Influence of terminal action requirements on action-centered distractor effects.

Tipper (1985; Q J Exp Psychol A 37:571-590) has suggested that competing responses programmed to distracting stimuli are inhibited based on their relationship to the action being performed. The present paper reports two experiments designed to examine the influence of the terminal action of a task on the allocation of visual attention. Taken together the results suggest that when engaging targets in an environment, which includes distracting stimuli, competing responses are likely to be programmed in parallel and that the relationship between competing responses can include both spatial position and action characteristics.