Intervening response events between identification targets do not always turn repetition benefits into repetition costs

Abstract

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.

Dissociating Orienting Biases From Integration Effects With Eye Movements

“…Manual RTs, on the other hand, should reveal roughly symmetrical target location repetition benefits and costs for manual response repeats and switches, respectively (i.e., integration effects). That is, on the basis of our previous work (Hilchey et al, 2017a;2017b), we Dissociating integration effects from orienting biases 5 expect no overall RT benefit or cost based on the repetition of target location. Thus, hypothetically, manual RTs will reveal integration effects with minimal evidence of orienting biases whereas the saccadic RTs will reveal orienting effects with minimal evidence of integration effects.…”

“…This is precisely the pattern that occurs in these feature discrimination tasks. Whereas orienting biases cannot be ruled out by such findings, they are rendered entirely hypothetical because the results can be accounted for in full by the TEC (Hilchey et al, 2017a;2017b).…”

“…In these cases, if the second target response repeats the first, RTs are faster, or facilitated, when target location repeats. In contrast, if the second target response is different than the first, RTs are slower, or inhibited, when target location repeats (e.g., Terry, Valdes & Neill, 1994;Notebaert & Soetens, 2003;Hommel, 2005;Rajsic, Bi & Wilson, 2013;Hilchey, Rajsic, Huffman & Pratt, 2017a;2017b). These opposing facilitatory and inhibition effects are roughly symmetrical, making it unclear whether shifts of attention are biased in favor of (Tanaka & Shimojo, 1996) or against (Taylor & Donnelley, 2002) prior target locations.…”

“…In this report, this long-standing ambiguity is resolved by requiring both eye movement localization and manual feature discrimination responses to targets. Our rationale for this approach and its success hinges on several key notions: (1) integration effects are a type of 'prepared reflex' (Hommel, 2005), brought on by feature discrimination (Hilchey et al, 2017a;2017b), (2) integration effects are confined mainly to the responses involved with making discrimination judgments, similar in principle to distractor-response integration effects (Moeller, Hommel & Frings, 2015), and (3) integration effects can completely overshadow orienting biases (e.g., Klein, 2004).…”

“…Historically, the target sample size of twenty is more than adequate for detecting integration effects in manual RT data (e.g., Hilchey et al, 2017a;2017b) and orienting biases in eye movement RT data, presuming inhibited re-orienting (e.g., Hilchey, Klein & Satel, 2014;Hilchey, Klein & Ivanoff, 2012).…”