Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of stimulus familiarity on preview search. Japanese Hiragana characters were used as the search stimuli. All items were presented in normal orientation in Experiment 1, whereas they were presented with 180-degree rotation in Experiment 2. Three conditions were compared in each experiment: Preview, all-items baseline, and half-items baseline conditions. In the preview condition, 3, 6, or 9 items were previewed and 3, 6, or 9 items were added to the display. In the all-items baseline condition, 6, 12, or 18 items were presented. In the half-items baseline condition, 3, 6, or 9 items were presented. In both experiments, the search performance in the preview condition was almost identical to that in the half-items baseline condition. Results suggest that the preview benefit in visual search occurs independently of stimulus familiarity.
