Vázquez, G. , Arriola, N. & Alonso, G.
University of the Basque Country
A series of experiments investigated the effect of pre-exposure schedule (concurrent, intermixed, and blocked) to two very similar visual stimuli (two coloured checkerboards) on the ability of human participants to discriminate between them in a “same/different” judgment task. When participants were also required to judge stimuli as same or different during pre-exposure, accuracy on the subsequent task was greater after concurrent and intermixed pre-exposure than blocked pre-exposure. Reaction time was lower after concurrent pre-exposure. This pattern was attenuated or disappeared when feedback was not given after performance during the task. These results are discussed in relation to the selective attention mechanism proposed for explaining perceptual learning. Acknowledgements: Grants from MICINN (PSI2008-00412) and the Basque Government (IT-276-07).