Distraction from long-term memory in visual search: Acquired procedural and template-based memory interfere with contextual cueing after target re-location

Participants can learn to faster detect targets embedded in repeatedly encountered spatial arrangements of distractors – termed the "contextual cueing" (CC) effect. However, cueing is severely compromised following target relocation in an otherwise unchanged distractor arrangement. Previous research demonstrated that this re-location cost is due to persistent misguidance of search towards the original location. Since CC reflects top-down guidance of contextual memory, this misguidance is an instance of a "distraction" effect that operates from acquired memory, rather than being driven by salient but irrelevant stimuli in the display. While traditional accounts of CC emphasize the acquisition of search-guiding memory "templates" specific to particular displays, contextual learning also tunes attentional (oculomotor) scanning routines to the overall statistics of the display arrangements, yielding a context-unspecific LT "proceduralization" of search. Using reaction-time and oculomotor-scanning measures, we confirmed both mechanisms to contribute to initial contextual learning as well as the "distraction" effect produced by relocating the targets of repeated displays. We suspect that guidance and misguidance of search by repeated contexts involve two complementary LT mechanisms: procedural optimization of broad, i.e., display-generic, scanning routines, and learning of where to expect the target in specific repeated-context displays.