Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Visual marking for search: behavioral and event-related potential analyses.

Thomas Jacobsen1, Glyn W Humphreys, Erich Schröger

  • 1Institut für Allgemeine Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Seeburgstrasse 14-20, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. jacobsen@uni-leipzig.de

Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research
|November 8, 2002
PubMed
Summary

Visual marking, an attentional mechanism, prioritizes new objects by inhibiting old ones. This study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to show visual marking effects occur before new stimuli appear, supporting its role in visual attention.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Not All Rules Are Equal: Rare Conditional Rules Shape Behaviour but Yield to Global Probability in Passive Listening.

The European journal of neuroscience·2026
Same author

The Impact of Action Intention Versus Action-Effect Intention on Auditory Prediction Error Signals.

The European journal of neuroscience·2026
Same author

Measuring the Genuine Mismatch Negativity in the Auditory Multi-Feature Paradigm.

The European journal of neuroscience·2026
Same author

The sound of silence: Omission responses and how the brain predicts in the absence of sound.

Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews·2025
Same author

Auditory N1 Suppression and Omission N1 Do Not Share a Common Underlying Mechanism.

Psychophysiology·2025
Same author

Auditory facilitation in deterministic versus stochastic worlds.

Cognitive neuroscience·2025

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Visual Attention Research
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Visual marking is a key attentional mechanism for prioritizing new objects.
  • It operates through top-down inhibition of previously attended objects.
  • Understanding its neural basis is crucial for explaining visual selection.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate the neural mechanisms of visual marking using event-related brain potentials (ERPs).
  • Determine if visual marking effects precede the onset of new visual stimuli.
  • Differentiate the role of visual marking from attentional capture by new items.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed a visual search task with a two-stage display.
  • Three conditions (Preview, Control, Search) manipulated target appearance and item changes.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded to analyze neural activity.

    • Main Results:

    • Condition-contingent attentional modulations were observed in the N1/N2 ERP components.
    • A sustained negativity (350-750 ms) was found in the Preview-Control comparison.
    • This negativity indicated visual marking processes were active before the second display onset.

    Conclusions:

    • Visual marking involves neural processes that begin before new stimuli appear.
    • The findings support a role for visual marking in pre-selection of visual information.
    • This challenges explanations of preview benefits solely based on attentional capture.