Effects of targets embedded within words in a visual search task

Visual search performance can be negatively affected when both targets anddistracters share a dimension relevant to the task. This study examined ifvisual search performance would be influenced by distracters that affect adimension irrelevant from the task. In Experiment 1 within the letter string ofa letter search task, target letters were embedded within a word. Experiment 2compared targets embedded in words to targets embedded in nonwords. Experiment 3compared targets embedded in words to a condition in which a word was present ina letter string, but the target letter, although in the letter string, was notembedded within the word. The results showed that visual search performance wasnegatively affected when a target appeared within a high frequency word. Theseresults suggest that the interaction and effectiveness of distracters is notmerely dependent upon common features of the target and distracters, but can beaffected by word frequency (a dimension not related to the task demands).