Contextual cuing as a form of nonconscious learning: Theoretical and empirical analysis in large and very large samples

Abstract

Numerous studies have demonstrated that associative learning can affect visual cognition. In one such effect, search times for a target hidden among similar distractors are faster for repeated search configurations compared with novel configurations. This contextual cuing effect is particularly interesting, because researchers routinely have failed to find evidence of recognition of the repeated configurations, concluding that the effect is a form of nonconscious learning. Vadillo, Konstantinidis, and Shanks (2016) recently criticized this conclusion on a number of methodological and conceptual grounds that suggest the area suffers from a high probability of false-negative results on awareness tests and misinterpretation of weak or absent relationships between cuing and awareness measures. We developed further predictions from theoretical models assuming that single or independent memory sources drive learning and awareness and discuss how these predictions fare in three new contextual cuing experiments involving large (n > 60) and very large samples (n > 600). The data support the absence of a positive relationship between recognition and the cuing effect both at the participant and configuration level, the probability of which being a false negative is very low in a model assuming a single memory source drives learning and awareness. This was the case using both conventional and Bayesian analyses. The combination of this theoretical and empirical analysis suggests that contextual cuing is not dependent on cue recognition and provides evidence that it reflects a genuine form of nonconscious learning.

Local item density modulates adaptation of learned contextual cues

“…Previous research showed that while contextual cueing is of high capacity and is considered a genuine form of effortless, nonconscious, learning (Colagiuri & Livesey, 2016), the memory underlying the cueing effect is quite resistant to forming an association between a new target location and an existing distractor representation. This 'lack of adaptation' was replicated in Experiment 1 and in various other experiments conducted in the course of our research (see Fig.…”

Three Ways That Non-associative Knowledge May Affect Associative Learning Processes

“…Some of the traditional sources of evidence have failed to convince all theorists that it is necessary to posit association formation as being mechanistically distinct from inferential reasoning or higher order cognition in general. For instance, the notion that associative learning can occur in the absence of awareness is still as contentious as ever (see Goujon et al, 2015; Colagiuri and Livesey, 2016; Vadillo et al, 2016 for a recent iteration of this debate concerning implicit learning in visual search). Nevertheless, a number of results (e.g., Morís et al, 2014; Perruchet, 2015; Cobos et al, 2016) suggest that associative learning mechanisms are separable from other cognitive sources of expectation in at least some circumstances and could represent the operation of an independent system.…”

Testing the controllability of contextual cuing of visual search

“…On the basis of such results, it has been proposed that CC is produced by automatic implicit (unconscious) learning of the repeated configurations (refs 4 and 5; but see ref. 6).…”