The encoding process of nonconfigural information in contextual cuing.
Jiang and Wagner (2004) demonstrated that individual target-distractor associations were learned in contextual cuing. We examined whether individual associations can be learned in efficient visual searches that do not involve attentional deployment to individual search items. In Experiment 1, individual associations were not learned during the efficient search tasks. However, in Experiment 2, where additional exposure duration of the search display was provided by presenting placeholders marking future locations of the search items, individual associations were successfully learned in the efficient search tasks and transferred to inefficient search. Moreover, Experiment 3 demonstrated that a concurrent task requiring attention does not affect the learning of the local visual context. These results clearly showed that attentional deployment is not necessary for learning individual locations and clarified how the human visual system extracts and preserves regularity in complex visual environments for efficient visual information processing.
Ogawa
Hirokazu
H
Cognitive Science Research Group, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, Japan. ogawa@fennel.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Kumada
Takatsune
T
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012153:Retention, Psychology