Signal suppression makes search less effortful

Physically salient stimuli compete for attention but can be suppressed under certain conditions. Highly salient distractors can be suppressed more efficiently than less salient ones. However, the implications for the suppression of salient-but-irrelevant signals on the subjective effort of searching are unclear. On one hand, the neural processes involved in signal suppression may themselves be effortful to engage. On the other hand, the facilitation of search that results from reduced competition from the distractor in the visual system may render the act of searching less mentally effortful. Using a recently developed technique of relating physical effort to the putative mental effort required by different search conditions, we assessed whether observers were more motivated to exert physical effort to avoid the demands of ignoring high- or low-salience distractors. We replicated greater suppression for high- than low-salience distractors and showed that participants exerted more physical effort in exchange for search displays containing the high-salience distractors. However, in a situation where high- and low-salience distractors captured attention equally, participants no longer exhibited this preference. Our results suggest that observers prefer the conditions in which they search most efficiently, even when those conditions involve stronger recruitment of suppressive mechanisms of distractor processing.