Perseveration in attention: Inhibitory feature-based attentional sets automatically carry over to novel task contexts

The question of how subjects manage to ignore irrelevant information has recently been a topic of keen interest. Previous research examined whether display-wide feature-based attention is accomplished by the enhancement of relevant features or the inhibition of irrelevant features. ERP data indicated that inhibition of irrelevant distractor features is the main component of the observed attentional effect. In the present study behavioral data confirms that the effect is inhibitory, and that such inhibition can carryover from one task to another.