The Implicit Processing in Multiple Object Tracking (original) (raw)

Previous research has shown that implicit memory of visual context guides visual attention to a target object in a dynamic scene . We investigated how attention affects implicit learning of contextual information in dynamic scene using a multiple object tracking (MOT) task. Participants were asked to track five identical targets which moved independently and unpredictably among five identical distractors. In this task, the motion patterns (trajectories) of the target items (Experiment 1) or the distractor items (Experiment 2) were made invariant by repeating them throughout the entire experimental session. The results showed that the invariant motion patterns of the target set improved MOT performance implicitly. In addition, participants demonstrated greater performance when the motion patterns of both target and distractor set were made invariant. This additional facilitation by the distractor set was not observed when only patterns of the distractor set was repeated. These data suggest contextual modulation of attentional tracking and sensitivity to the global motion pattern in a dynamic scene.