Feature-based effects in the coupling between attention and saccades

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that prior to saccade execution visual attention is imperatively shifted towards the saccade target (e.g., Deubel & Schneider, 1996; Kowler, Anderson, Dosher, & Blaser, 1995). Typically, observers had to make a saccade according to an arrow cue and simultaneously perform a perceptual discrimination task either at the saccade endpoint or elsewhere on the screen. Discrimination performance was poor if the location of the saccade target (ST) and the discrimination target (DT) did not coincide. However, those experiments only investigated shifts of spatial attention. In the current experiments, we examined how feature-based attention is deployed before a saccade. In Experiment 1, we randomly varied the colors of the ST and DT. Results showed that discrimination performance was better when the DT was shown in the same color as the ST. This color congruency effect was slightly larger and more reliable when ST color was relevant and constant across trials (Experiment 2). We conclude that selection of a colored ST can induce display-wide facilitative processing of stimuli sharing this color. Results are discussed in terms of saccade programming and saccade selection, color priming in visual search, color cuing, and color-based top-down contingent attentional capture. We also discuss basic mechanisms of spatial- and feature-based attention and predictive remapping of visual information across saccades.

Dissociating oculomotor contributions to spatial and feature-based selection

“…If saccade planning results in an enhancement of processing of features matching saccade target object, we should observe perceptual discrimination improvement at the saccade target color-matching locations. Importantly, we measured FBA at two peripheral locations (upward or downward), to which no saccades had to be directed, in contrast to two studies that measured FBA at locations that were potential saccade targets, thus confounding discrimination benefits arising because of saccade target selection with potential FBA benefits (Gersch et al 2009;Born et al 2012).…”

“…Even though these studies suggest such a link, none of them have directly investigated whether this feature-matching signal is related to oculomotor selection. Furthermore, behavioral studies reporting spatial effects of saccade target selection did not measure feature-based selection (Hoffman and Subramaniam 1995;Kowler et al 1995;Deubel and Schneider 1996;Montagnini and Castet 2007;Deubel 2008;Jonikaitis and Deubel 2011;Rolfs et al 2011), and the few studies that measured feature-based selection show conflicting results (Born et al 2012;White et al 2013).…”

Saccadic remapping of object-selective information

“…A retinotopic account holds that saccadic remapping is, in fact, the remapping of attention pointers for objects in the world immediately prior to a saccade within a retinotopic map, rather than the remapping of the representations themselves (Born, Ansorge, & Kerzel, 2012; Cavanagh et al, 2010; Collins, Rolfs, Deubel, & Cavanagh, 2009; Rolfs et al, 2010). Another view is that there are spatiotopic representations in visual cortex, representing objects in world centered coordinates independent of their current retinal position, and the representation of the object itself, rather than a pointer to it, is remapped (Burr & Morrone, 2011; Hall & Colby, 2011; Melcher, 2005; 2007; 2009; Melcher & Morrone, 2003).…”

Attention modeled as information in learning multisensory integration

“…On the behavioral side, attending to certain stimulus features will increase detection of objects with these features [36,4,10]. Similarly, activating the attentional content coding for a stimulus with high auditory and low visual salience enhanced the activity of specific neurons in our network and it increased the likelihood for the network to choose the location of the auditory sub-stimulus over that of the visual sub-stimulus.…”

“…4 shows that activating the neurons coding for ⇐, ⊗, and ⇒ clearly enhanced mean activity in those neurons whose preferred values were in the respective region. In contrast to spatial attention, feature-based attention enhances activity of neurons selective to the features attended to across the visual field [10,36]. We tested whether this was also true for our network by simulating multisensory input at 100 regular positions between 0 and 1.…”