Implicit learning modulates attention in a spatial cueing task

The environment in which we live provides a continuous amount of information to the human brain, and some must be prioritised according to our goals and expectations, through a process known as ‘attentional selection’. Selective attention is typically thought to be driven by either bottom-up (exogenous) or top-down (endogenous) processes. However, the dual dichotomy of attentional selection has been recently challenged. Evidence from visual search studies suggests that attentional guidance may be influenced by Statistical Learning (SL) of spatial regularities (Jiang, 2018). When a region of the screen is made more probable to contain the to-be-detected target, participants show faster reaction times compared to trials with targets appearing in improbable locations. The present study investigated SL in a Posner cueing task. Differently from previous studies, the present work involved a three-phase design, allowing to exclude intervening factors (e.g., priming effects) and to isolate pure effects of SL (Jiang, 2018). Furthermore, cue predictive validity (i.e., the probability of a cue to predict target location) was manipulated only in one out of two spatial locations (i.e., left or right), with the aim to elicit an attentional bias toward that specific location. Results showed Cueing effects during the Learning phase (i.e., cue predictive validity at 75%), but not during the previous Baseline phase (i.e., first; cue predictive validity at 50%). Importantly, such effect persisted during the final Testing phase, when cue predictive validity came back to chance level (i.e., 50%), providing evidence that SL modulated spatial orienting of attention.