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Much dilution little load in Lavie and Torralbo's (2010) response: A reply.

2010; American Psychological Association; Volume: 36; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/a0021907

1939-1277

Yehoshua Tsal, Hanna Benoni,

Multisensory perception and integration

Lavie and Torralbo (2010) present a response to the critique of load theory put forward by Tsal and Benoni (2010). We note that this response includes long discussions that dilute the major points of the debate and deals only with the first experiment in Tsal and Benoni, and we question whether it covers the broader critique we offer. In our reply, we argue against the points made by Lavie and Torralbo and propose that the critique of the theory is justified. Tsal and Benoni (2010) propose an alternative dilution interpre- tation to the theory of perceptual load. They argue that the elim- ination of distractor interference in high-load displays is not due to increases in load but rather to the dilution of the incongruent distractor by the neutral items present in these displays. Tsal and Benoni separate the effects of load and dilution by including dilution displays that are high in dilution and low in perceptual load. Low load is preserved in the dilution condition either by distinguishing the target from the neutral letters by color (Exper- iment 1) or location (Experiment 2) or by providing advanced knowledge of target color in multicolor displays (Experiments 3 and 4). The results of all experiments show that distractor inter- ference is eliminated under these dilution conditions, thereby sup- porting the alternative dilution interpretation. Tsal and Benoni also raise additional points against the main tenets of the theory of perceptual load. Lavie and Torralbo (2010) propose an alternative interpretation to the argument that neutral items dilute distractor processing. Their response is based on two claims. First, some of the neutral elements in the dilution displays used in our study fell close to the target resulting in a spillover of processing, in which neutral items are processed along with targets. Second, the dilution and high- load displays we used were different since only in the former was the target a color singleton. According to Lavie and Torralbo, the combination of these two factors resulted in our dilution effect. However, these claims pertain only to Experiment 1 in Tsal and Benoni. In Experiment 2, Tsal and Benoni did not manipulate color, and the neutral letters were all remote from the target, and they were also less salient than the distractor. In the last two experiments the dilution and high-load displays were identical. Clearly, the fact that the same dilution and reversed load effects arose as in Experiment 1 go against the points raised by Lavie and Torralbo.