Pascucci, D. , Mastropasqua, T. & Turatto, M.
Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, Rovereto, Italy
In visual perception, the exposition to a visual target enhances the processing of the same target on a future encounter (Schacter, 1998). The priming of pop out (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994) provides an example of this perceptual facilitation, in which the repetition of the same target-distractors colour configuration, increases the speed with which target is discriminated. However, little is known as to whether priming of pop-out also improves target visibility. The aim of the present study is to evaluate whether the repetition of the singleton target color can change its visibility, which was manipulated via metacontrast masking. To this aim the color of the target was either kept constant (blocked condition) or changed randomly (random condition). Results showed that subjects were better at identifying the target in the blocked as compared to the random condition. This suggests a possible interaction between memory and attention-perception mechanisms. Interestingly, however, when repetitions of the same color in the random condition are considered, target visibility increased for runs up to 3, but then decreased for longer runs. We hypothesize that this could reflect mechanisms of “switch expectation” that interfere with the visual short memory system.