The category effect in visual detection and partial report

Abstract

The category effect refers to the more efficient processing of a multi-item array that can occur when some of the items are known to be from an irrelevant category, such as letters instead of digits. Previous research has found category effects in visual search, visual detection, and partialreport tasks. The present experiments investigated the category effect in a task that combined elements of both visual detection and partial report. Experiment 1 found a strong category effect when there was only one item in the relevant category; Experiment 2 found no effect at all when there were three items in the relevant category. The results are discussed in terms of two common accounts of the category effect: partial analysis and parallel categorization. © 1985 Psychonomic Society, Inc.