Here Today, Gone Tomorrow – Adaptation to Change in Memory-Guided Visual Search

Zellin, Martina; Conci, Markus; von Mühlenen, Adrian; Müller, Hermann J. · 2013 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059466

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Summary

This study investigates the flexibility of memory-guided visual search, specifically examining whether observers can adapt implicit contextual associations when a target’s location changes permanently within a familiar scene. While "contextual cueing" facilitates search for targets in repeated configurations, previous research suggested that these associations are rigid. The authors sought to determine if existing context-target links could be "relearned" to accommodate a new target location, or if such adaptation is fundamentally constrained compared to learning entirely new contexts ("new-learning"). The researchers conducted four experiments using a standard contextual cueing paradigm where participants searched for a rotated 'T' among 'L' distractors. In relearning experiments (Experiments 1 and 3), participants first learned associations between specific distractor configurations and initial target locations. Subsequently, the target was relocated to a new position within the same invariant context. Experiment 1 tested this with intensive training (20–35 repetitions of the new location), while Experiment 3 introduced an overnight sleep break to reduce proactive interference. In parallel new-learning experiments (Experiments 2 and 4), participants learned a second, entirely distinct set of context-target configurations under identical training conditions. Performance was measured via response times (RTs) and explicit recognition tests. The results demonstrated a stark contrast between relearning and new-learning. In relearning conditions, contextual cueing for the relocated targets failed to develop, regardless of the intensity of training or the presence of a sleep break. Search times for relocated targets remained comparable to those for novel, unlearned contexts, indicating that the initial context-target associations were not updated. Conversely, in new-learning conditions, robust contextual cueing emerged for the additional, previously unseen configurations. Furthermore, the introduction of relocated targets or new contexts did not interfere with the retention of cueing for the initially learned configurations; when targets returned to their original locations, search facilitation was immediately restored. These findings indicate that contextual memory is highly inflexible regarding changes to established target locations. The inability to relearn relocated targets, despite successful learning of new contexts under identical conditions, suggests that contextual cueing mechanisms are optimized for encoding only one repeated target location per context. This implies that implicit visual search strategies rely on stable, single-location associations rather than adaptable representations, highlighting a fundamental limitation in how the visual system updates spatial memory in response to environmental changes.

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• visual search