Most visual search experiments are conducted in a quiet environment so that participants can fully concentrate on the focal task without interruption. This is in stark contrast to the real world, which is usually riddled with distractions and interruptions. Many studies have looked into interruption costs using basic and applied visual search tasks and there is ample evidence that we take longer to find what we are looking for when we are interrupted. However, the underlying causes of these costs are presently unclear. This pre-data poster describes a research project in which we plan to systematically investigate the role of perceptual and cognitive load. In previous studies, interruptions were rather heterogenous and often either low or high in both perceptual and cognitive load, making it difficult to evaluate their relative contribution. In the planned research project, we will use a classic visual search task and an orthogonal manipulation of perceptual and cognitive load. During the interruption, participants will perform a running memory span task. The items will be clearly visible (low perceptual load) or masked with Gaussian visual noise (high perceptual load) and participants will recall the last item (low cognitive load) or the last four items on the list (high cognitive load). We will ask if the effects of perceptual and cognitive aspects of an interruption are additive and whether one type of interruption seems to be more potent than the other. We welcome any feedback and look forward to discussing the planned project with you.