Are selection history effects limited to implicit forms of memory? Evidence from intertrial repetition.

Selection history effects in visual attention are typically considered implicit memory effects. In three experiments, we investigated if a key selection history effect, intertrial priming, could be based on the incidental application of explicit memory. In the basic search task (Experiment 1), participants searched for real-world objects from different categories.

Category-specific learning of color, orientation, and position regularities guide visual search.

In six experiments, we examined how object categories structure the learning of environmental regularities to guide visual search. Participants searched for pictures of exemplars from a set of real-world categories in a repeated search task modeled on the contextual cuing literature. Each trial began with a category label cue, followed by a search array of natural object photographs, with one target object matching the category label.

Real-world object categories and scene contexts conjointly structure statistical learning for the guidance of visual search.

We examined how object categories and scene contexts act in conjunction to structure the acquisition and use of statistical regularities to guide visual search. In an exposure session, participants viewed five object exemplars in each of two colors in each of 42 real-world categories. Objects were presented individually against scene context backgrounds.

Categorical cuing: Object categories structure the acquisition of statistical regularities to guide visual search.

Recent statistical regularities have been demonstrated to influence visual search across a wide variety of learning mechanisms and search features. To function in the guidance of real-world search, however, such learning must be contingent on the context in which the search occurs and the that is the target of search. The former has been studied extensively under the rubric of .