Can Specific Inspection Time Strategies be Inferred by their Latency?

Abstract

The use of apparent motion cues to guide inspection time (IT) discriminations has been taken to imply the vulnerability of IT to strategic processes. The current study measured the response latency of IT and IT-like tasks, on the grounds that strategic processing tends to be slow, and reflects the conscious use of motion cues during IT. The possibility that cue-reporters have an information-processing advantage prior to perceiving these cues was examined by giving subjects a critical stimulus duration task. IT/IQ correlations were found, irrespective of whether subjects reported using motion cues during IT or not. With the exception of performance on an IT task, there were no psychometric, information-processing, or response time differences between subjects who reported consistent use of motion cues and those who did not. Examination of response times reflecting the different tasks required to complete IT did not isolate a processing stage unique to motion-reporting individuals. Results from this small s...