Interaction effects in successive visual displays: An extension of the Eriksen-Collins paradigm

The paradigm of Eriksen and Collins, in which one-haft of the elements of a display is assigned randomly to each of two successively presented fields, was applied to the visual discrimination of one- and two-dimensional Markov constraints. In contrast with the two-flash masking paradigm, performance in the Eriksen-Collins paradigmimproves as the interval between the successively presented fields is shortened. Constraint thresholds may increase with interfield intervals as short as 20 msec. In contrast with the results of most visual information-processing tasks, increasing the duration of each field may result in sharplyelevated thresholds. The elevation of thresholds can be reduced through repeated presentation. Sharp asymmetries are also obtained with differential brightness of the two fields.