Most visual search studies have been restricted to alphanumeric stimulus materials.
These interactive stimulus materials included hypertext and multiple screens of information and simulated real-life literacy demands presented by digital media.
Like IALS and ALL, PIAAC included intact stimulus materials taken from a range of adult contexts, including the workplace, home and community.
It is less obvious that it is applicable to the Nahmias et al. results, where the stimulus materials seem, comparatively, affectively neutral.
The limitations of common attentional tasks, suitability of stimulus materials and differences in stimulus duration times may have contributed to these inconsistencies.
Additionally, each task was performed with two different types of stimulus materials (familiar words, unfamiliar faces) in order to determine the influence of material-type vs task-type.
Setting and Stimulus Materials: Ten pamphlets and brochures commonly used in urban hospitals, home care agencies, and public clinics in the Midwest were evaluated.
The design, materials, and procedure were identical to those in experiment 1 except for two changes to the stimulus materials, which were designed to make the three conditions as similar as possible except for the event structure manipulation.
NSK, SGBJ, and WA wrote the stimulus materials, which were critically revised by JK Programming and data collection were performed by SGBJ and WA; SGBJ, WA, and NSK performed data analyses.
Journal of Memory and Language 43, 576 593] (Experiment 2), found no such facilitation; however, in the second experiment, upon re-designing and improving the stimulus materials, facilitation was demonstrated.
Stimulus materials needed to be adaptable to an onscreen presentation, keeping the same formatting as that used on paper, and all selected items needed remain open-ended, but be capable of being computer scored in order to support the adaptive design of PIAAC.
