Visual marking and change detection

The preview benefit from prior exposure of response-irrelevant (distracter) objects in visual search has been accounted for in terms of top-down inhibition (i.e. visual marking), bottom-up abrupt onset capture, or asynchrony-dependent perceptual segregation. We assess the relative contribution of abrupt onset and visual marking in a paradigm combining visual search with a visual working memory task. We investigated time-based selection of multiple objects for storage in visual working memory, using a change detection paradigm (Luck and Vogel in Nature 390:279–281, 1997) with distracter preview. We varied preview exposure (short vs. long), in a series of three experiments. The contribution of asynchrony-related perceptual segregation was assessed across experiments by varying the complexity of the stimuli (colored squares, oriented bars and oriented T-shapes) and the type of change detection (color or orientation), resulting in different levels of perceptual segregation between visual elements. The results suggest that bottom-up abrupt onset, visual marking and perceptual segregation factors co-operate in time-based selection for storage in visual working memory.