Do images involuntarily trigger search? A test of Pillsbury's hypothesis.

Pillsbury (1908) suggested that deciding to search for something in a scene consists of nothing more than forming a visual image of the target. If so, imaging should trigger search even when it would be more advantageous not to search. Subjects were cued to form an image of a specified object (e.g., tiger) and to press a key when they had done so. This initiated the presentation of a sequence of pictures, with a single target digit interspersed; the subject's task was to report this digit. The sequence contained a picture of the same type of object that the subject had just imaged (e.g., a tiger), either before or after the target digit. If this picture was detected involuntarily, an attentional blink should have impaired digit detection when the picture preceded the digit. This was confirmed in two experiments, even when instructions specifically encouraged subjects to discard the image and to avoid searching for it. The results support Pillsbury's hypothesis.