In search of exogenous feature-based attention

Donovan, Ian; Zhou, Ying; Carrasco, Marisa

doi:10.3758/s13414-019-01815-3

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…Importantly, the features of the prime that were prioritized (color and shape) were irrelevant to the task. While our results support the existence of exogenous feature-based attention, a recent study has failed to find support for it (Donovan et al, 2020 ). One possible explanation for the discrepancy is that action helps to boost the response over and above the effect of merely presenting a stimulus.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 70%

“…The action effect paradigm presents participants with a very similar situation (an uninformative colored shape presented at a non-target location), and these earlier findings would suggest that acting upon an object might indeed lead to prioritization of the object’s color, even if other features of the target (such as shape) do not match the prime. However, other researchers more recently have failed to find evidence of the existence of exogenous feature-based attention (Donovan, Zhou, & Carrasco, 2020 ). More work on the action effect, such as that reported here, may help to reveal more about the precise conditions under which exogenous feature-based attention can occur.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simple action alters attention towards visual features

Wang

Weidler

Sun

et al. 2021

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Recent studies have revealed an action effect, in which a simple action towards a prime stimulus biases attention in a subsequent visual search in favor of objects that match the prime. However, to date the majority of research on the phenomenon has studied search elements that are exact matches to the prime, and that vary only on the dimension of color, making it unclear how general the phenomenon is. Here, across a series of experiments, we show that action can also prioritize objects that match the shape of the prime. Additionally, action can prioritize attention to objects that match only one of either the color or the shape of the prime, suggesting that action enhances individual visual features present in the acted-on objects. The pattern of results suggests that the effect may be stronger for color matches – prioritization for shape only occurred when attention was not drawn to the color of the prime, whereas prioritization for color occurred regardless. Taken together, the results reveal that a prior action can exert a strong influence on subsequent attention towards features of the acted-on object.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 70%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simple action alters attention towards visual features

Wang

Weidler

Sun

et al. 2021

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Their data and ours are consistent with models in which tuned filters increase their precision according to their similarity to the cue (Treue & Martinez-Trujillo, 1999). Their data also points to the possibility that exogenous cueing relies on a different set of mechanisms that may be specific to spatial cues (Busse, Katzner, & Treue, 2006;Donovan, Zhou, & Carrasco, 2020).…”

supporting

confidence: 87%

Sensitivity enhancement and selection are shared mechanisms for spatial and feature-based attention

Birman

Gardner

2021

Preprint

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Human observers use cues to guide visual attention to the most behaviorally relevant parts of the visual world. Cues are often separated into two forms: those that rely on spatial location and those that use features, such as motion or color. These forms of cueing are known to rely on different populations of neurons. Despite these differences in neural implementation, attention may rely on shared computational principles, enhancing and selecting sensory representations in a similar manner for all types of cues. Here we examine whether evidence for shared computational mechanisms can be obtained from how attentional cues enhance performance in estimation tasks. In our tasks, observers were cued either by spatial location or feature to two of four dot patches. They then estimated the color or motion direction of one of the cued patches, or averaged them. In all cases we found that cueing improved performance. We decomposed the effects of the cues on behavior into model parameters that separated sensitivity enhancement from sensory selection and found that both were important to explain improved performance. We found that a model which shared parameters across forms of cueing was favored by our analysis, suggesting that observers have equal sensitivity and likelihood of making selection errors whether cued by location or feature. Our perceptual data support theories in which a shared computational mechanism is re-used by all forms of attention.Significance StatementCues about important features or locations in visual space are similar from the perspective of visual cortex, both allow relevant sensory representations to be enhanced while irrelevant ones can be ignored. Here we studied these attentional cues in an estimation task designed to separate different computational mechanisms of attention. Despite cueing observers in three different ways, to spatial locations, colors, or motion directions, we found that all cues led to similar perceptual improvements. Our results provide behavioral evidence supporting the idea that all forms of attention can be reconciled as a single repeated computational motif, re-implemented by the brain in different neural architectures for many different visual features.

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“…The alpha oscillation is coherent over several mm of cortex and is unlikely to be limited only to cells whose tuning match the stimulus. The effects of exogenous attention are more in line with the properties of alpha in that a cue is effective if it precedes a target by less than 300 ms (Posner and Cohen, 1984; Wang et al, 2015a), and it appears to be largely untuned to stimulus features (Patel et al, 2010; Donovan et al, 2020). This strengthens the connection between the alpha pRF and cuing effects rather than surround suppression.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Precise Spatial Tuning of Visually Driven Alpha Oscillations in Human Visual Cortex

Yuasa

Groen

Piantoni

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Neuronal oscillations at about 10 Hz, called alpha oscillations, are often thought to arise from synchronous activity across large regions of occipital cortex, reflecting general cognitive states such as attention, arousal, and alertness. However, there is also evidence that modulation of alpha oscillations in visual cortex can be spatially specific. Here, we used intracranial electrodes in human patients to measure alpha oscillations in multiple visual areas in response to visual stimuli whose location varied systematically across the visual field. We used a model-based approach to separate the alpha oscillation from broadband power changes. Using a population receptive field (pRF) model to explain the pattern of the alpha signal, we find that the alpha pRF centers are similar to those estimated from broadband (70–180 Hz) time series, but the sizes are several times larger. The results demonstrate that alpha suppression in human visual cortex can be precisely tuned. Finally, we show how the pattern of alpha responses can explain several features of exogenous visual attention.

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In search of exogenous feature-based attention

Cited by 8 publications

References 101 publications

Simple action alters attention towards visual features

Simple action alters attention towards visual features

Sensitivity enhancement and selection are shared mechanisms for spatial and feature-based attention

Precise Spatial Tuning of Visually Driven Alpha Oscillations in Human Visual Cortex

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