A pop-out induced extinction-like phenomenon in neurologically intact subjects.

A series of tachistoscopic search experiments was performed to investigate variations of distractor effects dependent on the relative position and salience of target and distractor. It was found that highly salient (pop out) items distracted search for less salient (conjunction) targets and vice versa. However, only the effect of pop-out distractors was lateralized when paired with a contralateral target, RVF-distractors leading to a stronger latency increase. With unimanual response, this effect was stronger in the right hand. When the distractors were presented in the same visual halffield (VF) as the targets, effects were of comparable size in both VF.