The long and the short of priming in visual search

Abstract

Memory affects visual search, as is particularly evident from findings that when target features are repeated from one trial to the next, selection is faster. Two views have emerged on the nature of the memory representations and mechanisms that cause these intertrial priming effects: independent feature weighting versus episodic retrieval of previous trials. Previous research has attempted to disentangle these views focusing on short term effects. Here, we illustrate that the episodic retrieval models make the unique prediction of long-term priming: biasing one target type will result in priming of this target type for a much longer time, well after the bias has disappeared. We demonstrate that such long-term priming is indeed found for the visual feature of color, but only in conjunction search and not in singleton search. Two follow-up experiments showed that it was the kind of search (conjunction versus singleton) and not the difficulty, that determined whether long-term priming occurred. Long term priming persisted unaltered for at least 200 trials, and could not be explained as the result of explicit strategy. We propose that episodic memory may affect search more consistently than previously thought, and that the mechanisms for intertrial priming may be qualitatively different for singleton and conjunction search. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-015-0860-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Timing a week later: The role of long-term memory in temporal preparation

“…Intriguingly, the pool model that Taatgen and Van Rijn proposed as an account for these effects is based on principles of memory storage similar to those of MTP. Finally, in the more distant domain of visual search, it has been observed that selection is faster when target features are repeated from one trial to the next, and in the case of conjunction search these effects even occur on the long term, that is, up to at least a week, as in the present experiment (Kruijne & Meeter, 2015, 2016.…”

Rapid and selective updating of the target template in visual search

“…More recent work using target identification tasks has extended the target frequency effect to situations in which one of two targets is always present. The more frequent target stimulus is detected more rapidly (Kruijne & Meeter, 2015). These findings firmly establish target frequency as a modulator of attentional priority.…”

“…However, in a color singleton search task in which the target was more often one color (e.g., red among green) rather than another (e.g., green among red), the frequency effect dissipated quickly. This was the case even when the singleton search task was difficult (Kruijne & Meeter, 2015).…”

“…Similar to conjunction search and unlike singleton search, the feature search task requires people to hold the specific target colors in the search template. This should produce episodic memory traces of the specific target features, a condition hypothesized to be important for establishing longterm frequency effects (Kruijne & Meeter, 2015). At the same time, the feature search task involves finding features that are exclusively associated with the target-none of the distractors possess the target features.…”

Effects of valence on selecting and memorizing spatial information from road maps

“…However, this process of information extraction from maps is initiated and surrounded by a personal, emotional context. Since emotion and cognition are interlaced aspects and the visual search for information acquisition is influenced by mood and memory (Kruijne & Meeter, 2015;Storbeck & Clore, 2005), this research aims at determining the effects of valence on selecting and memorizing spatial information from road maps (e.g. google maps).…”