Task-based memory systems in contextual-cueing of visual search and explicit recognition

Abstract

Visual search is facilitated when observers encounter targets in repeated display arrangements. This ‘contextual-cueing’ (CC) effect is attributed to incidental learning of spatial distractor-target relations. Prior work has typically used only one recognition measure (administered after the search task) to establish whether CC is based on implicit or explicit memory of repeated displays, with the outcome depending on the diagnostic accuracy of the test. The present study compared two explicit memory tests to tackle this issue: yes/no recognition of a given search display as repeated versus generation of the quadrant in which the target (which was replaced by a distractor) had been located during the search task, thus closely matching the processes involved in performing the search. While repeated displays elicited a CC effect in the search task, both tests revealed above-chance knowledge of repeated displays, though explicit-memory accuracy and its correlation with contextual facilitation in the search task were more pronounced for the generation task. These findings argue in favor of a one-system, explicit-memory account of CC. Further, they demonstrate the superiority of the generation task for revealing the explicitness of CC, likely because both the search and the memory task involve overlapping processes (in line with ‘transfer-appropriate processing’).

Why Are Acquired Search-Guiding Context Memories Resistant to Updating?

“…This proposal refers back to "classical" work on associative learning that attributes a role to perceptual saliency of "attention" for explaining cue-competition effects [see, e.g., Kamin (1969), advocating that learning a novel cue is also a function of attention paid to that cue]. Automatic attraction of attention by learnt context cues also lines in well with reports suggesting that cueing manifests in the absence of explicit knowledge about the repeated displays (e.g., Colagiuri and Livesey, 2016;Spaak and de Lange, 2020; though see Kroell et al, 2019;Geyer et al, 2020, for explicit memory effects in contextual-cueing studies).…”

Environmental regularities mitigate attentional misguidance in contextual cueing of visual search.

“…Of note, our analysis of recognition test performance combined the data from the individual Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2. This was motivated by a recent meta-analytical study showing that increasing test power can reveal above-chance recognition in CC (Vadillo et al, 2016; see also Geyer et al, 2020; Smyth & Shanks, 2008).…”

“…In support of this, an analogous Bayesian ANOVA (implemented in the R package "BayesFactor"; Morey & Rouder, 2018) revealed a BF 10 = .21 for the main effect of response type, which according to Jeffreys (1961) suggests that the data is 4.76 times more likely under the null hypothesis, of the hit rates being comparable to the false alarm rates and thus there is no explicit knowledge in CC. We nevertheless acknowledge that our Bayes factor is .21, so the evidence for the null hypothesis may be considered only as moderate (Dienes, 2014), probably because of the relatively low sensitivity of the specific, yes/no, recognition test (e.g., Geyer et al, 2020;Vadillo et al, 2016).…”

Learning to suppress a distractor may not be unconscious

“…Furthermore, experiments employing alternative, and arguably more sensitive, methods to measure participants’ awareness usually find clear evidence of explicit knowledge (e.g., Giménez-Fernández et al, 2020 ; Vadillo et al, 2020 ). Meta-analyses and empirical studies with the contextual cuing paradigm arrive at the same conclusion: Participants’ performance in the awareness test is systematically above chance when the measure of awareness is sufficiently sensitive and the study is properly powered to detect such effects (Geyer et al, 2020 ; Smyth & Shanks, 2008 ; Vadillo et al, 2016 , 2022 ).…”