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Perceptual learning of task-irrelevant features depends on the sensory context
Patrick Bruns1,2, Takeo Watanabe3
1Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, 190 Thayer Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA. patrick.bruns@uni-hamburg.de.
Scientific Reports
|February 9, 2019
Summary
Visual perceptual learning (VPL) can be influenced by task-irrelevant stimuli, even when subliminal and unrelated to reinforcement. Learning magnitude increases when irrelevant features are perceptually similar to relevant ones.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Visual perceptual learning (VPL) typically requires reinforcement signals.
- Task-irrelevant features can undergo VPL if consistently paired with reinforcement.
- The influence of non-reinforcement-related, task-irrelevant features on VPL is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether task-irrelevant, subliminal visual stimuli, unrelated to reinforcement, influence VPL.
- To determine if the perceptual similarity of irrelevant stimuli to relevant stimuli affects VPL.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed a central character identification task.
- Subliminal coherent motion stimuli were presented in the background.
- One motion direction was paired with targets; others were paired with distractors.
Main Results:
- VPL magnitude was significantly greater when distractor-paired motion directions were close to the target-paired direction.
- This effect occurred even though the distractor stimuli were subliminal and unrelated to reinforcement.
Conclusions:
- Subliminal, non-reinforcement-related sensory information influences VPL.
- The sensory context, including perceptual similarity, modulates VPL outcomes.
- VPL theories may need refinement to include exposure-based influences.
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