Influences of luminance contrast and ambient lighting on visual context learning and retrieval

Xuelian Zang,Hermann J Müller,Xiuna Zhu,Zhuanghua Shi,Lingyun Huang

doi:10.3758/s13414-020-02106-y

Abstract

Invariant spatial context can guide attention and facilitate visual search, an effect referred to as “contextual cueing.” Most previous studies on contextual cueing were conducted under conditions of photopic vision and high search item to background luminance contrast, leaving open the question whether the learning and/or retrieval of context cues depends on luminance contrast and ambient lighting. Given this, we conducted three experiments (each contains two subexperiments) to compare contextual cueing under different combinations of luminance contrast (high/low) and ambient lighting (photopic/mesopic). With high-contrast displays, we found robust contextual cueing in both photopic and mesopic environments, but the acquired contextual cueing could not be transferred when the display contrast changed from high to low in the photopic environment. By contrast, with low-contrast displays, contextual facilitation manifested only in mesopic vision, and the acquired cues remained effective following a switch to high-contrast displays. This pattern suggests that, with low display contrast, contextual cueing benefited from a more global search mode, aided by the activation of the peripheral rod system in mesopic vision, but was impeded by a more local, fovea-centered search mode in photopic vision.

Highlights

Invariant spatial context can guide attention and facilitate visual search, an effect referred to as “contextual cueing.” Most previous studies on contextual cueing were conducted under conditions of photopic vision and high search item to background luminance contrast, leaving open the question whether the learning and/or retrieval of context cues depends on luminance contrast and ambient lighting
The present study was designed to examine whether and how long-term statistical learning of spatial regularities, or “context cues,” in our visual environment depends on the prevailing ambientlighting and luminance-contrast conditions, and whether and to what extent contextual cues acquired under certain lighting and contrast conditions could be effectively transferred to changed environmental conditions
We investigated the role of these factors in a “traditional” contextual-cueing paradigm with meaningless, artificial stimuli, which afford greater control of display variables compared with naturalistic scenes

Summary

Introduction

Invariant spatial context can guide attention and facilitate visual search, an effect referred to as “contextual cueing.” Most previous studies on contextual cueing were conducted under conditions of photopic vision and high search item to background luminance contrast, leaving open the question whether the learning and/or retrieval of context cues depends on luminance contrast and ambient lighting. Note that establishing in-/dependence of contextual cueing from variable environmental conditions would be of theoretical importance and potentially of relevance for contextual training in certain real-world scenarios, such as driving simulation On these grounds, the present study was designed to examine whether and how long-term statistical learning of spatial regularities, or “context cues,” in our visual environment depends on the prevailing ambientlighting and luminance-contrast conditions, and whether and to what extent contextual cues acquired under certain lighting and contrast conditions could be effectively transferred to (i.e., be retrieved and continue to guide search under) changed environmental conditions

Methods

Results

Conclusion