Visual attention is not limited to the oculomotor range

Hanning, Nina M.; Szinte, Martin; Deubel, Heiner

doi:10.1073/pnas.1813465116

Cited by 53 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…It therefore seems very unlikely that the impairment in feature search can be explained solely by differences in the sensory properties of the stimuli. These results are consistent with our previous observations of impaired covert feature search beyond the EOMR (Smith & Archibald, 2018;Smith et al, 2014, Experiment 1;Smith et al, 2010), and a number of studies demonstrating that exogenous covert orienting is impaired beyond the EOMR (Casteau & Smith 2019;Smith et al, 2010;Smith et al, 2014; although also see Hanning, Szinte, & Deubel, 2019). Together, these studies are evidence that placing a salient target beyond the range of eye movements reduces the efficiency with which it can reflexively summon attention.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

On the link between attentional search and the oculomotor system: Is preattentive search restricted to the range of eye movements?

Casteau

Smith

2020

Atten Percept Psychophys

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It has been proposed that covert visual search can be fast, efficient, and stimulus driven, particularly when the target is defined by a salient single feature, or slow, inefficient, and effortful when the target is defined by a nonsalient conjunction of features. This distinction between fast, stimulus-driven orienting and slow, effortful orienting can be related to the distinction between exogenous spatial attention and endogenous spatial attention. Several studies have shown that exogenous, covert orienting is limited to the range of saccadic eye movements, whereas covert endogenous orienting is independent of the range of saccadic eye movements. The current study examined whether covert visual search is affected in a similar way. Experiment 1 showed that covert visual search for feature singletons was impaired when stimuli were presented beyond the range of saccadic eye movements, whereas conjunction search was unaffected by array position. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this effect by measuring search times at 6 eccentricities. The impairment in covert feature search emerged only when stimuli crossed the effective oculomotor range and remained stable for locations further into the periphery, ruling out the possibility that the results of Experiment 1 were due to a failure to fully compensate for the effects of cortical magnification. The findings are interpreted in terms of biased competition and oculomotor theories of spatial attention. It is concluded that, as with covert exogenous orienting, biological constraints on overt orienting in the oculomotor system constrain covert, preattentive search.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

On the link between attentional search and the oculomotor system: Is preattentive search restricted to the range of eye movements?

Casteau

Smith

2020

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…The findings reported here demonstrate that exogenous events equally grab our attention both inside and outside the oculomotor range, and are in line with recent evidence from our lab showing concordant attentional benefits beyond the reach of saccadic eye movements [8]. The automatic shift of attention to a distracting cue outside the oculomotor range observed here is an exogenous effect that cannot be explained by voluntary, endogenous orienting.…”

Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 92%

Attention capture outside the oculomotor range

Hanning

Deubel

2020

Current Biology

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Neurophysiological studies demonstrated that attentional orienting is performed by fronto-parietal brain areas which also play an important role in oculomotor control. Accordingly, several studies claimed that exogenous attention can only be allocated to where we can potentially make an eye movement, i.e. within the oculomotor range. We tested this assumption by assessing the disruptive effect of a salient distractor at locations within and beyond participants' oculomotor range. Participants rotated their heads ~38° leftwards to prevent them from performing large rightward saccades. In this posture, participants fixated the screen center and focused their attention on a location on the left side of the screen, where they had to discriminate the orientation of a visual noise patch. While assessing visual orientation sensitivity -an established proxy of visual attention -at this endogenously attended location, we flashed a salient cue either at the attended location or at various locations inside or outside their oculomotor range. We found that whenever the salient cue occurred at a location other than the endogenously attended location, it withdrew visual attention and significantly disrupted endogenous attentional orienting. Crucially, this effect occurred regardless of whether the cue was presented within or beyond participants' oculomotor range, demonstrating that exogenous events equally grab our attention both inside and outside the eyes reach. Since spatial exogenous attention was attracted unrestrictedly toward locations to which no saccade could be executed, the coupling of attention and eye movement control is less tight than, for example, the prominent "Premotor Theory of Attention" suggests. Rather, attention can be shifted freely over the entire visual range, independent of pathological and physiological limitations of the eye movement system.

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“…Based on the sample size range of previous studies on presaccadic visual attention (e.g. Deubel & Schneider, 1996 ; White, Rolfs, & Carrasco, 2013 ; Wollenberg et al, 2018 ; Hanning, Szinte, & Deubel, 2019 ), 9 healthy participants (aged 24–31 years, 5 women, 8 right-eye dominant, and 1 author) with normal or corrected to normal vision completed the experiment over the course of 2 sessions (approximately 150 minutes each, including intermittent breaks) on different days in exchange for 50 €. All participants, except for one author (L.W.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual attention and eye movement control during oculomotor competition

2020

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Saccadic eye movements are typically preceded by selective shifts of visual attention. Recent evidence, however, suggests that oculomotor selection can occur in the absence of attentional selection when saccades erroneously land in between nearby competing objects (saccade averaging). This study combined a saccade task with a visual discrimination task to investigate saccade target selection during episodes of competition between a saccade target and a nearby distractor. We manipulated the spatial predictability of target and distractor locations and asked participants to execute saccades upon variably delayed go-signals. This allowed us to systematically investigate the capacity to exert top-down eye movement control (as reflected in saccade endpoints) based on the spatiotemporal dynamics of visual attention during movement preparation (measured as visual sensitivity). Our data demonstrate that the predictability of target and distractor locations, despite not affecting the deployment of visual attention prior to movement preparation, largely improved the accuracy of short-latency saccades. Under spatial uncertainty, a short go-signal delay likewise enhanced saccade accuracy substantially, which was associated with a more selective deployment of attentional resources to the saccade target. Moreover, we observed a systematic relationship between the deployment of visual attention and saccade accuracy, with visual discrimination performance being significantly enhanced at the saccade target relative to the distractor only before the execution of saccades accurately landing at the saccade target. Our results provide novel insights linking top-down eye movement control to the operation of selective visual attention during movement preparation.

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Visual attention is not limited to the oculomotor range

Cited by 53 publications

References 52 publications

On the link between attentional search and the oculomotor system: Is preattentive search restricted to the range of eye movements?

On the link between attentional search and the oculomotor system: Is preattentive search restricted to the range of eye movements?

Attention capture outside the oculomotor range

Visual attention and eye movement control during oculomotor competition

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