Implicitly and explicitly encoded features can guide attention in free viewing.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Visual Perception
• Attention Studies

Background:

• Priming, often mediated by working memory, is known to affect visual task performance.
• The extent to which visual priming influences attention during tasks without explicit instructions remains an open question.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the ubiquity of visual priming effects on attention.
• To determine if incidental or explicit encoding of visual stimuli influences subsequent attention deployment during free viewing.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments utilized a change detection task as a cover for a priming display.
• Subsequent free-viewing of a filler display allowed for the measurement of attention distribution via eye movements.
• Experiment 1 involved incidental encoding of prime item quantity; Experiment 2 involved explicit encoding of quantity, color, and shape.

Main Results:

• Items in the free-viewing display sharing color and shape with the prime were attended more frequently than chance.
• Items sharing neither color nor shape were attended to less often.
• Priming effects were observed even when only partial features (color or shape) were shared, suggesting unbound representations can be primed. Effects were stronger with explicit encoding.

Conclusions:

• Incidental and explicit encoding of visual stimuli can prime subsequent attention during free viewing.
• Visual priming influences eye movement patterns without requiring explicit tasks or top-down control.
• The findings demonstrate a robust and pervasive influence of prior visual exposure on attentional allocation.