Natalie Paquette¹, Joseph Schmidt¹; ¹University of Central Florida

Violating visual search expectations shifts performance towards the expected search (e.g., Cox et al., 2021). Expecting a difficult search but performing an easy search can decrease guidance, increase RTs and object (target/distractor) dwell times, whereas expecting an easy search but performing a difficult search, can decrease accuracy, RTs and object processing times, relative to when expectations are accurate (Paquette & Schmidt, 2025). Awareness of an expectation violation often facilitates task performance (Pinquart et al., 2021), resulting in reduced expectancy effects. However, if search history drives search performance (Wolfe, 2021), awareness of the upcoming difficulty shouldn’t impact expectancy driven changes to search performance. Using a mixed design (between subjects: awareness, predictive/non-predictive cue; within subjects: violation type, harder/easier than expected and stimulus type: Landolt-C’s/real-world objects), this study examined effects of awareness of expectation violations on search performance. Participants pictorially previewed (200ms), then after a 1000ms delay, searched for target Landolt-C’s or real-world objects in blocks of easy or difficult search (low vs. high target-distractor similarity, respectively). Blocks contained 25% of trials from the unexpected difficulty level to assess performance changes when expectations were violated relative to when they were accurate. A predictive or non-predictive difficulty cue was presented during the delay and maintained during search. Early results show a significant effect of expectancy in both awareness conditions, violation types, and stimulus types in distractor dwell time (all p < .05) and reaction times in Landolt-C search (all p < .05). Real-world objects generated an additional effect in harder than expected guidance (p < .05) and Landolt-C’s generated effects in easier than expected target dwell time in the predictive condition. These data suggest that awareness of an expectation violation does not mitigate expectancy effects, suggesting they may be primarily driven by recent search history rather than trial-by-trial expectations.