Priming of pop-out in the spatial-cueing paradigm

Searching for a unique target is faster when its unique feature repeats than when it changes. The standard account for this priming-of-popout (PoP) phenomenon is that selecting a target increases the attentional priority of its features in subsequent searches. However, empirical tests of this priority account have yielded contradictory findings. Here, we attempted to clarify why support of its predictions has been elusive in spatial-cueing studies. We noted that the repetition manipulation is stronger in PoP studies than in spatial-cueing studies: The target and nontarget features either repeat or swap in the former, whereas in the latter, the target color either repeats or changes while the nontarget color remains constant. Here, we implemented the stronger repetition manipulation in the spatial-cueing paradigm. If PoP affects attentional priority, the cue-validity effect should be larger when the current-cue color and previous-target color match than when they mismatch. The results of Experiment 1 revealed the opposite effect. Moreover, they showed that well-replicated contingent-capture effects do not hold when target and nontarget colors are allowed to swap—an observation that was confirmed in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, we verified that with our experimental set-up, a subtle manipulation of attentional priority could modulate cue-validity effects. While the present study does not resolve why evidence for the priority account is inconsistent with the spatial-cueing paradigm, they eliminate one possible reason for such inconsistency. They also reveal that allowing the target and distractors color to swap masks contingent-capture effects, thereby highlighting the complexity of spatial-cueing effects.