title: Expectation violations in sensorimotor sequences: shifting from LTM-based attentional selection to visual search.
abstract: Long-term memory (LTM) delivers important control signals for attentional selection. LTM expectations have an important role in guiding the task-driven sequence of covert attention and gaze shifts, especially in well-practiced multistep sensorimotor actions. What happens when LTM expectations are disconfirmed? Does a sensory-based visual-search mode of attentional selection replace the LTM-based mode? What happens when prior LTM expectations become valid again? We investigated these questions in a computerized version of the number-connection test. Participants clicked on spatially distributed numbered shapes in ascending order while gaze was recorded. Sixty trials were performed with a constant spatial arrangement. In 20 consecutive trials, either numbers, shapes, both, or no features switched position. In 20 reversion trials, participants worked on the original arrangement. Only the sequence-affecting number switches elicited slower clicking, visual search-like scanning, and lower eye-hand synchrony. The effects were neither limited to the exchanged numbers nor to the corresponding actions. Thus, expectation violations in a well-learned sensorimotor sequence cause a regression from LTM-based attentional selection to visual search beyond deviant-related actions and locations. Effects lasted for several trials and reappeared during reversion.
authors.affiliation: Neuro-cognitive Psychology and Cluster of Excellence "Cognitive Interaction Technology," Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Rebecca M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Foerster
authors.forename: Werner X
authors.initials: WX
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057567:Memory, Long-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attention; expectation discrepancy; eye movements; long-term memory; sensorimotor action; visual search