Target familiarity and visual working memory do not influence familiarity effect in visual search

Familiarity effect refers to the phenomenon that searching for a novel target among familiar distractors is more efficient than that searching for a familiar target among novel distractors. While the familiarity of distractors is considered as a key role on familiarity effect, the familiarity of targets contribute to this asymmetric visual search is unclear. The present study investigated how target familiarity influences visual search efficiency from the perspective of perceptual load. Experiment 1 using two similar Chinese characters (“甲” and “由”) suggested that searching for a familiar target from familiar distractors is an inefficient search process in Chinese context. Experiment 2 adopted a dual-task paradigm with a visual working memory task to increase the perceptual load and attempt to affect the efficiency of searching a novel target (mirrored “舌”) from familiar distractors (“舌”). Results demonstrated no difference in the search efficiency between single and dual-task conditions. The present study suggests that the familiarity of target does not influence the search efficiency with familiar distractors when involving semantic processing of Chinese characters. Additionally, the interference of extra working memory load would not impair the efficiency of searching target among familiar distractors, supporting the critical effect of distractor familiarity on the efficiency of visual search.