Carry-over of attentional settings between distinct tasks: A transient effect independent of top-down contextual biases

•Attentional settings in a task persist to a second unrelated task, affecting search.•Top-down biases within scenes have no impact on the persistence of attentional set.•The effect of a previously relevant attentional set on eye movements is brief. Top-down attentional settings can persist between two unrelated tasks, influencing visual attention and performance. This study investigated whether top-down contextual information in a second task could moderate this “attentional inertia” effect. Forty participants searched through letter strings arranged horizontally, vertically, or randomly and then made a judgement about road, nature, or fractal images. Eye movements were recorded to the picture search and findings showed greater horizontal search in the pictures following horizontal letter strings and narrower horizontal search following vertical letter strings, but only in the first 1000 ms. This shows a brief persistence of attentional settings, consistent with past findings. Crucially, attentional inertia did not vary according to image type. This indicates that top-down contextual biases within a scene have limited impact on the persistence of previously relevant, but now irrelevant, attentional settings.