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Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant

Visual attention seems essential for learning the statistical regularities in our environment, a process known as statistical learning. However, how attention is allocated when exploring a novel visual scene whose statistical structure is unknown remains unclear. In order to address this question, w...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Alamia, Andrea, Zénon, Alexandre
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4746264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26903846
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00042
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author Alamia, Andrea
Zénon, Alexandre
author_facet Alamia, Andrea
Zénon, Alexandre
author_sort Alamia, Andrea
collection PubMed
description Visual attention seems essential for learning the statistical regularities in our environment, a process known as statistical learning. However, how attention is allocated when exploring a novel visual scene whose statistical structure is unknown remains unclear. In order to address this question, we investigated visual attention allocation during a task in which we manipulated the conditional probability of occurrence of colored stimuli, unbeknown to the subjects. Participants were instructed to detect a target colored dot among two dots moving along separate circular paths. We evaluated implicit statistical learning, i.e., the effect of color predictability on reaction times (RTs), and recorded eye position concurrently. Attention allocation was indexed by comparing the Mahalanobis distance between the position, velocity and acceleration of the eyes and the two colored dots. We found that learning the conditional probabilities occurred very early during the course of the experiment as shown by the fact that, starting already from the first block, predictable stimuli were detected with shorter RT than unpredictable ones. In terms of attentional allocation, we found that the predictive stimulus attracted gaze only when it was informative about the occurrence of the target but not when it predicted the occurrence of a task-irrelevant stimulus. This suggests that attention allocation was influenced by regularities only when they were instrumental in performing the task. Moreover, we found that the attentional bias towards task-relevant predictive stimuli occurred at a very early stage of learning, concomitantly with the first effects of learning on RT. In conclusion, these results show that statistical regularities capture visual attention only after a few occurrences, provided these regularities are instrumental to perform the task.
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spelling pubmed-47462642016-02-22 Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant Alamia, Andrea Zénon, Alexandre Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Visual attention seems essential for learning the statistical regularities in our environment, a process known as statistical learning. However, how attention is allocated when exploring a novel visual scene whose statistical structure is unknown remains unclear. In order to address this question, we investigated visual attention allocation during a task in which we manipulated the conditional probability of occurrence of colored stimuli, unbeknown to the subjects. Participants were instructed to detect a target colored dot among two dots moving along separate circular paths. We evaluated implicit statistical learning, i.e., the effect of color predictability on reaction times (RTs), and recorded eye position concurrently. Attention allocation was indexed by comparing the Mahalanobis distance between the position, velocity and acceleration of the eyes and the two colored dots. We found that learning the conditional probabilities occurred very early during the course of the experiment as shown by the fact that, starting already from the first block, predictable stimuli were detected with shorter RT than unpredictable ones. In terms of attentional allocation, we found that the predictive stimulus attracted gaze only when it was informative about the occurrence of the target but not when it predicted the occurrence of a task-irrelevant stimulus. This suggests that attention allocation was influenced by regularities only when they were instrumental in performing the task. Moreover, we found that the attentional bias towards task-relevant predictive stimuli occurred at a very early stage of learning, concomitantly with the first effects of learning on RT. In conclusion, these results show that statistical regularities capture visual attention only after a few occurrences, provided these regularities are instrumental to perform the task. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4746264/ /pubmed/26903846 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00042 Text en Copyright © 2016 Alamia and Zénon. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Alamia, Andrea
Zénon, Alexandre
Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title_full Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title_fullStr Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title_full_unstemmed Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title_short Statistical Regularities Attract Attention when Task-Relevant
title_sort statistical regularities attract attention when task-relevant
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4746264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26903846
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00042
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