Dana Slabbekoorn¹ (), Eunji Back¹, Deborah E. Hannula¹; ¹University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Novel objects are strong attractors of attention and are viewed preferentially in the visual paired comparison task. At the same time, a growing body of work demonstrates that long-term memory can bias gaze toward the learned associate of a memory cue. The present study examined how novel items and associates compete for attention. Participants completed an incidental encoding task in which they viewed scene–face pairs and were asked to consider their fit. In a subsequent indirect test, each trial began with a studied scene, followed by the presentation of a 3-face display superimposed on the scene. One of these faces had been paired with the scene (i.e., the associate), another was familiar but had been paired with a different scene, and the remaining face was new. Participants were instructed to view the display and eye movements were recorded. No reference was made to memory. After incidental viewing, participants completed two explicit recognition tests. In one test, they attempted to identify the novel face and in the other they identified the associate; confidence judgments were made after each recognition response. During the incidental test block, participants spent more time looking at associates in the first gaze than at either of the remaining two faces. They also made more transitions to the associate and spent more time over the course of the entire trial viewing that face compared to the other two. When time-course analyses were performed, results indicated that disproportionate viewing of the associate was significant within the first second of the 3-face display onset and remained high for the rest of the trial. The only measure that was not sensitive to learned associations was the landing position of the first saccade. Together, these results demonstrate that under conditions of direct competition, associates are stronger attractors of attention than novel items.