The Effects of Visual Distractors on Serial Dependence

Attractive serial dependence occurs when perceptual decisions are attracted toward previous stimuli. This effect is mediated by spatial attention and is most likely to occur when similar stimuli are attended at nearby locations. Attention, however, also involves the suppression of distracting information and of spatial locations where distracting stimuli have frequently appeared. Although distractors form an integral part of our visual experience, how they affect the processing of subsequent stimuli is unknown. Here, in two experiments, we tested serial dependence from distractor stimuli during an orientation adjustment task. We interleaved adjustment trials with a discrimination task requiring observers to ignore a peripheral distractor randomly appearing on half of the trials. Distractors were either similar to the adjustment probe (Experiment 1) or differed in spatial frequency and contrast (Experiment 2) and were shown at predictable or random locations in separate blocks. The results showed that the distractor caused considerable attentional capture in the discrimination task, with observers likely using proactive strategies to anticipate distractors at predictable locations. However, there was no evidence that the distractors affected the perceptual stream leading to positive serial dependence. Instead, they left a weak repulsive trace in Experiment 1 and more generally interfered with the effect of the previous adjustment probe in the serial dependence task. We suggest that this repulsive bias may reflect the operation of mechanisms involved in attentional suppression.