The effects of location cuing on redundant-target processing

The present study is concerned with the redundany gain: the observation that subjects respond faster to simultaneously presented redundant targets than to single targets. This finding is usually interpreted as evidence for parallel, self-terminating, unlimited-capacity processing. Alternatively, it has been claimed that the reaction-time advantage with redundant targets is simply due to spatial uncertainty under single-target conditions. The present study tested this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, subjects responded when one, two, or three letters E were presented, and refrained from responding when one, two, or three letters F were presented. In half of the trials, location uncertainty was eliminated by presentation of a line segment at one the locations of the subsequently appearing target letters. The results reject the alternative spatial-uncertainty explanation: even when the location of the impending target is cued in advance, there is no attenuation of the redundancy gain. Experiment 2 served as a control experiment and showed a clear redundancy gain, even in conditions in which it was ensured that, before display onset, attention was directed to a location of one of the impending targets.