title: Distractor-induced blindness for orientation changes and coherent motion.
abstract: The conscious perception of simple visual stimuli can be modulated by the presence of distractors. In the motion blindness paradigm, the detection of coherent motion is impaired when task-irrelevant motion distractors are presented prior to the target. Aim of this study was to examine the feature specificity of the distractor effect. For this reason, targets were either defined by motion coherence ("motion blindness") or orientation changes ("orientation blindness"). In a series of three experiments we show that distractors have to share the feature characteristics of the target in order to reduce its detectability. However, independent inhibition sets for visual features can be activated if the targets' characteristics are ambiguous.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. lars.michael@fu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Michael
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hesselmann
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kiefer
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Niedeggen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D054518:Attentional Blink; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult