Eye and hand movements disrupt attentional control

Abstract

Voluntary attentional control is the ability to selectively focus on a subset of visual information in the presence of other competing stimuli–a marker of cognitive control enabling flexible, goal-driven behavior. To test its robustness, we contrasted attentional control with the most common source of attentional orienting in daily life: attention shifts prior to goal-directed eye and hand movements. In a multi-tasking paradigm, human participants attended at a location while planning eye or hand movements elsewhere. Voluntary attentional control suffered with every simultaneous action plan, even under reduced task difficulty and memory load–factors known to interfere with attentional control. Furthermore, the performance cost was limited to voluntary attention: We observed simultaneous attention benefits at two movement targets without attentional competition between them. This demonstrates that the visual system allows for the concurrent representation of multiple attentional foci. Since attentional control is extremely fragile and dominated by premotor attention shifts, we propose that action-driven selection plays the superordinate role for visual selection.

Presaccadic attention depends on eye movement direction and is related to V1 cortical magnification

“…. In sum, recent research refutes the view that the control of spatial attention is dependent on oculomotor control circuits 6,7,9,17,44,60–62 (reviews 51,63 ) and suggests the reverse: Attention does not result from motor programming but is a necessary predecessor, i.e., successful movements depend on preceding attentional selection to specify the motor coordinates for an upcoming movement – selection-for-action 1,64,65 . Our results are inconsistent with both accounts: (1) Eye movement parameters for upward saccades are no different from horizontal and downward saccades; given that upward saccade motor programming is “normal” (indicated by typical saccade latency and precision), it should – according to the premotor theory of attention – cause a regular shift of attention to the motor target; (2) According to the selection-for-action account, the presaccadic shift of attention functions as target marker and is a prerequisite for movement execution; the motor target has to be attentionally selected before the saccade is executed.…”

“…Sensitivity at locations other than the target –including the currently still foveated location 13 – inevitably decreases just before saccade onset 3,14,15 . Presaccadic attention even shifts to the saccade target when detrimental for the task at hand 1,9,16,17 , demonstrating a strong functional coupling.…”

“…This finding is surprising for several reasons: (I) presaccadic attention is assumed to be mandatory: it automatically shifts before any saccade being made 1,17,32 , via oculomotor feedback projections 11,12,18–20 ; (II) presaccadic attention facilitates the integration of pre- and post-saccadic information 33 and thus has an important functional role, indispensable also for upward saccades: By rendering peripheral representations more fovea-like (e.g., via predictively enhancing contrast sensitivity 4,6 and spatial resolution at the saccade target 26 , or shifting sensitivity at the saccade target to higher spatial frequencies 7,9 ), presaccadic attention enables a smooth transition from presaccadic (peripheral) to post-saccadic (foveal) information – and thus perceptual continuity across saccades 6–9,34–36 ; (III) visual sensitivity at the upper vertical meridian (during fixation) is generally lowest, thus could improve the most 22,27–30,37 . Our former study measured presaccadic attention at perceptual threshold 21 , but recent findings show that presaccadic attention modulates performance via response gain 6 , i.e., at higher stimulus contrasts where performance asymptotes.…”

Does hand position affect orienting when no action is required? An electrophysiological study

“…Others argue that attentional capture is under the control of the participants' goals (e.g., Folk et al, 1992;Leber and Egeth, 2006) and that stimulus-driven capture occurs only for stimuli that match an attentional set. More recently, researchers have examined how potential action can contribute to higherlevel attentional control (Hanning et al, 2022). Against this theoretical framework, it becomes important to know how body position fits into the traditional attentional control scheme.…”

Dissociable roles of human frontal eye fields and early visual cortex in presaccadic attention – evidence from TMS

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Shortly before each saccadic eye movement, presaccadic attention improves visual sensitivity at the saccade target [1][2][3][4][5] at the expense of lowered sensitivity at non-target locations [6][7][8][9][10][11] . Some behavioral and neural correlates of presaccadic attention and covert attention are similar 12 , which likewise enhances sensitivity but during fixation 13 .

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