Figure 1

Schematic illustration of the four experimental conditions. In one condition, participants passively viewed the pictures (0 % task). Three further conditions included a feature-based counting task. Task-related stimuli were created by overlaying 6 thin horizontal or vertical lines. The lines superimposed on the IAPS pictures covered approximately 6 % of the picture and did not comprise the perceptibility of the IAPS pictures. The probability of task-related stimuli was varied across the three task conditions including 10 %, 50 %, or 100 % of trials (for the last two rows the fourth trial in the shown example is one of the rare target trials). In all conditions, pictures were presented as rapid and continuous stream. Abbreviations P, N, U refer to Pleasant, Neutral, and Unpleasant picture contents.