How does implicit learning of search regularities alter the manner in which you search?

Individuals are highly sensitive to statistical regularities in their visual environment, even when these patterns do not reach conscious awareness. Here, we examine whether oculomotor behavior is systematically altered when distractor/target configurations rarely repeat, but target location on an initial trial predicts the location of a target on the subsequent trial. The purpose of the current study was to explore whether this temporal-spatial contextual cueing in a conjunction search task influences both reaction time to the target and participant's search strategy. Participants searched for a target through a gaze-contingent window in a display consisting of a large number of distractors, providing a target-present/absent response. Participants were faster to respond to the target on the predicted trial relative to the predictor trial in an implicit contextual cueing task but were no more likely to fixate first to the target quadrant on the predicted trial (Experiment 1). Furthermore, implicit learning was interrupted when instructing participants to vary their searching strategy across trials to eliminate visual scan similarity (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, when participants were explicitly informed that a pattern was present at the start of the experiment, explicit learning was observed in both reaction time and eye movements. The present experiments provide evidence that implicit learning of sequential regularities regarding target locations is not based on learning more efficient scan paths, but is due to some other mechanism.

US Soldiers' Individual and Unit-level Factors Associated with Perceptions of Disinformation in the Military Context.

INTRODUCTION: Although the US Government considers threats of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information to rise to the level of terrorism, little is known about service members' experiences with disinformation in the military context. We examined soldiers' perceptions of disinformation impact on the Army and their units. We also investigated associations between disinformation perceptions and soldiers' sociodemographic characteristics, reported use of fact-checking, and perceptions of unit cohesion and readiness. METHODS: Active-duty soldiers (N = 19,465) across two large installations in the Southwest US completed an anonymous online survey. RESULTS: Sixty-six percent of soldiers agreed that disinformation has a negative impact on the Army. Thirty-three percent of soldiers perceived disinformation as a problem in their unit. Females were more likely to agree that disinformation has a negative impact on the Army and is a problem in their unit. Higher military rank was associated with lower odds of agreeing that disinformation is a problem in units. Most soldiers were confident about their ability to recognize disinformation (62%) and reported using fact-checking resources (53%), and these factors were most often endorsed by soldiers who agreed that disinformation is a problem for the Army and their unit. Soldiers' perceptions of unit cohesion and readiness were negatively associated with the perception that disinformation is a problem in their unit. CONCLUSION: While the majority of soldiers viewed disinformation as a problem across the Army, fewer perceived it as problematic within their units. Higher levels of reported fact-checking were most evident among those who perceived disinformation as a problem, suggesting that enhancing awareness of the problem of disinformation alone could help mitigate its deleterious impact. Perceptions of disinformation problems within units were associated with soldiers' perceptions of lower unit cohesion and readiness, highlighting misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information's impact on force readiness. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Examining the influence of a spatially irrelevant working memory load on attentional allocation.

The present study examined the influence of holding task-relevant gaze cues in working memory during a target detection task. Gaze cues shift attention in gaze-consistent directions, even when they are irrelevant to a primary detection task. It is unclear, however, whether gaze cues need to be perceived online to elicit these effects, or how these effects may be moderated if the gaze cues are relevant to a secondary task. In Experiment 1, participants encoded a face for a subsequent memory task, after which they performed an unrelated target detection task. Critically, gaze direction was irrelevant to the target detection task, but memory for the perceived face was tested at trial conclusion. Surprisingly, participants exhibited inhibition-of-return (IOR) and not facilitation, with slower response times for the gazed-at location. In Experiments 2, presentation duration and cue-target stimulus-onset asynchrony were manipulated and we continued to observe IOR with no early facilitation. Experiment 3 revealed facilitation but not IOR when the memory task was removed; Experiment 4 also revealed facilitation when the gaze cue memory task was replaced with arrows cues. The present experiments provide an important dissociation between perceiving cues online versus holding them in memory as it relates to attentional allocation.

Gaze cues influence memory but not for long.

Many factors influence the manner in which material is encoded into memory, with one of the most important determinants of subsequent memorability being the degree to which an item is attended at study. Attentional gaze manipulations - which occur when a task-irrelevant face at fixation looks towards or away from a target - have been shown to enhance attention such that stimuli that are gazed at elicit quicker responses. In the present study, four experiments were conducted to determine whether attentional gaze cues can also influence the recall of items appearing at gazed-at or gazed-away from locations. In Experiment 1, an irrelevant gaze cue at fixation preceded the presentation of to-be-remembered items, with each item remaining on screen for 1000ms. Gaze direction had no effect on memory for words. In Experiment 2, the presentation time for to-be-remembered items was reduced to 250ms or 500ms. Now gazed at items were more memorable. In Experiment 3, we manipulate the intentionality of the memory instruction and demonstrate that gaze cues influence memory even when participants are not explicitly attempting to memorize items. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrates that these findings are specific to gaze cues as no memory effect is observed when arrow cues are presented. It is argued that gaze cues can modify memory for items, but that this effect is primarily attributable to shifts of attention away from target items when a gaze cue is invalid.