Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
197,768 studies31 sourcesUpdated 42 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BYAttention, perception & psychophysics

A registered report on interruptions during visual search: Examining the effects of perceptual and cognitive load.

  • Emily Seeligmüller1
  • Jeremy M Wolfe2,3
  • Jan Philipp Röer4
4 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße 44, Witten, 58455, Germany. [email protected].
  2. 2Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
  3. 3Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
  4. 4Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße 44, Witten, 58455, Germany.
Read full textPDFDOICite

Abstract

Interruptions during visual search tasks significantly impair search performance, leading to prolonged reaction time (RT) and reduced accuracy. The interruption's complexity has been proposed as one important factor that might modulate this decline in performance. However, previous research on interruption complexity during visual search has not clearly differentiated between perceptual and cognitive load, making it difficult to evaluate their relative contributions. This preregistered study examines the effects of interruption complexity on visual search performance by independently manipulating perceptual and cognitive load. Participants performed a visual search task interrupted by a running memory span task. During the interruption task, numerical items were either clearly visible (low perceptual load) or masked with Gaussian visual noise (high perceptual load), and participants recalled either the last item (low cognitive load) or the last four items of the list (high cognitive load). We investigated whether perceptual and cognitive effects are additive and whether one factor is more potent than the other. The results advance theoretical knowledge and contribute to a clearer understanding of the underlying mechanisms of interruption-related performance costs.

Related

  1. Audiometric, Perceptual and Subjective Cognitive Assessment of Hearing Loss in Adults with Hearing-Related Complaints.
    Marta Álvarez-Cendrero, Andrea Rodríguez Rodero, María A Callejón-Leblic
    Audiology researchPeer-reviewedCC BYFull textNeuroscienceEurope PMC
  2. Registered Replication Report and Extension of Maas & Hox (2005), Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Models
    Joao F. Guassi Moreira, Jared Block, Alondra M. Cruz +2
    PsyArXivPreprintCC BY 4.0Full textGeneral biologyOSF
  3. Identifying neural correlates of auditory perceptual awareness and deviance using a no-report inattentional deafness paradigm
    A. Ellinghorst, T. Dellert, Y. Zhu +3
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textNeurosciencebioRxiv
  4. Does a map-level insulation constraint improve sequence-based prediction of 3D genome folding? A Stage 1 Registered Report with a reverse-complement-equivariant state-space model (HiFold-Mamba)
    M. Malekpouri, S. Lotfi
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textBioinformatics & computational biologybioRxiv
  5. Registered Report: Replication and Extension of Nozaradan et al. (2011)
    Karli M. Nave, Erin E. Hannon, Joel S. Snyder +40
    Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological SciencePeer-reviewedCC BY-NC8 citedNeuroscienceOpenAlex

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{seeligmuller2026registered,
  title = {{A registered report on interruptions during visual search: Examining the effects of perceptual and cognitive load.}},
  author = {Emily Seeligmüller and Jeremy M Wolfe and Jan Philipp Röer},
  journal = {Attention, perception \& psychophysics},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.3758/s13414-026-03360-2},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42955505},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - A registered report on interruptions during visual search: Examining the effects of perceptual and cognitive load.
AU  - Emily Seeligmüller
AU  - Jeremy M Wolfe
AU  - Jan Philipp Röer
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/28
JO  - Attention, perception & psychophysics
DO  - 10.3758/s13414-026-03360-2
UR  - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42955505
AB  - Interruptions during visual search tasks significantly impair search performance, leading to prolonged reaction time (RT) and reduced accuracy. The interruption's complexity has been proposed as one important factor that might modulate this decline in performance. However, previous research on interruption complexity during visual search has not clearly differentiated between perceptual and cognitive load, making it difficult to evaluate their relative contributions. This preregistered study examines the effects of interruption complexity on visual search performance by independently manipulating perceptual and cognitive load. Participants performed a visual search task interrupted by a running memory span task. During the interruption task, numerical items were either clearly visible (low perceptual load) or masked with Gaussian visual noise (high perceptual load), and participants recalled either the last item (low cognitive load) or the last four items of the list (high cognitive load). We investigated whether perceptual and cognitive effects are additive and whether one factor is more potent than the other. The results advance theoretical knowledge and contribute to a clearer understanding of the underlying mechanisms of interruption-related performance costs.
SN  - 1943-3921
SN  - 1943-393X
ER  -