Attention to irrelevant contexts decreases as training increases: Evidence from eye-fixations in a human predictive learning task

• Attention to contexts and cues in human predictive learning was measured through eye-fixations.
• Context is actively processed at the beginning of acquisition, and this processing quickly decreases when training increases.
• Irrelevant contexts are ignored by participants once they learn about the value of predictive cues

Participants were trained in a human predictive learning task in which they had to predict whether the ingestion of a given food (cue) by the imaginary customer of an imaginary restaurant (context) was followed by gastric malaise (outcome). One food was always followed by gastric malaise in one of the contexts, while other foods were not followed by gastric malaise in the same, or in an alternative context. Predictive responses and eye-fixations were recorded throughout the 48 training trials with each cue involved in the task. In agreement with the predictions of the Attentional Theory of Context Processing, attention to the contexts measured through eye-fixations decreased while attention to the cues increased as training progressed. The results of this study give support to the idea that contexts are actively processed at the beginning of acquisition, and that this processing decreases as training increases.