Contextual Cuing of Visual Search Does Not Guide Attention Automatically in the Presence of Top-Down Goals

• Main Authors: Beesley, T. (Author), Luque, D. (Author), Molinero, S. (Author), Vadillo, M.A (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Psychological Association 2021
• Subjects: association; attention; Attention; Automaticity; Contextual cuing; Cues; Goals; human; Humans; learning; Learning; motivation; pattern recognition; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Perceptual learning; reaction time; Reaction Time; Visual search
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Visual search is faster when it occurs within repeated displays, a phenomenon known as contextual cuing (CC). CC has been explained as the result of an automatic orientation of attention toward a target item driven by learned distractor-target associations. In 3 experiments we tested the specific hypothesis that CC is an automatic process of attentional guidance. Participants first searched for a T target in a standard CC procedure. Then, they experienced the same repeated configurations (with the T still present), but now searched for a Y target that was positioned either in a location on the same, or on a different side, from the old T target. Results suggested that there was no interference caused by the old T-target: target search was not affected by the relative positions of the T and Y. Instead, we found a general facilitation in search times for repeated configurations (Experiments 1 and 2). This main effect disappeared when the need for visual search was eliminated in Experiment 3 using a “feature search task”. These results suggest that repeated sets of distractors did not trigger an uncontrollable response toward the position of the T; instead, CC was produced by perceptual learning processes. © 2021 American Psychological Association