Blink and you won’t miss it: The preview benefit in visual marking survives internally generated eyeblinks.

Abstract

People are able to ignore old (previewed) stimuli in order to prioritize the processing of newly appearing items--the preview benefit (D. G. Watson & G. W. Humphreys, 1997, "Visual marking: prioritizing selection for new objects by top-down attentional inhibition of old objects," Psychological Review, Vol. 104, pp. 90-122). According to the inhibitory visual marking account, this is achieved by the top-down and capacity-limited inhibition of old stimuli already in the field, which leads to a selection advantage for new items when they appear. In contrast, according to the abrupt luminance onset account (M. Donk & J. Theeuwes, 2001, "Visual marking beside the mark: prioritizing selection by abrupt onsets," Perception & Psychophysics, Vol. 63, pp. 891-900), new items capture attention automatically simply because they generate luminance onset signals. Here, we demonstrate that new items can be partially prioritized over old items even when they appear during an eyeblink and so have no unique luminance transients associated with their appearance. Overall, the findings suggest that both the inhibition of old items and attention capture by luminance changes contribute to time-based selection.

Onset of background dynamic noise attenuates preview benefit in inefficient visual search

“…These findings suggest that transient motion, or positional shifts accompanying abrupt changes in the shape of old items, attenuate preview benefits. Furthermore, recent studies suggest that the preview benefit remains even when the shape of old items changes, provided that these changes involve either eye blink (Irwin & Humphreys, 2013;von Mühlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013), occlusion (Kunar et al, 2003), or transient masking (Watson & Kunar, 2010). Osugi, Kumada, and Kawahara (2010) demonstrated that preview benefits persist during shape changes if semantic information pertaining to the items is retained.…”

Visual working memory simultaneously guides facilitation and inhibition during visual search

“…2B). The observed preview benefit in such searches is likely guided, in part, by attentional capture from the onset of nonpreviewed search items (Donk & Theeuwes, 2001) and by other potentially capacity-unlimited inhibitory mechanisms (von Mühlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013). The contribution of VWM-based preview inhibition can only be observed in measures of behavioral performance when other preview mechanisms are prevented from guiding the search process (e.g., by allowing participants to move their eyes, which disrupts the sensory signals that capture attention).…”

Subset selective search on the basis of color and preview

“…This latter finding is in line with previous findings on color-based selectivity (Egeth et al, 1984; Friedmanhill & Wolfe, 1995; Kaptein et al, 1995; Theeuwes, 1994) and shows that performance in the color full-baseline conditions did not leave much room for further improvement through a reduction in the influence of the number of irrelevant elements. Nevertheless, there are numerous studies reporting profound preview effects with differently colored sets (Braithwaite & Humphreys, 2003; Humphreys, Olivers, et al, 2006; Humphreys et al, 2004; Humphreys et al, 2002; Irwin & Humphreys, 2013; Kiss & Eimer, 2011; Kunar, Humphreys, & Smith, 2003a, 2003b; Kunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Hulleman, 2003; Kunar, Humphreys, Smith, & Watson, 2003; Olivers & Humphreys, 2003; Olivers et al, 1999; von Muhlenen et al, 2013; Watson, 2001; Watson et al, 2008; Watson et al, 2011; Watson & Humphreys, 1997, 1998, 2002; Watson & Inglis, 2007; Watson & Kunar, 2010; Zupan et al, 2015), and, more importantly, these effects were typically attributed to a reduction in the influence of the number of irrelevant elements.…”

“…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., Braithwaite & Humphreys, 2003; Humphreys et al, 2004; Humphreys, Watson, & Jolicoeur, 2002; Irwin & Humphreys, 2013; Kunar, Humphreys, & Smith, 2003a; Olivers & Humphreys, 2003; von Muhlenen, Watson, & Gunnell, 2013; Watson, Compton, & Bailey, 2011; Watson & Humphreys, 1997, 2002; Watson & 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?…”