Benefits from attention depend on the target type in location-precued discrimination.

In previous research, we found that precuing of attention to a target location greatly improved discrimination of targets that differed in line arrangement, but had little effect on discrimination of targets that differed in line orientation. In the present research, a number of other targets that represent various feature differences were used. The new data are consistent with and extend our earlier findings by showing that (1) there is some effect of precuing with all targets tested, and (2) the size of precuing effects varies in a complex way with the nature of the target. Moreover, the difficulty of the discrimination cannot explain the size of the precuing effects. A framework for understanding the events occurring during trials in the location-cuing paradigm is presented and applied to these results.