Threefold effect of peripheral precues: alertness, orienting, and response tendencies.

Three experiments were run revealing that peripheral cues exert an alerting and orienting effect. Novel is the finding that peripheral cues induce a (hidden) tendency to respond to the cued side, which interacts with the response tendency elicited by the subsequent following target. Compatible S-R mappings revealed either a reversed or no response tendency in cue conditions as compared to uncued conditions. Incompatible mappings mostly showed a decrease in response tendencies under influence of the peripheral cue. An increase of the interval between the cue and the target up to 500 ms resulted in a return to the baseline condition (without cue). The findings for the compatible mappings may be interpreted in terms of an extra recoding operation that was induced by peripheral cues. Inconsistencies found for incompatible S-R mappings might be attributed to the dual presence of recoding operations on account of the cue and the target.