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This article presents a comprehensive survey of research concerning interactions between associative learning and attention in humans. Four main findings are described. First, attention is biased toward stimuli that predict their consequences reliably ( learned predictiveness ). This finding is consistent with the approach taken by Mackintosh (1975) in his attentional model of associative learning in nonhuman animals. Second, the strength of this attentional bias is modulated by the value of the outcome ( learned value ). That is, predictors of high-value outcomes receive especially high levels of attention. Third, the related but opposing idea that uncertainty may result in increased attention to stimuli (Pearce & Hall, 1980), receives less support. This suggests that hybrid models of associative learning, incorporating the mechanisms of both the Mackintosh and Pearce-Hall theories, may not be required to explain data from human participants. Rather, a simpler model, in which attention to stimuli is determined by how strongly they are associated with significant outcomes, goes a long way to account for the data on human attentional learning. The last main finding, and an exciting area for future research and theorizing, is that learned predictiveness and learned value modulate both deliberate attentional focus, and more automatic attentional capture. The automatic influence of learning on attention does not appear to fit the traditional view of attention as being either goal-directed or stimulus-driven . Rather, it suggests a new kind of “derived” attention., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Four experiments using human participants examined how learning about the value of an outcome with which a cue is associated influences attention to that cue. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants learn more rapidly about cues that previously predicted high-value outcomes than those that predicted low-value outcomes, indicating an attentional bias that is based on the learned value of cues. Experiments 2 through 4 examined the nature of this bias by retrospectively manipulating the value of the outcomes involved through instructions to participants. Results demonstrate that learning about value through trial-by-trial training and through instruction both influence attention to the cues involved, but in different ways. We take these findings to suggest that the learning of attentional responses, just like more overt forms of instrumental action, can be influenced by both goal-directed and habit-like processes.

Preexposure to intermixed presentations of a pair of similar stimuli (AX and BX, where A and B represent distinctive features, and X the features the stimuli hold in common) facilitates subsequent discrimination between them. This perceptual learning effect has been interpreted as indicating that the loss of effective salience resulting from repeated presentation of a stimulus is attenuated or reversed by a salience-modulation process that operates on the unique stimulus features A and B during intermixed preexposure. In 3 experiments, we examined discrimination after intermixed preexposure to AX and BX, making comparison with a condition in which novel unique features were added to the preexposed background (CX and DX). In all experiments, we also monitored eye gaze during both preexposure and the test. Experiments 1 and 2 found discrimination of the preexposed stimuli to be superior. This result cannot be explained by salience-modulation theories that suppose that intermixed preexposure merely attenuates loss of salience to the unique features A and B; it suggests, rather, that intermixed preexposure to AX and BX enhances the salience of, or attention paid to, the distinctive features. Experiment 3 demonstrated that exposure increases sensitivity to the spatial location of the features, a conclusion confirmed by analysis of eye gaze., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).)

Cues that reliably predict an outcome in an initial phase of training (Phase 1) are learned faster in a second phase of training (Phase 2) than cues that were unreliable in Phase 1. This result is observed despite objectively equal relationships between the cues and the outcomes in Phase 2, and consequently constitutes a nonnormative bias in learning. The present experiments sought to confirm that this learned predictiveness effect is the product of attentional processes (Experiment 1), and to test further whether these processes are under voluntary control or are automatic in nature (Experiment 2). In addition to the usual outcome prediction measure, eye-gaze behavior was also monitored. The results indicated an important role for top-down strategic attentional processes in the learned predictiveness task. In contrast, no evidence for an automatic attentional bias was found., ((c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.)

Four experiments examined the role of attention in human perceptual learning. In Experiment 1, participants were preexposed to a pair of visual (checkerboard) stimuli AX and BX, with common elements X and unique features A and B. A same-different task was then used to assess discrimination of AX and BX and a pair of control stimuli, CY and DY. In addition, participants' eye movements were recorded to assess the role of attentional processes. The results showed that preexposure enhanced discrimination between AX and BX. Furthermore, participants showed greater attention to the preexposed unique features A and B than to the novel unique features C and D, as measured by the eye gaze monitor. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the prediction that perceptual learning is due to the relative familiarity of the common and unique stimulus features. Experiment 4 replicated the intermixed-blocked effect and showed that the way in which AX and BX are presented is also important for perceptual learning. The results generally support the idea that intermixed preexposure to AX and BX increases attention to the unique stimulus features A and B. Some aspects of the results are consistent with a relative novelty account, whereas others implicate a high-level attentional process that is not driven by stimulus novelty.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular indirect measure of attitudes in social psychology. Rothermund and Wentura (2001, 2004) suggested that artifacts such as salience asymmetries are a source of compatibility effects in the IAT, and, therefore, the IAT does not necessarily measure attitude. They claim that salience asymmetries correspond with visual search asymmetries, such that the stimulus categories that are more quickly detected in a visual search task are also compatible in the IAT. We propose that processing fluency is a more reliable indicator of salience asymmetries in the IAT than are visual search asymmetries. To test this hypothesis, we set processing fluency in opposition to visual search asymmetry to see which variable better predicted IAT effects. In one pair of categories, the category that was more quickly detected in visual search was also more fluently processed in a binary classification task. In a second pair of categories, the category that was more quickly detected in visual search was the less fluently processed category. Across four experiments, we demonstrated that compatibility effects in the IAT corresponded with differences in processing fluency between categories, rather than with visual search asymmetries.

A selective summary of the four contributions to this special issue of Learning & Behavior on perceptual learning is presented. Mackintosh and Hall propose an associative analysis of perceptual learning. It is argued that Tsushima and Watanabe's psychophysical evidence and Fiser's Bayesian-modeling work represent (in different ways) challenges to the associative approach. Some tentative suggestions are explored with regard to how animal learning theorists might meet these challenges. Finally, the role of awareness in perceptual learning is briefly examined.

Four experiments examined the role of selective attention in a new causal judgment task that allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, blocking was observed; pretraining with 1 cue (A) resulted in reduced learning about a 2nd cue (B) when those 2 cues were trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant Cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training. This is consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated toward the more predictive Cue A, and away from the less predictive Cue B (e.g., N. J. Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants demonstrated poorer recognition for the most predictive cues, relative to control cues. A new model, which is based on N. J. Mackintosh's (1975) model, is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about, and later recognized, (.(c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

A robust finding in humans and animals is that intermixed exposure to 2 similar stimuli (AX/BX) results in better discriminability of those stimuli on test than does exposure to 2 equally similar stimuli in 2 separate blocks (CX_DX)--the intermixed-blocked effect. This intermixed-blocked effect may be an example of the superiority of spaced over massed practice; in the intermixed, but not the blocked exposure regime, each presentation of a given stimulus (e.g., AX) is separated from the next by the presentation of its partner (BX). Two experiments with human participants replicated the intermixed-blocked effect and showed that the effect was not due to the spacing of exposure trials. A mechanism for the intermixed-blocked effect is proposed, which combines theories from associative learning and memory., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.)

In a first stage of training, participants learned to associate four visual cues (two different colors and two different shapes) with verbal labels. For Group S, one label was applied to both colors and another to both shapes; for Group D, one label was applied to one color and one shape, and the other label to the other cues. When subsequently required to learn a task in which a given motor response was required to one of the colors and one of the shapes, and a different response to the other color and the other shape, Group D learned more readily than Group S. The task was designed so that the associations formed during the first stage of training could not generate differential transfer to the second stage. The results are consistent, however, with the proposal that training in which similar cues are followed by different outcomes will engage a learning process that boosts the attention paid to features that distinguish these cues.

Much of contemporary associative learning research is focused on understanding how and when the associative history of cues affects later learning about those cues. Very little work has investigated the effects of the associative history of outcomes on human learning. Three experiments extended the "learned irrelevance" paradigm from the animal conditioning literature to examine the influence of an outcome's prior predictability on subsequent learning of relationships between cues and that outcome. All 3 experiments found evidence for the idea that learning is biased by the prior predictability of the outcome. Previously predictable outcomes were readily associated with novel predictive cues, whereas previously unpredictable outcomes were more readily associated with novel nonpredictive cues. This finding highlights the importance of considering the associative history of outcomes, as well as cues, when interpreting multistage designs. Associative and cognitive explanations of this certainty matching effect are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a review of recent studies of perceptual learning conducted with nonhuman animals. The focus of this research has been to elucidate the mechanisms by which mere exposure to a pair of similar stimuli can increase the ease with which those stimuli are discriminated. These studies establish an important role for 2 mechanisms, one involving inhibitory associations between the unique features of the stimuli, the other involving a long-term habituation process that enhances the relative salience of these features. We then examine recent work investigating equivalent perceptual learning procedures with human participants. Our aim is to determine the extent to which the phenomena exhibited by people are susceptible to explanation in terms of the mechanisms revealed by the animal studies. Although we find no evidence that associative inhibition contributes to the perceptual learning effect in humans, initial detection of unique features (those that allow discrimination between 2 similar stimuli) appears to depend on an habituation process. Once the unique features have been detected, a tendency to attend to those features and to learn about their properties enhances subsequent discrimination. We conclude that the effects obtained with humans engage mechanisms additional to those seen in animals but argue that, for the most part, these have their basis in learning processes that are common to animals and people. In a final section, we discuss some implications of this analysis of perceptual learning for other aspects of experimental psychology and consider some potential applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of experiments studied the amount learned about two food cues (A and B) whose presentation in a meal was followed by an allergy (+) in a fictitious patient. Participants were trained with A+ and C+ in Phase 1 and then with AB+ or AB++ in Phase 2. Subsequent testing revealed that BC was more allergenic than AD, showing that more had been learned about B than A in Phase 2. Participants were also trained with A+, then with AB+, and finally with AB++. The results of interpolating AB+ between A+ and AB++ training were consistent with the hypothesis that pretraining with Cue A selectively suppressed attention to its associate across the AB+ trials and, thereby, reduced the amount subsequently learned about B on AB++ trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of attentional allocation in associative learning are typically structured according to one of two guiding principles: the predictiveness principle, which posits that attention is paid to cues that have reliably predicted an outcome in the past, or the uncertainty principle, which states that attention is paid to cues about which little is known. Both principles are well supported by studies of animals. However, in studies of human learning, there is very little direct empirical support for the uncertainty principle. In the study reported here, we addressed this gap by investigating negative transfer, a phenomenon that may provide unique support for the uncertainty principle. In two human learning experiments using an allergist task, we replicated the primary findings of previous research on animal learning. We believe that these data provide the first direct evidence for the uncertainty principle in human associative learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]