The role of the cognitive context in the conservatism of unconscious visual sets

Rigidity of a verbal set was compared in three series of experiments: (1) pseudowords were presented at the set-forming stage and were changed for common words at the testing stage: (2) in the same conditions as in 1, an additional task of target localization in the matrix by two distinctive features was introduced: (3) in the additional target localization task, the spatial component was strengthened whereas image recognition component was reduced. The results confirmed Our hypothesis about the context-dependence of the rigidity of the visual set. This characteristic substantially depends on a working memory loading and cognitive tasks performed by it subject, in particular, the relationship between the degrees of involvement of the ventral and dorsal visual systems into the cortical processing of sequential verbal and nonverbal visual stimuli. The experimental paradigm can serve as it model for the investigation of the roles of the ventral and dorsal visual systems in the recognition function.