Lijeong Hong¹ (), Min-Shik Kim¹; ¹Yonsei University

People implicitly learn target-distractor co-occurrences, a process that facilitates visual search performance, known as contextual cueing (Chun & Jiang, 1998, 1999). While perceptual schemas—like expecting to find a pen on a desk—are acquired through visual experience, real-world tasks often involve social contexts, such as recognizing familiar individuals in crowded environments. This study investigates whether social information about interpersonal associations can be implicitly learned as a contextual cue and used to guide attention during visual search tasks. Notably, the contextual cue in this study was independent of the spatial configuration of all stimuli, including the target's location. Participants were asked to find a female face (target) among ten male faces (distractors). In the consistent mapping condition, specific pairings between target and distractor faces were maintained across all blocks, while in the variable mapping condition, target-distractor pairings were randomized. For example, in the consistent condition, a target face (e.g., Kim Kardashian) was always paired with specific distractor faces (e.g., the other Kardashian family members), whereas no such pairing existed in the variable condition. Importantly, spatial configurations of all stimuli were randomized in both conditions. Results showed that participants implicitly learned the associations between target and distractor identities, encoding interpersonal contextual information and using it to guide attention during the visual search. These results indicate that social information about interpersonal associations can be implicitly learned and served as contextual cues, enabling individuals to anticipate the target's identity and enhancing visual search performance. This study suggests that contextual cueing research could extend to other dimensions of social information, such as emotional expressions or group dynamics.