Learning Alters Salience

The ability to ignore salient yet irrelevant stimuli is essential to accomplish even simple tasks. Previous research has shown that observers are better able to suppress distracting items via experience; yet how this learned suppression is achieved is largely unknown. The current study employed a psychophysical approach combined with computational modelling to examine how learned spatial suppression affects perception. The results show that items presented at suppressed locations are perceived as less bright than those in non-suppressed areas, suggesting that learned suppression directly affects the perceived saliency of items. To determine how this saliency change affects visual search, computational modelling approach was used to compare various models of attentional selection. The analysis favoured a model in which learned suppression reduces the saliency of objects presented at suppressed locations in the initial salience calculation. Since the saliency of these items is reduced, they are less able to compete for attentional processing and capture attention less often.