Picking-up and exploiting spatial and temporal regularities in the occurrence of sensory events is important for goal-directed behaviour. According to the “Predictive Coding Hypothesis” (Friston Philosophical Trans R Soc B 360(1456):815–836, 2005), these regularities are used to generate top-down predictions that are constantly compared with actual sensory events. In a previous study with the Attentional Blink (AB) paradigm, we showed that the temporal and probabilistic uncertainty of T2s that are presented outside the Attentional Blink period, i.e. at least 400 ms after T1, improves the conscious report of T2 that are presented inside the AB. The study of ERP correlated showed that this improvement was associated with a prolonged storage of pre-conscious T2 traces in extra-striate areas (Lasaponara et al. Cortex 71:15–33, 2015). Here, we tested whether variations in the probabilistic cueing of the position of a primary T1 visual target in a 4 × 4 letter array, modulate the retention of memory traces evoked by secondary letter targets (T2) that were presented in other positions of the array. Most important, in each trial, the identity of T2 was specified to participants upon disappearance of the array. We show that high probabilistic cueing facilitates T1 detection and improves the corresponding sensitivity index (d′). In contrast, retention and conscious report of secondary targets (T2) improves when the probabilistic cueing of T1 position is poor. These results suggest that uncertainty in the upcoming position of primary targets boosts the strength of memory traces evoked by secondary targets and improves the possibility that traces of secondary targets gain full access to conscious processing.

在发生感官事件时拾起和利用空间和时间规律对于目标导向行为很重要。根据“预测编码假说”（Friston Philosophical Trans R Soc B 360（1456）：815-836，2005），这些规律被用来产生自上而下的预测，并与实际的感官事件不断进行比较。在先前关于注意力眨眼（AB）范式的研究中，我们表明，在注意力眨眼期以外（即T1之后至少400毫秒）出现的T2的时间和概率不确定性改善了出现在T2内的有意识报告AB。有关ERP的研究表明，这种改善与在纹状体区域长期保存意识前T2痕迹有关（Lasaponara等人，Cortex 71：15-33，2015）。这里，我们测试了在4×4字母阵列中主要T1视觉目标位置的概率提示的变化是否调节了在阵列其他位置呈现的次要字母目标（T2）引起的记忆轨迹的保留。最重要的是，在每个试验中，在阵列消失时都向参与者指定了T2的身份。我们表明，高概率提示有助于T1检测并提高相应的灵敏度指数（d'）。相反，当T1位置的概率提示较差时，次要目标（T2）的保留和有意识报告会提高。