Processing of information about location in brief visual displays

Within the context of the selective masking effect (Merikle, Coltheart, & Lowe, 1971), a series of five experiments investigated the utility of bar-marker probes as a poststimulus sampling procedure for partial report of brief visual displays. It was demonstrated that bar markers are inadequate as partial-report cues because subjects cannot properly locate the positions of the probes. An improved bar-marker procedure was developed which removed this problem of cue localization. Furthermore, it was shown that subjects, when given the opportunity, are able to report much more from brief visual displays than the bar-marker procedure typically permits. It was also suggested that subjects’ ability to employ bar-marker probes is governed by quite different factors than their capacity to report the contents of brief visual displays.