Abstract
A horizontal search task was used to investigate the effects of association value (AV) and target retention on perceptual search times. Forty-eight Ss were required to locate a target trigram in a line of 10 field trigrams under the four possible combinations of high and low AV for target and field items. Each of these combinations appeared under conditions of forced target study or no forced target study prior to the search. Controls were provided for letter-search or partial recognition techniques, and random orders were used for equal distribution of practice effects over the blocks of 10 positions of the target. The results indicate that AV has only the effect of facilitating retention of target items and, therefore, has no direct influence on perceptual search times.
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The data for this study was collected while both authors were at Oklahoma City University.
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Davidson, E.H., Lucas, J.J. Perceptual search time as influenced by association value: Stimulus discriminability or stimulus retention?. Psychon Sci 25, 359–360 (1971). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335905
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335905