Awareness in contextual cuing with extended and concurrent explicit tests
Open accessAbstract
The term contextual cuing refers to improved visual search performance with repeated exposure to a configuration of objects. Participants use predictive cues-derived from learned associations between target locations and the spatial arrangement of the surrounding distractors in a configuration--to efficiently guide search behavior. Researchers have claimed that contextual cuing can occur implicitly. The present experiments examined two explicit measures--generation and recognition. In Experiment 1, we found that contextual cuing information was consciously retrievable when the number of trials used in a generation test was increased, and the results also suggested that the shorter tests that were used previously were not statistically powerful enough to detect a true awareness effect. In Experiment 2, concurrent implicit and explicit (generation and recognition) tests were employed. At a group level, learning did not precede awareness. Although contextual cuing was evident in participants who were selected post hoc as having no explicit awareness, and for specific configurations that did not support awareness, we argue that awareness may nevertheless be a necessary concomitant of contextual cuing. These results demonstrate that contextual cuing knowledge is accessible to awareness.
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When targets appeared in contextual configurations in which they had been selected before, they were more quickly selected than when they appeared in configurations in which they had never been selected, even though participants seemed unaware of the contextual relationships.
“They showed that when targets appeared in contextual configurations in which they had been selected before, they were more quickly selected than when they appeared in configurations in which they had never been selected—even though participants seemed to be unaware of the contextual relationships (but see Smyth & Shanks, 2008).”
From Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention. (2018) · cites this paper as Smyth & Shanks, 2008
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- Authors
- Smyth, A. C., & Shanks, D. R.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Smyth, Andrea C.
- ORCID
- Shanks, David R.
- Venue
- Memory & Cognition
- Published
- 2008-03
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 403-415
- ISSN
- 0090-502X (ISSN-L)
- 1532-5946
- OpenAlex
- W1974813962
- Cited by
- 150
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 5.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Memory & Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council (RES-538-28-1001)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Keywords
- contextual cuing, awareness, declarative memory, implicit memory, visual search, recognition memory, predictive cues, spatial learning, statistical power
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Association Learning, Awareness, Cues, Discrimination Learning, Female, Field Dependence-Independence, Humans, Male, Orientation, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Reaction Time, Mental Recall
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