The Phenomenon and Mechanisms of the Distractor Previewing Effect
Bingbing Mu, Shun Li · 2014
The Distractor Previewing Effect is an inter-trial effect in visual search. In a visual search task, participants are asked to find a color oddball among distractors and then to identify its shape. Their responses are slower when the target in the current target-present trial has the same color as the items in the preceding target-absent trial than when the color of the current distractors does so. This inter-trial effect is not due to response inhibition, but reflects attention inhibition from one trial to the next. This paper introduces the phenomenon of the DPE, compares it to other inter-trial effects in visual search, and discusses its underlying mechanisms and future research directions.