Can a single short-term mechanism account for priming of pop-out?. (October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kruijne, Wouter; Brascamp, Jan W.; Kristjánsson, Árni; Meeter, Martijn
• Is Part Of: Vision research. Volume 115(2015) Part A
• Page Start: 17
• Page End: 22
• Publication Date: 2015-10
• Subjects: Priming of pop-out -- Visual search -- Attention -- Kernel analysis -- Implicit memory; Vision -- Periodicals; 573.88
• DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2015.03.011
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0042-6989

Abstract

Highlights: Priming of pop-out is a short-term phenomenon and decays in 5–8 trials. This also holds after prolonged sequences repeating one target color. This contradicts earlier reports with the same paradigm. The results agree with a previously reported mathematical model of priming. Abstract: Trial-to-trial feature repetition speeds response times in pop-out visual search tasks. These priming effects are often ascribed to a short-term memory system. Recently, however, it has been reported that a 'build-up' sequence of repetitions could facilitate responses over 16 trials later – well beyond twice the typically reported time course (Vision Research, 2011, 51, 1972–1978). Here, we first report two replication attempts that yielded little to no support for such long-term priming of pop-out. The results instead fell in line with the predictions of a previously proposed computational model that describes priming as short-lived facilitation that decays over approximately eight trials (Vision Research, 2010, 50, 2110–2115). In the second part of this study, we show that these data are consistent with a simple formulation of decay with a single timescale, and that there is no significant priming beyond eight trials.