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Learning alters salience and proactive attentional priority
Dock H Duncan1,2, Dirk van Moorselaar3,4, Jan Theeuwes3,5,6,7,8
1Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. D.H.Duncan@vu.nl.
Communications Psychology
|February 17, 2026
Summary
Learned spatial suppression makes distracting items appear less bright, reducing their ability to capture attention. This learned suppression directly impacts visual search performance by lowering initial saliency calculations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Ignoring irrelevant stimuli is crucial for task completion.
- Learned suppression improves the ability to ignore distractors, but mechanisms are debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how learned spatial suppression influences perception and performance.
- To determine the underlying mechanisms of learned suppression in visual processing.
Main Methods:
- A psychophysical approach with a large sample size (n=230).
- Computational modeling to analyze attentional selection mechanisms.
- Comparing various models to identify the best fit for observed data.
Main Results:
- Items at suppressed locations were perceived as less bright.
- Learned suppression directly impacts the perceived saliency of visual items.
- Computational models indicated suppression reduces initial saliency calculations.
Conclusions:
- Learned spatial suppression directly reduces the saliency of visual items in suppressed locations.
- This reduced saliency hinders items from competing for and capturing attentional resources.
- Findings clarify the mechanism by which learned suppression enhances visual search efficiency.
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