title: Salience drives non-spatial feature repetition effects in cueing tasks.
abstract: In an exogenous cueing task repeating a non-spatial feature can benefit performance if the feature is task-relevant to a discrimination response. Previous studies reporting this effect have used complex displays. In the current study, we look at the generalizability of this effect, by extending it to a simple exogenous cueing paradigm in which the cue and target displays each consist of single-object onsets. We also investigate the influence of task-relevant and irrelevant features independently within the same experiment. Consistent with previous studies, we find non-spatial feature repetition benefits in all three experiments. Importantly, and unlike previous studies, we find that the most salient, rather than the task-relevant, feature drives the non-spatial feature repetition benefit. Furthermore, in addition to the previously observed non-spatial feature repetition benefits, we also found a spatially specific feature repetition benefit. We argue that these new findings are consistent with habituation accounts of attentional cueing effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. greg.huffman@mail.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Greg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Huffman
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Naseem
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Al-Aidroos
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pratt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Priming; Repetition effects; Space-based