Abstract
Extensive cognitive research has been devoted to the sensitivity of the visual system to invariant statistical information. For example, many studies have shown that performance improves when a visual display is presented repeatedly. But what allows humans to connect the current visual input to previous memory? Is the connection made only when the entire incoming display matches with a previous memory, or can retrieval rely on an incomplete match between the input and a learned display? Using a visual search task, we show that (1) once a repeated display is learned, subjects can retrieve it even when an incoming display only matches it in 3-4 locations; (2) however, early during learning, repetition of a small proportion of a display is not enough to establish a strong memory trace for the repeated locations. We suggest that the retrieval of a well-established visual memory can proceed even if an incoming display partly matches the previous memory.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | 322-330 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of vision |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 14 2005 |
Keywords
- Contexual cueing
- Implicit visual learning
- Visual search