Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 79, Issue 2, March 1992, Pages 101-114
Acta Psychologica

Is rapid performance improvement across short precue-target delays due to masking from peripheral precues?

https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(92)90027-BGet rights and content

Abstract

The role of lateral masking in more rapid performance improvement with peripheral than with central precuing was investigated. A peripheral precue to the inside of the target location provided less marking at zero precue-target delay than a precue to the outside (experiment 1) or a precue involving a partial target at the target location (experiment 2). There was no significant interaction between precue-target delay and precue type in a comparison of inside precues and precues involving a briefly-brightened box around the target location, although overall performance was significantly poorer with the latter (experiment 3). Performance was better at short precue-target delays with inside precues than with central precues (experiment 4), yet it did not improve significantly more rapidly. Minimizing lateral masking with peripheral precues thus eliminates the dramatic performance improvement sometimes observed across short precue-target delays, causing performance to be consistently better than with central precues across these delays.

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