Thank you, Sebastiaan!😀🎉

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Once you eventually select those other times for your next round of search, they are encoded more efficiently thanks to these memory traces.

In sum, when you are repeatedly checking your shopping list for the next two/three items to search for, through visual exposure, you build up latent memory traces for the other items on your list as well!

We found that inspection durations were again shorter in the stable condition when observers were placing the last four items. Here, differences in sampling duration could only be attributed to prior visual exposure to the last four items (and not to e.g. visual distractions caused by swapping).

In Exp. 3, observers were asked to place four cued items (indicated by thick black outlines) first, and four uncued items later. We manipulated the stability of the last four items (uncued items)only while participants placed the first four (cued items).

Across 3 experiments, we found that when to-be-placed items were stable, observers took less time to sample them when they were selected for action later. This indicates that -through visual exposure- memory traces build up for prospective items, facilitating subsequent encoding.

In the SHUFFLED condition, we randomly swapped the locations of to-be-placed items before participants accessed the Model grid, which should interfere with the build-up of memory traces for unplaced items.

In the STABLE condition, the to-be-placed items remained at the same location throughout a trial, allowing for the build-up of memory traces for these unplaced items through repeated visual exposure.

Akin to the shopping list example, it is difficult for observers to memorize and place all items in one go. Therefore, participants need to revisit the Model grid, and are frequently visually exposed to items that are not yet selected for immediate action.

We asked whether memory traces are formed for these prospective (non-selected) items. To this end, our participants were tasked to reproduce a model grid (left) by dragging items from a resource grid (right) to their correct positions in the workspace (middle).

For instance, when using a shopping list, we may select a few items for immediate action, while being passively exposed to other (prospective) items on the list.

In our daily lives, we often encounter visual objects that we do not act on immediately, but are nonetheless exposed to, and may engage with in the future.