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

Giménez‐Fernández, Tamara; Luque, David; Shanks, David R.; Vadillo, Miguel A.

doi:10.3758/s13423-021-02025-5

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the other hand, across our experiments, we found that the overall RT advantage on high- versus low-probability quadrant targets dropped by roughly 50% between the last epoch of the learning phase and the first epoch of the extinction phase, and dropped further during the extinction phase. This finding closely replicates the results reported by Giménez-Fernández et al (2021) in a recent meta-analytic review of 42 studies. These authors suggested “that participants tend to reduce their bias to the previously rich quadrant as they accumulate more and more evidence that the target is evenly distributed” (p. 9).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Our findings resolve the recent debate about whether target probability cueing is long-lasting or instead rapidly wanes (Jiang, 2018 vs. Giménez-Fernández et al, 2021, respectively). On the one hand, we found search slopes to be consistently shallower when the target appeared in the high- than in a low-probability quadrant during extinction.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Attentional guidance by target-location probability cueing is largely inflexible, long-lasting, and distinct from inter-trial priming.

Golan¹,

Lamy²

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is growing consensus that selection history strongly guides spatial attention and is distinct from current goals and physical salience. Here, we focused on target-location probability cueing: when the target is more likely to appear in one region, search performance gradually improves for targets appearing in that region. Probability cueing is thought to reflect a long-lasting, inflexible and implicit attentional bias. However, strong evidence for these claims is lacking. We re-examined them in four experiments. The target was more likely to appear in one than in the other regions during the learning phase, whereas all regions were equiprobable during the extinction phase. We manipulated set size in all experiments. Probability cueing reduced search slopes during learning and extinction, suggesting that the bias is attentional and long-lasting. Although intertrial priming from several previous trials had an influence, it did not account for all the effects. We also found the bias to be largely inflexible: informing participants that the probability imbalance during learning would be discontinued during extinction did not reduce the bias. Moreover, the acquired bias remained the default determinant of attentional priority when goal-directed guidance failed (i.e., when a cue instructing participants to start their search in a given region during the extinction phase was omitted or invalid). Finally, many more participants than predicted by chance showed awareness of the probability manipulation, although we could not establish whether awareness was associated with the bias. We conclude that probability cueing is a long-lasting and inflexible attentional bias, distinct from intertrial priming.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Attentional guidance by target-location probability cueing is largely inflexible, long-lasting, and distinct from inter-trial priming.

Golan¹,

Lamy²

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To sum up, probabilistic cuing has been proposed to represent an attentional habit because it is gradual, implicit, persistent, viewer centered, transferable only to other serial search tasks, and insensitive to WM load. Previous studies carried out by some of us showed no evidence that probabilistic cuing is implicit, persistent, or gradual (Giménez-Fernández et al, 2020; Giménez-Fernández, Luque, et al, 2022; Vadillo et al, 2020). In contrast, in the present study, we confirmed that probabilistic cuing is not easily hindered by a WM task, although we found some evidence that the expression of this attentional bias might depend on spatial WM resources.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

The role of working memory in probabilistic cuing of visual search.

Giménez‐Fernández¹,

Vicente-Conesa²,

Luque³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a typical probabilistic cuing experiment, participants are asked to find a visual target among a series of distractors. Although participants are not informed about this, the target appears more frequently in one region of the display, resulting in faster search times for targets located in this region. This bias is thought to depend on a habit-like attentional control mechanism, unconstrained by the availability of working memory (WM) resources. However, the only study that has explored this feature in the past suffers from methodological shortcomings that leave the results open to alternative explanations. In three experiments, we aimed to confirm whether probabilistic cuing is unaffected by visual, spatial, and spatiotemporal WM load. For each experiment, one group of participants performed the visual search task during the retention interval of a WM task (high-load group), whereas another group of participants (no-load group) carried out the visual search task after the WM task. We hypothesized that the probabilistic cuing effect would be larger for the no-load group compared to the high-load group. This hypothesis was confirmed in one experiment, but exploratory analyses suggest that the results can be highly dependent on the analytic approach, casting doubts on its robustness. Overall, our results provide partial support for the hypothesis that probabilistic cuing is not affected by a secondary task. However, given that some analyses reveal an effect of WM load, we conclude that it might be premature to rule out the possibility that the expression of this attentional bias requires WM resources.

show abstract

“…In addition, these studies usually have very small samples that do not grant sufficient statistical power to detect changes in attentional bias between stages. Recently, we have shown that by boosting statistical power, either by increasing the number of participants or by aggregating all available data in a meta-analysis, it is possible to detect a clear decrease in the bias across the unbiased stage (Giménez-Fernández et al, 2020, 2022).…”

Section: Inflexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Attentional Habits

Giménez-Fernández,

Luque,

Shanks

et al. 2023

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Attentional habits acquired by visual statistical learning cause enduring biases toward specific locations. These habits, driven by recent search history, are thought to be independent of both goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional mechanisms. This theoretical claim is based on three characteristics that these habits apparently exhibit, that is, they are inflexible, implicit, and efficient. We review methodological limitations in previous studies and briefly describe recent results that challenge this new framework. We conclude that it might be premature to assume that attentional habits are based on a special search history process that differs from the two traditionally recognized attentional mechanisms.

show abstract

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

Cited by 6 publications

References 56 publications

Attentional guidance by target-location probability cueing is largely inflexible, long-lasting, and distinct from inter-trial priming.

Attentional guidance by target-location probability cueing is largely inflexible, long-lasting, and distinct from inter-trial priming.

The role of working memory in probabilistic cuing of visual search.

Rethinking Attentional Habits

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About