Strategic eects on object-based attentional selection Nicholas J. Cepeda * , Arthur F. Kramer Department of Psychology, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, 405 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Received 30 June 1998; received in revised form 25 January 1999; accepted 8 February 1999 Abstract The same-object bene®t, that is faster and/or more accurate performance when two target properties to be identi®ed appear on one object than when each of the properties appear on dierent objects, has been a robust and theoretically important ®nding in the study of at- tentional selection. Indeed, the same-object bene®t has been interpreted to suggest that at- tention can be used to select objects and perceptual groups rather than unparsed regions of visual space. In the present studies we report and explore a dierent-object bene®t, that is faster identi®cation performance when two target properties appear on dierent objects than when they appear on a single object. The results from the three experiments suggest that the dierent-object bene®t was the result of mental rotation and translation strategies that subjects performed on objects in an eort to determine whether two target properties matched or mismatched. These image manipulation strategies appear to be performed with similar but not with dissimilar target properties. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of object-based attentional selection. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classi®cation: 2300; 2323; 2346 Keywords: Object-based attention; Comparison strategies; Visual attention 1. Introduction A number of spatial metaphors have been used to describe the manner in which attention is deployed in the visual environment. For example, Posner (1980); (see Acta Psychologica 103 (1999) 1±19 * Corresponding author. 0001-6918/99/$ - see front matter Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 0 1 - 6 9 1 8 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - 9