Cognitive Processes In Contextual Cueing

In the world, objects can never occur in isolation, They covary with other objects and particular environment, providing a very rich source of contextual association that to be explored by our visual system. We see the world in scenes, where visual objects occur in rich surroundings, often embedded in a typical context with other related objects. By these covariations, visual context information constrains what to expect and where to look, facilitating/priming search for and recognition of objects embedded in complex displays. For examples, a recognized oven can prime us a kitchen surrounding or a office can facilitate searching for a compute that could be possibly occurred. Previous research has shown that participants respond faster to a target if it is always presented at the same location and accompanied by the same contextual configuration than if it is not. The effect that invariant configuration of the same arrangement of random elements (repeated or predictive display) induces high-grade searching-task efficiency has come to be known as the contextual cueing effect. Interestingly, learning and memory of visual context information was implicit, subjects were not aware of those repeated displays.There were convergency evidence that contextual cueing effect was driven by the acquisition of associations between target locations and informative contexts. In terms of ecological relevance, contextual cueing can be regarded as a form of (contextual) scene memory that can facilitate attentional orienting. Most researches on contextual cueing effect explained how contextual information is learned and how it guides the deployment of visual attention, and how object identities and real scenes provide useful information on modulating contextual cueing effect. In sum, previous studies adopted letters or shapes as stimuli, and presented in2-D plane surface, there was very little knowledge of how contextual cueing could be learned in the depth cue scenes. One of the potential advantages of contextual cueing effect lies in ecological validity, and the stimuli adopted by Chun and Jiang in1998were presented lacking in stereo depth information. In fact, visual information in2-D plane surface cannot conclusively express much more plentiful visual information in the real environment, such as depth cues information, orientation information.In order to further investigate the mechanism of contextual cueing effect, make a better understanding of how contextual cueing was learn by the visual configurations, and provide useful associations between target and visual context to facilitate search. In this project, we mainly focus two major facts to reveal the mechanism of contextual cueing effect. In part one, we we mainly investigate how contextual cueing was learned in the depth cue environment. In part two, we adopt eye movement recordings to explore the specific processing stages of contextual cueing effect and reveal the process of contextual cueing in a dynamic analysis.In the first study, we adopted stimuli by Chun and Jiang but presented in3D stereo vision by binocular disparity, to test whether contextual cueing effect can be acquired by stereoscopic depth perception. In Exp1, participants were weared stereoscope to perform a contextual cueing task. In the3-D environment, visual information were much more plentiful, we test whether participants can use the association between target and context, and guide spatial attention toward target position. The results showed that participants responded fast in repeated configuration than that in random configurations, suggested that when stimuli were presented in stereo vision, participants can still learn the contextual cueing by stereoscopic depth perception. However, Exp1can not fully role out one possibility that participants still use the same search strategy in2-D planar surface. Because all the stimuli in repeated configurations were invariant, participants can search target without depth cue and guide attention to the target position.To eliminate the above possibility, in the second study we constrain the depth cue in each repeated configuration to investigate contextual cueing effect. In Exp2and Exp3, we randomized each repeated configuration of one eye have a certain horizontal transformation by manipulating each stimuli jittered in a certain range, and keep the configuration in the other eye invariant. By such manipulation, the identical configuration was presented each time in different stereoscopic depth perception. The results showed that when stereoscopic depth in3-D environment was unstable, participants can not learn contextual cueing information, suggesting that contextual cueing in Exp1was affected by depth perception.In the third study, to further investigate whether semantic covariation could be a factor in the stereoscopic depth perception condition to impact contextual cueing effect. In Exp4, we investigated how depth perception affects contextual cueing when the configurations without semantic covariation by using stimuli like Chun and Jiang. To increase search difficulty, we increased set size into12and16. The results showed that when set size increased contextual cueing effect was decreased or disappeared, suggesting that depth cue perception might be an interference factor in contextual cueing effect. In Exp5, e investigated how depth perception affect contextual cueing when the configuration with semantic covariation by using real-world scene. Stimuli consisted of3D-redered models of naturalistic scenes, and participants performed search task both in3-D and2-D environment, independently. The results showed that When real-world scenes were presented in stereo depth condition, the search efficiency was at least not worse than that presented without depth condition, suggesting that depth cue perception might be an facilitation factor in contextual cueing effect.In the fourth study, we use eye movement to explore roles that modulates contextual cueing effect. Empirical results in the literature have divergent views on whether the contextual cueing effect is driven by attentional guidance or facilitation of initial perceptual processing or response selection. In Exp6., we used eye movement recording in identifying the precise stage of the processing which offers information about the substages of the search task. We partitioned the entire response RTs into three segments—the early phase, the middle phase, and the late phase. The results suggest that the contextual cueing effect is contributed mainly by attentional guidance, and facilitation of response selection also plays a role. In Exp7., We use eye movement further investigate how contextual guidance of visual attention represents regularities and covariations between objects within a scene, and we used a novel method for statistical fixation mapping of eye movement data by plotting a three-dimensional fixation map and considered as "activation maps".The whole project explored the mechanism of contextual cueing effect within stereo depth perception, and used eye movement recordings to further explored specific substages of processing stages. The results suggested that within stereo depth condition, contextual cueing effect might be of higher ecological validity, moreover, a dual-state modulation might be involved in the contextual cueing effect in that attentional guidance plays a major role and, to a small extent, facilitation of response selection also contributes to the overall contextual cueing effect.