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Visual attention

Implicit learning of environmental regularities guides visual attention

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 4, page 367 (2025)Cite this article

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In visual experiments, objects are often displayed in isolation to eliminate interference from irrelevant factors such as other objects that might compete for attention or bias perception. However, in real life, objects are typically surrounded by other objects that form a scene. Objects also usually appear in specific positions within scenes, which reflects the predictable nature of visual environments. For example, a book is typically placed on a bookshelf, and not on the floor.

Regularities in visual environments have a crucial role in guiding visual attention, as highlighted by Chun and Jiang in their 1998 paper. They manipulated the associations between visual scenes and the locations of the target (a T shape) and found that the target was detected faster when it always appeared in the same spot within a specific arrangement of L-shaped distractors, than in scenes with new arrangements. Thus, they proposed that repeated encounters of an object at a specific location enables observers to learn the relationship between the object location and the scene, and subsequently use that context as a visual cue to guide visual search. For instance, based on previous visual experience with cups, people are more likely to first check the table in the bedroom and the drain rack in the kitchen than other locations (such as the floor) when searching for a cup.

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References

Original article

  • Chun, M. M. & Jiang, Y. Contextual cueing: implicit learning and memory of visual context guides spatial attention. Cogn. Psychol 36, 28–71 (1998)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Luzi Xu

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  1. Luzi Xu
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Correspondence to Luzi Xu.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Xu, L. Implicit learning of environmental regularities guides visual attention. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 367 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00449-7

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