If not When, then Where? Ignoring Temporal Information Eliminates Reflexive but not Volitional Spatial Orienting

Kaitlin Laidlaw,Alan Kingstone

doi:10.3390/vision1020012

Kaitlin Laidlaw, Alan Kingstone

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/vision1020012

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Journal: Vision	Publication Date: May 6, 2017
Citations: 7	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Western University, University of British Columbia

Abstract

A tremendous amount of research has been devoted to understanding how attention can be committed to space or time. Until recently, relatively little research has examined how attention to these two domains combine. The present study addressed this issue. We examined how implicitly manipulating whether participants used a cue to orient attention in time impacts reflexive or volitional shifts in spatial attention. Specifically, participants made speeded manual responses to the detection of a peripherally presented target that appeared either 100, 500, or 1000 ms after the onset of a central cue. Cues were either spatially non-predictive arrows (p = 0.50) or spatially-predictive (p = 0.80) letter cues. Whereas arrow cues can reflexively orient spatial attention even when non-predictive of a target’s spatial location, letters only orient spatial attention when they reliably predict a target location, i.e., the shift is volitional. Further, in one task, a target was presented on every trial, thereby encouraging participants to use the temporal information conveyed by the cue to prepare for the appearance of the target. In another task, 25% of trials contained no target, implicitly discouraging participants from using the cue to direct attention in time. Results indicate that when temporal information is reliable and therefore volitionally processed, then spatial cuing effects emerge regardless of whether attention is oriented reflexively or volitionally. However, when temporal information is unreliable, spatial cuing effects only emerge when spatial cue information is reliable, i.e., when spatial attention is volitionally shifted. Reflexive cues do not elicit spatial orienting when their temporal utility is reduced. These results converge on the notion that reflexive shifts of spatial attention are sensitive to implicit changes in a non-spatial domain, whereas explicit volitional shifts in spatial attention are not.

Highlights

Human visual attention can be oriented in both space and time [1,2]
Into the blocks, foreperiod was eliminated at later inSOAs, i.e., response times (RT) stabilized spatially informative letter cue, regardless of whether catch trials were presented
We began our study by noting that recent work suggests that temporal attention, when it is explicitly cued, does not interact with volitional or reflexive spatial attention to a central cue

Summary

Introduction

Human visual attention can be oriented in both space and time [1,2]. In so doing, people can improve processing of their visual world to particular locations, and during expected time periods [3,4,5,6,7,8]. In the Posner cuing paradigm [9,10], participants make speeded manual responses to a peripherally presented target. As Posner demonstrated, if the onset of the target is validly cued by a brief change in luminance at the target’s spatial location, attention will be reflexively directed to the target’s location, quickly facilitating processing and speeding responses. The target is invalidly cued, or preceded by the same flash at an opposing spatial location, responses will initially be delayed because attention is misdirected by the cue and must be reallocated to the target’s location upon its appearance. The difference in response times (RT) between validly and invalidly cued trials is Vision 2017, 1, 12; doi:10.3390/vision1020012 www.mdpi.com/journal/vision

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