Context affects implicit learning of spatial bias depending on task relevance

Abstract

Recent studies on the probability cueing effect have shown that a spatial bias emerges toward a location where a target frequently appears. In the present study, we explored whether such spatial bias can be flexibly shifted when the target-frequent location changes depending on the given context. In four consecutive experiments, participants performed a visual search task within two distinct contexts that predicted the visual quadrant that was more likely to contain a target. We found that spatial attention was equally biased toward two target-frequent quadrants, regardless of context (context-independent spatial bias), when the context information was not mandatory for accurate visual search. Conversely, when the context became critical for the visual search task, the spatial bias shifted significantly more to the target-frequent quadrant predicted by the given context (context-specific spatial bias). These results show that the task relevance of context determines whether probabilistic knowledge can be learned flexibly in a context-specific manner.

Explicit attentional goals unlock implicit spatial statistical learning.

“…However, note that in contextual cuing it is the search array itself, which activates a particular spatial bias, whereas in goal-specific probability cuing the activation of the target template leads to the generation of spatial biases prior to the onset of the search array as indicated by the attentional probes in Experiment 3. Effects of context have also been identified in some studies on probability cuing, which seems to depend on the task relevance of contextual information (Hong et al, 2020;Y. Jiang & Leung, 2005; but see Vadillo et al, 2020).…”

What to expect where and when: how statistical learning drives visual selection

“…Also, contextual cuing and reward learning have been shown to involve highly contextspecific learning [87,88]. Counter to these observations, when learning tracks spatial probabilities of targets across search displays, learning generalizes to new contexts, especially when the tasks involve similar search behaviors [89,90]. However, learning becomes context specific when processing of the context is necessary to perform the task [89], or when the two tasks differ in attentional demands [91].…”

“…Counter to these observations, when learning tracks spatial probabilities of targets across search displays, learning generalizes to new contexts, especially when the tasks involve similar search behaviors [89,90]. However, learning becomes context specific when processing of the context is necessary to perform the task [89], or when the two tasks differ in attentional demands [91]. Although less well characterized, the current evidence also suggests that spatial suppression effects are not context dependent [76], not even when the contexts are made task-relevant [92].…”

Is probabilistic cuing of visual search an inflexible attentional habit? A meta-analytic review

“…This, on its own, could explain why search times are faster in this region (Walthew & Gilchrist, 2006). To minimize the possibility that probabilistic cuing is driven by fleeting inter-trial priming processes, most studies include two stages (e.g., Addleman et al, 2019;Hong et al, 2020). In the biased learning stage, participants carry out the probabilistic cuing task as described above for several hundreds of trials.…”