This paper is concerned with how we prioritize the selection of new objects in visual scenes. We present four experiments investigating the effects of distractor previews on visual search through new objects. Participants viewed a set of to-be-ignored nontargets, with the task being to search for a target in a second set, added to the first after 1000ms. This second set could contain a salient feature singleton, defined in terms of its color, orientation, or both color and orientation. When the singleton was a distractor, search was slowed relative to when there was no singleton. Search was facilitated when the singleton was a target. Interestingly, both the interference and facilitation effects were modulated when the preview shared features with the singleton. Follow-up experiments showed that this reduction of singleton effects was not due to: (i) low-level sensory aspects of the displays, (ii) increased heterogeneity in the search set in the preview condition, or (iii) color-based grouping of old and new items. Instead, we suggest that there is an inhibitory carry-over from the first to the second set of items based on feature similarity. We suggest the suppression stems from a process termed visual marking, which suppresses irrelevant visual objects in anticipation of more relevant new objects (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). The findings argue against alternative explanations such as the automatic capture by abrupt new onsets account.

中文翻译：

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视觉标记禁止单例捕获

本文关注的是我们如何优先考虑视觉场景中新对象的选择。我们提出了四个实验，研究干扰预览对通过新对象进行视觉搜索的影响。参与者查看了一组要忽略的非目标，任务是在第二组中搜索目标，并在 1000 毫秒后添加到第一个。第二个集合可以包含一个显着特征单例，根据其颜色、方向或颜色和方向进行定义。当单身人士分散注意力时，相对于没有单身人士时，搜索速度会减慢。当单身人士成为目标时，搜索就变得容易了。有趣的是，当预览与单例共享功能时，干扰和促进效果都被调制。后续实验表明，这种单例效应的减少不是由于：(i) 显示器的低级感官方面，(ii) 预览条件中搜索集的异质性增加，或 (iii) 基于颜色的新旧项目分组。相反，我们建议基于特征相似性从第一组项目到第二组项目存在抑制性结转。我们认为抑制源于一个称为视觉标记的过程，该过程抑制了不相关的视觉对象，以期待更多相关的新对象（Watson & Humphreys，1997）。研究结果反对替代解释，例如由突然的新发病帐户自动捕获。我们建议基于特征相似性从第一组项目到第二组项目存在抑制性结转。我们认为抑制源于一个称为视觉标记的过程，该过程抑制了不相关的视觉对象，以期待更多相关的新对象（Watson & Humphreys，1997）。研究结果反对替代解释，例如由突然的新发病帐户自动捕获。我们建议基于特征相似性从第一组项目到第二组项目存在抑制性结转。我们认为抑制源于一个称为视觉标记的过程，该过程抑制了不相关的视觉对象，以期待更多相关的新对象（Watson & Humphreys，1997）。研究结果反对替代解释，例如由突然的新发病帐户自动捕获。