Spatial Working Memory Load Interferes Contextual Cueing Effect

The human visual system receives more information than can be consciously processed. To overcome this capacity limit,we employ attentional mechanisms to prioritize task-relevant (target) information over less relevant (distractor) information. Regularities in the environment can facilitate the allocation of attention,as demonstrated by the spatial contextual cueing paradigm.When observers are exposed repeatedly to a scene included both target information and invariant distractor information,learning from earlier exposures enhances the search for the target.Here,we investigated whether spatial contextual cueing draws on spatial working memory resources and,if so,at what level of processing working memory load has its effect.Participants performed 2 tasks concurrently:a visual search task,in which the spatial configuration of some search arrays occasionally repeated,and a spatial working memory task,using single-task paradigm or dual-task paradigm.In Experiment 1,we use a 2(context:repeat search arrays vs. novel search arrays) × 3 (load:no-load vs. low-load vs. high-load) experiment design,the results demonstrate that spatial contextual learning is significantly reduced under concurrent WM load.In Experiment 2, we addressed the possibility that participants in Experiment 1 learned contextual information from the visual search array but that this learning was not expressed under dual task conditions,so we use a 3 (learning condition:novel vs. no-load vs. high-load) × 4 (block) design,the findings suggest that spatial contextual learning is robust to increases in WM load.Experiment 3 was designed to distinguish between two alternative explanations of the results from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2:the expression of learning account and the novel-array interference account.The results in Experiment 3 suggest that contextual learning was influenced by WM load in both the dual-task training phase and the single-task testing phases.These findings do not support the expression of learning accountand instead suggest that the novel-array interference hypothesis provides a better explanation for the different findings of the first two experimentsIncreases in working memory load significantly impaired contextual learning These findings indicate that spatial contextual cueing utilizes working memory resources.