FIGURE 1.

Panel (A) shows the experimental paradigm for each trial block. An initial pair of white dots cued participants to attend to a specific diagonal at the beginning of each task block. Ten image pairs from one category (faces or houses) appeared sequentially along the attended diagonal. Panel (B) illustrates the four main stimulus block types. In the “TaskD+” distractor-present condition, image pairs from the other category appeared along the opposite diagonal; in the “TaskD–” distractor-absent condition, no stimuli appeared in the opposite diagonal (C). Participants decided whether the two stimuli on the attended diagonal were “same” or “different” (D); 50% of trials involved the same stimuli. The purple dotted circle indicates the attended regions and was not present for the participant.