Does perceptual intake speed reflect intelligent use of feedback in an inspection-time task? The effect of restricted...

To examine whether the development of effective strategies during inspection time (IT) required active learning processes, we gave subjects an IT task involving false feedback. This IT task (ADIT) started at an exposure duration of 20 ms and gradually increased until subjects could reliably discriminate IT stimuli. False feedback about correctness of discrimination was introduced to make the ADIT task particularly difficult for individuals who were attempting to develop and refine an IT-related strategy. There was no difference between ITs derived from the ADIT and a standard IT task (VIT). There were no differences in ITs for subjects given either truthful or false feedback on the ADIT task. However, an interaction did exist between the feedback condition and the two IT tasks. This interaction indicated that subjects with ostensibly better VITs had poorer performance on ADIT, compared with those subjects who had truthful feedback. This finding suggests that false feedback can disrupt effective performance on IT. Self-reported strategy use had a significant independent effect on the observed IT measures. Individuals who reported strategies were not significantly higher in IQ than those who did not report strategies.