TY - JOUR
T1 - Top-down attentional guidance based on implicit learning of visual covariation
AU - Chun, Marvin M.
AU - Jiang, Yuhong
PY - 1999/7
Y1 - 1999/7
N2 - The visual environment is extremely rich and complex, producing information overload for the visual system. But the environment also embodies structure in the form of redundancies and regularities that may serve to reduce complexity. How do perceivers internalize this complex informational structure? We present new evidence of visual learning that illustrates how observers learn how objects and events covary in the visual world. This information serves to guide visual processes such as object recognition and search. Our first experiment demonstrates that search and object recognition are facilitated by learned associations (covariation) between novel visual shapes. Our second experiment shows that regularities in dynamic visual environments can also be learned to guide search behavior. In both experiments, learning occurred incidentally and the memory representations were implicit. These experiments show how top-down visual knowledge, acquired through implicit learning, constrains what to expect and guides where to attend and look.
AB - The visual environment is extremely rich and complex, producing information overload for the visual system. But the environment also embodies structure in the form of redundancies and regularities that may serve to reduce complexity. How do perceivers internalize this complex informational structure? We present new evidence of visual learning that illustrates how observers learn how objects and events covary in the visual world. This information serves to guide visual processes such as object recognition and search. Our first experiment demonstrates that search and object recognition are facilitated by learned associations (covariation) between novel visual shapes. Our second experiment shows that regularities in dynamic visual environments can also be learned to guide search behavior. In both experiments, learning occurred incidentally and the memory representations were implicit. These experiments show how top-down visual knowledge, acquired through implicit learning, constrains what to expect and guides where to attend and look.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0141439403&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0141439403&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-9280.00168
DO - 10.1111/1467-9280.00168
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0141439403
VL - 10
SP - 360
EP - 365
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
SN - 0956-7976
IS - 4
ER -