The object-file framework explains how object continuity is maintained as objects move: it stipulates that when we focus our attention on an object, we automatically retrieve this object’s recent history. Supporting evidence comes from the object-specific preview benefit (OSPB): participants are faster to name a target letter when the same letter appeared in the same versus a different object in a preceding (preview) display. Although this framework has been very influential, replicating the OSPB has proved difficult, presumably because observers could ignore the preview display. To address this problem, a modified object-reviewing paradigm was suggested, which became the standard paradigm: participants are required to report whether the target letter matches one of the preview display’s letters. However, as this paradigm makes retrieval of the object’s history task-relevant, it is a useful method for studying the structure of object representations for memory but does not capture the automaticity of the object-reviewing process, which is the heart of the object-file account of perception. Here, we suggest an alternative go/no-go object-reviewing paradigm that is specifically tailored to study object-files for perception: it requires participants to attend to the preview display, yet does not require explicit retrieval of the object history. Using our new paradigm, we reliably replicate the OSPB. As a proof of concept, we revisit the persistence of the OSPB, previously investigated with the modified paradigm.
