Preview benefit survives a three-dimensional rotation of the rigid configuration of search items

Abstract

When some distractors (old items) are presented prior to others (new items) during an inefficient visual search task, search becomes easier, as though observers were able to exclude the old items from the search. This phenomenon, called preview benefit, occurs when the locations of the old items are deprioritized relative to the locations of the new items, through a process of visual marking. It has been demonstrated that preview benefit persists when the old items move on the display, if the spatial relationships among the old items remain unchanged, suggesting that the memory template for visual marking represents the spatial configuration of the old items. One remaining question is whether the configuration is coded in two- or three-dimensional coordinates. In the present study, we examined whether preview benefit was preserved when all items were graphically rendered in three-dimensional coordinates and rigidly rotated around the vertical axis at a constant angular velocity. Preview benefit occurred in this situation, suggesting that the memory template for visual marking represents the spatial configuration in three-dimensional coordinates.