On the dissociation between compound and present/absent tasks in visual search: Intertrial priming is ambiguity driven

Olivers, Christian N. L.; Meeter, Martijn · 2006 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1080/13506280500308101

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Summary

This study investigates the dissociation in intertrial priming effects between two types of visual search tasks: present/absent tasks, where participants determine if a target exists, and compound tasks, where participants identify a specific feature of a target that is always present. While intertrial priming—where repeating a target-defining feature speeds up reaction times—is robust in present/absent tasks, it is often absent or reduced in compound tasks. The authors propose an ambiguity-driven account to explain this discrepancy, hypothesizing that priming serves to resolve uncertainty in the stimulus-response relationship. Present/absent tasks are inherently ambiguous because the observer must decide if a signal is present amidst noise, whereas compound tasks lack this ambiguity as the target’s presence is certain and the response is independent of the target-defining feature. To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted five experiments. Experiment 1 directly compared present/absent, compound, and compound/absent tasks within the same participants, controlling for whether target changes were feature-based or dimension-based. Results confirmed strong priming in present/absent tasks but no significant priming in either compound condition, ruling out explanations based on target salience or the type of target change. Experiment 2 examined a go/no-go task, where participants responded to target presence but withheld response for absence. Priming remained strong, indicating that an overt "absent" response is not required; rather, the uncertainty of target presence drives the effect. Experiment 3 addressed potential confounds related to reaction time speeds by using a faster compound localization task, yet priming remained absent, suggesting the effect is not merely drowned out by slower responses in standard compound tasks. Experiments 4 and 5 directly tested the ambiguity hypothesis by reintroducing uncertainty into the compound task. In Experiment 4, ambiguity was increased by introducing foil distractors on absent trials, creating competition. Experiment 5 alternated compound trials with present/absent trials, creating task uncertainty. In both cases, intertrial priming returned in the compound task. These findings demonstrate that when the stimulus-response relationship becomes ambiguous, the implicit priming mechanism becomes functional to aid in resolution. The significance of these findings lies in challenging the view that intertrial priming is a fixed, automatic property of visual search. Instead, the results suggest that priming is a flexible, adaptive mechanism driven by the need to resolve ambiguity. This implies that the attention system implicitly adjusts its sensitivity based on task demands and uncertainty levels, rather than operating through rigid, stimulus-specific pathways. The study provides a unified explanation for conflicting literature on priming in compound tasks, attributing differences to the level of ambiguity inherent in the task design rather than to specific stimulus features or response requirements.

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• visual search