Figure 1.

Measures of distractor interference: example displays. (A) The response-competition-task. In this task participants make forced-choice responses to a target item (in this example, either X or N). Distraction is indexed by the RT increase when the target item is flanked by distractors representing the competing response (pictured) versus those representing the same response. (B) The attentional capture task. In the typical attentional capture task, distraction is indexed by the increase in search RTs for a target item (in this example a circle), when one of the non-target search items appears as a salient singleton in an irrelevant dimension (e.g., color), compared to a no singleton baseline. (C) A new measure of interference from salient yet entirely task-irrelevant distractors. Within these measures distraction is indexed by the increase in RTs associated with the peripheral presentation of a colorful distractor. This can be either an image of a well known cartoon character (selected from Superman, Spiderman, Pikachu, Spongebob Squarepants, Micky Mouse, and Donald Duck) or meaningless yet colorful shape.