Search

Information processing is more efficient at cued relative to non-cued locations. A number of studies have examined whether non-predictive gaze cues are special due to their biological relevance. While most studies indicate that cueing effects of gaze cues and arrow cues are similar, one aspect remains to be examined – cue duration. Contrary to early findings, a number of studies have observed cueing effects at short durations for arrow cues. For gaze cues however, the evidence is more mixed. The present study therefore aims to directly compare the cueing effects of arrow and gaze cues at short and long durations. Participants (N = 30) performed a discrimination task and were presented with arrow and gaze cues for short or long durations. Cueing effects were measured at each duration for each cue type. Significant cueing effects were observed for both cue types at both short and long duration. Moreover, for both cue types, no difference was observed in the magnitude of cueing effects at short and long duration. The results suggest that both cue types cues can efficiently orient attention even at short cue durations, and that the biological relevance of gaze direction cues do not provide any advantage over arrows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibition of return (IOR), an inhibitory aftereffect of attentional orienting, usually reveals itself in slower responses to targets appearing at previously attended locations in spatial cueing tasks. Many of the neural substrates underlying visual working memory are also closely linked to attention. The present study examined whether the contents held in working memory interfere with IOR by requiring participants to keep a set of spatial locations in working memory while they performed a spatial cueing task. Results revealed that the presence of a concurrent working memory load modulated IOR when the cueing task involved saccadic responses (Experiment 4), but not when more resource-demanding responses were required in the cueing task (Experiments 1–3). The present study also revealed that working memory load had little effect on the time course of IOR. We suggest that the attentional control setting (ACS) selected to accommodate the cognitive tasks at hand determines whether working memory will interfere with IOR and spatial attention in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luck et al. (2021, Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition, 29(1), 1–21. ) propose that proactive suppression can help to resolve the long-standing attentional capture debate. They argue that salient but task-irrelevant stimuli automatically generate a priority signal, which leads to attentional capture if it is not suppressed. While this signal suppression framework provides a refreshing new perspective on attentional capture, it cannot fully resolve this debate. To do this, it would have to be demonstrated that task-contingent capture effects in spatial cueing tasks are linked to proactive feature-based suppression preventing attentional capture by salient but irrelevant objects. I argue that there is little evidence if any evidence for such a link. I consider possible reasons why suppression does not seem to play a major role in spatial cueing tasks, and also highlight important general limitations of proactive inhibitory control in visual search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-known that visual attention can be tuned in a top-down controlled manner to various attributes. Amongst other search strategies, previous research has identified a feature search mode in which attention is tuned to the target feature (e.g., colour) vs. a singleton search mode, where all salient items can attract attention. A short review of the literature reveals that singleton search mode is not regularly applied in single-target search, but could play a role in two-target search. Here we critically tested whether results suggesting singleton search could alternatively be due to top-down tuning to different attributes of the targets (e.g., luminance). The results of the first experiment show a mixture of attentional tuning to the target colours (red, green), as well as luminance (darker), and residual singleton capture. A second experiment shows that such mixed results can be obtained in the standard paradigm, with only small changes to the stimuli. These results cannot be coherently described within a single mental representation, and are therefore difficult to reconcile with the notion of a target template. Non-representational theories such as feature map theories seem better equipped to explain mixed search results, which could be a decisive weakness of representational theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Must attention be disengaged from a location before it can be moved to another? We addressed this question in four experiments. Participants searched for a target defined by its colour. The search display followed either one or two successive singleton cues that were expected to capture attention because they were in the target colour. We found a spatial benefit at the location of the first cue even though attention had been shifted to the location of the second cue. However, this benefit was smaller than when the second cue had been absent. These findings suggest that attention can be directed to a new location before it is entirely disengaged from its previous locus. We tested and rejected alternative interpretations, according to which this residual spatial effect resulted from occasional failures of attentional capture by the second cue, or from variability of the speed at which attention was shifted from one cue to the other. Taken together, our findings suggest that shifting attention from one location to another results in two simultaneous foci of attention for at least 300 ms. We discuss the possibility that the residual spatial benefits observed here may reflect pre-attentive tagging rather than parallel allocation of a limited resource to two separate locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glyn Humphreys and his co-workers have made numerous important theoretical and empirical contributions to research on visual search. They have introduced the concept of attentional target templates and investigated the nature of these templates and how they are involved in the control of search performance. In the experiments reported here, we investigated whether feature-specific search templates for particular colours can guide target selection independently for different regions of visual space. We employed behavioural and electrophysiological markers of attentional selection in tasks with targets defined by specific colour/location combinations. In Experiment 1, participants searched for pairs of colour targets in a particular spatial configuration (e.g., red in the upper and blue in the lower visual field). In Experiment 2, they searched for single colour-defined targets at specific locations (e.g., red on the left or blue on the right). Target displays were preceded by non-informative cues containing target-colour items at task-set matching or mismatching locations. Contingent attentional capture was observed only for matching cues. However, both matching and mismatching cues elicited identical N2pc components, indicating equivalent attentional capture. This shows that the rapid deployment of attention towards target features is spatially non-selective, and that selection of colour/location combinations occurs at later post-perceptual stages. This was further corroborated in search displays where targets were accompanied by target-colour distractors at nonmatching locations. Here, spatial biases towards the target emerged late and were strongly attenuated relative to displays without such distractors. These results demonstrate that attentional templates for target-defining features operate in a spatially-global fashion. Feature-based guidance of visual search cannot be restricted to particular locations even when this is required by the demands of an attentional selection task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attentional effects of letter cues on target processing were investigated in a bilateral spatial cueing paradigm. Luminance contrast of the cue stimuli and of the target stimuli were both manipulated. Consistent with predictions derived from theoretical models of visual attention, manipulating cue luminance and target luminance had very different effects on performance. In agreement with the dorsal stream attention hypothesis (Marrett et al., 2011) orienting effects were unaffected by changes in cue luminance; but in agreement with the work of Reynolds, Pasternak, and Desimone (2000) and Carrasco, Ling, and Read (2004) orienting effects were strongly modulated by changes in the luminance and perceptual quality of the target. Theoretical implications of the results are considered and the data are explained in terms of a sensory enhancement effect, whereby attention amplifies the neuronal responses for attended stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Findings that illusory contours can facilitate visual detection of a subthreshold real line (Dresp & Bonnet, 1995) were not replicated, when line-induced instead of edge-induced illusory contour stimuli were used (Salvano-Pardieu et al., 2006). Rather, the results of the latter study supported the importance of spatial cues. The present study was designed to investigate whether spatial cueing might also facilitate detection of targets superimposed on edge-induced illusory contours. In Experiment 1, a target line was superimposed on the illusory contour of a Kanizsa square, presented between dots with a precise or distant location to the target, or on a homogeneous field (control). Detection of the target was poorest for the control, followed by the distant-dots and Kanizsa conditions, whereas it was best for precisely cueing dots. Experiment 2 replicated the conditions in Experiment 1 (Kanizsa, precisely cueing dots, and control) with additional controls for possible luminance effects. The two new conditions matched the Kanizsa condition for overall luminance and preciseness of spatial cueing without generating illusory contours. Performance was best in the dot condition and worst in the control, but the same across the Kanizsa and matched luminance conditions. In Experiments 3 and 4, the stimuli presented were matched more closely to those used by Dresp and Bonnet, but still the results confirmed those obtained in our Experiments 1 and 2. Together, these experiments strongly suggest that detection is also facilitated by spatial cueing rather than subthreshold summation, in the case of edge-induced illusory contours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]