Does the Cue’s Feature Matter?

To find out the level of processing of pre-attentive objects we preferred to use cues, i.e., a transient visual stimuli that may attract attention automatically or voluntarily (peripherally or centrally presented cues). In one of our recent experiments (Authors, Unpublished experiment), we observed that color similarity of cue and target does not improve subject’s performance in a peripherally cued detection task. In this paper we describe another experiment which had two kinds of symbolic cues presented in the fixation point (at the center) and showed the subjects where to deploy their attention (right or left) according to their shapes. Subjects were asked to detect the target (i.e. a simple detection task) or to discriminate between two alternate targets, different in some features except color (i.e. a common discrimination task). We compared the reaction time (RT) in both types in same feature condition (target’s color was similar to cue’s) and different feature condition (target’s color was different from cue’s). Results showed significant difference between them. So we concluded that with increased exposure, color -as an unattended feature of the central cue- can also get processed and improve subjects performance.