THREEFOLD EFFECT OF PERIPHERAL PRECUES - ALERTNESS, ORIENTING, AND RESPONSE TENDENCIES

Three experiments were run revealing that peripheral cues exert an ale rting and orienting effect. Novel is the finding that peripheral cues induce a (hidden) tendency to respond to the cued side, which interact s with the response tendency elicited by the subsequent following targ et. Compatible S-R mappings revealed either a reversed or no response tendency in cue conditions as compared to uncued conditions. Incompati ble mappings mostly showed a decrease in response tendencies under inf luence of the peripheral cue, An increase of the interval between the cue and the target up to 500 ms resulted in a return to the baseline c ondition (without cue). The findings for the compatible mappings may b e interpreted in terms of an extra recoding operation that was induced by peripheral cues. Inconsistencies found for incompatible S-R mappin gs might be attributed to the dual presence of recoding operations on account of the cue and the target.