Abstract
Recent research of task-irrelevant perceptual learning (TIPL) demonstrates that stimuli that are consistently presented at relevant point in times (e.g. with task-targets or rewards) are learned, even in the absence of attention to these stimuli. However, different research paradigms have observed different results for how salient stimuli are learned; with some studies showing no learning, some studies showing positive learning and others showing negative learning effects. In this paper we focused on how the level of processing of stimuli impacts fast-TIPL. We conducted three different experiments in which the level of processing of the information paired with a target was manipulated. Our results indicated that fast-TIPL occurs when participants have to memorize the information presented with the target, but also when they just have to process this information for a secondary task without an explicit memorization of those stimuli. However, fast-TIPL does not occur when participants have to ignore the target-paired information. This observation is consistent with recent models of TIPL that suggest that attentional signals can either enhance or suppress learning depending on whether those stimuli are distracting or not to the subjects' objectives. Our results also revealed a robust gender effect in fast-TIPL, where male subjects consistently show fast-TIPL, whereas the observation of fast-TIPL is inconsistent in female subjects.
Highlights
We were still interested in an inhibitory account of Dewald et al.’s [17] results, which could imply that the lack of task-irrelevant perceptual learning (TIPL) could be due to an inhibition of the image stream
Given that we know that fast-TIPL can occur for salient target-paired images [13], it is clear that the level of processing of the images during the task mediates the acquisition of TIPL
That when subjects were required to attend to the image-stream but not instructed to memorize them, fast-TIPL was found, but only for male subjects
Summary
It is tempting to believe that learning and memory are primarily guided by conscious processes, but there is evidence that implicit factors play key roles in determining what information we encode [1], [2]. A number of studies of task-irrelevant perceptual learning (TIPL) demonstrated that processing the target of a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) detection task can facilitate encoding of irrelevant, and even unnoticed, information paired with these targets [3,4,5,6]. TIPL has been observed in studies where the information paired with the target was parathreshold, but not in studies where the information paired with the target was supra-threshold [11], [12]. One hypothesis is that weak task-irrelevant signals fail to be ‘‘noticed’’, and to be suppressed by the attentional system and are learned, while stronger stimulus signals are detected, suppressed, and are not learned [9], [10]
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