Abstract
Studies on intertrial priming have shown that in visual search experiments, the preceding trial automatically affects search performance: facilitating it when the target features repeat, and giving rise to switch costs when they change. These effects also occur at longer time scales: when one of two possible target colors is more frequent during an experiment block, this results in a prolonged and persistent facilitation for the color that was biased, long after the frequency bias is gone. In this study, we explore the robustness of such long-term priming. In one experiment, long-term priming was built up in one experimental session, and was then assessed in a second session a week later. Long-term priming persisted across this week, emphasizing that long-term priming is truly a phenomenon of long-term memory. In another experiment, participants were fully informed of the bias and instructed to prioritize the other, unbiased color. Nevertheless, long-term priming of the biased color persisted in this block. The results support the view that priming results from the automatic and implicit retrieval of memory traces of past trials.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016