EXTERNALLY CUED AND INTERNALLY GENERATED SELECTION - DIFFERENCES IN DISTRACTOR ANALYSIS AND INHIBITION

In most studies of selective attention, the experimenter informs the p articipant what the target is and what action is required. For example , participants may be told to name the red drawing. The present study shows that under such conditions of external selection, distracter inh ibition is used to ensure that selection is efficient. In external sel ection, analysis of distracters is limited, causing later recognition of distracter items to be poor. In contrast, during real-world selecti on a person may be confronted with a number of potential targets and m ay have to decide what will be the target for action. Under these cond itions of internal selection, inhibition of distracting information do es not occur. Moreover, distracters are more fully analyzed and thus b etter recognized at a later test.