The perceptual load hypothesis posits that early and late selection occurs under conditions of high and low perceptual load, respectively. Recent work, however, suggests that the absence of a congruency effect in high-load trials – the behavioral signature of early selection in studies of perceptual load – may not provide an exhaustive index of failing to identify task-irrelevant distractors. Prior research also suggests that the congruency sequence effect (CSE) – a modulation of the congruency effect after incongruent relative to congruent trials – provides complementary information about whether participants identify distractors. We therefore conducted a novel test of the perceptual load hypothesis that employed both the congruency effect and the CSE as measures of distractor identification. Experiment 1 revealed that distractors were identified not only in low-load trials but also in high-load trials wherein there was no overall congruency effect. Experiment 2 further revealed which task parameters allowed us to observe such “hidden” distractor identification. These findings suggest that perceptual load is not always a crucial determinant of early versus late selection.