Attentional priming in Go No-Go search tasks

Abstract

Go/No-Go responses in visual search yield different estimates of the operation of visual attention than more standard present versus absent tasks. Such minor methodological tweaks have a surprisingly large effect on measures that have, for the last half-century or so, formed the backbone of prominent theories of visual attention. Secondly, priming effects in visual search have a dominating influence on visual search, accounting for effects that have been attributed to top-down guidance in standard theories. Priming effects in visual search have, however, never been investigated for searches involving Go/No-Go present/absent decisions. Here, Go/No-Go tasks were used to assess visual search for an odd-one-out face, defined either by color or facial expression. The Go/No-Go responses for the color-based task were very fast for both present and absent trials and notably, they resulted in negative slopes of RT and set size. Interestingly "Go" responses were even faster for the target absent case. The "Go" responses were, on the other hand, much slower for expression and became higher with increased set-size, particularly for the target-absent response. Priming effects were considerable for the feature search, but for expression, the target absent priming was strong, but did not occur for target present trials, arguing that repetition priming for this search mainly reflects priming of context rather than target features. Overall, the results reinforce the point that Go/No-Go tasks are highly informative for theoretical accounts of visual attention and are shown here to cast a new light on attentional priming.

Keywords: Attentional priming; Go/No-Go tasks; Theories of attention; Visual search.