Phasic Alertness is Unaffected by the Attentional Set for Orienting

Abstract

Warning stimuli preceding target stimuli for behaviour improve behavioural performance, which is referred to as phasic alerting. Similar benefits occur due to preceding orienting cues that draw spatial attention to the targets. It has long been assumed that alerting and orienting effects arise from separate attention systems, but recent views call this into question. As it stands, it remains unclear if the two systems are interdependent, or if they function independently. Here, we investigated whether the current attentional set for orienting modulates the effectiveness of alerting. In three experiments, participants classified visual stimuli in a speeded fashion. These target stimuli were preceded by orienting cues that could predict the target's location, by alerting cues that were neutral regarding the target's location, or by no cues. Alerting cues and orienting cues consisted of the same visual stimuli, linking alerting cues with the attentional set for orienting. The attentional set for orienting was manipulated in blocks, in which orienting cues were either informative or uninformative about the target's location. Results showed that while alerting generally enhanced performance, alerting was unaffected by the informativeness of the orienting cues. These findings show that alerting does not depend on the attentional set that controls orienting based on the informational value of orienting cues. As such, the findings provide a simple dissociation of mechanisms underlying phasic alertness and spatial attentional orienting.

Warning signals only support the first action in a sequence

“…Phasic alertness is assumed to enhance perceptual and cognitive processing by triggering a boost of arousal that optimises processing for the current task (e.g., by engaging the locus-coeruleus norepinephrine system that regulates activity widely spread across the cortex, Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005 ). The finding that alerting effects were limited to the first action in a sequence could argue that for this arousal boost to affect an action, it must be in contact with the specific cognitive processes controlling the action (e.g., setting up and maintaining a task-set, Dietze & Poth, 2022 ; Lin & Lu, 2016 ; response selection, Hackley, 2009 ; Hackley & Valle-Inclán, 1998 , 2003 ). These processes would need to be established and active already, as could be the case for the first action, but would “loose contact” with the arousal boost as soon as these processes were re-configured for the next subsequent action.…”

“…For laboratory tasks requiring a single action, it is well established that phasic alertness affects behaviour substantially: Acting on visual target stimuli is improved when these targets are preceded by visual (Asanowicz & Marzecová, 2017 ; Dietze & Poth, 2022 , in revision; Fan et al, 2002 , 2005 ) or auditory (Dietze & Poth, in revision; Fuentes & Campoy, 2008 ; Ishigami & Klein, 2010 ; Poth, 2020 ; Seibold, 2018 ) warning stimuli (so-called alerting cues) that induce the state of phasic alertness. Compared with conditions without alerting cues, alerting reduced reaction times in speeded choice tasks (Dietze & Poth, 2022 ; Fan et al, 2002 ; Hackley, 2009 ; Poth, 2020 ), improved sensitivity in visual discrimination tasks (Kusnir et al, 2011 ), and made visual processing for object recognition start earlier (Petersen et al, 2017 ) and proceed faster (Haupt et al, 2018 ; Matthias et al, 2010 ; Petersen et al, 2017 ; Wiegand et al, 2017 ). In sum, these findings suggest that alerting affects cognitive processing throughout all processing stages, from perceptual encoding (Kusnir et al, 2011 ; Matthias et al, 2010 ; Petersen et al, 2017 ), over response selection (Hackley & Valle-Inclán, 1998 , 2003 ; Posner, 1978 ), up until response execution (Posner, 1978 ; Posner & Petersen, 1990 ).…”

Phasic alerting in visual search tasks

“…The experiment was conducted online via Pavlovia (Open Science Tools Ltd., 2019 ) with the PsychoPy application (Pierce et al, 2019 ) that provides precise enough timing for reaction time experiments (Bridges et al, 2020 ; Dietze & Poth, 2022 ). To ensure consistent stimuli sizes across the participants’ monitors, we applied a credit card scaling procedure at the beginning of the experiment (Morys-Carter, 2021 ).…”

“…In lab-based studies, phasic alertness is typically evoked by presenting alerting cues before visual targets. Under these alerting conditions, reaction times are shorter (Dietze & Poth, 2022 ; Fan et al, 2002 ; Poth, 2020 ), visual processing speed is higher (Matthias et al, 2010 ; Petersen et al, 2017 ; Wiegand et al, 2017 ), perceptual sensitivity is increased (Li et al, 2018 ), or response accuracy is traded for shorter reaction times (Han & Proctor, 2022 ; McCormick et al, 2019 ; Posner et al, 1973 ). These benefits provided by alerting cues are referred to as alerting effects (Posner & Petersen, 1990 ).…”

Test–retest reliability of eye tracking measures in a computerized Trail Making Test

“…In contrast to the difference score, which depends on a stimulus-driven contrast between conditions (i.e., sequence of numbers vs. sequence of alternating numbers and letters), this measure is based solely on an internal switch between task sets in TMT-A and TMT-B. The ability to shift between the emphasis on speed or accuracy seems to present one of the most fundamental internal priorities we can set affecting almost any given task ( Carrasco & McElree, 2001 ; Dietze & Poth, 2022 ; Heitz, 2014 ; Rae, Heathcote, Donkin, Averell, & Brown, 2014 ; Wickelgren, 1977 ). Calculating a score based on this internal criterion can therefore extend the capabilities of the TMT to measure abilities of cognitive control without the need for further stimulus-dependent alternations of the task.…”