Search

Priming of attentional selection involves speeded selection of task-relevant visual search items when search stimuli remain constant between trials. Various paradigms involving different features have been used to study the nature of this priming. The tasks differ greatly in difficulty and the neural mechanisms involved, raising the question of how easily priming on one feature dimension can be used to draw conclusions about priming on another. Here, this was addressed by contrasting time courses and relative sizes of priming effects for the repetition of a lower-level and higher-level feature (color vs. facial expression). Priming was tested in two odd-one-out search tasks, one involving discrimination (experiments 1A and 1B), the other a present/absent judgment (experiments 2A and 2B). The main question was how similar the size and temporal profiles of priming are for the two features. The sizes of the priming effects were very different for color and expression and color priming effects lasted for much longer than expression priming (measured with memory kernel analyses), suggesting that the mechanisms behind the effects differ in their operational principles. Different forms of priming should only be compared with great caution and priming seems to occur at many levels of processing. Priming should be thought of as a general principle of perceptual processing.

Once presumed to be intimately related, feature integration and the consequences of attentional orienting are now often studied separately. Yet the paradigms used to study each can be highly similar; participants respond to a stimulus, which is then followed by a second stimulus, matching or mismatching the first on some feature(s). Given the similarities between the methods, it seems likely that these fields each could gain insights regarding their own work by looking at the other. Here we note a peculiarity of feature integration research: It relies on paradigms that require or encourage participants to identify the nonspatial features of a stimulus in order to make the correct response. This leaves open the question of whether feature integration effects can be found in tasks that do not require stimulus identity (e.g., color or shape) processing. To answer this question, we reviewed attentional orienting studies that manipulated whether stimulus identity repeated but that required only detection or localization responses, irrespective of stimulus identity. With one exception, feature integration effects were absent from those experiments. Furthermore, we attempted to replicate the exception and found no feature integration effects. Our review shows that detection and localization paradigms are particularly useful for studying the consequences of attentional orienting in the absence of integration effects, and that these same tasks provide a baseline to understand the sources of feature integration effects with only slightly variations in the basic task.

When there is a relatively long interval between two successive stimuli that must be detected or localized, there are robust processing costs when the stimuli appear at the same location. However, when two successive visual stimuli that must be identified appear at the same location, there are robust same location costs only when the two stimuli differ in their responses; otherwise same location benefits are observed. Two separate frameworks that inhibited attentional orienting and episodic integration, respectively, have been proposed to account for these patterns. Recent findings hint at a possible reconciliation between these frameworks-requiring a response to an event in between two successive visual stimuli may unmask same stimulus and same location costs that are otherwise obscured by episodic integration benefits in identification tasks. We tested this hybrid account by integrating an intervening response event with an identification task that would otherwise generate the boundary between same location benefits and costs. Our results showed that the intervening event did not alter the boundary between location repetition benefits and costs nor did it reliably or unambiguously reverse the common stimulus-response repetition benefit. The findings delimit the usefulness of an intervening event for disrupting episodic integration, suggesting that effects from intervening response events are tenuous. The divide between attention and feature integration accounts is delineated in the context of methodological and empirical considerations.

In an exogenous cueing task repeating a non-spatial feature can benefit performance if the feature is task-relevant to a discrimination response. Previous studies reporting this effect have used complex displays. In the current study, we look at the generalizability of this effect, by extending it to a simple exogenous cueing paradigm in which the cue and target displays each consist of single-object onsets. We also investigate the influence of task-relevant and irrelevant features independently within the same experiment. Consistent with previous studies, we find non-spatial feature repetition benefits in all three experiments. Importantly, and unlike previous studies, we find that the most salient, rather than the task-relevant, feature drives the non-spatial feature repetition benefit. Furthermore, in addition to the previously observed non-spatial feature repetition benefits, we also found a spatially specific feature repetition benefit. We argue that these new findings are consistent with habituation accounts of attentional cueing effects.

Mind wandering is associated with perceptual decoupling: the disengagement of attention from perception. This decoupling is deleterious to performance in many situations; however, we sought to determine whether it might occur in the service of performance in certain circumstances. In two studies, we examined the role of mind wandering in a test of "semantic satiation," a phenomenon in which the repeated presentation of a word reduces semantic priming for a subsequently presented semantic associate. We posited that the attentional and perceptual decoupling associated with mind wandering would reduce the amount of satiation in the semantic representations of repeatedly presented words, thus leading to a reduced semantic-satiation effect. Our results supported this hypothesis: Self-reported mind-wandering episodes (Study 1) and behavioral indices of decoupled attention (Study 2) were both predictive of maintained semantic priming in situations predicted to induce semantic satiation. Additionally, our results suggest that moderate inattention to repetitive stimuli is not sufficient to enable "dishabituation": the refreshment of cognitive performance that results from diverting attention away from the task at hand. Rather, full decoupling is necessary to reap the benefits of mind wandering and to minimize mind numbing.

Search performance is sequence-dependent. A specific finding observed in compound-search tasks consists of an interaction between cross-trial sequences (repetition vs. change) of the target-defining (primary) and response-defining (secondary) features: The effect of a target change is greater when the response stays the same than when the response changes. The present study tested whether this interaction arises from processes involved in target search or from later processes in compound tasks. Uncertainty about the upcoming target location-that is, the search component of compound tasks-was removed in different experiments, either by the use of exogenous spatial precues or by presenting only one, central item. Despite having removed the search component, we observed a robust interaction between target (primary) and response (secondary) feature sequences. These results suggest that this interaction originates from a processing stage concerned with discriminating the response feature of a single (selected) item, rather than from a search-related stage. Furthermore, the results support our multiple-weighting-systems hypothesis, according to which sequence effects in visual search tasks do not stem from a single, unitary mechanism; rather, multiple stages of processing on any given trial can lead to separate memory traces, which in turn have effects on different stages of processing on the subsequent trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have shown that repetition of search-relevant attributes facilitates visual search performance. For example, Maljkovic and Nakayama () showed that when observers search for a target defined by its color and report its shape, repetition of the target color speeds search, an effect known as priming of pop-out. While intertrial feature priming in search was initially thought to affect perceptual processes, the idea that it also affects postselection stages of processing is increasingly acknowledged. However, because in previous studies repetition of the motor response has typically been confounded with repetition of the response feature, it is not clear what mechanisms underlie the postselection effect of intertrial priming. In the present study, we dissociated the two repetition types. The results showed that repetition of the target-defining attribute from the previous trial affects selection of the motor response but not discrimination of the response attribute. The implications for current accounts of intertrial priming are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are pointers relating to the consequences of repetition, a general framework regarding the cognitive implications of processing multidimensional stimuli as a function of previous stimulus history is currently lacking. Three experiments using sounds varying in location and pitch were carried out, in which the immediate consequences of repeating or changing task-relevant and task-irrelevant attributes were orthogonally examined. A consistent pattern of data was shown, in that the magnitude of selective attention failure was larger when the task-relevant value repeated across trials, while differences between dimensions were larger when the task-relevant value changed across trials. These effects of irrelevance and dimension as a function of intertrial contingency are summarized in a model depicting the dynamic allocation of processing resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: T2 in an attentional blink paradigm served as a high- or low-frequency prime word for a subsequent repeated target. Consistent with research in visual word identification, only reported primes facilitated the identification of a target repeated approximately 8s after RSVP. Priming was greater for low- than high-frequency words. Analogous with masked priming, a blinked T2 facilitated report of a repeated target occurring 318ms after T2 in RSVP. The blinked repetition priming effect was additive with target frequency. These results indicate that: (1) the outcomes of processing prime words are a key factor in repetition priming effects, with blinked and reported T2s behaving like masked and unmasked primes, respectively, (2) there may be different sources of repetition effects, (3) there is a consistent cross-paradigm pattern of repetition effects that occurs as a function of prime–target interval and the ability to identify the word on its first and second presentation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The coding of stimuli and responses is crucial for human behaviour. Here, we focused primarily on the response codes (or response categories). As a method, we applied a combined dual-task and task-switch paradigm with a fixed task-to-hand mapping. Usually, negative effects (i.e., costs) are observed for response category repetitions under task switching. However, in several previous studies it has been proposed that such repetition effects do not occur, if the stimulus categories (e.g., “odd” if digits have to be classified according to their parity feature) are unequivocally mapped to specific responses. Our aim was to test this hypothesis. In the present experiments, we were able to distinguish between three different types of possible response codes. The results show that the participants generally code their responses according to abstract response features (left/right, or index/middle finger). Moreover, the spatial codes were preferred over the finger-type codes even if the instructions stressed the latter. This preference, though, seemed to result from a stimulus-response feature overlap, so that the spatial response categories were primed by the respective stimulus features. If there was no such overlap, the instructions determined which type of response code was involved in response selection and inhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]