Fig. 3.

Stimuli and procedure of Experiment 2. During training participants reported the orientation of the target letter T (left vs. right) while ignoring the onset distractor appearing on 50% of the total trials. The locations of the target and distractor were completely segregated within and between trials. The target could appear only in the placeholders located along the oblique meridians, whereas the distractor could appear only in the placeholders located along the vertical and horizontal meridians, and it was 8 times more likely to appear in one of the four possible locations (the numbers inside the placeholders indicate the distractor rate, and were not shown during the experiment). In the example depicted, the higher distractor rate coincided with the left position along the horizontal axis. In the test phase, participants reported the orientation of the gap (left or right) in the abrupt onset annulus, which appeared at the same locations of the previous distractors during training (along the vertical or horizontal meridians), but now with equal probability at all locations