Illusory conjunctions are alive and well: A reply to Donk (1999)

When presented with a red T and a green O, observers occasionally make conj unction responses and indicate that they saw a green T. These errors have b een interpreted as reflecting separable processing stages of feature detect ion and integration with the illusory conjunctions arising from a failure a t the integration stage. Recently, M. Donk (1999) asserted that the phenome non of illusory conjunctions is an artifact. Conjunction reports are actual ly the result of confusing a nontarget item (O in the example above) for a target item (the letter T) and (correctly) reporting the color associated w ith the (incorrectly) selected target. The authors demonstrate that althoug h target-nontarget confusion errors are a potential source of conjunction r eports, there is a plethora of findings that cannot be accounted for by thi s confusion model. A review of the literature indicates that in many studie s, illusory conjunctions do result from a failure to properly integrate fea tures.