Evidence of limited capacity and noise reduction with single-element displays in the location-cuing paradigm

Precuing a location facilitates accuracy of identification of a target at that location and reduces noise from other nontarget characters in a multicharacter field. In 5 experiments, evidence for facilitation included higher accuracy with long precue-target intervals than with short intervals and higher accuracy when a precue indicated the correct location than with short intervals and higher accuracy when a precue indicated the correct location than when it indicated the wrong location. These results were found for each target-mask condition used (1 target with 1 mask, 1 target with 4 masks, or 1 target and 3 nontargets with 4 masks) in experienced and inexperienced observers. Evidence for noise reduction was found because accuracy was higher in the 1 target-1 mask condition than in the other conditions on correctly cued trials with short-cue-target intervals and on incorrectly cued trials. Data are related to methodological factors that are important to obtaining these effects and to capacity and noise reduction models.