The Influence Of The Locking Relationship Between Image Information And Location Information Of Distractors In Contextual Cueing Effect

In the classic contextual cueing paradigm,participants performed a visual search task in which they looked for a target letter T among a random layout of distractor letter Ls.Over time,smaller reaction times(RT)were found for repeated scenes than for novel scenes.In this study,we explored the possible learning of distractor identity if that information is added to the conventional contextual cueing paradigm.Experiment 1 studied the binding relationship between image information and location information.In addition to target letter T and distractor letter Ls in classic contextual cueing paradigm,we added a picture of a face adjacent to each letter in the display.A set of same faces or different faces were used in all the scenes.The experiment 1 conducted a 2(phase:learning phase\testing phase)×35(time block)×2(scene type:old scene\new scene)×2(face character:different faces\same faces)mixed experimental design,face character is the between subject factor.In the learning phase,repeated location information,repeated identity information and their binding relationship were provided.Following 30 learning blocks,participants experienced 5 testing blocks in which the repeated scenes maintained the same spatial layouts as that during learning phase but the identities of the faces were randomly exchanged.By doing this,the binding of the two information was broken,mading a conflict of location information and identity information.The results showed as that:comparable contextual cueing effect were found following learning phase regardless whether the distractor letter Ls was paired with same face or a set of different faces suggesting little RT benefit when repeated distractor identity information was provided in addition to the repeated layout information.In the beginning of testing phase,however,the new set of face identity-location pairing for upright faces diminished contextual cueing effect while the same face group found no diminished contextual cueing effect,suggesting that information of the identity of the faces also contributed to the contextual cueing in the learning phase.Experiment 2 studied the influence of relative weakness image information to contextual cueing effect,adding a set of inverted faces to search items.Conducted a 2(phase:learning phase and testing phase)×35(time block)×2(scene type:old scene and new scene)mixed experimental design,face character is the between subject factor.The result showed that group which used inverted face did not show any diminished contextual cueing effect,suggesting image which has a low level of recognition intensity did not have any influence on contextual cueing effect.In experiment 3,we consider the identity of object as a task-relevant factor.The experiment 2 conducted a 2(phase:learning phase and testing phase)×25(time block)×2(scene type:old scene and new scene)design.It found with the task-relevant change,contextual cueing effect had a bigger diminished than experiment 1.The results concluded that distractor identity had an influence on contextual cueing effect when the binding of identity information and location information was broken.The image recognition intensity is the factor of this kind of influence.And the relationship between image information and task also influences the contextual cueing effect.