Simulated central vision loss does not impair implicit location probability learning when participants search through simple displays

Abstract

Central vision loss disrupts voluntary shifts of spatial attention during visual search. Recently, we reported that a simulated scotoma impaired implicit spatial attention towards regions likely to contain search targets. In that task, search items were overlaid on natural scenes. Because natural scenes can induce explicit awareness of learned biases leading to voluntary shifts of attention, here we used a search display with a blank background less likely to induce awareness of target location probabilities. Participants searched both with and without a simulated central scotoma: a training phase contained targets more often in one screen quadrant and a testing phase contained targets equally often in all quadrants. In Experiment 1, training used no scotoma, while testing alternated between blocks of scotoma and no-scotoma search. Experiment 2 training included the scotoma and testing again alternated between scotoma and no-scotoma search. Response times and saccadic behaviors in both experiments showed attentional biases towards the high-probability target quadrant during scotoma and no-scotoma search. Whereas simulated central vision loss impairs implicitly learned spatial attention in the context of natural scenes, our results show that this may not arise from impairments to the basic mechanisms of attentional learning indexed by visual search tasks without scenes.

The effects of goal-driven attention on the acquisition of location probability learning.

“…To counterbalance the assignment of high-probability quadrants across participants, we needed to test in multiples of 12. Thus, we aimed to test 24 participants, a sample size representative of recent LPL studies (Addleman et al 2021;Addleman & Lee 2022).…”