The presence of joint predictors generates conjunctive predictions

The cognitive system readily detects statistical relationships where a cue predicts a specific outcome. What is less known is how the mind generates predictions when multiple cues are presented simultaneously that predict different outcomes. Here, we examine the nature of such predictions. Specifically, we examine whether the presence of joint cues leads to conjunctive predictions that represent the overlap between the outcomes associated with the cues, or disjunctive predictions that represent the total possible outcomes. To test this, we used a visual search paradigm where participants first viewed a cue and then searched for a target in an array. Each cue predicted where the target would appear in one of the four quadrants in the array. After learning the cue–location associations, two cues were presented simultaneously, and participants searched for the target where the target now appeared in each quadrant with equal probability. We found that participants were faster to find the target in conjunctive locations over disjunctive ones upon seeing two cues (Experiment 1). This attentional prioritization was not solely driven by the smaller spatial scope of conjunctive locations (Experiment 2), and was present when two cues were presented in two feature dimensions in a single object (Experiment 3). These results were consistent with a conjunctive account, where the presence of joint cues led to a conjunctive prediction that represented the overlap of the different outcomes associated with each cue. The study sheds a new light on how the mind makes predictions in novel contexts based on existing knowledge.