Abstract
It is well-known that stimulus exposure influences the perception and performance on a subsequently presented stimulus. Despite this, it is unclear whether such pre-training exposures have a longer-lasting effect or whether they influence perceptual learning. To address these questions, we investigated the effect of pre-training exposure on subsequent training over a multiple sessions across days on a perceptual task. Two groups of subjects (n=22, n1 = n2 = 11) were first exposed to a single 100-ms stimulus. One group to a peripheral noise patch, and the other group to a peripheral vertical orientation. The procedure of training was identical for both groups and consisted of 8 blocks of 100 trials for one session, with a total of two sessions, one on each of two consecutive days. On each trial subjects reported on a central letter detection task (T or L) and a peripheral coarse orientation discrimination task (tilted left or right from vertical). Both groups received an identical central letter. Despite a manipulation only on the peripheral stimulus our results showed longer reaction times and higher accuracy on the central letter detection task in the group that received a vertical reference compared with the group that received a noise patch. There was no significant difference between groups on peripheral performance measures and no interactions were found across days. These results indicate that a single brief exposure to a stimulus has a significant and lasting effect on subsequent perceptual responses. These results not only underscore the importance of careful control and further investigation of common features of pre-training procedures, but shows a strong effect of a brief single stimulus on subsequent task performance.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017