title: Contingency blindness: location-identity binding mismatches obscure awareness of spatial contingencies and produce profound interference in visual working memory.
abstract: The purpose of the present study was to highlight the role of location-identity binding mismatches in obscuring explicit awareness of a strong contingency. In a spatial-priming procedure, we introduced a high likelihood of location-repeat trials. Experiments 1, 2a, and 2b demonstrated that participants' explicit awareness of this contingency was heavily influenced by the local match in location-identity bindings. In Experiment 3, we sought to determine why location-identity binding mismatches produce such low levels of contingency awareness. Our results suggest that binding mismatches can interfere substantially with visual-memory performance. We attribute the low levels of contingency awareness to participants' inability to remember the critical location-identity binding in the prime on a trial-to-trial basis. These results imply a close interplay between object files and visual working memory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S4K1, Canada. fiaccocm@mcmaster.ca
authors.forename: Chris M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Fiacconi
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Milliken
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult