MULTIPLE-ELEMENT LINE SEGMENT PRECUES - ORIENTATION AND LOCATION EFFECTS ON ATTENTION

Three experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that a uniq uely oriented line segment located at the end of the directional flow produced by the alignment of the long axes of identically oriented bac kground segments will not be detected as rapidly as when the segment a ppears at locations within the flow. The hypothesis was supported with response time measured in Experiment 1. A location-cuing task was use d in the last two experiments, with the unique segment becoming a prec ue to indicate the location of an upcoming target character; accuracy was the dependent measure. Poorer detection of the unique segment at e nd-of-flow locations was shown not to be due to a local configuration effect produced by the uniquely oriented segment in conjunction with t he segment on either side. The time course of attentional development with multiple-segment precue displays was comparable to that with an a rrow at fixation as the precue, and slower than that with a line segme nt appearing alone.