title: Complex backgrounds delay low-load visual search.
abstract: Past research has shown, separately, that endogenous location cues and high perceptual load search tasks increase the specificity of attentional deployment to task-relevant regions of the visual field, while complex task-irrelevant backgrounds greatly resembling task-relevant stimuli reduce it. Here, we investigated in the same study whether the perceptual load created by an endogenously cued set of task-relevant stimuli determines whether a surrounding complex background of similar task-irrelevant stimuli would interfere with search. Our results show that high perceptual load protects against interference from a complex background of similar but task-irrelevant stimuli, situated just beyond the boundaries of the task-relevant set. Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that search characteristics do not change when the relevant set is restricted attentionally to a smaller delineated area, even in the presence of a background. Finally, we found that the efficacy of endogenous location cueing is not dependent on the type of search task that occurs in the cued area. Our findings also reveal that alternative attention-directing strategies, such as guided search and signal detection, may be employed in such tasks in the absence of endogenous location cueing.
authors: Visual Perception Laboratory, Psychology Department, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H4B 1R6, Canada. vavassis@alcor.concordia.ca
authors: Angela
authors: A
authors: Vavassis
authors: Michael W
authors: MW
authors: Von Grünau
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*