Can arrows change the subjective perception of space? Exploring symbolic attention repulsion

Abstract

The attention repulsion effect (ARE) refers to distortions in the perception of space for areas nearby the focus of attention. For instance, when attending to the right-hand side of the visual field, objects in central vision may appear as though they are shifted to the left. The phenomenon is likely caused by changes in visual cell functioning. To date, research on the ARE has almost exclusively used exogenous manipulations of attention. In contrast, research exploring endogenous attention repulsion has been mixed, and no research has explored the effects of non-predictive arrow cues on this phenomenon. This gap in the literature is unexpected, as symbolic attention appears to be a unique form of attentional orienting compared to endogenous and exogenous attention. Therefore, the current study explored the effects of symbolic orienting on spatial repulsion and compared it to an exogenously generated ARE. Across four experiments, both exogenous and symbolic orienting resulted in AREs; however, the magnitude of the symbolic ARE was smaller than the exogenous ARE. This difference in magnitude persisted, even after testing both phenomena using stimulus timing parameters known to produce optimal effects in traditional attentional cueing paradigms. Therefore, compared to symbolic attention, it appears that exogenous manipulations may tightly constrict attention resources on the cued location, in turn potentially influencing the functioning of visual cells for enhanced perceptual processing.

An attentional approach to geometrical illusions

“…Thus, either the attentional approach fails here, or the size of figural extent does not obligatory determine the size of the attentional field. It is known, e.g., that arrows can automatically shift attention in the direction of the arrowhead and can thus induce changes in object perception such as the ARE (e.g., Lawrence et al, 2022 ). This could indicate that the attentional field for the fins pointing outward is in fact smaller rather than larger than for the fins pointing inward (see Figure 8A ).…”

Integración espacial de contenidos en entornos de realidad extendida

“…◾ Contigüidad espacial: la contigüidad espacial se define como la cercanía entre fuentes de información que fomentan la contigüidad del contenido [69] (figura 8). Se diferenció entre la contigüidad de campo, entendida como la separación de fuentes de información sobre el mismo plano visual (separado=discontiguo, cercano=contiguo), y la contigüidad de profundidad, entendida como la separación entre fuentes que involucran planos visuales localizados a diferentes profundidades [70] (igual profundidad=contiguo, profundidades dife-rentes=discontiguo) [52].…”