Benefits from negative templates in easy and difficult search depend on rapid distractor rejection and enhanced guidance.

While most research on attentional templates focuses on how attention can be guided toward targets, a growing body of research has been examining our ability to guide attention away from distractors using negative templates. A recent report showed larger reaction time benefits from negative templates during a difficult search task compared to an easy search task. However, it remains unclear what shifts in attentional processing led to these differences in reaction time benefits. In the current study, we tested the predictions of enhanced guidance and rapid rejection as potential explanations for the differential impact of negative templates based on search difficulty. In Experiment 1, we replicated the larger benefits from negative templates in a within-subjects design. In Experiment 2, we use eye tracking to measure the proportion of fixations directed towards target-colored distractors as an index of enhanced guidance and the dwell time on distractors as a measure of rapid rejection. We found more attentional guidance from negative templates in the difficult search condition. In addition, we found larger benefits of rapid rejection from negative templates in the difficult search condition. While we typically focus on templates as a way of guiding attention, these results highlight another key role played by attentional templates: rapid distractor rejection.