Repetition effects in visual search

Hillstrom, Anne P. · 2000 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03206924

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Summary

This study investigates whether repetition effects in visual search are limited to bottom-up guidance driven by stimulus salience or if they also operate in search guided by top-down factors. Previous research by Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994) demonstrated that repeating the defining feature of a target facilitates selection in salience-driven search, suggesting an implicit memory mechanism. Hillstrom addresses the question of whether this effect persists when search relies more heavily on top-down guidance, such as when targets are less salient or defined by conjunctions of features. The research aims to determine if the repetition effect is a general mechanism for target prioritization or specific to the determination of salience. The author conducted four experiments using visual search tasks where participants identified targets among distractors. Experiment 1 replicated Maljkovic and Nakayama’s singleton search, where participants searched for a color singleton and reported its orientation. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 progressively increased the demand for top-down guidance: Experiment 2 swapped the salience of defining and reported features; Experiment 3 used multiple singletons requiring feature search; and Experiment 4 employed conjunction search. In all experiments, participants responded to target attributes while the defining feature (e.g., color) was either repeated or changed from the previous trial. Reaction times (RTs) and accuracy were measured across blocked, alternating, and random trial sequences to distinguish repetition effects from expectancy effects. The results showed that repeating the defining feature of the target significantly speeded response times across all experimental conditions, including those requiring substantial top-down guidance. In Experiment 1, defining-feature repetition reduced RTs by an average of 105 msec, an effect that remained significant even when participants could not anticipate the target color (random sequences). The effect was cumulative, with longer strings of repetitions yielding faster responses, and it decayed over intervening trials, influencing up to three preceding trials. Crucially, repetition did not alter the priority of targets relative to distractors, as display size affected search equally regardless of repetition status. Accuracy analyses indicated that the RT benefits were not due to speed-accuracy tradeoffs. The findings demonstrate that the repetition effect is not confined to bottom-up, salience-driven search but also influences search guided by top-down factors. This suggests that the mechanism underlying the repetition effect is not merely a tool for determining salience but likely involves a short-term episodic memory system that facilitates target selection broadly. The study concludes that implicit memory plays a role in visual search regardless of the degree of top-down guidance, challenging models that restrict repetition effects to preattentive salience mechanisms. The results imply that memory for recent target features automatically aids in the prioritization stage of visual search, even when explicit target templates are required.

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• visual search