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Expectation violations in sensorimotor sequences: shifting from LTM‐based attentional selection to visual search

Long‐term memory (LTM) delivers important control signals for attentional selection. LTM expectations have an important role in guiding the task‐driven sequence of covert attention and gaze shifts, especially in well‐practiced multistep sensorimotor actions. What happens when LTM expectations are disconfirmed? Does a sensory‐based visual‐search mode of attentional selection replace the LTM‐based mode? What happens when prior LTM expectations become valid again? We investigated these questions in a computerized version of the number‐connection test. Participants clicked on spatially distributed numbered shapes in ascending order while gaze was recorded. Sixty trials were performed with a constant spatial arrangement. In 20 consecutive trials, either numbers, shapes, both, or no features switched position. In 20 reversion trials, participants worked on the original arrangement. Only the sequence‐affecting number switches elicited slower clicking, visual search‐like scanning, and lower eye–hand synchrony. The effects were neither limited to the exchanged numbers nor to the corresponding actions. Thus, expectation violations in a well‐learned sensorimotor sequence cause a regression from LTM‐based attentional selection to visual search beyond deviant‐related actions and locations. Effects lasted for several trials and reappeared during reversion.