Previous work has shown that reaction times to find a target in displays that have been repeated are faster compared with displays that have never been seen before. This learning effect, termed 'contextual cueing' (CC), has been shown using contexts such as the configuration of the distracters in the display and the background colour. However, it is not clear how these two contexts interact to facilitate search. We investigated this here by comparing the strengths of these two cues when they appeared together. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distracter configural cues, compared with when the target was only predicted by configural information. The resultsshowed that the addition of a colour cue did not increase contextual cueing. In Experiment 2 participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distracter configuration compared with when the target was only cued by colour. The results showed that adding a predictive configural cue led to a stronger CC benefit. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the disruptive effects of removing either a learned colour cue or a learned configural cue and whether there was cue competition when colour and configural cues were presented together.Removing the configural cue was more disruptive to CC than removing colour, and configural learning was shown to overshadow the learning of colour cues. The data support a Configural Dominant account of CC, where configural cues act as the stronger cue in comparison to colour when they are presented together.3
There is conflicting evidence concerning the characteristics of binocular channels in the human visual system with respect to the existence of a 'pure' binocular channel that responds only to simultaneous stimulation of both eyes. Four experiments were conducted to resolve these discrepancies and to evaluate the evidence for the existence of such an exclusive binocular channel. In the first three studies, tilt aftereffects were measured after monocular adaptation. The relative sizes of the direct, interocularly transferred, and binocular aftereffects were not influenced by the configuration of the adapting pattern (experiment 1), or by the eye used for adaptation (experiment 2). There were also consistent interobserver differences in the relative sizes of the aftereffect seen after monocular adaptation (experiment 3). Taken together, these data raise questions about the appropriateness of a monocular adaptation paradigm for evaluating the presence of a pure binocular channel in observers with normal binocular vision. In experiment 4, in which the paradigm of alternating monocular adaptation was used, data were obtained that are consistent with the presence of a pure binocular channel.
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