Object-based selection in the two-rectangles method is not an artifact of the three-sided directional cue

A common means of investigating object-specific selection is the two-rectangles method, in which a target appears at one end of two rectangles (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994). Prior to target presentation, one end of two parallel rectangles is cued by brightening the three line segments along one of its ends. When the target appears in the opposite end of the cued rectangle, responses tend to be faster and more accurate than when it appears in the end of the other rectangle, which is equally distant from the cue. This effect has been taken as evidence of object-specific selection of information. The present study rules out the concern that the object-specific effect that is found with this method is caused by the directional nature of the cue. That is, the three-sided cue, which essentially points to the "same-object" location, does not itself give rise to the object-specific advantage. These results are discussed in terms of the combined roles of explicit object structure in the scene, past experience, and task set as contributing to the way in which information is organized and selected from a scene.