Jt. Mordkoff et He. Egeth, RESPONSE-TIME AND ACCURACY REVISITED - CONVERGING SUPPORT FOR THE INTERACTIVE RACE MODEL, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 19(5), 1993, pp. 981-991
The interactive race model embodies 2 central claims: that divided att
ention is best described as a race between separately processed codes
and that the 2 types of design contingency to which the model is sensi
tive affect different processing stages. Previous support for the mode
l has come from a series of redundant-target tasks examining reaction
time (RT) (J. T. Mordkoff & S. Yantis, 1991). We tested both central c
laims using near-threshold, accuracy tasks. This approach capitalizes
on a known difference between RT and accuracy measures: that (in simpl
e tasks) accuracy is sensitive only to perceptual manipulations, where
as RT is affected by both perceptual and postperceptual factors (J. L.
Santee & H. E. Egeth, 1982). The results from 3 experiments provide c
onverging support for the proposed loci of the 2 contingency-sensitive
mechanisms within the interactive race model, as well as additional e
vidence concerning the differential sensitivities of RT and accuracy m
easures.