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Procedural training programs such as augmented and virtual reality programs often present cues that direct trainees' attention to particular locations and/or items to facilitate learning. However, the impact of different types of cues on trainees' learning is poorly understood. For example, cues that indicate the location of to-be-pressed buttons might cause a trainee to focus on button locations rather than their icons. If the trainee later needs to use a differently-arranged interface, they may be unable to complete the tasks and may need retraining. The current study trained people with either location cues or icon cues and then had them perform the same tasks with a rearranged layout. The results indicate that what a trainee learns is impacted by the type of cue and the type of icons in the interface. When the interface contained icons that represented their function, participants trained with location cues had poorer accuracy and reported experiencing higher difficulty using the interface than participants trained with icon cues, suggesting that icon cues may lead to greater learning than location cues. Both groups, though, maintained similar accuracy when the interface rearranged, indicating they both learned button icons. When the interface contained abstract icons, participants trained with icon cues were able to maintain higher accuracy with the rearranged interface compared to participants trained with location cues suggesting they had greater knowledge of button icons. This finding indicates designers of procedural training programs should consider how cue type could impact a trainee's learning, particularly with abstract icons.

To characterize internal processes of an observer conducting perceptual tasks, we developed an observer model that combines the perceptual template model (PTM), the attention mechanisms in the PTM framework (Lu & Dosher, 1998), and uncertainty of signal detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966). The model was evaluated with a visual search experiment conducted in a range of external noise, signal contrast, and target-distractor similarity conditions. In each trial, eight Gabor patches were shown in each of two brief intervals, with one target at a different orientation from the distractors in one of the presentations. Subjects were precued to a subset of the stimuli (1, 2, 4, or 8) and asked to report (a) which interval contained the target and (b) where the target was. Individual roles of uncertainty and of attention in visual search were investigated by comparing models with and without an attention component. The results showed that decision uncertainty alone was sufficient to account for the set-size effect, even in conditions with high target-distractor similarity. Our theoretical model and empirical results provide a coherent picture regarding how visual information is selected and processed during feature search.

Research on spatial cueing has shown that uninformative cues often facilitate mean response time (RT) performance in valid- compared to invalid-cueing conditions at short cue-target stimulus-onset-asynchronies (SOAs), and robustly generate a reversed or inhibitory cueing effect at longer SOAs that is widely known as inhibition-of-return (IOR). To study the within-trial time course of the IOR and facilitation effects we employ discrete-time hazard and conditional accuracy analyses to analyze the shapes of the RT and accuracy distributions measured in two experimental tasks. Our distributional analyses show that (a) IOR is present only from ~160 ms to ~280 ms after target onset for cue-target SOAs above ~200 ms, (b) facilitation does not precede IOR, but co-occurs with it, (c) the cue-triggered motor response activation is selectively and actively inhibited before target onset, (d) the IOR effect consists of a facilitatory and an inhibitory component when compared to central cueing, (e) the addition of an extra central cue causes a temporary negative cueing effect in the conditional accuracy functions, and (f) the within-trial time course of IOR is not affected much by the task employed (detection or localization). We conclude that the traditional mean performance measures conceal crucial information on behavioral dynamics in spatial cueing paradigms.

Procedural training programs such as augmented and virtual reality programs often present cues that direct trainees' attention to particular locations and/or items to facilitate learning. However, the impact of different types of cues on trainees' learning is poorly understood. For example, cues that indicate the location of to-be-pressed buttons might cause a trainee to focus on button locations rather than their icons. If the trainee later needs to use a differently-arranged interface, they may be unable to complete the tasks and may need retraining. The current study trained people with either location cues or icon cues and then had them perform the same tasks with a rearranged layout. The results indicate that what a trainee learns is impacted by the type of cue and the type of icons in the interface. When the interface contained icons that represented their function, participants trained with location cues had poorer accuracy and reported experiencing higher difficulty using the interface than participants trained with icon cues, suggesting that icon cues may lead to greater learning than location cues. Both groups, though, maintained similar accuracy when the interface rearranged, indicating they both learned button icons. When the interface contained abstract icons, participants trained with icon cues were able to maintain higher accuracy with the rearranged interface compared to participants trained with location cues suggesting they had greater knowledge of button icons. This finding indicates designers of procedural training programs should consider how cue type could impact a trainee's learning, particularly with abstract icons. • The type of training cue used during training can impact what trainees learn. • Cues indicating item location are worse for learning than cues indicating item features (e.g. button icons). • The impact of training cue depends on how much button icons look like what they represent. • Participants trained with icon cues have greater knowledge of abstract button icons than those trained with location cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current work aimed to uncover the pattern of attention given to external comparison standards when engaged in social judgments. In a series of 5 experiments (N = 463), a Modified Spatial Cueing Task provided evidence for a general Comparison Induced Delay (CID), but found no signs of visuospatial attention (Pilot, Study 1 & 2). However, the CID did not occur if cues did not remain visually available throughout the trials (Study 3 & 4). Heterogeneity in results prompted the use of a single-paper meta-analysis including all secondary studies. A consistent CID effect was found across studies when standards remained visually available (K = 5), but not when they were masked (K = 2). No direct signs of visuospatial attentional bias were found. These results suggest that the attentional cost of engaging with external comparisons is mainly cognitive in nature, although a minor reoccurring visual component could not be excluded.

Social stimuli are a highly salient source of information, andseem to possess unique qualities that set them apart fromother well-known categories. One characteristic is their abilityto elicit spatial orienting, whereby directional stimuli like eye-gaze and pointing gestures act as exogenous cues that triggerautomatic shifts of attention that are difficult to inhibit. Thiseffect has been extended to non-social stimuli, like arrows,leading to some uncertainty regarding whether spatialorienting is specialized for social cues. Using a standardspatial cueing paradigm, we found evidence that both apointing hand and arrow are effective cues, but that the handis encoded more quickly, leading to overall faster responses.We then extended the paradigm to include multiple cues inorder to evaluate congruent vs. incongruent cues. Our resultsindicate that faster encoding of the social cue leads todownstream effects on the allocation of attention resulting infaster orienting.

The present study investigated whether 7-month-old infants attribute directionality to an object after having observed it engage in agentive behavior and whether they maintain this attribution even when the agent is presented statically. Infants were familiarized with an object displaying either agentive behavioral cues (self-propelled, context-sensitive movement) or non-agentive motion (the same movement pattern caused by external factors). In a subsequent spatial-cueing procedure, the agent was displayed statically at the center of the screen. Gaze latencies were assessed for targets appearing at a location congruent or incongruent with the position of the agent's formerly leading end. Only infants that had observed the object move in an agentive manner showed shorter gaze latencies for congruent compared to incongruent targets, suggesting facilitation of attention toward a location congruent with the agent's prior action direction. Results provide evidence that infants attribute directionality to novel agents based on behavioral agency cues, that this directional representation is maintained even when the agent is stationary, and that it guides infants' covert attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To examine the impact of secondary task performance on contextual blindness arising from the suppression and masking of temporal and spatial sequence learning., Background: Dual-task scenarios can lead to a diminished ability to use environmental cues to guide attention, a phenomenon that is related to multitasking-induced inattentional blindness. This research aims to extend the theoretical understanding of how secondary tasks can impair attention and memory processes in sequence learning and access., Method: We conducted three experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a serial reaction time task to investigate the impact of a secondary tone counting task on temporal sequence learning. In Experiment 2, we used a contextual cueing task to examine the effects of dual-task performance on spatial cueing. In Experiment 3, we integrated and extended these concepts to a simulated driving task., Results: Across the experiments, the performance of a secondary task consistently suppressed (all experiments) and masked task learning (experiments 1 and 3). In the serial response and spatial search tasks, dual-task conditions reduced the accrual of sequence knowledge and impaired knowledge expression. In the driving simulation, similar patterns of learning suppression from multitasking were also observed., Conclusion: The findings suggest that secondary tasks can significantly suppress and mask sequence learning in complex tasks, leading to a form of contextual blindness characterized by impairments in the ability to use environmental cues to guide attention and anticipate future events., Application: These findings have implications for both skill acquisition and skilled performance in complex domains such as driving, aviation, manufacturing, and human-computer interaction., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The gaze-following patch (GFP) is located in the posterior temporal cortex and has been described as a cortical module dedicated to processing other people's gaze-direction in a domain-specific manner. Thus, it appears to be the neural correlate of Baron-Cohen's eye direction detector (EDD) which is one of the core modules in his mindreading system-a neurocognitive model for the theory of mind concept. Inspired by Jerry Fodor's ideas on the modularity of the mind, Baron-Cohen proposed that, among other things, the individual modules are domain specific. In the case of the EDD, this means that it exclusively processes eye-like stimuli to extract gaze-direction and that other stimuli, which may carry directional information as well, are processed elsewhere. If the GFP is indeed EDD's neural correlate, it must meet this expectation. To test this, we compared the GFP's BOLD activity during gaze-direction following with the activity during arrow-direction following in the present human fMRI study. Contrary to the expectation based on the assumption of domain specificity, we did not find a differentiation between gaze- and arrow-direction following. In fact, we were not able to reproduce the GFP as presented in the previous studies. A possible explanation is that in the present study-unlike the previous work-the gaze stimuli did not contain an obvious change of direction that represented a visual motion. Hence, the critical stimulus component responsible for the identification of the GFP in the previous experiments might have been visual motion., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 Görner et al.)

A briefly flashed peripheral cue has been shown to repulse the perceived position of a subsequently presented foveal probe - a bias called the Attentional Repulsion Effect (ARE). While this bias has originally been assumed to reflect attentional capturing by the cue, its attentional nature has recently been questioned. To investigate the ARE's attentional properties, we recorded microsaccades as an attentional marker in the ARE paradigm. Microsaccades, small fixational eye movements performed during fixation, have previously been described to reflect the dynamics of spatial attention deployment. Our results favor an attentional explanation for the ARE: In trials in which an ARE was found, microsaccades were directed more often toward the cue, presumably reflecting the covert shift of attention. In contrast, more cue-incongruent microsaccades were observed in trials in which no ARE was found. Therefore, both repulsion as well as measured microsaccade modulations, are most likely an outcome of the preceding shifts of covert attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We are highly tuned to each other's visual attention. Perceiving the eye or hand movements of another person can influence the timing of a saccade or the reach of our own. However, the explanation for such spatial orienting in interpersonal contexts remains disputed. Is it due to the social appearance of the cue—a hand or an eye—or due to its social relevance—a cue that is connected to another person with attentional and intentional states? We developed an interpersonal version of the Posner spatial cueing paradigm. Participants saw a cue and detected a target at the same or a different location, while interacting with an unseen partner. Participants were led to believe that the cue was either connected to the gaze location of their partner or was generated randomly by a computer (Experiment 1), and that their partner had higher or lower social rank while engaged in the same or a different task (Experiment 2). We found that spatial cue‐target compatibility effects were greater when the cue related to a partner's gaze. This effect was amplified by the partner's social rank, but only when participants believed their partner was engaged in the same task. Taken together, this is strong evidence in support of the idea that spatial orienting is interpersonally attuned to the social relevance of the cue—whether the cue is connected to another person, who this person is, and what this person is doing—and does not exclusively rely on the social appearance of the cue. Visual attention is not only guided by the physical salience of one's environment but also by the mental representation of its social relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microsaccades are systematically modulated by peripheral spatial cues, and these eye movements have been implicated in perceptual and motor performance changes in cueing tasks. However, an additional oculomotor factor that may also influence performance in these tasks, fixational eye position itself, has been largely neglected so far. Using precise eye tracking and real-time retinal-image stabilization, we carefully analyzed fixational eye position dynamics and related them to microsaccade generation during spatial cueing. As expected, during baseline fixation, microsaccades corrected for a foveal motor error away from the preferred retinal locus of fixation (the so-called ocular position "set point" of the oculomotor system). However, we found that this relationship was violated during a short period immediately after cue onset; a subset of cue-directed "express microsaccades" that were highly precise in time and direction, and that were larger than regular microsaccades, occurred. These movements, having -100-ms latencies from cue onset, were triggered when fixational eye position was already at the oculomotor set point when the cue appeared; they were thus error-increasing rather than error-decreasing. Critically, even when no microsaccades occurred, fixational eye position itself was systematically deviated toward the cue, again with ~100-ms latency, suggesting that the oculomotor system establishes a new set point at different postcue times. This new set point later switched to being away from the cue after ~200-300 ms. Because eye position alters the location of retinal images, our results suggest that both eye position and microsaccades can be associated with performance changes in spatial cueing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latency of visually guided saccades executed after a cueing condition was adopted as a more ecological index to explore how spatial attention, usually assessed by manual responses, operates in the visual field. Subjects executed saccades aimed towards one of 4 possible positions, equally distributed around a central fixation cross. Before the onset of the saccadic target, a visual cue was briefly presented at the same or at a different spatial location. The visual cue was non-predictive of the target position. Two experimental sessions were carried out, differing for the onset asynchrony between cue and target. A time-dependent coupling between the task-irrelevant location of the cue and the direction of a following overt shift of attention emerged. Clinical applications of the adopted experimental setting to neurological and psychiatric patients with motor impairments are discussed.

Attention bias describes the differential allocation of attention towards one stimulus compared to others. In humans, this bias can be mediated by the observer’s affective state and is implicated in the onset and maintenance of affective disorders such as anxiety. Affect-driven attention biases (ADABs) have also been identified in a few other species. Here, we review the literature on ADABs in animals and discuss their utility as welfare indicators. Despite a limited research effort, several studies have found that negative affective states modulate attention to negative (i.e., threatening) cues. ADABs influenced by positive-valence states have also been documented in animals. We discuss methods for measuring ADAB and conclude that looking time, dot-probe, and emotional spatial cueing paradigms are particularly promising. Research is needed to test them with a wider range of species, investigate attentional scope as an indicator of affect, and explore the possible causative role of attention biases in determining animal wellbeing. Finally, we argue that ADABs might not be best-utilized as indicators of general valence, but instead to reveal specific emotions, motivations, aversions, and preferences. Paying attention to the human literature could facilitate these advances.

In the uncanny valley phenomenon, the causes of the feeling of uncanniness as well as the impact of the uncanniness on behavioral performances still remain open. The present study investigated the behavioral effects of stimulus uncanniness, particularly with respect to speeded response. Pictures of fish were used as visual stimuli. Participants engaged in direction discrimination, spatial cueing, and dot-probe tasks. The results showed that pictures rated as strongly uncanny delayed speeded response in the discrimination of the direction of the fish. In the cueing experiment, where a fish served as a task-irrelevant and unpredictable cue for a peripheral target, we again observed that the detection of a target was slowed when the cue was an uncanny fish. Conversely, the dot-probe task suggested that uncanny fish, unlike threatening stimulus, did not capture visual spatial attention. These results suggested that stimulus uncanniness resulted in the delayed response, and importantly this modulation was not mediated by the feelings of threat.

It is widely accepted that the presentation of a printed word automatically triggers processing that ends with full semantic activation. This processing, among other characteristics, is held to occur without intention, and cannot be stopped. The results of the present experiment show that this account is problematic in the context of a variant of the Stroop paradigm. Subjects named the print color of words that were either neutral or semantically related to color. When the letters were all colored, all spatially cued, and the spaces between letters were filled with characters from the top of the keyboard (i.e., 4, #, 5, %, 6, and *), color naming yielded a semantically based Stroop effect and a semantically based negative priming effect. In contrast, the same items yielded neither a semantic Stroop effect nor a negative priming effect when a single target letter was uniquely colored and spatially cued. These findings undermine the widespread view that lexical-semantic activation in word reading is automatic in the sense that it occurs without intention and cannot be derailed.

The current work aimed to uncover the pattern of attention given to external comparison standards when engaged in social judgments. In a series of 5 experiments (N = 463), a Modified Spatial Cueing Task provided evidence for a general Comparison Induced Delay (CID), but found no signs of visuospatial attention (Pilot, Study 1 & 2). However, the CID did not occur if cues did not remain visually available throughout the trials (Study 3 & 4). Heterogeneity in results prompted the use of a single-paper meta-analysis including all secondary studies. A consistent CID effect was found across studies when standards remained visually available (K = 5), but not when they were masked (K = 2). No direct signs of visuospatial attentional bias were found. These results suggest that the attentional cost of engaging with external comparisons is mainly cognitive in nature, although a minor reoccurring visual component could not be excluded. • Comparison standards consistently produced a Comparison Induced Delay (CID). • CID did not occur when cues were masked. • No other signs of visuospatial attention were detected. • Comparison standards mainly occupy cognitive attentional resources. • A minor visual component could not be excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of attention in visual word recognition and reading aloud is a long debated issue. Studies of both developmental and acquired reading disorders provide growing evidence that spatial attention is critically involved in word reading, in particular for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar letter strings. However, studies on healthy participants have produced contrasting results. The aim of this study was to investigate how the allocation of spatial attention may influence the perception of letter strings in skilled readers. High frequency words, low frequency words and pseudowords were briefly and parafoveally presented either in the left or the right visual field. Attentional allocation was modulated by the presentation of a spatial cue before the target string. Accuracy in reporting the target string was modulated by the spatial cue but this effect varied with the type of string. For unfamiliar strings, processing was facilitated when attention was focused on the string location and hindered when it was diverted from the target. This finding is consistent the assumptions of the CDP+ model of reading aloud, as well as with familiarity sensitivity models that argue for a flexible use of attention according with the specific requirements of the string. Moreover, we found that processing of high-frequency words was facilitated by an extra-large focus of attention. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that a broad distribution of attention is the default mode during reading of familiar words because it might optimally engage the broad receptive fields of the highest detectors in the hierarchical system for visual word recognition.

The deployment of visuospatial attention and the programming of saccades are governed by the inferred likelihood of events. In the present study, we combined computational modeling of psychophysical data with fMRI to characterize the computational and neural mechanisms underlying this flexible attentional control. Sixteen healthy human subjects performed a modified version of Posner's location-cueing paradigm in which the percentage of cue validity varied in time and the targets required saccadic responses. Trialwise estimates of the certainty (precision) of the prediction that the target would appear at the cued location were derived from a hierarchical Bayesian model fitted to individual trialwise saccadic response speeds. Trial-specific model parameters then entered analyses of fMRI data as parametric regressors. Moreover, dynamic causal modeling (DCM) was performed to identify the most likely functional architecture of the attentional reorienting network and its modulation by (Bayes-optimal) precision-dependent attention. While the frontal eye fields (FEFs), intraparietal sulcus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) of both hemispheres showed higher activity on invalid relative to valid trials, reorienting responses in right FEF, TPJ, and the putamen were significantly modulated by precision-dependent attention. Our DCM results suggested that the precision of predictability underlies the attentional modulation of the coupling of TPJ with FEF and the putamen. Our results shed new light on the computational architecture and neuronal network dynamics underlying the contextsensitive deployment of visuospatial attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-space synaesthetes ‘see’ time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen versus heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with L’s preferred ‘auditory’ viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the 'preferred' auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009).

Recent research has demonstrated that involuntary attention improves target identification accuracy for letters using non-predictive peripheral cues, helping to resolve some of the controversy over performance enhancement from involuntary attention. While various cueing studies have demonstrated that their reported cueing effects were not due to response bias to the cue, very few investigations have quantified the extent of any response bias or developed methods of removing bias from observed results in a double judgment accuracy task. We have devised a method to quantify and remove response bias to cued locations in a double judgment accuracy cueing task, revealing the true, unbiased performance enhancement from involuntary and voluntary attention. In a 7-alternative forced choice cueing task using backward masked stimuli to temporally constrain stimulus processing, non-predictive cueing increased target detection and discrimination at cued locations relative to uncued locations even after cue location bias had been corrected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of attention in visual word recognition and reading aloud is a long debated issue. Studies of both developmental and acquired reading disorders provide growing evidence that spatial attention is critically involved in word reading, in particular for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar letter strings. However, studies on healthy participants have produced contrasting results. The aim of this study was to investigate how the allocation of spatial attention may influence the perception of letter strings in skilled readers. High frequency words (HFWs), low frequency words and pseudowords were briefly and parafoveally presented either in the left or the right visual field. Attentional allocation was modulated by the presentation of a spatial cue before the target string. Accuracy in reporting the target string was modulated by the spatial cue but this effect varied with the type of string. For unfamiliar strings, processing was facilitated when attention was focused on the string location and hindered when it was diverted from the target. This finding is consistent the assumptions of the CDP+ model of reading aloud, as well as with familiarity sensitivity models that argue for a flexible use of attention according with the specific requirements of the string. Moreover, we found that processing of HFWs was facilitated by an extra-large focus of attention. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that a broad distribution of attention is the default mode during reading of familiar words because it might optimally engage the broad receptive fields of the highest detectors in the hierarchical system for visual word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipating where an event will occur enables us to instantaneously respond to events that occur at the expected location. Here we investigated if such spatial anticipations can be triggered by symbolic information that participants cannot consciously see. In two experiments involving a Posner cueing task and a visual search task, a central cue informed participants about the likely location of the next target stimulus. In half of the trials, this cue was rendered invisible by pattern masking. In both experiments, visible cues led to cueing effects, that is, faster responses after valid compared to invalid cues. Importantly, even masked cues caused cueing effects, though to a lesser extent. Additionally, we analyzed effects on attention that persist from one trial to the subsequent trial. We found that spatial anticipations are able to interfere with newly formed spatial anticipations and influence orienting of attention in the subsequent trial. When the preceding cue was visible, the corresponding spatial anticipation persisted to an extent that prevented a noticeable effect of masked cues. The effects of visible cues were likewise modulated by previous spatial anticipations, but were strong enough to also exert an impact on attention themselves. Altogether, the results suggest that spatial anticipations can be formed on the basis of unconscious stimuli, but that interfering influences like still active spatial anticipations can suppress this effect.

Visuospatial neglect after stroke is often characterized by a disengage deficit on a cued orienting task, in which individuals are disproportionately slower to respond to targets presented on the contralesional side of space following an ispilesional cue as compared to the reverse. The purpose of this study was to investigate the generality of the finding of a disengage deficit on another measure of cued attention, the temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, that does not depend upon speeded manual responses. Individuals with right hemisphere stroke with and without spatial neglect and older healthy controls were tested with both a speeded RT cueing task and an unspeeded TOJ-with-cuing task. All stroke patients evidenced a disengage deficit on the speeded RT cueing task, although the size and direction of the bias was not associated with the severity of neglect. In contrast, few neglect patients showed a disengage deficit on the TOJ task. This discrepancy suggests that the disengage deficit may be related to task demands, rather than solely due to impaired attentional mechanisms per se. Further, the results of our study show that the disengage deficit is neither necessary nor sufficient for neglect to manifest.

Visuospatial neglect after stroke is often characterized by a disengage deficit on a cued orienting task, in which individuals are disproportionately slower to respond to targets presented on the contralesional side of space following an ispilesional cue as compared to the reverse. The purpose of this study was to investigate the generality of the finding of a disengage deficit on another measure of cued attention, the temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, that does not depend upon speeded manual responses. Individuals with right hemisphere stroke with and without spatial neglect and older healthy controls (OHC) were tested with both a speeded RT cueing task and an unspeeded TOJ-with-cuing task. All stroke patients evidenced a disengage deficit on the speeded RT cueing task, although the size and direction of the bias was not associated with the severity of neglect. In contrast, few neglect patients showed a disengage deficit on the TOJ task. This discrepancy suggests that the disengage deficit may be related to task demands, rather than solely due to impaired attentional mechanisms per se. Further, the results of our study show that the disengage deficit is neither necessary nor sufficient for neglect to manifest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Neurologically normal subjects misperceive the midpoints of lines (PSE) as reliably leftward of veridical center, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect. This leftward bias reflects the dominance of the right cerebral hemisphere in deploying spatial attention. Transient visual cues, delivered to either the left or right endpoints of lines, modulate PSE such that leftward biases are increased by leftward cues, and are decreased by rightward cues, relative to a no-cue control condition. We ask whether lateralized auditory cues can similarly influence PSE in a tachistoscopic visual line bisection task, and describe how visual and auditory cues, in spatially synergistic or antagonistic combinations, jointly influence PSE. Our results demonstrate that whereas auditory and visual cues both modulate PSE, visual cues are overall more potent than auditory cues. Visual and auditory cues are weighted such that visual cues are significantly more potent than auditory cues when visual cues are delivered to left hemispace. Visual and auditory cues are equipotent when visual cues are delivered to right hemispace. These results are consistent with the existence of independent lateralized networks governing the deployment of visuospatial and audiospatial attention. An analysis of the weighting of unisensory visual and auditory cues which optimally predicts PSE in multisensory cue conditions shows that cues combine additively. There was no evidence for a superadditive multisensory cue combination. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Previous studies yielded evidence that the precision, with which stimuli are localized in the visual periphery, is improved under conditions of focused attention. The present study examined whether focused attention is able to correct a mislocalization recently observed with successively presented stimuli: when observers are asked to localize the peripheral position of a briefly presented target with respect to a previously presented comparison stimulus, they tended to judge the target as being more towards the fovea than was its actual position. In three experiments the mislocalization was tested under conditions with focused and distributed attention. Results revealed that the mislocalization increased with distributed attention and disappeared when stimuli appeared consistently at predictable positions and thus under conditions of focused attention. However, when a procedure with a trial-by-trial cueing was applied the mislocalization was only reduced, but not wiped out completely. In a recently developed dynamic field model consisting of interacting excitatory and inhibitory neuronal cell populations the results were explained as an attentional modulation of spontaneous (baseline) levels of neural activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fixational eye movements are subdivided into tremor, drift, and microsaccades. All three types of miniature eye movements generate small random displacements of the retinal image when viewing a stationary scene. Here we investigate the modulation of microsaccades by shifts of covert attention in a classical spatial cueing paradigm. First, we replicate the suppression of microsaccades with a minimum rate about 150 ms after cue onset. Second, as a new finding we observe microsaccadic enhancement with a maximum rate about 350 ms after presentation of the cue. Third, we find a modulation of the orientation towards the cue direction. These multiple influences of visual attention on microsaccades accentuate their role for visual information processing. Furthermore, our results suggest that microsaccades can be used to map the orientation of visual attention in psychophysical experiments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Microsaccades, or tiny eye movements that take place during periods of fixation, have long been thought to be random artifacts of the oculomotor system. Here we demonstrate a possible link between microsaccades and covert attention shifts. We designed two psychophysical tasks involving spatial cues that had identical sensory stimuli but differing patterns of attentional benefits and costs. We found that microsaccades, rather than being randomly distributed, had directions that were directly correlated with the directions of covert attention shifts in the two tasks. Our results suggest that microsaccades occur because of subliminal activation of the oculomotor system by covert attention. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Simple Summary: Good animal welfare requires minimizing suffering and promoting positive experiences. To achieve this, we need reliable indicators of animals' psychological states. In humans, different moods and emotions ("affects") are associated with changes in visual attention ("attention bias"). We review studies investigating whether attention biases are also indicators of affect in animals. Although research is limited, evidence for affect-driven attention biases has been found in several species, especially primates and livestock. These studies are discussed in relation to tasks developed for measuring attention in humans. We identify additional findings from human psychology that might be applied to animals, particularly species not studied before, and conclude that affect-driven attention bias is a promising welfare indicator. However, it may be more useful for studying responses to specific stimuli, rather than general wellbeing. With further study, we hope these findings contribute to fulfilling society's ethical obligations towards animals. Attention bias describes the differential allocation of attention towards one stimulus compared to others. In humans, this bias can be mediated by the observer's affective state and is implicated in the onset and maintenance of affective disorders such as anxiety. Affect-driven attention biases (ADABs) have also been identified in a few other species. Here, we review the literature on ADABs in animals and discuss their utility as welfare indicators. Despite a limited research effort, several studies have found that negative affective states modulate attention to negative (i.e., threatening) cues. ADABs influenced by positive-valence states have also been documented in animals. We discuss methods for measuring ADAB and conclude that looking time, dot-probe, and emotional spatial cueing paradigms are particularly promising. Research is needed to test them with a wider range of species, investigate attentional scope as an indicator of affect, and explore the possible causative role of attention biases in determining animal wellbeing. Finally, we argue that ADABs might not be best-utilized as indicators of general valence, but instead to reveal specific emotions, motivations, aversions, and preferences. Paying attention to the human literature could facilitate these advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]