"Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing": Retraction.

Reports the retraction of "Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing" by Yuhong V. Jiang, Khena M. Swallow and Gail M. Rosenbaum (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2013[Feb], Vol 39[1], 285-297). The retraction is at the request of the authors. There was an unintentional error in the MATLAB experimental script used for Experiment 5 that caused one experimental condition to be incorrectly recorded in the data files. The authors confirmed that the MATLAB scripts used for Experiments 1 and 2 did not contain any errors and the findings and conclusions remain valid. However, for Experiments 3 and 4, the programming error led to two issues: (a) one variable was incorrectly written to the data files, and (b) the actual number of trials per condition during the training phase was unbalanced. To ensure that the scientific record is adequately corrected, the authors have uploaded additional information, including the MATLAB scripts for all experiments, the reanalysis of the data from Experiments 3, 4, and 5, and the validation of Experiments 1 and 2, to this OSF repository: https://osf.io/k79j4/?view_only=2220d62d0bb643f9b4ca53 e7a6da872f. The first author of the paper, who programmed the MATLAB scripts, takes full responsibility for the error. The authors sincerely regret this error and apologize for its effects on the editors, reviewers, and the broader scientific community. All authors of the original article joined in the request for the retraction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2012-09470-001). Our visual system is highly sensitive to regularities in the environment. Locations that were important in one's previous experience are often prioritized during search, even though observers may not be aware of the learning. In this study we characterized the guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning of a target's spatial probability, and examined the interaction between endogenous cuing and probability cuing. Participants searched for a target (T) among distractors (Ls). The target was more often located in one region of the screen than in others. We found that search reaction time (RT) was faster when the target appeared in the high-frequency region rather than the low-frequency regions. This difference increased when there were more items on the display, suggesting that probability cuing guides spatial attention. Additional data indicated that on their own, probability cuing and endogenous cuing (e.g., a central arrow that predicted a target's location) were similarly effective at guiding attention. However, when both cues were presented at once, probability cuing was largely eliminated. Thus, although both incidental learning and endogenous cuing can effectively guide attention, endogenous cuing takes precedence over incidental learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Advancing Research on Medical Image Perception by Strengthening Multidisciplinary Collaboration.

Medical image interpretation is central to detecting, diagnosing, and staging cancer and many other disorders. At a time when medical imaging is being transformed by digital technologies and artificial intelligence, understanding the basic perceptual and cognitive processes underlying medical image interpretation is vital for increasing diagnosticians' accuracy and performance, improving patient outcomes, and reducing diagnostician burnout. Medical image perception remains substantially understudied. In September 2019, the National Cancer Institute convened a multidisciplinary panel of radiologists and pathologists together with researchers working in medical image perception and adjacent fields of cognition and perception for the "Cognition and Medical Image Perception Think Tank." The Think Tank's key objectives were to identify critical unsolved problems related to visual perception in pathology and radiology from the perspective of diagnosticians, discuss how these clinically relevant questions could be addressed through cognitive and perception research, identify barriers and solutions for transdisciplinary collaborations, define ways to elevate the profile of cognition and perception research within the medical image community, determine the greatest needs to advance medical image perception, and outline future goals and strategies to evaluate progress. The Think Tank emphasized diagnosticians' perspectives as the crucial starting point for medical image perception research, with diagnosticians describing their interpretation process and identifying perceptual and cognitive problems that arise. This article reports the deliberations of the Think Tank participants to address these objectives and highlight opportunities to expand research on medical image perception.

Location probability learning in 3-dimensional virtual search environments.

When a visual search target frequently appears in one target-rich region of space, participants learn to search there first, resulting in faster reaction time when the target appears there than when it appears elsewhere. Most research on this location probability learning (LPL) effect uses 2-dimensional (2D) search environments that are distinct from real-world search contexts, and the few studies on LPL in 3-dimensional (3D) contexts include complex visual cues or foraging tasks and therefore may not tap into the same habit-like learning mechanism as 2D LPL. The present study aimed to establish a baseline evaluation of LPL in controlled 3D search environments using virtual reality. The use of a virtual 3D search environment allowed us to compare LPL for information within a participant's initial field of view to LPL for information behind participants, outside of the initial field of view. Participants searched for a letter T on the ground among letter Ls in a large virtual space that was devoid of complex visual cues or landmarks. The T appeared in one target-rich quadrant of the floor space on half of the trials during the training phase. The target-rich quadrant appeared in front of half of the participants and behind the other half. LPL was considerably greater in the former condition than in the latter. This reveals an important constraint on LPL in real-world environments and indicates that consistent search patterns and consistent egocentric spatial coding are essential for this form of visual statistical learning in 3D environments.

Simulated central vision loss impairs implicit location probability learning.

Some eye diseases, especially macular degeneration, can cause central vision loss (CVL), impairing goal-driven guidance of attention. Does CVL also affect implicit, experience-driven attention? We investigated how simulated central scotomas affected young adults' ability to prioritize locations frequently containing visual search targets (location probability learning). Participants searched among distractor letter 'L's for a target 'T' that appeared more often in one screen quadrant than others. To dissociate potential impairments to statistical learning of target locations and attentional guidance, two experiments each included search with and without simulated scotomas. Experiment 1 successfully induced probability learning in a no-scotoma phase. When participants later searched both with and without simulated scotomas, they showed persistent, statistically equivalent spatial biases in both no-scotoma and scotoma search. Experiment 2 trained participants with a central scotoma. While Experiment 1's participants acquired probability learning regardless of their self-reported awareness of the target's location probability, in Experiment 2 only aware participants learned to bias attention to the high probability region. Similarly, learning with a scotoma affected search with no scotoma in aware but not unaware participants. Together, these results show that simulated central vision loss interferes with the acquisition of implicitly learned location probability learning, supporting a role of central vision in implicit spatial attentional biases.

Contextual cueing in preview search.

Frequently finding a target in the same location within a familiar context reduces search time, relative to search for objects appearing in novel contexts. This learned association between a context and a target location requires several blocks of training and has long-term effects. Short-term selection history also influences search, where previewing a subset of a search context shortly before the appearance of the target and remaining distractors speeds search. Here we explored the interactions between contextual cueing and preview benefit using a modified version of a paradigm from Hodsoll and Humphreys (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(6), 1346-1358, 2005). Participants searched for a T target among L distractors. Half of the distractors appeared 800 ms before the addition of the other distractors and the target. We independently manipulated the repetition of the previewed distractors and the newly added distractors. Though the previewed set never contained the target, repetition of either the previewed or the newly added context yielded contextual cueing, and the effect was greater when the previewed context repeated. Another experiment trained participants to associate the previewed context with a target location, then disrupted the association in a testing phase. This disruption eliminated contextual cueing, suggesting that learning of the previewed context was associative. These findings demonstrate an important interaction between distinct kinds of selection history effects.

The yellow light: Predictability enhances background processing during behaviorally relevant events.

The attentional boost effect refers to the observation that when simultaneously performing a scene memory task and a target detection task, participants better remember scenes that appear at the same time as the detection target than scenes that coincide with distractors. The attentional boost effect is thought to result from a transient increase in attention during an acute behaviorally relevant event, resulting from a temporal orienting response. But can endogenous orienting to predictable targets trigger this response in the same manner as exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets? Until now, the attentional boost effect has only been tested under conditions in which the target's appearance was unpredictable. Because of the distinction between exogenous and endogenous orienting, target predictability could attenuate the attentional boost effect, or it could increase temporal orienting efficiency and enhance the effect. To test the attentional boost effect under predictable conditions, participants memorized scenes while responding to a target digit, 0, among a stream of digits appearing in the center of those scenes. In some blocks, the 0 predictably followed the digit sequence 3-2-1. In these predictable blocks, participants showed a robust attentional boost effect. This shows that both endogenous orienting to temporally predictable targets and exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets enhance concurrent task processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Tell me what you saw: The usefulness of verbal descriptions for others.

Describing what one saw to another person is common in everyday experience, such as spatial navigation and crime investigations. Past studies have examined the effects of recounting on one's own memory, neglecting an important function of memory recall in social communication. Here we report surprisingly low utility of one's verbal descriptions for others, even when visual memory for the stimuli has high capacity. Participants described photographs of common objects they had seen to enable judges to identify the target object from a foil in the same basic-level category. When describing from perception, participants were able to provide useful descriptions, allowing judges to accurately identify the target objects 87% of the time. Judges' accuracy decreased to just 57% when participants provided descriptions from memory acquired minutes ago, and to near chance (51.8%) when the verbal descriptions were based on memory acquired 24 hours ago. Comparison of participants' own identification accuracy with judges' accuracy suggests the presence of a common source of errors. This finding suggests that recall and recognition of visual objects share common memory sources. In addition, the low utility of one's verbal descriptions constrains theories about the extension of one's memory to the external world and has implications for eyewitness identification and laws governing it.

Perceptual learning in the identification of lung cancer in chest radiographs.

Extensive research has shown that practice yields highly specific perceptual learning of simple visual properties such as orientation and contrast. Does this same learning characterize more complex perceptual skills? Here we investigated perceptual learning of complex medical images. Novices underwent training over four sessions to discriminate which of two chest radiographs contained a tumor and to indicate the location of the tumor. In training, one group received six repetitions of 30 normal/abnormal images, the other three repetitions of 60 normal/abnormal images. Groups were then tested on trained and novel images. To assess the nature of perceptual learning, test items were presented in three formats - the full image, the cutout of the tumor, or the background only. Performance improved across training sessions, and notably, the improvement transferred to the classification of novel images. Training with more repetitions on fewer images yielded comparable transfer to training with fewer repetitions on more images. Little transfer to novel images occurred when tested with just the cutout of the cancer region or just the background, but a larger cutout that included both the cancer region and some surrounding regions yielded good transfer. Perceptual learning contributes to the acquisition of expertise in cancer image perception.

Redundancy gain in visual search of simulated X-ray images.

Cancer diagnosis frequently relies on the interpretation of medical images such as chest X-rays and mammography. This process is error prone; misdiagnoses can reach a rate of 15% or higher. Of particular interest are false negatives-tumors that are present but missed. Previous research has identified several perceptual and attentional problems underlying inaccurate perception of these images. But how might these problems be reduced? The psychological literature has shown that presenting multiple, duplicate images can improve performance. Here we explored whether redundant image presentation can improve target detection in simulated X-ray images, by presenting four identical or similar images concurrently. Displays with redundant images, including duplicates of the same image, showed reduced false-negative rates, compared with displays with a single image. This effect held both when the target's prevalence rate was high and when it was low. Eye tracking showed that fixating on two or more images in the redundant condition speeded target detection and prolonged search, and that the latter effect was the key to reducing false negatives. The redundancy gain may result from both perceptual enhancement and an increase in the search quitting threshold.

Effects of changing object identity on location working memory.

It is widely accepted that features and locations are represented independently in an initial stage of visual processing. But to what degree are they represented separately at a later stage, after objects enter visual working memory (VWM)? In one of her last studies on VWM, Treisman raised an open question about how people represent locations in VWM, suggesting that locations may be remembered independently of what occupies them. Using photographs of real-world objects, we tested the independence of location memory from object identity in a location change detection task. We introduced changes to object identities between the encoding and test arrays, but instructed participants to treat the objects as placeholders. Three experiments showed that location memory was disrupted when the placeholders changed shape or orientation. The disruption was more noticeable for elongated than for round placeholders and was comparable between real-world objects and rectangles of similar aspect ratio. These findings suggest that location representation is sensitive to the placeholders' geometric properties. Though they contradict the idea that objects are just placeholders in location working memory (WM), the findings support Treisman's proposal that the items in VWM are bound to the global configuration of the memory array.

A spatial bias toward highly rewarded locations is associated with awareness.

Mounting evidence suggests that monetary reward induces an incidentally learned selection bias toward highly rewarded features. It remains controversial, however, whether learning of reward regularities has similar effects on spatial attention. Here we ask whether spatial biases toward highly rewarded locations are learned implicitly, or are instead associated with explicit knowledge of reward structure. Participants completed a hybrid search and choice task involving multiple targets among multiple distractors. Targets garnered varying magnitudes of reward, and participants were instructed to search for targets and guess and click on the 1 that they thought would yield the highest reward. Unbeknownst to participants, 1 side of the display offered higher reward than the other. We measured the spatial bias for targets on the high-reward side of the screen and probed explicit awareness via a multiquestion interview. Participants who were aware of the reward structure (N = 48) showed a selection bias for targets appearing on the high-reward side of the screen. Contrary to previous findings, unaware participants (N = 24) showed only a significant central bias, despite spending just as much time on the task. The strong association between explicit awareness and reward-driven spatial attention in this paradigm suggests that instead of directly affecting the attentional priority map, probabilistic spatial reward learning more frequently affects attention indirectly by modulating task goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Experience-Driven Auditory Attention.

In addition to conscious goals and stimulus salience, an observer's prior experience also influences selective attention. Early studies demonstrated experience-driven effects on attention mainly in the visual modality, but increasing evidence shows that experience drives auditory selection as well. We review evidence for a multiple-levels framework of auditory attention, in which experience-driven attention relies on mechanisms that acquire control settings and mechanisms that guide attention towards selected stimuli. Mechanisms of acquisition include cue-target associative learning, reward learning, and sensitivity to prior selection history. Once acquired, implementation of these biases can occur either consciously or unconsciously. Future research should more fully characterize the sources of experience-driven auditory attention and investigate the neural mechanisms used to acquire and implement experience-driven auditory attention.

Implicit guidance of attention in contextual cueing: Neuropsychological and developmental evidence.

When searching for an object in a familiar environment, we may automatically orient to locations where this object was often placed previously. Contextual cueing refers to the guidance of attention by repeated search context. As an implicit mechanism with high capacity, contextual cueing may be important for people whose cognitive function is compromised, immature, or in decline. Here we review and synthesize the last two decades of research on contextual cueing, focusing on neuropsychological and developmental evidence. Contextual cueing is largely preserved in young children, older adults, and individuals with autism spectrum disorders or mild intellectual impairment. Some, though not all, studies find a deficit in contextual cueing in amnesic patients, patients with basal ganglia damage, children with ADHD, and individuals with psychiatric disorders. Although the medial temporal lobe, the basal ganglia, and the posterior parietal cortex are implicated in contextual cueing, definitive evidence for their necessity is lacking. These findings suggest that contextual cueing is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that is exceptionally robust to damages to single brain sites.

Mechanisms of contextual cueing: A tutorial review.

Repeated contexts yield faster response time in visual search, compared with novel contexts. This effect is known as contextual cueing. Despite extensive study over the past two decades, there remains a spirited debate over whether repeated displays expedite search before the target is found (early locus) or facilitate response after the target is found (late locus). Here, we provide a tutorial review of contextual cueing, with a focus on assessing the locus of the effect. We evaluate the evidence from psychophysics, EEG, and eye tracking. Existing studies support an early locus of contextual cueing, consistent with attentional guidance accounts. Evidence for a late locus exists, though it is less conclusive. Existing literature also highlights a distinction between habit-guided attention learned through experience and changes in spatial priority driven by task goals and stimulus salience.

Implicit location probability learning does not induce baseline shifts of visuospatial attention.

We tested whether implicit learning causes shifts of spatial attention in advance of or in response to stimulus onset. Participants completed randomly interspersed trials of letter search, which involved reporting the orientation of a T among Ls, and scene search, which involved identifying which of four scenes was from a target category (e.g., forest). In Experiment 1, an initial phase more often contained target letters in one screen quadrant, while the target scenes appeared equally often in all quadrants. Participants persistently prioritized letter targets in the more probable region, but the implicitly learned preference did not affect the unbiased scene task. In Experiment 2, the spatial probabilities of the scene and letter tasks reversed. Participants unaware of the probability manipulation acquired only a spatial bias to scene targets in the more probable region, with no effect on letter search. Instead of recruiting baseline shifts of spatial attention prior to stimulus onset, implicit learning of target probability yields task-dependent shifts of spatial attention following stimulus onset. Such shifts may involve attentional behaviors unique to certain task contexts.

Judging social interaction in the Heider and Simmel movie.

Simple displays of moving shapes can give rise to percepts of animacy. These films elicit impoverished narratives in some individuals, such as those with an autism spectrum disorder. However, the verbal demand of producing a narrative limits the utility of this task. Non-verbal tasks have so far focused on detecting animate objects. Lacking from previous research is a task that relies less on verbal description but more than animacy perception. Here, we presented data using a new social interaction judgement task. Healthy young adults viewed the Heider and Simmel movie and pressed one button whenever they perceived social interaction and another button when no social interaction was perceived. We measured the time points at which social judgement began, the fluctuation of the judgement in relation to stimulus kinematic properties, and the overall mean of social judgement. Participants with higher autism traits reported lower levels of social interaction. Reversing the film in time produced lower social interaction judgements, though the temporal profile was preserved. Our study suggests that both low-level motion characteristics and high-level understanding contribute to social interaction judgement. The finding may facilitate future research on other populations and stimulate computational vision work on factors that drive social judgements.

Memory across a short-delay: Systematic biases in memory for faces.

From geometric figures to human faces, many visual stimuli vary along a continuum in featural space, anchored at one end by a highly distinctive constellation of features, at the other by a neutral set. Here we used a continuum of morphed faces to test whether errors in visual short-term memory are symmetric in feature space around the target or systematically biased toward one or the other end of the continuum. Participants were shown a face for 1 s. After a brief delay, participants were asked to choose the face they had been shown among three face options, which consisted of the target face, one face that was slightly more distinctive, and one face that was slightly more neutral. Continuums of morphed faces ranged from an average, neutral face to different distinctive celebrity faces two experiments, or from neutral facial expressions to highly emotional expressions a third experiment. Results showed that when participants made an incorrect response, they were more likely to incorrectly identify the more distinctive face than the more neutral or average face as the target face. This bias toward more extreme faces, however, was not observed for unfamiliar (non-celebrity) faces that were emotionally neutral. These findings suggest that visual memory encodes distinctive features of stimuli that lead to biases in later recognition.

Target detection increases pupil diameter and enhances memory for background scenes during multi-tasking.

Attending to targets in a detection task can facilitate memory for concurrently presented information, a phenomenon known as the attentional boost effect. One account of the attentional boost suggests that it reflects the temporal selection of behaviorally relevant moments, broadly facilitating the processing of information encountered at these times. Because pupil diameter increases when orienting to behaviorally relevant events and is positively correlated with increases in gain and activity in the locus coeruleus (a purported neurophysiological mechanism for temporal selection), we tested whether the attentional boost effect is accompanied by an increase in pupil diameter. Participants memorized a series of individually presented scenes. Whenever a scene appeared, a high or low pitched tone was played, and participants counted (and later reported) the number of tones in the pre-specified, target pitch. Target detection enhanced later memory for concurrently presented scenes. It was accompanied by a larger pupil response than was distractor rejection, and this effect was more pronounced for subsequently remembered rather than forgotten scenes. Thus, conditions that produce the attentional boost effect may also elicit phasic changes in neural gain and locus coeruleus activity.

The influence of selection history on auditory spatial attention.

Evidence suggests that prior attentional selection guides visuospatial attention without conscious intent. Yet few studies have examined whether selection history influences auditory spatial attention. Using a novel auditory search task, we investigated two selection history effects: short-term intertrial location priming and long-term location probability learning. Participants reported whether a spoken number, occurring simultaneously with three spoken letter distractors presented from different locations, was odd or even. We first showed that endogenous attention guided by informative arrows facilitated search in our paradigm. Next, intertrial location priming was assessed by comparing reaction time when target location repeated across recent trials to when target location changed. Unlike visual search, auditory search showed little evidence of intertrial location priming. In a separate experiment, we investigated location probability learning by making targets disproportionately likely to appear in one location. Results showed location probability learning: participants were faster when targets occurred in the high-probability location than in the low-probability locations. To our knowledge, this is the first study of intertrial location priming or long-term location probability learning in auditory search. The findings have implications for the role of spatial relevance in auditory attention and suggest that long-term attentional learning and short-term priming rely on separate mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Characteristics of sustaining attention in a gradual-onset continuous performance task.

Continuous performance tasks are frequently associated with a vigilance decrement, particularly when target events are rare and after prolonged time on task. Here we characterized the time course of a performance decrement that happens more rapidly. Using the gradual-onset continuous performance task (the gradCPT), we presented participants with a long sequence of scenes that gradually faded in and out. Participants pressed a button as soon as they detected scenes in one category and ignored scenes in another category. We manipulated the novelty of stimuli, required response rate, and the prevalence rate of the target stimuli. Performance sensitivity declined moderately within and across three 8-min-long blocks. Contrary to mindlessness accounts of vigilance decrement, the decline was not restricted to situations when target events were rare and the stimuli were repetitive. High motor response rates substantially impaired overall sensitivity and moderately increased performance decrement. Performance in the gradCPT did not correlate with individual differences in mindfulness, attentional lapses, media multitasking, or complex working memory span. The rapid and pervasively observed decline in performance is consistent with attentional resource theories of vigilance decrement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).