Stimulus and Response Set in Information Processing

Abstract

Four French-English bilinguals were presented with brief displays of digits. The subjects were to report subsets of the displays based on either stimulus-set or response-set instructions presented either before or after the displays. Stimulus-set was defined as selection based on the color of the to-be-reported digits. Response-set was defined as the language in which the digits were to be reported. Stimulus-set instructions produced significantly more accurate reports when presented before the displays than when presented after. Response-set instructions resulted in no significant differences before and after displays. The results support the assertion that there are at least two forms of selective attention, one corresponding to stimulus selection and the second to response selection.