Measuring learning and attention to irrelevant distractors in contextual cueing

Visual search usually improves with repeated exposure to a search display. Previous research suggests that such “contextual cueing” effect may be supported even by aspects of the search display that participants have been explicitly asked to ignore. Based on this evidence, it has been suggested that the development of contextual cueing over trials does not depend on selective attention. In the present series of experiments, we show that the most common strategy used to prevent participants from paying attention to the task-irrelevant distractors often results in suboptimal selection. Specifically, we show that visual search is slower when search displays include many irrelevant distractors. Eye-tracking data shows that this happens, at least in part, because participants fixate on them. These results cast doubts on previous demonstrations that contextual cueing is independent from selective attention.