Mean recognition task accuracy for Experiment 4.

<p>Photos behind black distractors represent trials where the tested scene matched one of the scenes presented concurrently with a black letter during the RSVP stream. Conversely, photos behind white targets represent trials where the tested scene matched the scene presented concurrently with the white target letter during the RSVP. Displays were identical to Experiment 2; however, participants were instructed to direct their attention to the letters at fixation but only perform the recognition memory task. Given that the white letter serves as a perceptually novel event, one might expect enhanced performance for scenes presented concurrently with the novel event. However, recognition performance was at chance for both test scenes presented concurrently with black distractor letters and with novel white letters, <i>t</i>(14) = 0.6798, <i>p</i> = 0.5077, and <i>t</i>(14) = 0.8373, <i>p</i> = 0.4165, respectively. A paired-samples <i>t</i> test revealed no significant differences for test scenes presented concurrently with black letters (52.89%±1.33%) and novel white letters (53.13%±3.96%), <i>t</i>(14) = 0.1494, <i>p</i> = 0.8834, suggesting that the enhanced performance in prior experiments was not simply due to the perceptual novelty of the physical stimulus.