Temporal order judgments: A sensitive measure for measuring perceptual latency?

Temporal order judgments (TOJs) have been used for demonstrating the facilitating effect of attention on information processing - prior entry. Prior entry is a robust, often large effect. Besides attention, other factors shorten perceptual latency, for instance stimulus saliency, action affordances of an object, or threatening objects. The expectable size for these effects is far smaller than that usually obtained for prior entry. Some effects might consist of only a few milliseconds. But are TOJs sensitive enough for detecting such small effects? For answering this question, we tested whether objects highly associated with a certain color are perceived earlier. In a four-alternative TOJ, including a "simultaneous" and "uncertain" category, we found a small advantage for high color diagnostic objects. This indicates high sensitivity of the TOJ task. We also found that "simultaneous" judgements were most sensitive. This is important for the debate on the usefulness of order vs. simultaneous judgments.