Task-irrelevant objects can sometimes capture attention and increase the time it takes an observer to find a target. However, less is known about how these distractors impact visual search strategies. Here, I found that salient distractors reduced rather than increased response times on target-absent trials (Experiment 1; N = 200). Combined with higher error rates on target-present trials, these results indicate that distractors can induce observers to quit search earlier than they otherwise would. These effects were replicated when target prevalence was low (Experiment 2; N = 200) and with different stimuli that elicited shallower search slopes (Experiment 3; N = 75). These results demonstrate that salient distractors can produce at least two consequences in visual search: They can capture attention, and they can cause observers to quit searching early. This novel finding has implications both for understanding visual attention and for examining distraction in real-world domains where targets are often absent, such as medical image screening.

中文翻译：

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在视觉搜索中分散注意力的对象会导致提前退出

与任务无关的对象有时会吸引注意力并增加观察者找到目标所需的时间。然而，人们对这些干扰因素如何影响视觉搜索策略知之甚少。在这里，我发现显着的干扰因素会减少而不是增加对无目标试验的响应时间（实验 1；N = 200）。结合目标存在试验的更高错误率，这些结果表明干扰因素可以诱导观察者比其他情况更早地退出搜索。当目标流行率较低（实验 2；N = 200）和不同的刺激导致较浅的搜索斜率（实验 3；N = 75）时，这些效果会被复制。这些结果表明，显着的干扰因素至少可以在视觉搜索中产生两个结果：它们可以吸引注意力，它们会导致观察者提前退出搜索。这一新发现对理解视觉注意力和检查通常没有目标的现实世界领域（例如医学图像筛选）中的分心都有影响。