VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2026-06-15DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2026.2687589
Xiaoli Zhang, Taosheng Liu
{"title":"The guiding strength of sensory templates during preparatory stage of sustained feature-based attention.","authors":"Xiaoli Zhang, Taosheng Liu","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2026.2687589","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13506285.2026.2687589","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Visual attention is guided by attentional templates that store task-relevant information, but whether these templates contain sensory details, and how task factors influence their content and guiding strength remains unclear. We investigated these questions by combining sustained feature-based attention with a search task containing an irrelevant distractor that either matched or mismatched the target color in the sustained attention task. The difference in attentional capture by the distractor in the same-color versus different-color condition indexed the strength of the sensory template. We manipulated selection demand by varying the similarity between the two colors in the sustained attention task and presented cues in either sensory or non-sensory formats. With sensory cues, capture magnitude remained equally strong under both low and high selection demand. However, with non-sensory cues, low selection demand attenuated but did not fully eliminate capture. These results demonstrate that attentional templates store sensory content of cued features. The guiding strength of templates is not susceptible to selection demand with sensory cues, but non-sensory cues delayed or reduced the activation and maintenance of sensory templates under low selection demand. This suggests that cue format and selection demand contribute to how sensory information is represented in attentional templates to guide selection.</p>","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"33 10","pages":"631-645"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13565366/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148957048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2025-09-14Epub Date: 2026-03-23DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2026.2645176
Gwenllian C Williams, Anna C Nobre, Sage E P Boettcher
{"title":"Feature-temporal predictions dynamically modulate performance, feature-based attentional capture, and motor response activity during visual search.","authors":"Gwenllian C Williams, Anna C Nobre, Sage E P Boettcher","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2026.2645176","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13506285.2026.2645176","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent work has shown that temporal predictions linked to spatial expectations can guide visual search in dynamic environments, but less is known about feature-based temporal predictions. Here, we investigated whether behaviour is guided towards feature-temporally predictable targets in crowded, dynamic displays under spatial uncertainty. Participants searched for two distinct targets (non-overlapping colour-shape combinations) in a free-viewing visual-search task. During learning trials, each target appeared transiently at a predictable time (early or late); in testing, some appeared unpredictably. We assessed whether feature-temporal predictability improved target identification, modulated attentional guidance, and tuned motor preparation. Results showed that, early during trials, participants were more efficient at identifying temporally predicted targets, with electromyography revealing enhanced muscle activity aligned with expected target timing. Distractors sharing features with either target captured gaze most often when that target was expected, indicating temporally tuned, feature-based attentional guidance. These findings highlight the flexibility of temporal expectations in guiding behaviour.</p>","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"33 8","pages":"524-541"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7619539/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149168412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2025-04-21Epub Date: 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2025.2571626
Hui Men, Alexander C Schütz
{"title":"Confidence in incomplete visual search.","authors":"Hui Men, Alexander C Schütz","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2571626","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2571626","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Visual search is critical in many activities. Under time pressure or when targets are hard to detect, decisions about target presence might be forced with insufficient information. Then an estimation of confidence is essential for subsequent actions. We asked participants to search for a small target in two search stimuli and to choose the one they felt more confident about. Target presence and the size of one stimulus was varied. The hit rate decreased as gaze-target distance increased. At large distances, hits and false alarms were similar and correlated across participants, suggesting lucky guesses. Performance was better in chosen than in non-chosen stimuli, mainly because of higher hit rate. Confidence choices preferred smaller stimuli and target-present responses. The latter preference decreased with increasing gaze-target distance, indicating reliance on target visibility. These results indicate that confidence in visual search is influenced by target visibility and the probability that the target was overlooked.</p>","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"33 4","pages":"285-298"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7618635/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-05-25DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2025.2507946
Alan Z Lu, Aditya Upadhyayula, John M Henderson
{"title":"Meaning maps predict reaction time in change detection.","authors":"Alan Z Lu, Aditya Upadhyayula, John M Henderson","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2507946","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2507946","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To detect changes in our visual environments, the visual system compares pre-and post-change representations maintained in active working memory. Previous research has suggested that change detection is primarily informed by high-level semantics in naturalistic scenes. Here, across two experiments, we used meaning maps - a data driven method to measure the visual semantic information in naturalistic scenes - to investigate whether semantic features predicted visual change detection in a flicker paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that changes in highly meaningful regions were more easily detected than changes in non-meaningful regions despite controlling for low-level visual saliency. Experiment 2 found that the meaning-driven advantage was significantly reduced by scene inversion, further supporting the role of semantics in change detection. Together, these results demonstrate that the visual system relies on semantic features during change detection.</p>","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"33 2","pages":"89-104"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12380198/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144974316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-09-04DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2024.2397825
Ananya Mandal, Jan Philipp Röer, Heinrich R. Liesefeld
{"title":"Auditory distractors are processed but do not interfere with visual search of any difficulty when sound is irrelevant","authors":"Ananya Mandal, Jan Philipp Röer, Heinrich R. Liesefeld","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2024.2397825","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2024.2397825","url":null,"abstract":"People often report being distracted during their visual tasks, such as monitoring the road ahead, by task-irrelevant sounds, for example, a baby crying on the backseat. When we first tried to stud...","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142218351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2025-04-11DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2025.2486493
Carly J Leonard
{"title":"Individual differences in first saccade latency predict overt behavior during search for a contour integration target.","authors":"Carly J Leonard","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2486493","DOIUrl":"10.1080/13506285.2025.2486493","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>During everyday functioning, the visual world is explored by using saccadic eye movements to direct the information-rich fovea to specific locations. These eye movements are guided by visual input from outside of the fovea, where processes of perceptual organization piece together scene and object structure, including contour information. The current study investigates variation in how the typical population uses eye movements to complete a search for a closed-contour target formed by oriented gabor patches. Performance at contour integration tasks varies across a range of clinical populations, although it is unknown the degree to which performance differs within the typical population and if these differences relate to how individuals move their eyes during the task. The results show large variation in first saccade latency between individuals, with these differences correlating with first saccade accuracy and the total number of fixations needed to complete the task. Within-subject performance variation across trials mirrored these effects, although equivalent changes in first saccade latency did not influence saccadic behavior for all participants in the same way. This finding that longer first saccade latency improves eye movement guidance differently across participants is discussed in terms of the potential benefits of having additional time for recurrent processing and individual differences in ability to spatially spread attention.</p>","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"32 8","pages":"675-686"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12338195/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144838265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-08-23DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2024.2393467
Fredrik Allenmark, Miloš Stanković, Hermann J. Müller, Zhuanghua Shi
{"title":"Dynamic suppression of likely distractor locations: Task-critical modulation","authors":"Fredrik Allenmark, Miloš Stanković, Hermann J. Müller, Zhuanghua Shi","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2024.2393467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2024.2393467","url":null,"abstract":"When a distractor frequently appears in a certain region of a search display, it interferes less with performance, reflecting learned distractor suppression. While this effect is well established, ...","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"424 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142218366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-08-23DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2024.2344724
Matt Oxner, Norman Forschack, Matthias M. Müller
{"title":"Testing the contributions of proactive target and distractor templates in visual search performance","authors":"Matt Oxner, Norman Forschack, Matthias M. Müller","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2024.2344724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2024.2344724","url":null,"abstract":"When searching for objects with particular visual features, performance is sometimes improved by the presence of a salient colour distractor, such as a red item among green objects. Attention to su...","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142218368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-08-23DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2024.2335116
Lindsay A. Santacroce, Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau
{"title":"Frequency of filler items does not modulate the emotional attentional blink","authors":"Lindsay A. Santacroce, Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2024.2335116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2024.2335116","url":null,"abstract":"In the emotional attentional blink (EAB; emotion-induced blindness), emotional distractors impair report of subsequent targets in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams of fillers. Recent ...","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142218365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VISUAL COGNITIONPub Date : 2024-08-23DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2024.2328902
Aylin A. Hanne, Jan Tünnermann, Anna Schubö
{"title":"Handling distractor interference in mixed and fixed search","authors":"Aylin A. Hanne, Jan Tünnermann, Anna Schubö","doi":"10.1080/13506285.2024.2328902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2024.2328902","url":null,"abstract":"When searching for a target, humans can reduce interference from a colour distractor by using different strategies, such as down-weighting the distractor dimension or the most likely distractor loc...","PeriodicalId":47961,"journal":{"name":"VISUAL COGNITION","volume":"110 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142218353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}