Humans are capable of selecting information that is goal-relevant. Irrelevant (distractor) information, however, typically is not filtered completely and impacts on responses to the goal. Recent theories of selective attention indicate that distractor interference is
determined by the perceptual load of a visual display and the availability of cognitive control mechanisms (working memory load). It is unclear however, which mechanisms
assist efficient selective attention and how irrelevant distracting information is rejected.
Using a go/no-go visual attention task (Experiment 1) and a visual search task (Experiment 2), this series of experiments examined distractor processing in visual
selective attention.