ABSTRACT

Sequential modulations in symbolic cueing tasks have been attributed to complete versus partial repetition/alternation of stimulus features between consecutive trials. This feature-integration hypothesis is questioned by recent findings and further investigated in the present study. In the first two experiments, when the cueing axes switched between trials, only complete alternation of cue directions and target locations existed. Nevertheless, significant sequence effects were still found in this condition, which did not support the feature-integration hypothesis. Furthermore, although sequence effects were still significant when stimulus identities were manipulated in Experiment 3, it was abolished when different cue categories (gaze and arrow) were presented as cues in Experiment 4. The findings suggest that the integration of stimulus features is not the only source of the sequential effect and some higher level cognitive mechanisms, possibly as described in the task-file or task organization hypotheses, are involved in the sequential modulations of symbolic cueing.

摘要

符号提示任务中的顺序调制已被归因于连续试验之间刺激特征的完全与部分重复/交替。最近的发现对这一特征整合假设提出了质疑，并在本研究中进行了进一步的研究。在前两个实验中，当提示轴在试验之间切换时，仅存在提示方向和目标位置的完全交替。然而，在这种情况下仍然发现了明显的序列效应，这不支持特征整合假设。此外，尽管在实验3中操纵刺激身份时序列效果仍然很显着，但在实验4中将不同的提示类别（凝视和箭头）作为提示呈现时，序列效果就消失了。