Repetition priming reveals sustained facilitation
and transient inhibition in reaction time
Y. Tanaka and S. Shimojo (2000) Journal of Experimental Psychology,
Human Perception and Performance, 26 (4) 1421-1435.
Reaction time (RT) in a detection or a location discrimination task
increases when a target is repeatedly presented at the same
location (inhibition), while RT decreases
in the feature (color or orientation) discrimination
tasks (facilitation; Y. Tanaka and S. Shimojo 1996,
Vision Research 36, pp 2125-2140 ).
Here, the time course of inhibition
and facilitation was examined, using a repetition priming paradigm.
Results indicate that inhibition occurred only in the immediately successive
trial, whereas facilitation accumulated over several trials
with location repetition. Moreover, inhibition and facilitation
occurred in a task-relevant manner: detection/location
discrimination produced transient RT increase, whereas
feature discrimination tasks produced cumulative RT decrease.
These results suggest a functional
dissociation between spatial orienting and feature analysis,
as well as top-down modulations by tasks leading to different types
of visual memory.