Investigating memory episodes in location probability learning: Can altering response features reset spatial bias?

TL;DR

This study investigates how memory episodes influence implicit learning of spatial biases and finds that changing response features does not reset learned attentional biases.

Contribution

The study explores the role of episodic retrieval in implicit learning and challenges the hypothesis that response feature changes reset spatial bias.

Findings

Changing motor responses did not negate the learned attentional bias.

Attentional bias persisted despite alterations in response features.

Episodic retrieval plays a role in implicit location probability learning.

Abstract

When individuals are repeatedly exposed to a specific task, they store each occurrence as a distinct memory episode, which includes stimuli, responses, and outcomes. The accumulation of these episodes enables more efficient retrieval over time, particularly under consistent conditions, leading to quicker and more automatic responses. This mechanism likely underlies the statistical learning effect observed in tasks such as the probability cueing paradigm, where frequent target detection at a predictable location enhances performance through rapid, less conscious retrieval of relevant episodes. In this study, we explored the role of episodic retrieval in implicit location probability learning, focusing specifically on how changes in response features might impact the retrieval of memory episodes and, consequently, the learned attentional bias. Participants performed a visual search task, searching for a T among Ls, while unaware that the target was more often in one screen region. An attentional bias towards this region developed during training. In the testing phase, we examined whether changes in motor responses could negate the learned attentional bias, as such changes might prevent the retrieval of relevant memory episodes. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, two experiments showed that changing response features did not affect the attentional bias. This study expands our understanding of human statistical learning by examining the previously neglected yet increasingly recognized role of episodic retrieval in shaping implicit learning processes, thereby opening new avenues for understanding how our visual systems adapt to and learn from the environment.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13414-025-03106-6.

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