Novelty and attention: Controls for retinal adaptation and for stimulus-response specificity

Abstract

Three experiments used a free-choice technique to investigate effects of novelty on selective attention. Ss underwent a habituation phase, during which combinations of spots of one color were presented, and then a test phase, during which spots of the familiar color and a novel color were presented together. Experiment 1 showed that, during the test phase, Ss were more likely to respond to novel stimuli whether manual or verbal responses were performed in both phases. Experiment 2 produced the same effect with different distances between stimuli and the fixation point for the two phases, ruling out retinal adaptation as an explanation. Experiment 3 showed the effect to occur when different responses were performed in the two phases, indicating that it is stimulus-specific. © 1971, Psychon. Sci.. All rights reserved.