PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Previous studies have shown that during visual search, participants are able to implicitly learn across-trial regularities regarding target locations and use these to improve search performance. The present study asks whether such across-trial visual statistical learning also extends to the location of salient distractors. In Experiments 1 and 2, distractor regularities were paired so that a specific distractor location was 100% predictive of another specific distractor location on the next trial. Unlike previous findings that employed target regularities, the current results show no difference in search times between predictable and unpredictable trials. In Experiments 3-5 the distractor location was presented in a structured order (a sequence) for one group of participants, while it was presented randomly for the other group. Again, there was no learning effect of the across-trial regularities regarding the salient distractor locations. Across five experiments, we demonstrated that participants were unable to exploit across-trial spatial regularities regarding the salient distractors. These findings point to important boundary conditions for the modulation of visual attention by statistical regularities and they highlight the need to differentiate between different types of statistical regularities.
摘要：
以前的研究表明，在视觉搜索过程中，参与者能够隐含地学习关于目标位置的跨试验规律,并使用这些规律来提高搜索性能.本研究询问这种跨试验的视觉统计学习是否也扩展到显着干扰物的位置。在实验1和2中,对干扰物规律性进行配对,使得特定干扰物位置100%预测下一次试验中的另一特定干扰物位置。与以前采用目标规律的发现不同，目前的结果显示,可预测试验和不可预测试验的搜索时间没有差异.在实验3-5中，对于一组参与者，以结构化顺序（序列）呈现了分心器的位置，而另一组随机呈现。再一次,关于显著的干扰物位置的跨试验规律性没有学习效果.在五个实验中，我们证明参与者无法利用关于显著干扰物的跨试验空间规律.这些发现指出了通过统计规律调节视觉注意力的重要边界条件，并且强调了区分不同类型的统计规律的必要性。
