Learning of association between a context and multiple possible target locations in a contextual cueing paradigm.

Searching for a target is faster in a repeated context compared to a new context, possibly because the learned contextual information guides visual attention to the target location (attentional guidance). Previous studies showed that switching the target location following learning, or having the target appear in one of multiple possible locations during learning, fails to produce search facilitation in repeated contexts. In this study, we re-examined whether the learning of an association between a distractor configuration context and a target is limited to one-to-one context-target associations. Visual search response times were facilitated even when a repeated context was associated with one of four possible target locations, provided the target locations were also shared by other repeated distractor contexts. These results suggest that contextual cueing may involve mechanisms other than attentional guidance by one-to-one context-target associations.

Motor expertise affects the unconscious processing of geometric forms.

BACKGROUND: The unconscious processing of information is an important skill used by competitive athletes to handle the rapidly changing movements of opponents and equipment. Previous studies have shown that unconscious information processing among athletes is better than that among non-athletes in the sports-specific domain. However, it is not yet clear whether athletes also show superior unconscious information processing in the general cognitive domain. METHODS: Twenty-five competitive table tennis players (athletes) and 26 aged-matched non-athletic college students (non-athlete controls) were recruited for this study. Participants first performed a masked priming task that used geometric shapes as primes and targets to examine unconscious information processing in the general cognitive domain. As a control, participants then completed a prime identification task to determine whether they could consciously detect the priming geometric forms. Reaction times and error rates were analyzed to examine whether motor expertise influenced unconscious information processing in the general domain. Nineteen athletes and 17 non-athletes from our present study, which used general stimuli, also participated in our previous study, which used sport-specific stimuli. The strength of the unconscious response priming effect was analyzed to examine whether the effect of motor expertise on unconscious processing could be transferred from a sports-specific domain to a general domain. RESULTS: Signal detection analyses indicated that neither athletes nor non-athletes could consciously perceive the priming stimuli. Two-way repeated-measures analyses of variance followed by simple main effects analyses of the masked priming performance, indicating that athletes responded faster and committed fewer errors when the priming stimulus was congruent with the target stimulus. These results suggested that athletes exhibited a significant unconscious response priming effect of geometric forms. By contrast, non-athletes did not respond faster or commit fewer errors for congruent vs. incongruent conditions. No significant difference was detected between athletes and non-athletes in error rates for congruent trials, but athletes committed significantly more errors than non-athletes on incongruent trials. The strength of the unconscious response priming effect that athletes exhibited was greater than that for non-athletes, both in the present study with general stimuli and in our previous study with sport-specific stimuli. CONCLUSION: The results indicated that motor expertise facilitated the unconscious processing of geometric forms, suggesting that the influence of motor expertise on unconscious information processing occurs not only for the sports-specific domain but also transfers to the general cognitive domain.

Face recognition and memory in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia, commonly known as tone deafness, is a lifelong impairment of music perception and production. It remains a question of debate whether the impairments in musical domain observed in congenital amusia are paralleled in other non-musical perceptual abilities. Using behavioral measures in two experiments, the current study explored face perception and memory in congenital amusics. Both congenital amusics and matched controls performed a face perception task (Experiment 1) and an old/novel object memory task (for both faces and houses, Experiment 2). The results showed that the congenital amusic group had significantly slower reaction times than that in matched control group when identifying whether two faces presented together were the same or different. For different face-pairs, the deficit was greater for upright faces compared with inverted faces. For object memory task, the congenital amusic group also showed worse memory performance than the control group. The results of the present study suggest that the impairment attributed to congenital amusia is not only limited to music, but also extends to visual perception and visual memory domain.

How Attentional Guidance and Response Selection Boost Contextual Learning: Evidence from Eye Movement.

The contextual cueing effect (CCE) refers to the learned association between predictive configuration and target location, speeding up response times for targets. Previous studies have examined the underlying processes (initial perceptual process, attentional guidance, and response selection) of CCE but have not reached a general consensus on their contributions to CCE. In the present study, we used eye tracking to address this question by analyzing the oculomotor correlates of context-guided learning in visual search and eliminating indefinite response factors during response priming. The results show that both attentional guidance and response selection contribute to contextual learning.