The effect of task-irrelevant objects in spatial contextual cueing
DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2024.1336379
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates how task-irrelevant objects influence the contextual cueing effect, a phenomenon where repeated spatial configurations of distractors facilitate visual search by guiding attention to target locations. While previous research established that illusory shapes formed by distractors can abolish this effect, it remained unclear whether genuinely task-irrelevant objects would similarly interfere. The authors hypothesized that the impact of such objects depends on whether they are perceived as part of the search display or as background elements. The research comprised five experiments using a standard T/L visual search task. In Experiment 1, a green-filled square was added to unoccupied locations in the display. Results showed that this task-irrelevant square strongly reduced the contextual cueing effect, reducing the reaction time benefit from 253 ms in standard displays to just 48 ms. Experiment 2 modified the procedure to allow the square to overlap with distractor items, creating a perception of depth separation. This manipulation reinstated the contextual cueing effect, which was robust and comparable to standard displays. Experiment 3 confirmed that this restoration did not depend on the square actually overlapping with stimuli, but rather on the possibility of overlap. Experiments 4 and 5 introduced display changes in the final epoch to test the manifestation of learned information, revealing that the square hindered both the acquisition and the expression of contextual knowledge. The findings demonstrate that the presence of a task-irrelevant object disrupts contextual cueing only when it is perceived as part of the search display configuration. When the object is perceived as background (via potential overlap), contextual learning proceeds normally. The interference is attributed to the diversion of attentional resources away from the predictive context, rather than bottom-up capture of attention by the square itself. Explicit recognition tests indicated that participants had some conscious memory of repeated displays, but this did not account for the differences in search performance. These results refine the understanding of implicit spatial learning, suggesting that effective contextual cueing relies on the perceptual segmentation of the search field. The study implies that the visual system treats elements perceived as part of the search array differently from background elements, with the former competing for attentional resources necessary for learning statistical regularities. This highlights the critical role of perceptual grouping and depth perception in modulating incidental learning during visual search.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-11 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-25 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-11 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-11 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-11 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-11 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.
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