• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2022

Lavie's perceptual load theory (Lavie, 1995) proposes that the influence of distractors would be blocked as the load gets higher. Studies of perceptual load have usually adopted the flanker task, developed by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974), which measures reaction time on the target flanked by distractors. In the post-cueing forced task, participants should report the identity of the target cued later, and negative repetition effect (NRE) has often been observed. NRE means the effect that the accuracy of identification is worse when the target is flanked by the same nontargets than when flanked by different nontargets. This study has tried to check whether perceptual load has an effect on identification rate and NRE. Experiment 1 manipulated the similarity between targets and a distractor, and observed a tendency of NRE, but not the effect of perceptual load. Experiment 2 used 4, 2 (in two kinds of diagonal arrangement), or none distractors of the same identity to burden more perceptual load. NRE was significant and perceptual load showed significance but not a linear trend. Experiment 3 checked again whether NRE would be varied according to two levels of perceptual load strengthened by positional variability of load stimuli, but did not find the effect of perceptual load. It is concluded that perceptual load might have a limited effect on the early stage of perceptual processing due to divided attentional processing of the targets briefly exposed. Implications of this study were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.17-22
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• 2004

Two experiments were executed to investigate the effect of uniform connectedness systematically using the identification task of briefly exposed forms. Previous study observed negative repetition effected (i.e., NRE) in the identification task of two parentheses either connected or disconnected vertically, which was interpreted as an evidence against the hypothesis of uniform connectedness. Experiment I tested the hypothesis that NRE resulted from the Perceptual set or anticipating disconnected displays. Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that NRE resulted from relatively shorter exposure time. Using partial report task asking participants to report only the cued target and whole report task asking them to report the whole pattern with only connected displays, experiment 1 observed NRE respectively. Experiment 2, with longer exposure time equivalent to 83% accuracy and response bias controlled by use of catch trials, obtained the same NRE. Those results seems to indicate that uniformly connected forms were processed analytically by perceivers without task demand and futhermore, the hypothesis of uniform connectedness as a principle of perceptual organization is not plausible.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.365-391
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• 2013

Negative repetition effect (NRE) refers to the phenomenon that the accuracy of report is impaired when a target was flanked by the same distractor than when by alternative distractor. To probe the nature of NRE, this study introduced attention window(s) indicating the positions where a target might be presented, and non-attention window(s) where a target could not be presented. Attention windows are supposed to help participants detect targets readily. Two among three positions are indicated by attention windows in Exp. 1, and a single large attention window encompassing central two positions among four positions was used in Exp. 2, and either large or small attention window was used depending on the number of target candidates in Exp. 3. In the result of three experiments, NREs were consistently observed when both positions of a target and a distractor were indicated by previous attention windows. However, NREs (including its tendency) and its opposite, PREs were observed when a distractor was presented in the non-attention position, depending on its distance from the target and the size of attention window. It seems that this pattern of repetition effects is hard to be explained by repetition blindness hypothesis (Kanwisher, 1991), positional uncertainty hypothesis (Keren & Boer, 1985), and inhibitory attention capture hypothesis (Kwak et al., 1993). Instead it was proposed that shifting of spatial attention should be considered accordingly with the structure of stimulus display. The promising role of this task was discussed in studying the relation of attention and perception.