Abstract
Previous research has shown that when the targets of successive visual searches have features in common, response times are shorter. However, the nature of the representation underlying this priming and how priming is affected by the task remain uncertain. In four experiments, subjects searched for an odd-sized target and reported its orientation. The color of the items was irrelevant to the task. When target size was repeated from the previous trial, repetition of target color speeded the response. However, when target size was different from that in the previous trial, repetition of target color slowed responses, rather than speeding them. Our results suggest that these priming phenomena reflect the same automatic mechanism as thepriming of pop-out reported by Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994). However, the crossover interaction between repetition of one feature and another rules out Maljkovic and Nakayamas (1994) theory of independent potentiation of distinct feature representations. Instead, we suggest that the priming pattern results from contact with an episodic memory representation of the previous trial.
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This research was supported by Grant R01 MH45584 from the National Institute of Mental Health to H.P. and by an NEI postdoctoral fellowship awarded to A.O.H.
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Huang, L., Holcombe, A.O. & Pashler, H. Repetition priming in visual search: Episodic retrieval, not feature priming. Memory & Cognition 32, 12–20 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195816
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195816