Statistical regularities across trials bias attentional selection

Previous studies have shown that attentional selection can be biased toward locations that are likely to contain a target and away from locations that are likely to contain a distractor. It is assumed that through statistical learning, participants are able to extract the regularities in the display, which in turn biases attentional selection. The present study employed the additional singleton task to examine the ability of participants to extract regularities that occurred across trials. In four experiments, we found that participants were capable of picking up statistical regularities concerning target positions across trials both in the absence and presence of distracting information. It is concluded that through statistical learning, participants are able to extract intertrial statistical associations regarding subsequent target location, which in turn biases attentional selection. We argue here that the weights within the spatial priority map can be dynamically adapted from trial to trial such that the selection of a target at a particular location increases the weights of the upcoming target location within the spatial priority map, giving rise to a more efficient target selection