Semantic contextual cuing and visual attention.

Since M. M. Chun and Y. Jiang's (1998) original study, a large body of research based on the contextual cuing paradigm has shown that the visuocognitive system is capable of capturing certain regularities in the environment in an implicit way. The present study investigated whether regularities based on the semantic category membership of the context can be learned implicitly and whether that learning depends on attention. The contextual cuing paradigm was used with lexical displays in which the semantic category of the contextual words either did or did not predict the target location. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that implicit contextual cuing effects can be extended to semantic category regularities. Experiments 3 and 4 indicated an implicit contextual cuing effect when the predictive context appeared in an attended color but not when the predictive context appeared in an ignored color. However, when the previously ignored context suddenly became attended, it immediately facilitated performance. In contrast, when the previously attended context suddenly became ignored, no benefit was observed. Results suggest that the expression of implicit semantic knowledge depends on attention but that latent learning can nevertheless take place outside the attentional field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring and modeling the trajectory of visual spatial attention.

In a novel choice attention-gating paradigm, observers monitor a stream of 3x3 letter arrays until a tonal cue directs them to report 1 row. Analyses of the particular arrays from which reported letters are chosen and of the joint probabilities of reporting pairs of letters are used to derive a theory of attention dynamics. An attention window opens 0.15 s following a cue to attend to a location, remains open (minimally) 0.2 s, and admits information simultaneously from all the newly attended locations. The window dynamics are independent of the distance moved. The theory accounts for about 90% of the variance from the over 400 data points obtained from each of the observers in the 3 experiments reported here. With minor elaborations, it applies to all the principal paradigms used to study the dynamics of visual spatial attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intertrial Temporal Contextual Cuing: Association Across Successive Visual Search Trials Guides Spatial Attention.

Contextual cuing refers to the facilitation of performance in visual search due to the repetition of the same displays. Whereas previous studies have focused on contextual cuing within single-search trials, this study tested whether 1 trial facilitates visual search of the next trial. Participants searched for a T among Ls. In the training phase, the spatial layout on trial N=1 was predictive of the target location on trial N. In the testing phase, the predictive value was removed. Results revealed an intertrial temporal contextual cuing effect: Search speed became progressively shorter in the training phase, but it significantly lengthened during testing. The authors conclude that the visual system is capable of retaining spatial contextual memory established earlier to facilitate perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Top-down control over biased competition during covert spatial orienting.

Larger benefits of spatial attention are observed when distractor interference is prevalent, supporting the view that spatial selection facilitates visual processing by suppressing distractor interference. The present work shows that cuing effects with identical visual displays can grow substantially as the probability of distractor interference increases. The probability of interference had no impact on spatial cuing effects in the absence of distractors, suggesting that the enlarged cuing effects were not caused by changes in signal enhancement or in the spatial distribution of attention. These findings suggest that attentional control settings determine more than where spatial attention is directed; top-down settings also influence how attention affects visual processing, with increased levels of distractor exclusion when distractor interference is likely. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Auditory and visual capture during focused visual attention.

It is well known that auditory and visual onsets presented at a particular location can capture a person’s visual attention. However, the question of whether such attentional capture disappears when attention is focused endogenously beforehand has not yet been answered. Moreover, previous studies have not differentiated between capture by onsets presented at a nontarget (invalid) location and possible performance benefits occurring when the target location is (validly) cued. In this study, the authors modulated the degree of attentional focus by presenting endogenous cues with varying reliability and by displaying placeholders indicating the precise areas where the target stimuli could occur. By using not only valid and invalid exogenous cues but also neutral cues that provide temporal but no spatial information, they found performance benefits as well as costs when attention is not strongly focused. The benefits disappear when the attentional focus is increased. These results indicate that there is bottom-up capture of visual attention by irrelevant auditory and visual stimuli that cannot be suppressed by top-down attentional control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Previous research has shown how spatial attention is guided to a target location, but little is understood about how attention is allocated to an event in time. The authors introduce a paradigm to manipulate the sequential structure of visual events independent of responses. They asked whether this temporal context could be implicitly learned and used to guide attention to a relative point in time or location, or both, in space. Experiments show that sequentially structured event durations, event identities, and spatiotemporal event sequences can guide attention to a point in time as well as to a target event's identity and location. Cuing was found to rely heavily on the element immediately preceding the target, although cuing from earlier items also was evident. Learning was implicit in all cases. These results show that the sequential structure of the visual world plays an important role in guiding visual attention to target events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

No-onset looming motion guides spatial attention.

These 6 experiments explored the ability of moving random dot patterns to attract attention, as measured by a simple probe-detection task. Each trial began with random motion (i.e., dots linearly moved in random directions). After 1 s motion in 1 hemifield became gradually coherent (i.e., all dots moved up-, down-, left-, or rightwards, or either towards or away from a vanishing point). The results show that only looming motion attracted attention, even when the task became a more demanding discrimination task. This effect is not due to an apparent magnification of stimuli presented in the focus of expansion. When the coherent motion started abruptly, all types of motion attracted attention at a short stimulus onset asynchrony. The looming motion effect only disappeared when attention was drawn to the target location by an arrow. These results suggest that looming motion plays a unique role in guiding spatial attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial context learning survives interference from working memory load.

The human visual system is constantly confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, only a subset of which can be processed in complete detail. Attention and implicit learning are two important mechanisms that optimize vision. This study addressed the relationship between these two mechanisms. Specifically we asked, Is implicit learning of spatial context affected by the amount of working memory load devoted to an irrelevant task? We tested observers in visual search tasks where search displays occasionally repeated. Observers became faster when searching repeated displays than unrepeated ones, showing contextual cuing. We found that the size of contextual cuing was unaffected by whether observers learned repeated displays under unitary attention or when their attention was divided using working memory manipulations. These results held when working memory was loaded by colors, dot patterns, individual dot locations, or multiple potential targets. We conclude that spatial context learning is robust to interference from manipulations that limit the availability of attention and working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The suppression of reflexive visual and auditory orienting when attention is otherwise engaged.

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether abrupt onsets are capable of reflexively capturing attention when they occur outside the current focus of spatial attention, as would be expected if exogenous orienting operates in a truly automatic fashion. The authors established a highly focused attentional state by means of the central presentation of a stream of visual or auditory characters, which participants sometimes had to monitor. No intramodal reflexive cuing effects were observed in either audition or vision when participants performed either an exogenous visual or auditory orthogonal cuing task together with the central focused attention task. These results suggest that reflexive unimodal orienting is not truly automatic. The fact that cuing effects were eliminated under both unimodal and cross-modal conditions is consistent with the view that auditory and visual reflexive spatial orienting are controlled by a common underlying neural substrate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired orienting of attention in left unilateral neglect: A componential analysis.

Twenty-six patients suffering from damage to the right side of the brain, 19 of whom exhibited signs of left neglect, as well as 32 matched controls, ran 3 spatial cuing tasks. Patients were also tested with 2 cancellation tests, a line-bisection test, the copy of a complex drawing, and a visual extinction procedure. Results first showed correlations between extinction and cancellation tests performance on one hand, and between line bisection and copy on the other hand. Second, results demonstrated that an engagement deficit toward contralesional targets appeared to be the most striking feature of neglect, and the engagement score was correlated with the cancellation score and extinction. Most patients with neglect also presented a deficit in disengagement, a deficit of inhibition of return, and probably a deficit of alertness. Deficits in engagement and in disengagement, as well as poor scores in cancellation tests, seemed to be related with posterior cortical and subcortical lesions. Most important, even if an endogenous deficit (frequently related with a thalamic lesion) could aggravate the neglect behavior, neglect syndrome was mainly explained by a deficit of exogenous attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of alertness on spatial and nonspatial components of visual attention.

Three experiments investigated whether spatial and nonspatial components of visual attention would be influenced by changes in (healthy, young) subjects’ level of alertness and whether such effects on separable components would occur independently of each other. The experiments used a no-cue/alerting-cue design with varying cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies in two different whole-report paradigms based on Bundesen’s (1990) theory of visual attention, which permits spatial and nonspatial components of selective attention to be assessed independently. The results revealed the level of alertness to affect both the spatial distribution of attentional weighting and processing speed, but not visual short-term memory capacity, with the effect on processing speed preceding that on the spatial distribution of attentional weighting. This pattern indicates that the level of alertness influences both spatial and nonspatial component mechanisms of visual attention and that these two effects develop independently of each other; moreover, it suggests that intrinsic and phasic alertness effects involve the same processing route, on which spatial and nonspatial mechanisms are mediated by independent processing systems that are activated, due to increased alertness, in temporal succession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The space of an object: Object attention alters the spatial gradient in the surround.

Although object-based attention enhances perceptual processing of information appearing within the boundaries of a selected object, little is known about the consequences for information in the object's surround. The authors show that distance from an attended object's center of mass determines reaction time (RT) to targets in the surround. Of 2 targets in the surround, both equidistant from a cue, the target closer to the center of mass was detected faster. Moreover, RT was shown to be a linear function of distance from the center of mass of a fixed, attended object, and changes to the shape of the object and its center of mass predictably altered RT. Object-based attention leads to a pattern of facilitation in the surround that may contribute to the organization of visual scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multisensory cues capture spatial attention regardless of perceptual load.

We compared the ability of auditory, visual, and audiovisual (bimodal) exogenous cues to capture visuo-spatial attention under conditions of no load versus high perceptual load. Participants had to discriminate the elevation (up vs. down) of visual targets preceded by either unimodal or bimodal cues under conditions of high perceptual load (in which they had to monitor a rapidly presented central stream of visual letters for occasionally presented target digits) or no perceptual load (in which the central stream was replaced by a fixation point). The results of 3 experiments showed that all 3 cues captured visuo-spatial attention in the no-load condition. By contrast, only the bimodal cues captured visuo-spatial attention in the high-load condition, indicating for the first time that multisensory integration can play a key role in disengaging spatial attention from a concurrent perceptually demanding stimulus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An effect of noise on the distribution of attention.

A paced search of a visual display was made in auditory conditions containing bursts of noise at either 68 or 105 db. Each selected visual item required 2 types of response, crossing out and counting. The preferred activity in the quieter condition was counting. When the test instructions emphasized this aspect of the task, attention shifted further toward the preferred activity during loud noise. When the instructions emphasized searching, there were no significant differences between noise and quiet. It appears that although noise will not always induce a redistribution of the attention needed to respond equally often in 2 paced activities, when it does so, the preferred activity gains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation sharpens exogenous spatial attention.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 7(4) of Emotion (see record 2007-17748-024). The supplemental materials link is as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.668.supp.] Although both attention and motivation affect behavior, how these 2 systems interact is currently unknown. To address this question, 2 experiments were conducted in which participants performed a spatially cued forced-choice localization task under varying levels of motivation. Participants were asked to indicate the location of a peripherally cued target while ignoring a distracter. Motivation was manipulated by varying magnitude and valence (reward and punishment) of an incentive linked to task performance. Attention was manipulated via a peripheral cue, which correctly predicted the presence of a target stimulus on 70% of the trials. Taken together, our findings revealed that the signal detection measure, reflecting perceptual sensitivity, increased as a function of incentive value during both valid and invalid trials. In addition, trend analyses revealed a linear increase in detection sensitivity as a function of incentive magnitude for both reward and punishment conditions. Our results suggest that elevated motivation leads to improved efficiency in orienting and reorienting of exogenous spatial attention and that one mechanism by which attention and motivation interact involves the sharpening of attention during motivationally salient conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modal attention asymmetry in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

This cross-sectional study examined modal attention asymmetries in patients with schizophrenia (n?=?47) and bipolar disorder (n?=?42), as contrasted to a matched-sample comparison group of normal participants (n?=?89). A test of continuous auditory and visual attention was the primary measure. The data were analyzed from 2 experimental conditions: simple modal responses (auditory and visual) and modal switching responses (ipsimodal and cross-modal switching). In the simple modal condition, patients with schizophrenia demonstrated a visual over auditory asymmetry; patients with bipolar disorder showed no differences. In modal switching conditions, however, patients with bipolar disorder displayed a significant auditory over visual asymmetry. No main effect was detected between medications and attention functioning. Results are discussed in light of differentiating these 2 populations on the basis of modal specificity of attention functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial attention and audiovisual interactions in apparent motion.

In this study, the authors combined the cross-modal dynamic capture task (involving the horizontal apparent movement of visual and auditory stimuli) with spatial cuing in the vertical dimension to investigate the role of spatial attention in cross-modal interactions during motion perception. Spatial attention was manipulated endogenously, either by means of a blocked design or by predictive peripheral cues, and exogenously by means of nonpredictive peripheral cues. The results of 3 experiments demonstrate a reduction in the magnitude of the cross-modal dynamic capture effect on cued trials compared with uncued trials. The introduction of neutral cues (Experiments 4 and 5) confirmed the existence of both attentional costs and benefits. This attention-related reduction in cross-modal dynamic capture was larger when a peripheral cue was used compared with when attention was oriented in a purely endogenous manner. In sum, the results suggest that spatial attention reduces illusory binding by facilitating the segregation of unimodal signals, thereby modulating audiovisual interactions in information processing. Thus, the effect of spatial attention occurs prior to or at the same time as cross-modal interactions involving motion information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhanced facilitation of spatial attention in schizophrenia.

Objective: While attentional functions are usually found to be impaired in schizophrenia, a review of the literature on the orienting of spatial attention in schizophrenia suggested that voluntary attentional orienting in response to a valid cue might be paradoxically enhanced. We tested this hypothesis with orienting tasks involving the cued detection of a laterally presented target stimulus. Method: Subjects were chronic schizophrenia patients (SZ) and matched healthy control subjects (HC). In Experiment 1 (15 SZ, 16 HC), cues were endogenous (arrows) and could be valid (100% predictive) or neutral with respect to the subsequent target position. In Experiment 2 (16 SZ, 16 HC), subjects performed a standard orienting task with unpredictive exogenous cues (brightening of the target boxes). Results: In Experiment 1, SZ showed a larger attentional facilitation effect on reaction time than HC. In Experiment 2, no clear sign of enhanced attentional facilitation was found in SZ. Conclusions: The voluntary, facilitatory shifting of spatial attention may be relatively enhanced in individuals with schizophrenia in comparison to healthy individuals. This effect bears resemblance to other relative enhancements of information processing in schizophrenia such as saccade speed and semantic priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does contextual cuing guide the deployment of attention?

Contextual cuing experiments show that when displays are repeated, reaction times to find a target decrease over time even when observers are not aware of the repetition. It has been thought that the context of the display guides attention to the target. The authors tested this hypothesis by comparing the effects of guidance in a standard search task with the effects of contextual cuing. First, in standard search, an improvement in guidance causes search slopes (derived from Reaction Time × Set Size functions) to decrease. In contrast, the authors found that search slopes in contextual cuing did not become more efficient over time (Experiment 1). Second, when guidance was optimal (e.g., in easy feature search), they still found a small but reliable contextual cuing effect (Experiments 2a and 2b), suggesting that other factors, such as response selection, contribute to the effect. Experiment 3 supported this hypothesis by showing that the contextual cuing effect disappeared when the authors added interference to the response selection process. Overall, the data suggest that the relationship between guidance and contextual cuing is weak and that response selection can account for part of the effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cross-modal and intramodal division of attention on perceptual implicit memory.

Extant results motivate 3 hypotheses on the role of attention in perceptual implicit memory. The first proposes that only intramodal manipulations of attention reduce perceptual priming. The second attributes reduced priming to the effects of distractor selection operating in a central bottleneck process. The third proposes that manipulations of attention only affect priming via disrupted stimulus identification. In Experiment 1, a standard cross-modal manipulation did not disrupt priming in perceptual identification. However, when study words and distractors were presented synchronously, cross-modal and intramodal distraction reduced priming. Increasing response frequency in the distractor task produced effects of attention regardless of target-distractor synchrony. These effects generalized to a different category of distractors arguing against domain-specific interference. The results support the distractor-selection hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)