Proactive inhibition as a function of orienting task characteristics

Two release from proactive inhibition experiments were conducted, in which orienting tasks were employed to direct subjects' attention to particular features of words. Experiment 1 employed two such tasks which emphasized either semantic or nonsemantic features, while both orienting tasks in Experiment 2 directed attention to semantic features of words. Although significant release was obtained with a change in task in these experiments, the level was considerably lower in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. The data were interpreted in terms of a theoretical orientation that emphasizes item differentiation as a major determinant of retrieval probability. It was argued that the degree of differentiation depends to some extent on the specific tasks employed and the extent to which they direct attention to different word features.