Discrimination of Image Orientation in the Presence of Distractors

We studied the influence of additional images (distractors) on the recognition of test objects, which included low-contrast Landolt circles with sizes of 1.1, 1.5, and 2.2 angular degrees and were presented eccentrically at 13.2 degrees from fixation. The distractors were either Landolt Cs or full circles with the same spatial characteristics. The distance between the test objects and the distractors varied from 2.2 to 24.2 angular degrees. The subjects were required to report the orientation of the tests (simple task) or to report the orientation of the tests and the shape of the distractor (dual task). The first group of subjects performed both simple and dual tasks, while the second group only performed the simple task. A significant deterioration of performance was recorded at all tested separations in both tasks; it was more pronounced in the dual task. The percent of correct responses was lower when Landolt circles were distractors as compared with full circles. The subjects tended to report the orientation of the distractors instead of tests in the cases of small and large separations. The recognition of distractors was also performed at a lower level in the cases of small and large distances. The data show that attention contributes to the task performance in two ways: the features of tests and distractors are integrated, or the tests are substituted by distractors.