The stage of priming: Are intertrial repetition effects attentional or decisional?

In a visual search task, reaction times to a target are shorter when its features are repeated than when they switch. The present study investigated whether these priming effects affect the attentional stage of target selection, as proposed by the printing of pop-out account, or whether they modulate performance at a later, post-selectional stage, as claimed by the episodic retrieval view. Secondly, to test whether priming affects only the target-defining feature, or whether priming can apply to all target-features in a holistic fashion, two presentation conditions were invoked, that either promoted encoding of only the target-defining feature or holistic encoding of all target features. Results from four eye tracking experiments involving a size and colour singleton target showed that, first, priming modulates selectional processes concerned with guiding attention. Second, there were traces of holistic priming effects, which however were not modulated by the displays, but by expectation and task difficulty. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.