Figure 1.

Stimuli and paradigms for visual attention and VSTM tasks. Identical stimuli and attentional selection demands were used across the two tasks. In the VSTM paradigm (green labels), participants were asked to remember the orientation of target bars (here in yellow) while ignoring distractor bars (here in blue). During the VSTM delay, a series of brief stimulus presentations before the memory probe and response served as a dynamic mask. In the visual attention paradigm (blue labels), participants were asked to select three target bars (yellow) and ignore distractor bars (blue). During the brief presentations, participants had to monitor target bars for when all selected yellow targets were vertical (e.g., displays 1 and 4), and report the number of these presentations in the target interval (1–2 or 3–4; in this example, the response would be 1–2 as there were 2 targets). Targets frames are indicated by red arrows.