In an inefficient visual search task, when some distractors (old items) temporally precede some others (new items), the old items are excluded from the search, a phenomenon termed visual marking. This effect is said to occur because the locations of the old items are inhibited before the new items appear. The present study used a probe-detection task to examine whether this inhibition occurs only at the precise locations of old items or at and around the locations of old items. We also investigated the effect of inhibition overreaching boundaries to encompass neighboring regions. Participants searched for a target or detected a probe that appeared after the new items appeared. The results revealed that the probe reaction times at locations inside grouped regions were longer than those at a blank region where no items had been presented and were comparable to those at a location occupied by old items. Probe detection was not delayed when the probe was presented near but external to the external boundary of the grouped regions. The overreaching effect was obtained before and after the new items appeared. We conclude that the inhibitory template for visual marking represents clusters of old items for at least 200 ms before the onset of new items, and that this spatial schema is preserved until at least 200 ms after the onset of new items.

When certain distractors (old items) appear before others (new items) during an inefficient visual search task, observers exclude the old items from the search (preview benefit), possibly because their locations are deprioritized relative to the locations of the new items. We examined whether participants were able to ignore task-irrelevant changes in a scene (i.e., the onset of repetitive changes, continual repetitive changes, and the cessation of repetitive changes in the background), while performing a preview search task. The results indicated that, when the noise continually changed position throughout each trial, or when dynamic noise was changed to static noise simultaneous with the appearance of the search display, the preview benefit remained. In contrast, when the static background noise was changed to dynamic background noise, simultaneous with the appearance of the search display, this task-irrelevant background event abolished the preview benefit on search efficiency. Therefore, we conclude that the onset of task-irrelevant repetitive changes in the background disrupts the process of inhibitory marking of old items.

When some distractors (old items) appear before others (new items) in an inefficient visual search task, the old items are excluded from the search (visual marking). Previous studies have shown that shape changes of static old items are sufficient to eliminate this effect when global luminance is maintained, suggesting that shape identity must be maintained for successful visual marking. It was unclear whether the change in meaning or shape was critical, because these changes were confounded in previous studies. The present study examined whether consistency in the semantic or the graphical identity of old items is critical for visual marking by introducing shape change in the absence of meaning change. The results indicated that visual marking survived graphical changes in old items as long as their meaning was maintained, suggesting that the memory template underlying visual marking represents the semantic identity of old items.

Bowing is a greeting behavior. The present study examined the modulation effect of bowing on perception of attractiveness. In each trial, a portrait digitized from university yearbooks was presented on a computer screen. The portrait was mildly tilted toward participants to simulate a greeting bow (25-degree angle). Participants evaluated the subjective attractiveness of the face using a visual analog scale (0-100). The mean attractiveness judgment of the bowing portrait was significantly higher relative to that of the bending-backward or standing-still control conditions (Experiment 1). Additional control experiments revealed that alternative accounts relying on apparent spatial proximity and physical characteristics could not solely explain the effect of bowing (Experiment 2) and indicated that the effect was specific to objects perceived as faces (Experiment 3). Furthermore, observers' in-return bowing behavior did not reduce the bowing effect (Experiment 4), and bowing motion increased the ratings of subjective politeness and submissiveness (Experiment 5). Finally, tilting the 3D faces elicited the same effect from observers as did tilting the still photos (Experiment 6). These results suggest that a tilting motion of portraits (or images of face-like objects) mimicking bowing enhances perceived attractiveness, at least as measured in a culture familiar with greeting by bowing.

Visual search is easier after looking at some distractors in advance because previewed distractors are excluded from the search (preview benefit). A dominant explanation for preview benefit is that it occurs because of the inhibition of old objects (visual marking). However, another view claims that preview benefit simply reflects automatic attentional orienting to new objects (onset capture). To address the question of whether visual marking plays any role in addition to onset capture, we compared the search performance for a target that always appeared as a new item ("marking" condition) with the performance for a target that appeared equally as a new or old item ("capture" condition). When items were presented at random positions in an invisible matrix, the slope in the "marking" condition was shallower than that in the "capture" condition, favoring the involvement of visual marking (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, no difference in slope was found among the search conditions regardless of changes in old items when items were arranged around the circumference of a circle (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that the contribution of visual marking depends on the configuration of search items; with complex displays, prioritizing selection for new objects is more effective if coupled with de-prioritizing de-selection for old objects.