Abstract
Our visual system has a striking ability to improve visual search based on the learning of repeated ambient regularities, an effect named contextual cueing. Whereas most of the previous studies investigated contextual cueing effect with the same number of repeated and non-repeated search displays per block, the current study focused on whether a global repetition frequency formed by different presentation ratios between the repeated and non-repeated configurations influence contextual cueing effect. Specifically, the number of repeated and non-repeated displays presented in each block was manipulated: 12:12, 20:4, 4:20, and 4:4 in Experiments 1–4, respectively. The results revealed a significant contextual cueing effect when the global repetition frequency is high (≥1:1 ratio) in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, given that processing of repeated displays was expedited relative to non-repeated displays. Nevertheless, the contextual cueing effect reduced to a non-significant level when the repetition frequency reduced to 4:20 in Experiment 3. These results suggested that the presentation frequency of repeated relative to the non-repeated displays could influence the strength of contextual cueing. In other words, global repetition statistics could be a crucial factor to mediate contextual cueing effect.
Highlights
Stable memory representations of past events are essential for acquisition and integration of new information
Experiment 1 was designed as a baseline condition to investigate whether global repetition frequency of 1:1 could elicit a reliable contextual cueing effect
Standard contextual cueing paradigm with 12 repeated and 12 non-repeated search configurations was used during the experiment, and similar results were observed, that is robust contextual cueing effect was established during the search session
Summary
Stable memory representations of past events are essential for acquisition and integration of new information. Previously relevant locations of search objects (e.g., an item on a supermarket shelf) receive attentional priority in subsequent encounters (e.g., Torralba, 2003; Brockmole et al, 2006) Such a memory acquisition can be either explicit and hypothesis driven (see Vadillo et al, 2016 for a meta-analysis study), when people actively learn new information; or implicit and without conscious awareness, when information is learned in an incidental manner (Reber, 1989; Parkin et al, 1990; Dienes and Berry, 1997). Regardless of the explicit or implicit nature of the contextual cueing, this type of cueing is a ubiquitous effect that was repeatedly observed in previous studies (see a review Goujon et al, 2015)
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