Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jul;59(7):e14025.
doi: 10.1111/psyp.14025. Epub 2022 Feb 9.

Cross-modal contextual memory guides selective attention in visual-search tasks

Siyi Chen  1 , Zhuanghua Shi  1   2 , Artyom Zinchenko  1 , Hermann J Müller  1   2 , Thomas Geyer  1   2
Affiliations

Cross-modal contextual memory guides selective attention in visual-search tasks

Siyi Chen et al. Psychophysiology. 2022 Jul.

Abstract

Visual search is speeded when a target item is positioned consistently within an invariant (repeatedly encountered) configuration of distractor items ("contextual cueing"). Contextual cueing is also observed in cross-modal search, when the location of the-visual-target is predicted by distractors from another-tactile-sensory modality. Previous studies examining lateralized waveforms of the event-related potential (ERP) with millisecond precision have shown that learned visual contexts improve a whole cascade of search-processing stages. Drawing on ERPs, the present study tested alternative accounts of contextual cueing in tasks in which distractor-target contextual associations are established across, as compared to, within sensory modalities. To this end, we devised a novel, cross-modal search task: search for a visual feature singleton, with repeated (and nonrepeated) distractor configurations presented either within the same (visual) or a different (tactile) modality. We found reaction times (RTs) to be faster for repeated versus nonrepeated configurations, with comparable facilitation effects between visual (unimodal) and tactile (crossmodal) context cues. Further, for repeated configurations, there were enhanced amplitudes (and reduced latencies) of ERPs indexing attentional allocation (PCN) and postselective analysis of the target (CDA), respectively; both components correlated positively with the RT facilitation. These effects were again comparable between uni- and crossmodal cueing conditions. In contrast, motor-related processes indexed by the response-locked LRP contributed little to the RT effects. These results indicate that both uni- and crossmodal context cues benefit the same, visual processing stages related to the selection and subsequent analysis of the search target.

Keywords: CDA; PCN; contextual cueing; event-related potentials; multisensory processing; selective attention.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Assumpção, L., Shi, Z., Zang, X., Müller, H. J., & Geyer, T. (2015). Contextual cueing: Implicit memory of tactile context facilitates tactile search. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 77(4), 1212-1222. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-0848-y
    1. Assumpção, L., Shi, Z., Zang, X., Müller, H. J., & Geyer, T. (2018). Contextual cueing of tactile search is coded in an anatomical reference frame. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(4), 566-577. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000478
    1. Böcker, K. B., Brunia, C. H., & Cluitmans, P. J. (1994). A spatio-temporal dipole model of the readiness potential in humans. II. Foot movement. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 91(4), 286-294. https://doi.org/10.1016/0013-4694(94)90192-9
    1. Brainard, D. H. (1997). The psychophysics toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10(4), 433-436. https://doi.org/10.1163/156856897x00357
    1. Brockmole, J. R., & Henderson, J. M. (2006). Usinsg real-world scenes as contextual cues for search. Visual Cognition, 13(1), 99-108. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280500165188

LinkOut - more resources