Selective masking and processing strategy

A patterned masking stimulus was presented immediately following a 100-ms exposure of a centrally-fixated, eight-letter row. The bar-marker probe, indicating which letter to report, appeared either at onset (simultaneous cue), or at offset (delayed cue) of a letter row. A selective-masking effect--greater masking at the centre positions than at the ends of a row--was obtained with the delayed cue. With the simultaneous cue, all positions were masked and there was no selective-masking effect. These results indicate that the effects of a patterned masking stimulus are dependent upon the processing strategy, and they support previous interpretations of selective masking which state that it is produced by an ends-first processing strategy.