The persistence of the attentional bias to regularities in a changing environment

Yu, Ru Qi; Zhao, Jiaying

doi:10.3758/s13414-015-0930-5

Cited by 42 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Stable visual statistics often induce long-term learning that persists after several days of delay (Anderson & Yantis, 2013;Chun & Jiang, 2003;Jiang et al, 2013;Lin, Lu, & He, 2016), interferes with new learning (Gebhart et al, 2009;Jungé, Scholl, & Chun, 2007;Yu & Zhao, 2015), and requires several hundred trials to extinguish (Jiang et al, 2013). In contrast, the frequency of the target-defining feature in our experiments showed no long-term component even though one target feature was more frequent than the other over several hundred trials.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

“…After participants acquire learning of one nonrandom statistical structure (e.g., an artificial grammar, a sequence of objects), the earlier learning interferes with learning of a new statistical structure. Primacy effects can interfere with new learning even after several hundred trials (Gebhart, Aslin, & Newport, 2009;Jiang et al, 2013;Yu & Zhao, 2015). In fact, the frequency effect in conjunction search is present after a one-week delay (Kruijne & Meeter, 2016).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid and selective updating of the target template in visual search

2017

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Frequent target stimuli are detected more rapidly than infrequent ones. Here, we examined whether the frequency effect reflected durable attentional biases toward frequent target features, and whether the effect was confined to featural properties that defined the target. Participants searched for two specific target colors among distractors of heterogeneous colors and reported the line orientation of the target. The target was more often in one specific feature (e.g., a specific color or a specific orientation) than another in a training phase. This frequency difference was removed or reversed in a testing phase. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that when frequency differences were introduced to the target's defining feature, participants more rapidly found the high-frequency target than the low-frequency target. However, changes in attention were not durable-the search advantage vanished immediately when the frequency differences were removed. Experiments 3-5 showed that only featural properties that defined the target facilitated search of the more frequent feature. Features that did not define the target, such as the target feature that participants reported, sped up response but did not facilitate search. These data showed that when searching for multiple targets in a feature search task, people selectively and rapidly adapt to the frequency in the target's defining feature.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid and selective updating of the target template in visual search

2017

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“…These symbols, derived from the African Ndjuká syllabary and unfamiliar to our Western subjects, were adopted based upon recent research that successfully utilized them to explore visual statistical learning (Turk-Browne et al, 2009; Zhao et al, 2013; Yu and Zhao, 2015). For every participant, all 27 symbols were randomly assigned to 9 different triplet sets (see Figure 1 for an example).…”

Section: General Materials and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Apparent Influence of Reward upon Visual Statistical Learning

Rogers¹,

Friedman²,

Vickery³

2016

Front. Psychol.

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Humans are capable of detecting and exploiting a variety of environmental regularities, including stimulus-stimulus contingencies (e.g., visual statistical learning) and stimulus-reward contingencies. However, the relationship between these two types of learning is poorly understood. In two experiments, we sought evidence that the occurrence of rewarding events enhances or impairs visual statistical learning. Across all of our attempts to find such evidence, we employed a training stage during which we grouped shapes into triplets and presented triplets one shape at a time in an undifferentiated stream. Participants subsequently performed a surprise recognition task in which they were tested on their knowledge of the underlying structure of the triplets. Unbeknownst to participants, triplets were also assigned no-, low-, or high-reward status. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants viewed shape streams while low and high rewards were “randomly” given, presented as low- and high-pitched tones played through headphones. Rewards were always given on the third shape of a triplet (Experiment 1A) or the first shape of a triplet (Experiment 1B), and high- and low-reward sounds were always consistently paired with the same triplets. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, except that participants were required to learn value associations of a subset of shapes before viewing the shape stream. Across all experiments, we observed significant visual statistical learning effects, but the strength of learning did not differ amongst no-, low-, or high-reward conditions for any of the experiments. Thus, our experiments failed to find any influence of rewards on statistical learning, implying that visual statistical learning may be unaffected by the occurrence of reward. The system that detects basic stimulus-stimulus regularities may operate independently of the system that detects reward contingencies.

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“…In addition, judgments can be biased by expectancies regarding the rate of alternation in a random sequence [10–12]. Expectancies regarding upcoming stimuli can in turn bias attention and influence subsequent judgments [13–17]. In light of these findings, we hypothesized that alternation between event types might bias judgments of problem severity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternation between different types of evidence attenuates judgments of severity

2017

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Most real-world judgments and decisions require the consideration of multiple types of evidence. For example, judging the severity of environmental damage, medical illness, or negative economic trends often involves tracking and integrating evidence from multiple sources (i.e. different natural disasters, physical symptoms, or financial indicators). We hypothesized that the requirement to track and integrate across distinct types of evidence would affect severity judgments of multifaceted problems, compared to simpler problems. To test this, we used scenarios depicting crop damage. Each scenario involved either two event types (i.e. mold damage and insect damage), or one event type. Participants judged the quality of the crop following each scenario. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjective judgments were attenuated if the scenario depicted multiple event types, relative to scenarios depicting single event types. This was evident as a shallower slope of subjective severity ratings, as a function of objectively quantifiable severity, for scenarios with multiple event types. In Experiment 3, we asked whether alternation between event types might contribute to this attenuation. Each scenario contained two event types, and the sequence of events either alternated frequently between types or was organized into two sequential groups. Subjective judgments were attenuated for scenarios with frequently alternating sequences. The results demonstrate that alternation between distinct event types attenuates subjective judgments of severity. This suggests that a requirement to integrate evidence across multiple sources places extra demands on the cognitive system, which reduces the perceived evidence strength.

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The persistence of the attentional bias to regularities in a changing environment

Cited by 42 publications

References 21 publications

Rapid and selective updating of the target template in visual search

Rapid and selective updating of the target template in visual search

No Apparent Influence of Reward upon Visual Statistical Learning

Alternation between different types of evidence attenuates judgments of severity

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