Mentally Imagined Item Captures Attention During Visual Search

This study aims to explore whether mental imagery can capture attention during visual search in a combined working memory and visual search task. The study compared a working memory condition that participants required to maintain a presented item then perform a visual search task with a mental imagery condition that participants mentally generated an item then searching. In both conditions, the item that they maintained can be a valid or invalid cue for the visual search. The result showed that, search reaction time was delayed by the invalid cue compared with the valid cue in the mental imagery condition, indicating mental imagery may share the same visual representation with attention. This result may have implications on imagery training in different ways which helps people detect malfunctions or dangerous targets more efficiently in the interactive environments.