Simple contextual cueing prevents retroactive interference in short-term perceptual training of orientation detection tasks

Abstract

AbstractPerceptual training of multiple tasks suffers from interference between the trained tasks. Here, we conducted four psychophysical experiments with separate groups of participants to investigate the possibility of preventing the interference in short-term perceptual training. We trained the participants to detect two orientations of Gabor stimuli in two adjacent days at the same retinal location and examined the interference of training effects between the two orientations. The results showed significant retroactive interference from the second orientation to the first orientation (Experiments 1 and 2). Introducing a 6-hour interval between the pre-test and training of the second orientation did not eliminate the interference effect, excluding the interpretation of disrupted reconsolidation as the pre-test of the second orientation may reactivate and destabilize the representation of the first orientation (Experiment 3). Finally, the training of the two orientations was accompanied by fixations in two colors, each served as a contextual cue for one orientation. The results showed that the retroactive interference was not evident after introducing these passively perceived contextual cues (Experiment 4). Our findings suggest that the retroactive interference effect in short-term perceptual training of orientation detection tasks was likely the result of higher-level factors such as shared contextual cues embedded in the tasks. The effect of multiple perceptual training could be facilitated by associating the trained tasks with different contextual cues.