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Interpreting visual preferences in the visual paired-comparison task.

Performance on the visual paired-comparison (VPC) task has typically been interpreted with E. Sokolov's (1963) comparator model of the orienting response; novelty preferences are interpreted as evidence of retention, whereas null preferences are interpreted as evidence of forgetting. Here the authors capitalized on the verbal nature of human adults to clarify the interpretation of visual preferences in VPC performance. In 2 experiments, adults were tested on either the VPC task or a forced-choice recognition task after delays of 3 min to 12 months. In Experiment 1, adults tested on the VPC task exhibited novelty preferences after short delays, null preferences after intermediate delays, and familiarity preferences after long delays. In Experiment 2, adults tested on the forced-choice recognition task exhibited high levels of accuracy irrespective of delay, but the latency with which they recognized the stimuli increased systematically over the retention interval. These data are inconsistent with a simple Sokolovian interpretation of VPC performance and instead suggest that memory may be expressed as a novelty preference, null preference, or familiarity preference depending on the accessibility of the representation.