Central and Peripheral Precuing of Forced-Choice Discrimination

Abstract

There are suggestions in the literature that spatial precuing of attention with peripheral and central cues may be mediated by different mechanisms. To investigate this issue, data from two previous papers were reanalysed to investigate the complete time course of precuing target location with either: (1) a peripheral cue that may draw attention reflexively, or (2) a central, symbolic cue that may require attention to be directed voluntarily. This analysis led to predictions that were tested in another experiment. The main result of this experiment was that a peripheral cue produced its largest effects on discrimination performance within 100 msec, whereas a central cue required approximately 300 msec to achieve maximum effects. In conjunction with previous findings, the present evidence for time differences between the two cuing conditions suggests that more than one process is involved in the spatial precuing of attention.

Spatial attention and reaction times during smooth pursuit eye movement

“…However, the warning effect cannot account for the results of Experiment 2 showing faster RTs in valid than in invalid trials because this effect would not differ between the two trial types. Moreover, many studies have reported that such a precue effectively shifted observers' attention voluntarily within less than 100 ms (e.g., Cheal & Lyon, 1991;Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; see also Kerzel et al, 2008). The RTs in Experiment 2 of the present study would reflect the spatial shift of attention, at least to some degree.…”

“…We used this condition to see whether the pattern of RTs during pursuit would be consistent with that of Experiment 1 in terms of the effect of retinal eccentricity, even when the cue was presented before the target stimulus onset. The SOAs between the onsets of the cue and target were 50, 100, and 150 ms. We used relatively short SOAs to prevent participants from making saccades in the cued direction before onset of the target stimulus (see the introduction), and several studies have reported that a symbolic cue effectively shifted observers' attention within less than 100 ms (Cheal & Lyon, 1991;Müller & Rabitt, 1989; see also Kerzel et al, 2008). Second, the target was presented inside one of five frames (central frame and peripheral frames located at ±5º and ±10º from the central frame) out of the seven frames in the stimulus display; that is, the leftmost and rightmost frames were not used for target presentation.…”

The functional role of alternation advantage in the sequence effect of symbolic cueing with nonpredictive arrow cues

“…First, one critical difference between this study and peripheral-cueing studies is that the arrow cues were perceptually different but spatially similar, whereas peripheral cues are perceptually identical but their spatial locations differ. Shifts of attention by central cues tend to be slower than shifts to peripheral cues, and many studies have concluded that different processing mechanisms are involved between arrow cueing and peripheral cueing (e.g., Cheal & Lyon, 1991;Jonides, 1981;Müller & Rabbitt, 1989;Ristic & Kingstone, 2012). Second, in the peripheral-cueing study of Dodd and Pratt, they examined inhibition-of-return effects rather than cueing effects.…”

ERPs reveal similar effects of social gaze orienting and voluntary attention, and distinguish each from reflexive attention

“…The ability to efficiently focus on a subset of this otherwise overwhelmingly complex environment depends on mechanisms of attention. Previous research has largely focused on two modes of orienting attention: a rapid and automatic reflexive capture of attention by salient stimuli, and a slower and more effortful voluntary orienting (e.g., Cheal & Lyon, 1991;Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Jonides, 1981;Müller & Rabbitt, 1989;Posner, 1980). More recently, however, attention has been shown to be under the influence of social cues as well.…”