Combining attributes in specified and categorized target search: Further evidence for strategic differences

Abstract

Three experiments explored the processing of color and form. In these, subjects were required to report the color of a rectangle surrounding a target item that appeared in the middle of a stream of nontarget stimuli. A different pattern of errors was found when the target was cued by category rather than by identity, both when the target was a digit in a stream of letters (Experiment 1) and when it was a word in a sequence of words (Experiments 2 and 3). The results endorse those of McLean, Broadbent, and Broadbent (1982) by providing further convergent evidence that the processes involved in perceptual selection are not invariant, but instead can be characterized in terms of two alternative processing modes. In the first mode, the two task-relevant stimulus features are processed in parallel, whereas in the second mode, they are processed serially. © 1984 Psychonomic Society, Inc.