Object-centered spatial learning in dynamic contexts: History-driven distractor suppression and target enhancement.

Abstract

The world around us is inherently structured and often repetitive. Research has shown that we can implicitly learn to prioritize relevant objects and locations while filtering out distracting information, creating an integrated priority map for attention allocation. The current study examines whether providing an object-like reference frame would induce an object-centered attentional bias or whether the bias would remain in egocentric (viewpoint-centered) coordinates. The search display consisted of six stimuli that were surrounded by a wheel and square frame. In two experiments, either a distractor or a target appeared more frequently in one location, leading to the suppression or enhancement of that location, respectively. Learning blocks were followed by test blocks, where the frame rotated, creating egocentric-matching and object-centered locations. These experiments showed that both target and distractor learning relied on an egocentric reference frame only. In follow-up experiments, the likely target and distractor location rotated dynamically with the frame during learning. This revealed that participants can learn to enhance a likely target location in an object-centered manner. We hypothesized that while space-based learning feeds into a priority map reliant on an egocentric reference frame, object-based learning allows for implicit prioritization of subparts of objects independent of their spatial orientation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).