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Implicit learning of gaze-contingent events

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Abstract

In a novel implicit learning task, participants responded to a target stimulus that could appear in one of three locations. Unknown to participants, the location in which the target appeared was probabilistically determined on the basis of the location of eye-gaze immediately prior to the appearance of the target. Participants’ response times to the appearance of the target in a high-probability location were faster than when it appeared in a low-probability location, revealing that participants were able to learn these gaze-contingent events. Furthermore, there was no difference in the cuing score between those participants classified as aware or unaware of the contingencies on a subsequent forced-choice recognition task. These data suggest the task involves implicit learning of instrumental (action-outcome) contingencies, which has potential implications for our understanding of gaze-contingent processes in social interaction.

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Notes

  1. See supplemental material for detailed analysis of the stimulus-gaze events.

  2. The threshold for stimulus-gaze event lags of 500 ms ensures that our analysis examines only those trials in which there was reasonable contiguity between the stimulus-gaze event and the target presentation. The duration of 500 ms also ensures that the analysis retains a large proportion of the trials. However, it should be noted that the critical effect of faster responding on frequent- over infrequent-mismatch trials is observed across a range of lags, including when the analysis is restricted to trials in which there was no lag (0 ms), t(39) = 4.58, d = .84, p < .001.

  3. We thank Ian McLaren for suggesting this alternative account.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Tom Beesley, Daniel Pearson & Mike Le Pelley

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  1. Tom Beesley
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  2. Daniel Pearson
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  3. Mike Le Pelley
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Correspondence to Tom Beesley.

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Appendix

Appendix

Forced-choice recognition test for awareness of task contingencies

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Beesley, T., Pearson, D. & Le Pelley, M. Implicit learning of gaze-contingent events. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 800–807 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0720-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0720-4

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