Early ERP effects on the scaling of spatial attention in visual search

Abstract

This article describes the examination of the spatial ‘scaling’ effect of visual attention with the technique of event-related potential (ERP). Eighteen participants were involved in a visual search task in which the cue-target paradigm was used. The search array was three concentric circles consisting of randomly selected English letters that were equally distributed in each circle. The behavioral and ERP data were recorded, respectively. The behavioral results showed that the response time increased and the response accuracy decreased with the increase of precue size. The ERPs amplitude of P1 and N1 components evoked by search array increased with the reduction of precue size. However, the latencies of these ERP components did not show significant differences between conditions. The hierarchical data of both behavioral assessment and ERPs provided evidence for the spatial ‘scaling’ effect of visual attention. The amplitudes of P1 and N1 components may be used as indices to examine the effect of spatial ‘scaling’. In different tasks, the display-set size of stimuli and the task complexity may be important factors that affect the attention allocation.