The phenomenology of endogenous orienting

Can we build endogenous expectations about the locus of occurrence of a target without being able to describe them? Participants performed cue–target detection tasks with different proportions of valid and invalid trials, without being informed of these proportions, and demonstrated typical endogenous effects. About half were subsequently able to correctly describe the cue–target relationships (‘verbalizers’). However, even non-verbalizer participants showed endogenous orienting with peripheral cues (Experiments 1 and 3), not depending solely on practice (Experiment 2). Explicit instructions did not bring about dramatic advantages in performance (Experiment 4).With central symbolic cues, only verbalizers showed reliable endogenous effects (Experiment 5). We concluded that endogenous orienting with peripheral cues can occur independently of participants developing explicit hypotheses about the cue–target relationships.