RT patterns and chunks in SRT tasks: a reply to Jiménez (2008).

Previous research has shown that the formation of units or chunks contributes to sequence learning in serial reaction time (SRT) tasks (Koch & Hoffmann, Psychological Research 63:22-35, 2000). However, some of these results were assumed to be unrelated to sequence learning and to reflect preexistent response tendencies (Jiménez, Psychological Research 72:387-396, 2008). In the Experiment of this study, we aimed to evaluate this issue.

Movements or targets: what makes an action in action-effect learning?

According to ideomotor theory, actions become linked to the sensory feedback they contingently produce, so that anticipating the feedback automatically evokes the action it typically results from. Numerous recent studies have provided evidence in favour of such action-effect learning but left an important issue unresolved. It remains unspecified to what extent action-effect learning is based on associating effect-representations to representations of the performed movements or to representations of the targets at which the behaviour aimed at.

Eye vergence is susceptible to the hollow-face illusion.

When an observer looks at a hollow mask of a face, a normal convex face is often perceived [the hollow-face illusion--Gregory 1973, in Illusion in Nature and Art (London: Duckworth) pp 49-96]. We show that in exploring an illusory face, the eyes converge at the illusory and not at the real distances of fixated targets like the tip of the nose. The 'vergence error' appears even though the resulting disparities of the two retinal images of the target provide feedback that would allow an immediate correction.

Local contextual cuing in visual search.

Previous research has indicated that covariations between the global layout of search displays and target locations result in contextual cuing: the global context guides attention to probable target locations. The present experiments extend these findings by showing that local redundancies also facilitate visual search. Participants searched for randomly located targets in invariant homogenous displays, i.

The influence of response--effect compatibility in a serial reaction time task.

Participants performed a serial reaction time task, responding to either asterisks presented at varying screen locations or centrally presented letters. Stimulus presentation followed a fixed second-order conditional sequence. Each keypress in the experimental groups produced a contingent, key-specific tone effect.