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Colour–cueing in visual search
Author(s) -
Laarni Jari
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9450.00215
Subject(s) - psychology , visual search , stimulus (psychology) , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , affect (linguistics) , orientation (vector space) , visual perception , perception , social psychology , communication , neuroscience , geometry , mathematics , management , economics
Several studies have shown that people can selectively attend to stimulus colour, e.g., in visual search, and that preknowledge of a target colour can improve response speed/accuracy. The purpose was to use a form–identification task to determine whether valid colour precues can produce benefits and invalid cues costs. The subject had to identify the orientation of a “T”–shaped element in a ring of randomly–oriented “L”s when either two or four of the elements were differently coloured. Contrary to Moore and Egeth’s (1998) recent findings, colour–based attention did affect performance under data–limited conditions: Colour cues produced benefits when processing load was high; when the load was reduced, they incurred only costs. Surprisingly, a valid colour cue succeeded in improving performance in the high–load condition even when its validity was reduced to the chance level. Overall, the results suggest that knowledge of a target colour does not facilitate the processing of the target, but makes it possible to prioritize it.