DISRUPTION AND MAINTENANCE OF SKILLED VISUAL-SEARCH AS A FUNCTION OF DEGREE OF CONSISTENCY

The present experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of var ying degrees of task consistency on the performance and maintenance of skill in a semantic-category visual search task. Four groups of parti cipants first received 6000 trials of consistent mapping (CM) training on two different categories. The participants then performed 4000 tri als in which one of the previously trained categories remained 100% co nsistent, whereas the other previously trained category became either 100%, 67%, 50%, or 33% consistent. This second phase of the experiment allowed for the examination of disruption of the search skill as a fu nction of degree of consistency. Subsequent to the degree of consisten cy manipulation, 100% consistency was restored and participants perfor med another 4200 CM trials. Results indicate that performance was disr upted by inconsistency and that disruption increased as consistency de creased. On the return of task consistency, performance improved rapid ly to predisruption levels, though some performance disruption was evi dent. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.