Positional priming of pop-out is nested in visuospatial context

Abstract

The present study investigated facilitatory and inhibitory positional priming using a variant of Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1996) priming of pop-out task. Here, the singleton target and the distractors could be presented in different visuospatial contexts-but identical screen locations-across trials, permitting positional priming based on individual locations to be disentangled from priming based on interitem configural relations. The results revealed both significant facilitatory priming, i.e., faster reaction times (RTs) to target presented at previous target relative to previously empty locations, and inhibitory priming, i.e., slower RTs to target at previous distractor relative to previously empty locations. However, both effects were contingent on repetitions versus changes of stimulus arrangement: While facilitation of target locations was dependent on the repetition of the exact item configuration (e.g., T-type followed by T-type stimulus arrangement), the inhibitory effect was more "tolerant," being influenced by repetitions versus changes of the item's visuospatial category (T-type followed by Z-type pattern; cf. Garner & Clement, 1963). The results suggest that facilitatory and inhibitory priming are distinct phenomena (Finke et al., 2009) and that both effects are sensitive to subtle information about the arrangement of the display items (Geyer, Zehetleitner, & Müller, 2010). The results are discussed with respect to the stage(s) of visual pop-out search that are influenced by positional priming.

Spatial priming in ecologically relevant reference frames

“…By this account, priming only lasts for roughly eight trials-in contrast to the long-term effects of contextual cueing-because a stable association between the spatial configuration and a specific target location never develops. A complementary prediction, made by Geyer et al, is that priming would suffer if the spatial configurations were varied from trial to trial, which is indeed what they found, supporting a linkage between the two spatial phenomena (Geyer et al, 2007; see also Gokce, Müller, & Geyer, 2013). If one considers configuration repetitions as repetitions of an object structure, this study also lends support for spatial priming occurring within an object-centered frame of reference, although this condition is more analogous to our combined retino/spatio/object-centered priming condition.…”

Positional priming of visual pop-out search is supported by multiple spatial reference frames

“…Prior research had shown that position priming is largely independent of color priming (e.g., Maljkovic and Nakayama, 1996; Gokce et al, 2013), but may interact with response priming, particularly when response speed is low (e.g., Lamy et al, 2010). Given this, positional priming may be affected by repetitions versus changes of observers’ overt search task response.…”

Testing the role of response repetition in spatial priming in visual search

“…g . , G e y e r, M ü l l e r, & Krummenacher, 2007;Gokce et al, 2013). As such, it may be possible, for example, to shift the eye and all stimuli in the scene the same distance in between trials and still obtain response-dependent spatial priming.…”

“…Simply, if target-target spatial priming is positive when the response repeats and weaker, reversed or nonexistent when the response switches, the claim can be made that the target-target priming effect is mainly or exclusively on postselective processes. Other processes that are commonly linked to attention may play a much smaller role (e.g., Gokce et al, 2014;Gokce et al, 2013Gokce et al, , 2015.…”