In visual search, people find targets faster when the arrangement of items repeats across trials, a phenomenon known as contextual cueing. This study investigated whether the knowledge gained from repeated displays is conscious. After a training phase, participants briefly viewed search displays followed by masks and then indicated the target's location and their confidence. Results showed that contextual cueing was driven by only about four learned configurations. For those learned displays, localization accuracy was higher, and participants reported greater visual experience and confidence compared to novel displays. The findings suggest that contextual cueing relies on a small number of repeated displays, and the ability to locate the target in those displays is accompanied by increased conscious awareness.
Binocular rivalry occurs when each eye sees a different image, causing conscious perception to alternate between them even though the physical stimuli remain constant. Contrast and attention have been shown to influence these alternations similarly, suggesting attention boosts effective stimulus contrast. This study examined brief transition periods between clear percepts, which are less understood. Observers reported four common transition types while contrast or exogenous attention was manipulated. Contrast and attention similarly affected overall rivalry dynamics, but their effects on transition appearance differed. This indicates attention's effect is not merely enhancing stimulus strength, a distinction revealed only when analyzing transition types.