Abstract
Hybrid visual search tasks typically require participants to search for more potential targets than could simultaneously be maintained in visual working memory. Therefore, these tasks require long-term memory templates. In this research, we examine whether another factor of long-term memory, memorability, influences hybrid search performance. Participants searched for 8 target items within search arrays of set size 1, 8, or 16. Half of the target items were drawn from a low memorability set and half from a high memorability set. All participants had to achieve 95% accuracy or higher during a memory test for the search targets in order to proceed to the search task. During visual search, accuracy was higher for visual search trials containing a high memorable target, and reaction times were faster for high memorable targets. This suggests that factors related to long-term memorability of items also impact their ability to serve as attentional templates during visual search.