual items (an example of part of a search theory in which the item is explicitly not important). ...
Much of the evidence for theories in visual search (including Hulleman & Olivers' [H&O's]) comes from inferences made using changes in mean RT as a function of the number of items in a display. We have known for more than 40 years that these inferences are based on flawed reasoning and obscured by model mimicry. Here we describe a method that avoids these problems.
... However, because the inhibitory template is item-(location) based, and influences the subsequent search process, I would suggest that here "the item" (and its location) continues to play a crucial role in the subsequent search process itself. Indeed, if the locations of the old items change when the new items arrive, the preview benefit disappears (e.g., Zupan et al. 2015). In contrast, when preview items move, inhibition is applied mostly to feature maps (Andrews et al. 2011;Watson & Humphreys 1998), removing the need to track, localize, or process individual items (an example of part of a search theory in which the item is explicitly not important). ...
We highlight the importance of considering the variance produced during the parallel processing stage in vision and present a case for why it is useful to consider the “item” as a meaningful unit of study when investigating early visual processing in visual search tasks.
... Given the finding that people can be highly selective on the basis of color in a standard conjunction search task, the question arises why so many studies have shown that an additional preview in such a task leads to even better performance (e.g., Humphreys et al., 2004;Humphreys, Watson, & Jolicoeur, 2002;Irwin & Humphreys, 2013;Kunar, Humphreys, & Smith, 2003a;von Muhlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013;Watson, Compton, & Bailey, 2011;Watson & Humphreys, 1997Watson & Inglis, 2007;Watson & Kunar, 2010;Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015). That is, if irrelevant elements can already be excluded from a search when they carry an irrelevant color, how then can an additional preview lead to any further performance improvements? ...
... Accordingly, search in the presence of both a preview and a color difference was more efficient than search in the presence of a color difference only. However, this preview benefit was not, as suggested by previous studies Humphreys et al., 2004;Humphreys et al., 2002;Irwin & Humphreys, 2013;Kiss & Eimer, 2011;Kunar, Humphreys, & Smith, 2003a, 2003bKunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Hulleman, 2003;Kunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Watson, 2003;Olivers et al., 1999;von Muhlenen et al., 2013;Watson, 2001;Watson, Braithwaite, & Humphreys, 2008;Watson et al., 2011;Watson & Humphreys, 1997Watson & Inglis, 2007;Watson & Kunar, 2010;Zupan et al., 2015) due to a reduced influence of the irrelevant elements. It was rather the case that the additional presence of a preview led to a more efficient search process through the relevant elements. ...
... Indeed, studies using differently colored subsets typically used uniquely defined targets, which, as demonstrated by the results of Experiment 1, may lead to a preview benefit which is entirely based on a more efficient search process through the relevant elements. Moreover, several studies even reported a preview benefit with a large color difference between relevant and irrelevant sets of elements Humphreys et al., 2004;Zupan et al., 2015). As demonstrated here and elsewhere (Egeth et al., 1984;Friedmanhill & Wolfe, 1995;Kaptein et al., 1995;Theeuwes, 1994), the plain presence of a large color difference between subsets already minimizes the influence of irrelevant elements, rendering it unlikely that the observed preview benefit was truly caused by a reduction in the influence of the irrelevant elements. ...
In the preview paradigm observers are presented with one set of elements (the irrelevant set) followed by the addition of a second set among which the target is presented (the relevant set). Search efficiency in such a preview condition has been demonstrated to be higher than that in a full-baseline condition in which both sets are simultaneously presented, suggesting that a preview of the irrelevant set reduces its influence on the search process. However, numbers of irrelevant and relevant elements are typically not independently manipulated. Moreover, subset selective search also occurs when both sets are presented simultaneously but differ in color. The aim of the present study was to investigate how numbers of irrelevant and relevant elements contribute to preview search in the absence and presence of a color difference between subsets. In two experiments it was demonstrated that a preview reduced the influence of the number of irrelevant elements in the absence but not in the presence of a color difference between subsets. In the presence of a color difference, a preview lowered the effect of the number of relevant elements but only when the target was defined by a unique feature within the relevant set (Experiment 1); when the target was defined by a conjunction of features (Experiment 2), search efficiency as a function of the number of relevant elements was not modulated by a preview. Together the results are in line with the idea that subset selective search is based on different simultaneously operating mechanisms.
... The original account (visual marking) proposes that new objects are prioritized via top-down inhibition of old items (Watson & Humphreys, 1997. This inhibitory process is flexible and goal-directed, strategic (Zupan, Watson, & Blagrove, 2015) but resource-consuming, as shown by dual-task paradigms (Humphreys, Watson, & Jolicoeur, 2002;Watson & Humphreys, 1997). As such, the mechanisms that underlay its operation may require the development and operation of executive functions (EF)-switching, inhibition and working memory (Miyake et al., 2000). ...
Visual search is facilitated when half of the distractors are presented in advance and can be actively inhibited – the preview benefit (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). We investigated the developmental course of this top-down inhibitory control by measuring the preview benefit in children of middle to late childhood. In order to evaluate whether this process followed a similar trajectory to more traditional measures of top-down cognitive control, children also completed executive function (EF) tasks assessing switching, inhibition (Shape-School Extended; Ellefson & Espy, 2005), and verbal/ spatial memory tests (Working Memory Test Battery for Children; Pickering & Gathercole, 2001). Our results show that a preview benefit is observed at small display sizes for 6 and 8 year old children, but that it is not present at larger display sizes. The preview benefit emerges fully in 12 year-old children at all display sizes. Children of all age groups searched baseline single feature, conjunction and preview search tasks more slowly than adults and produced more errors. Both the response times and the number of errors decreased with age. None of the EF measures correlated with the strength of the preview benefit. This suggests that: a) top-down inhibition does not develop until late childhood, b) preview search at small display sizes is mediated by different processes than at large display sizes, and c) top-down inhibition applied in time-based visual selection is different from inhibition during search, and from inhibition measured by current EF tasks. Overall, these results show that the attentional mechanisms involved in inhibitory time-based selection develop over the age range of 8 to 12 years.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014
When some distractors (old items) appear before the other distractors and the target (new items) during an inefficient visual search task, the old items are effectively excluded from the search (preview benefit). Previous studies have shown that this preview benefit is observed when items are presented in two temporal stages, namely the initial and second displays. In this situation, new and old items are defined by a single time point (i.e., new items appearing), and the newness of the items is constant through the target search. However, in the real world, the newness of items is updated by the newer objects appearing, which requires more complex computations to detect relevant information among them. The present study examined whether previewing affects the attentional shift to a newer object if multiple new items appear successively. I used the modified preview-search paradigm, which contains three temporally separated displays, and examined what happens if the singleton target appears 200 ms after other distractors appear in the third display. This successive (search) condition was compared to the simultaneous (search) condition in which no distractors were presented in the initial display, and all distractors appeared simultaneously in the second display. The results showed that attentional shift to a newer object requires more time in the successive condition than in the simultaneous condition (Experiment 1). Moreover, the search cost for the newer target would not be induced by a mere difference in the onset timings (Experiment 2) and would occur when the duration of the initial distractors was short, and thus visual marking of the initial distractors might not occur maximally (Experiment 3). Therefore, previewing degrades attentional shift to a newer object when multiple new items appear successively.
By approximately 6 years of age, children can use time-based visual selection to ignore stationary stimuli, already in the visual field and prioritize the selection of newly arriving stimuli. This ability can be studied using preview search, a version of the visual search paradigm with an added temporal component, in which one set of distractors is presented (previewed) before a second set that contains the target item. Preview search is more efficient than if all items are presented simultaneously, suggesting that temporally "old" objects can be ignored (the preview benefit). In two experiments, we examined the developmental trajectory for time-based visual selection in a sample of 192 6-, 8-, and 12-year-old children (49% female, predominantly White), with adults as controls (75% female, predominantly White), in the United Kingdom. The results showed an absence of the ability to ignore previewed moving distractors in 6-year-olds and confirmed its presence from 8 years of age. However, full development of this ability, which includes maintaining inhibition of previewed items over extended periods, was only present from the age of 12. Individual differences in executive functions, namely inhibition, were associated with preview search efficiency in 6-year-olds and adults. Overall, the results suggest a developmental trajectory in the ability to ignore moving old objects that occurs in two stages and develops later than the ability to ignore previewed stationary objects. The results are discussed in terms of underlying inhibitory mechanisms, in addition to individual differences in the expression of this ability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
