Schedule of Events | Symposia

Prioritizing Structure: Statistical Regularities Gate Sustained Attention on a Concurrent Task

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Elena Greatti^1,2 (egreatti@sissa.it), Davide Crepaldi^1,3, Amy Sue Finn⁴; ¹International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), ²University of Camerino, ³University of Pavia, ⁴University of Toronto

There is ongoing debate about the role of attention, if any, in statistical learning – the detection of structural regularities in our environment. Evidence suggests that statistical regularities capture attention (Zhao et al., 2013), but it is unclear whether this effect persists when the regularities are task-irrelevant (Alamia & Zénon, 2016) or how attention directly influences statistical learning (Toro et al., 2005; Batterink & Paller, 2019). To address these questions, a measure of sustained attention is needed. The present study explores the relationship between fluctuations in sustained attention and statistical learning by examining implicit neural entrainment and explicit recall of statistical patterns. Participants were exposed to two syllable streams containing statistical patterns (based on frequency groupings and transitional probabilities) and one control stream, with syllables presented at 4Hz. During exposure, participants performed a categorization task, identifying whether the displayed syllable was red or blue. Response times on this categorization task were used to measure fluctuations in sustained attention—lapse rates (Decker et al., 2020). Behavioral results revealed that statistical regularities influenced attention even when task-irrelevant: lapse rates were higher in both statistical conditions compared to the control. Neural entrainment was also observed in both statistical conditions, indicating a clear sensitivity to attention-attracting structure. After exposure, participants completed two behavioral tasks which evaluated how attention and neural entrainment to statistical regularities influenced their explicit recall. Results highlight the dynamic interaction between attention and statistical learning, advancing our understanding of how attentional states shape the detection, storage, and recall of regularities in memory.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other