Abstract
Intuitively, dynamic visual stimuli, such as moving objects or flashing lights, attract attention. Visual search tasks have revealed that dynamic targets among static distractors can indeed efficiently guide attention. The present study shows that the reverse case, a static target among dynamic distractors, allows for relatively efficient selection in certain but not all cases. A static target was relatively efficiently found among distractors that featured apparent motion, corroborating earlier findings. The important new finding was that static targets were equally easily found among distractors that blinked on and off continuously, even when each individual item blinked at a random rate. However, search for a static target was less efficient when distractors abruptly varied in luminance, but did not completely disappear. We suggest that the division into the parvocellular pathway dealing with static visual information on the one hand, and the magnocellular pathway common to motion and new object onset detection on the other, allows for efficient filtering of dynamic and static information.
This research was funded by a grant from NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), grant 400-03-008 to Jan Theeuwes and grant 451-02-117 to Chris Olivers.