  What are the cognitive after-effects of making a similarity judgement? What,
cognitively, is left behind and what effect might these residues have on
subsequent processing? In this paper, we probe for such after-effects using a
visual search task, performed after a task in which pictures of real-world
objects were compared. So, target objects were first presented in a comparison
task (e.g., rate the similarity of this object to another) thus, presumably,
modifying some of their features before asking people to visually search for
the same object in complex scenes (with distractors and camouflaged
backgrounds). As visual search is known to be influenced by the features of
target objects, then any after-effects of the comparison task should be
revealed in subsequent visual searches. Results showed that when people
previously rated an object as being high on a scale (e.g., colour similarity or
general similarity) then visual search is inhibited (slower RTs and more
saccades in eye-tracking) relative to an object being rated as low in the same
scale. There was also some evidence that different comparison tasks (e.g.,
compare on colour or compare on general similarity) have differential effects
on visual search.
