SPATIAL ORIENTING CONTROLLED WITHOUT AWARENESS - A SEMANTICALLY BASEDIMPLICIT LEARNING EFFECT

Three experiments tested whether spatial attention can be influenced b y 1 predictive relation between incidental information and the locatio n of target events. Subjects performed a simple dot detection task; 60 0 msec prior to each target a word was presented briefly 5 degrees to the left or right of fixation. There was a predictive relationship bet ween the semantic category (living or non-living) of the words and tar get location. However, subjects were instructed to ignore the words, a nd a post-experiment questionnaire confirmed that they remained unawar e of the word-target relationship. In all three experiments, given som e practice on the task, response times were faster when targets appear ed at likely (p = 0.8), compared to unlikely (p = 0.2) locations, in r elation to lateral word category Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that th is effect was driven by semantic encoding of the irrelevant words, and not by repetition of individual stimuli. Theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.