The Role of Spatial Reference Frame in Implicit Distractor Location Learning

The ability to ignore distracting information plays an important role in many daily life situations. Recent research shows that when we become familiar with features of a distracting stimulus, such as its likely location, we can better ignore it, allegedly because the brain implicitly learns where in the environment distraction is likely to occur. In this study, we examined whether implicit distractor learning is environment-centered and/or depends on the viewer’s perspective. To this end, participants (n=29) performed an additional-singleton visual-search task, displayed on a monitor lying flat on a table. In this task, unbeknownst to the participants, the singleton distractor appeared more often at one of the search locations (high-probable location) during a training phase, to induce distractor location learning. In a subsequent test phase, participants moved 90 degrees around the table, changing their viewpoint, and the distractor regularity was removed. Thus, in the test phase, the distractor could now appear on the previously likely distractor location in the environment, on the previously likely distractor location from their own new viewpoint, or at other previously low probability locations. Initial analyses showed a robust capture effect in singleton-present trials during the training phase, that was significantly reduced when the singleton distractor occurred at the high-probable location, demonstrating distractor-location learning. In the test phase, the effect of the previous distractor location showed trend-level significance, with numerically faster responses when the singleton distractor occurred at the viewer-centered location, but with no clear difference between the environment-centered and the other non-learned distractor locations. These first findings suggest that distractor-location learning may be predominantly viewer-centered, possibly entailing implicit learning of how one should not move their attention from an egocentric perspective.