Two experiments suggest that functional relations influence the processing of visual stimuli. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants are more accurate to detect targets engaged in functional interactions with related items than when they are simple surrounded by those items. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the accuracy of visual search in a non-scene display is affected when distractor items can be grouped functionally versus when distractor items are simple semantically related to each other. Overall, these data suggest that functional relations between objects affect the allocation of visual attention and by consequence, the processing of natural scenes and other structured visual stimuli.
![[first author]](images/one_arial_12.jpg){kind=small}
