Spatial statistical learning of task relevance, rather than stimulus prevalence, improves visual working memory recall.

ABSTRACT: Our visual environment provides us with more information than we can process. Processing efficiency may be enhanced by leveraging inherent regularities in the environment, such as prioritizing likely target objects over unlikely ones. Although there is evidence that statistical learning improves visual working memory performance, it is unclear whether this improvement occurs through stimulus prevalence (how likely we are to encounter stimuli) or task relevance (how likely we are to use these stimuli). To distinguish between these two hypotheses, we examined whether frequent appearance, or frequent probing of stimuli (or both) improves visual working memory recall. Participants were asked to recall and replicate the orientation of one of two previously presented oriented gratings (Gabors) a

SUBMITTER: Xu L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12916991 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature