B.1.5. Experiment 1.3: perceptual priming in block-wise cueing

In Experiment 2, the task was quite easy and the potential targets were few and highly similar. Above all, the target was not defined by its salience, and salience was not relevant for the task. On the contrary, in the experiments of Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994), the target was defined as the odd item and was consequently always salient. Perceptual priming was likely much more difficult to evidence in the present conditions than following the procedure of Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994). These authors showed that priming effects cumulated over trials and time. Therefore, we hypothesized that block-wise cueing could potentiate the priming effects, in the present experimental conditions. Indeed, if one item was made more often the target throughout a whole block, it should not only become relevant. In addition, priming effects, if any, should then cumulate, and perhaps become observable in the performance, by an increase of size effects in the large- and small- relevant condition. The third experiment aimed at evaluating how salience- and relevance-based attentional orienting were affected by such cumulative perceptual priming effects.