Abstract
Covert spatial cueing effects refer to the finding that targets appearing in the location of a previous cue stimulus are typically responded to more rapidly than targets appearing at different locations than the cue. One explanation of these effects is that the cue captures attention, so that attention is already at the target location when the target appears, resulting in faster responses relative to when targets appear at an uncued new location that requires a shift of attention. Here, however, we investigate the possibility that the relationship between cues and targets is more complicated than just location repetition by viewing cues and targets as separate event files which contain stimulus features (including location) that must be formed before responses can be made. To do this, we varied the relationship be the features of cues and targets to investigate the effect of cue-target similarity on spatial cueing effects, as cues and targets could either match in shape (Experiment 1) and/or color (Experiment 2), and could appear at same or different locations. Therefore, on each trial the target could switch from any of the cue stimulus's features or location or could repeat some or all these features allowing us to examine response time differences given event file repetition. If location repetition is sufficient to produce cueing effects then similar cueing benefits are expected regardless of cue-target feature overlap. Contrary to this prediction, spatial cueing interacted with shape repetition; shape switches between the cue and target attenuated (Experiment 1), or eliminated (Experiment 2), spatial cueing effects. When shape repeated, however, repeating location significantly improved performance. Shape and color also interacted with shape repetition having larger effect if color also repeated. Therefore, it seems that more than location repetition is a factor is spatial cueing effects.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015