Direct selection by color for visual encoding.

In two experiments, we used rapid serial visual presentation tasks to examine the usefulness of color for the direct selection of visual information for perceptual encoding. The participants' task was to make a discrimination as to whether a target letter within a rapid sequence appeared in its upper- or lowercase version, and an advance cue indicated the color in which the target letter was most likely to occur. To maximize the usefulness of the cued color, in validly cued trials, we used sequences in which the target was the only item appearing in the cued color. In both experiments, accuracy was highest for validly cued trials. A cost-benefit analysis revealed a facilitory effect of valid cues and an inhibitory effect of invalid ones. These results support the idea that color cuing allows the direct selection of objects for further perceptual processing.