Feature integration is not the whole story of the sequence effects of symbolic cueing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sequential modulations in symbolic cueing tasks have been attributed to complete versus partial repetition/alternation of stimulus features between consecutive trials. This feature-integration hypothesis is questioned by recent findings and further investigated in the present study. In the first two experiments, when the cueing axes switched between trials, only complete alternation of cue directions and target locations existed. Nevertheless, significant sequence effects were still found in this condition, which did not support the feature-integration hypothesis. Furthermore, although sequence effects were still significant when stimulus identities were manipulated in Experiment 3, it was abolished when different cue categories (gaze and arrow) were presented as cues in Experiment 4. The findings suggest that the integration of stimulus features is not the only source of the sequential effect and some higher level cognitive mechanisms, possibly as described in the task-file or task organization hypotheses, are involved in the sequential modulations of symbolic cueing.