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This article explored the extent to which stimulus-driven control over visual selection is modulated by goal-driven factors. Observers searched for a no-onset color target among 3 distractors and signaled its location either manually or with a saccade. Additional distractors appeared either with or without an abrupt onset and were either similar or dissimilar to the target. Abrupt onsets disrupted saccades to the target, especially when they shared the target color. Irrelevant onsets also interfered with the manual responses, but this interference was dependent on the particular type of manual response. Stimulus-driven and contingent capture can occur within a single paradigm, but the extent and nature of these effects depend on the specific response required.

In 4 experiments the authors used 2-stage designs to study susceptibility to interference in human discrimination learning. The experiments used a food allergy task. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a discrimination in Stage 1 in which Food A predicted an allergy outcome (A [right arrow] O). In Stage 2, when combined with Food B, Food A predicted the absence of the allergy (B [right arrow] O, AB [right arrow] no O). In the test phase, Food A was found to have retained its Stage 1 association with the allergy despite the potentially interfering Stage 2 trials. In Experiment 2, a discrimination between 2 compounds (AB [right arrow] O, CD [right arrow] no O) remained intact despite subsequent complete revaluation of the elements, (A [right arrow] no O, B [right arrow] no O, C [right arrow] O, D [right arrow] O); in Experiments 3 and 4, a discrimination between 2 pairs of elements (A [right arrow] O, B [right arrow] O, C [right arrow] no O, D [right arrow] no O) remained intact despite subsequent complete revaluation of the AB and CD compounds, (AB [right arrow] no O, CD [right arrow] O). These experiments yielded evidence of remarkable resistance to interference in human discrimination learning. The results are at variance with the predictions of J. M. Pearce's (1987, 1994a) configural theory of associative learning.

The manner by which developing children resist interference effects from irrelevant information is examined. Of particular significance are the influence of perceived structure and selective attention on interference. Stimulus response translation is emphasized over perceptual filtering and motor preparation processes in decreasing interference effects in developing children.

Whether attention to a local part of a visual display can prevent access to semantic information in form matching tasks with objects was studied. A first picture containing a line segment (the reference) was followed by 2 lateral objects also containing a line segment (a target and a distractor). Participants matched the line segments according to either their orientation or color. Effects of semantic information were assessed by manipulating the semantic relations among the pictures surrounding the reference, target, and distractor. Semantic information affected performance in the orientation matching task, but not in the color matching task. Results suggest the existence of separate selection mechanisms in vision. Selection of local colors for response purposes can be based on inhibition of the form pathway (eliminating semantic effects on matching). Selection within the form pathway can involve a bias toward global shape (the picture). Once attention is allocated to global shape, associated semantic representations are activated and semantic effects on matching emerge.

People often have trouble performing 2 relatively simple tasks concurrently. Th causes of this interference and its implications for the nature of attentional limitations have been controversial for 40 years, but recent experimental findings are beginning to provide some answers. Studies of the psychological refractory period effect indicate a stubborn bottleneck encompassing the proces of choosing actions and probably memory retrieval generally, together with certain other cognitive operations. Other limitations associated with task preparation, sensory-perceptual processes, and timing can generate additional and distinct forms of interference. These conclusions challenge widely accepted ideas about attentional resources and probe reaction time methodologies. They also suggest new ways of thinking about continuous dual-task performance, effects of extraneous stimulation (e.g., stop signals), and automaticity. Implications for higher mental processes are discussed.

It has been proposed that 1 component of the mechanism of visual selective attention is active inhibition of distracting information. A series of studies examines the time course of inhibition and the possible interfering effects of other task demands. Results demonstrate that inhibition can last at least 7 s after selection processes and that it is unaffected by predictable, unrelated intervening events. However, intervening events that are less predictable, or are the same as the inhibited stimulus, disrupt inhibition. Such results motivate a reconsideration of the previous view of distractor inhibition as a transient, fragile phenomenon.

Both spatial and temporal selection require focused attention. The authors examine how temporal attention affects spatial selection. In a dual-task rapid serial visual presentation paradigm, temporal selection of a target (T1) impairs processing of a second target (T2) that follows TI within 500 ms. This process is the attentional blink (AB). To test the effects of withdrawing temporal attention, the authors measured concurrent distractor interference on T2 when the distractors were presented during and outside of the AB. Perceptual interference was manipulated by the similarity in color between T2 and concurrent distractors, and response interference was manipulated by the flanker congruency task. Results showed that perceptual interference was larger during the AB. Response interference also increased during the AB, but only when perceptual interference was high. The authors conclude that temporal selection and spatial selection rely on a common attentional process.

Increasing the physical distinction between targets and distractors can eliminate Stroop interference, which has prompted claims that noninterfering distractors are not identified (e.g., Francolini & Egeth, 1980). However, such claims assumed that identification always produces interference. By using Francolini and Egeth's task of counting red items in arrays of red and black items, we found that noninterfering black digits produced identity-specific negative priming comparable to that produced by interfering red digits. This suggests that interfering and noninterfering distractors are both identified and then inhibited. A similar pattern of results is observed in a task of word naming for picture-word stimuli. The contrast between interference and priming measures of the distractor processing urges reconsideration of many data previously held as evidence that distractors can be completely filtered out.

In a series of experiments, we examined the effect of requiring subjects to attend to distractors in a test of negative priming. This was accomplished by using a referent size-selection task in which subjects were instructed to name the larger animal and to ignore the smaller animal in a word pair. The result was a quadrupling of the standard negative priming effect, suggesting that negative priming not only occurs for attended distractors, it is actually enhanced. We demonstrated that this enhancement of the effect was not due solely to increased latencies in the referent size-selection task, because neither decreasing base response times in other referent size-selection tasks nor increasing base response times in typical color-selection tasks substantially affected the respective negative priming effects. Although these findings can be accommodated within current theories of negative priming, they challenge the basic assumption that the negative priming effect arises because the critical item was ignored or not attended to on the prime trial.