The effects of stimulus rotation and familiarity in visual search

Rauschenberger and Yantis (2006) observed that an intersecting circle-line combination enjoyed significantly greater search efficiency when it was oriented to resemble a "Q" than when it was oriented so that the intersecting line was vertical (cf. Treisman and Souther, 1985). Although a control experiment made it unlikely that the obliqueness of the line was responsible for the observed benefit, there was no direct evidence that this benefit was attributable to the "Q-ness" of the stimulus. In the present study, a subset of Rauschenberger and Yantis's experiments was repeated with Chinese subjects, who had never been exposed to the Latin alphabet. For these subjects, there was no benefit for the"Q"-like stimulus, in contrast to the results of Rauschenberger and Yantis's study. These results show that a simple 45 degrees rotation of a stimulus can affect search efficiency significantly--but only when this rotation bestows meaning, or familiarity, to that stimulus.