Behavioral goals constrain the selection of visual information

Abstract

Although there is agreement that attentional processes are limited, the necessary conditions for such limitation have not been determined. We investigated whether behavioral goals are sufficient to constrain the selection of visual information. In two tasks, subjects were presented with targets and distractors that varied on two dimensions (e.g., color and letter). In separate conditions, the subjects' goal was to identify only one dimension of the target while ignoring the second dimension and ignoring the distractors. In both tasks, peripheral distractors interfered with target selection only when the targets and distractors differed on the goal-relevant dimension. When the goal was change..