Template-based attentional guidance and generic procedural learning in contextual guided visual search: Evidence from reduced response time variability.

ABSTRACT: The contextual cueing effect-where participants search repeated displays faster than novel ones-is often explained by the "attention guidance" account, which posits that repeated exposure helps individuals learn the context and attend to the likely target locations. Alternatively, the "generic procedural learning" account suggests that a general search strategy is developed for all displays, although repeated contexts play a higher weight in optimizing the strategy due to their higher presented frequency. This makes responses faster for repeated displays than novel displays. The current study examined these two mechanisms using a varied contextual cueing paradigm to analyze response time (RT) variability with the coefficient of variation (CV) and time-frequency analysis of RTs. Experiment

SUBMITTER: Yang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11977797 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature