A Configural Dominant Account of Contextual Cueing: Configural Cues are Stronger than Colour Cues

Kunar, Melina A.; John, Rebecca; Sweetman, Hollie

doi:10.1080/17470218.2013.863373

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(134 reference statements)

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“…Furthermore, it was recently reported that repeated configurations provide a stronger cue than repeated color information (Kunar, Johnston, & Sweetman, 2014), substantiating the notion that spatial information is a central factor in CC. Accordingly, prominent models of CC have often emphasized the spatial domain in context learning (e.g., Brady & Chun, 2007;Jiang & Wagner, 2004;Olson & Chun, 2002).…”

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confidence: 55%

What is the context of contextual cueing?

Makovski

2016

Psychon Bull Rev

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People have a powerful ability to extract regularities from noisy environments and to utilize this knowledge to assist in visual search. Extensive research has shown that this ability, termed contextual cueing (CC), is robust and ubiquitous, but it is still unclear what exactly is the context that is being leaned. Researchers have typically focused on how people learn spatial configuration regularities and have hence used simplified, meaningless search stimuli. Here, observers performed visual search tasks using images of real-world objects. The results revealed that, contrary to past findings, the repetition of either arbitrary spatial information or identity information was not sufficient to produce context learning. Instead, learning was found only when both types of information were repeated together. These results were further replicated in hybrid search tasks, in which subjects looked for multiple target templates. Together, these data suggest that CC is more limited than typically assumed, yet this learning is highly robust.

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confidence: 55%

What is the context of contextual cueing?

Makovski

2016

Psychon Bull Rev

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“…Both conditions consisted of a Training Phase, which established learning, and a Test Phase, which measured CC (see also Brady & Chun, 2007, Makovski & Jiang, 2010, Kunar & Wolfe, 2011, Kunar, John & Sweetman, 2014. The Training Phase consisted of seven epochs (Epochs 1-7).…”

Section: Design and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Having a phone conversation delays but does not disrupt cognitive mechanisms.

Gunnell¹,

Kunar²,

Watson³

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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Public Significance StatementThis study suggests that engaging in a phone conversation does not prevent people from performing a cognitive task. People remain able to learn spatial layouts and filter out irrelevant information when conversing and performing a visual search task. However, having a conversation leads to a consistent delay in their responses. This delay has consequences for applied tasks where the ability to respond quickly is important (e.g. driving). AbstractPrevious research has shown that talking on a mobile phone leads to impairments in a number of cognitive tasks. However, it is not yet known whether the act of conversation disrupts the underlying cognitive mechanisms (the Cognitive Disruption hypothesis) or leads to a delay in response due to a limit on central cognitive resources (the Cognitive Delay hypothesis). We investigated this here using two cognitive search tasks that investigate spatial learning and time-based selection: Contextual Cueing and Visual Marking. In Contextual Cueing, responses to repeated displays are faster than those to novel displays. In Visual Marking, participants prioritise attention to new information and deprioritise old, unimportant information (the 'Preview Benefit'). Experiments 1 to 3 investigated whether Contextual Cueing occurred while people were engaged in a phone conversation, whereas Experiments 4 to 6 investigated whether a Preview Benefit occurred, again while people were engaged in conversation. The results showed that having a conversation did not interfere with the mechanisms underlying spatial learning or time-based selection. However, in all experiments there was a significant increase in response times. The results are consistent with a Cognitive Delay account explaining the dual-task cost of having a phone conversation on concurrent cognitive tasks.

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“…In addition to learning distractor-distractor relationships, there is evidence that nonconfigural Bbackground^cues, such as colors, textures, or natural scenes, can support contextual cuing (e.g., Brockmole, Castelhano, & Henderson, 2006;Kunar, Flusberg, & Wolfe, 2006). The role of these background cues depends on their salience and can overshadow cuing driven by the configuration of the array items themselves (Rosenbaum & Jiang, 2013), though this may depend on the specific background cues that are present (Kunar, John, & Sweetman, 2014). Taken together, the existing research suggests that learning of target-distractor associations, distractor configurations, as well as other nonconfigural background information, all contribute to contextual cuing.…”

Section: Role Of Associative Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response time modeling reveals multiple contextual cuing mechanisms

2017

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Contextual cuing refers to a response time (RT) benefit that occurs when observers search through displays that have been repeated over the course of an experiment. Although it is generally agreed that contextual cuing arises via an associative learning mechanism, there is uncertainty about the type(s) of process(es) that allow learning to influence RT. We contrast two leading accounts of the contextual cuing effect that differ in terms of the general process that is credited with producing the effect. The first, the expedited search account, attributes the cuing effect to an increase in the speed with which the target is acquired. The second, the decision threshold account, attributes the cuing effect to a reduction in the response threshold used by observers when making a subsequent decision about the target (e.g., judging its orientation). We use the diffusion model to contrast the quantitative predictions of these two accounts at the level of individual observers. Our use of the diffusion model allows us to also explore a novel decision-level locus of the cuing effect based on perceptual learning. This novel account attributes the RT benefit to a perceptual learning process that increases the quality of information used to drive the decision process. Our results reveal both individual differences in the process(es) involved in contextual cuing but also identify several striking regularities across observers. We find strong support for both the decision threshold account as well as the novel perceptual learning account. We find relatively weak support for the expedited search account.

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A Configural Dominant Account of Contextual Cueing: Configural Cues are Stronger than Colour Cues

Cited by 20 publications

References 59 publications

What is the context of contextual cueing?

What is the context of contextual cueing?

Having a phone conversation delays but does not disrupt cognitive mechanisms.

Response time modeling reveals multiple contextual cuing mechanisms

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