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Published on: August 29, 2018
Object-based control of attention is sensitive to recent experience.
Hyunkyu Lee1, Michael C Mozer, Arthur F Kramer
1Department of Psychology, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, 405 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61802, USA. hyunklee@illinois.edu
Summary
Recent experiences shape visual attention. Past target locations on objects, not just spatial positions, influence current attentional focus, demonstrating adaptive learning.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Past experiences significantly influence visual search performance.
- Repetition of target features (color, shape, location) typically enhances performance.
- The modulation of abstract attentional control by recent experience remains less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if recent experience modulates object-based versus location-based attentional control.
- To determine the influence of previous cue-target relationships on current attentional benefits.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed a cued target discrimination task using stimuli on two rectangles.
- Object-based attentional benefits were measured by comparing response times to cued vs. uncued locations within objects.
- The study analyzed how the previous trial's cue-target relationship (cued vs. uncued object) affected the object-based benefit.
Main Results:
- An object-based attentional benefit was observed, where targets on cued objects were identified faster.
- This object-based benefit was significant only when the cued object had contained the target on the preceding trial.
- The effect was attributed to adaptation to environmental contingencies, not simple repetition of location or response.
Conclusions:
- Attention dynamically adapts to the recent temporal structure of the environment.
- Recent experience influences abstract attentional control, integrating object- and location-based processing.
- This suggests a unified attentional control system that adapts to optimize performance based on learned contingencies.
