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Investigating cue competition in contextual cuing of visual search

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2012
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Issue number3
Volume38
Number of pages17
Pages (from-to)709-725
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

A fundamental principle of learning is that predictive cues or signals compete with each other to gain control over behavior. Associative and propositional reasoning theories of learning provide radically different accounts of cue competition. Propositional accounts predict that under conditions that do not afford or warrant the use of higher order reasoning processes, cue competition should not be observed. We tested this prediction in 2 contextual cuing experiments, using a visual search task in which patterns of distractor elements predict the location of a target object. Blocking designs were used in which 2 sets of predictive distractors were trained in compound, with 1 set trained independently. There was no evidence of cue competition in either experiment. In fact, in Experiment 2, we found evidence for augmentation of learning. The findings are contrasted with the predictions of an error-driven associative model of contextual cuing (Brady & Chun, 2007).

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