Can templates-for-rejection suppress real-world affective objects in visual search?

TL;DR

This study explores whether mental templates can help suppress distracting real-world objects, including aversive ones, during visual search tasks.

Contribution

The study extends the concept of templates-for-rejection to real-world and aversive stimuli, revealing conditions under which they are effective.

Findings

Distractor inhibition was more effective for aversive stimuli when more time was given to encode cues.

A Bayesian analysis showed strong cumulative evidence of aversive distractor inhibition across experiments.

Inhibition of neutral distractors was inconsistent compared to aversive ones.

Abstract

Previous evidence has suggested that feature-based templates-for-rejection can be maintained in working memory to suppress matching features in the environment. Currently, this effect has only been demonstrated using abstract neutral shapes, meaning that it is unclear whether this generalizes to real-world images, including aversive stimuli. In the current investigation, participants searched amongst an array of real-world objects for a target, after being precued with either a distractor template, target template, or a no template baseline. In Experiment 1, where both distractor and target template cues were presented randomly on a trial-by-trial basis, there was moderate evidence of increased capture by aversive distractors after the distractor template cue. In Experiment 2a, however, when distractor templates were the only available cue and more time was given to encode the cue features, there was moderate evidence of effective distractor inhibition for real-world aversive and neutral stimuli. In Experiment 2b, when the task required a slower more effortful comparison of target features to stereotypical object representations, there was weaker evidence of inhibition, though there was still modest evidence suggesting effective inhibition of aversive distractors. A Bayesian meta-analysis revealed that across Experiment 2, aversive distractors showed strong cumulative evidence of effective inhibition, but inconsistent inhibition for neutral distractors. The results are interpreted from a rational search behaviour framework, which suggests that individuals utilize informative cues when they enable the most beneficial strategy and are accessible, and apply these to distractors when they cause sufficient disruption, either to search speed or emotional state.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-023-02410-2.

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