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Abstract
Alerting is one of the three components of attention which involves the eliciting and maintenance of arousal. A seminal study by Posner et al. (Posner MI, Klein R, Summers J, Buggie S. 1973 Mem. Cognit. 1, 2–12 (doi:10.3758/BF03198062)) focused on how changing the interval between an alerting signal and a target would impact the speed and accuracy of responding. Participants indicated whether targets were presented on the left or right side of the fixation point. Auditory warning signals were played at various intervals prior to the target to alert participants and prepare them to make a response. Reaction times revealed a robust, U-shaped, preparation function. Importantly, a clear speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) was observed. In the current experiment, we replicated the methodological components of this seminal study while implementing a novel auditory warning signal (Lawrence MA, Klein RM. 2013 J. Exp. Psychol. General 142, 560 (doi:10.1037/a0029023)) that was either purely endogenous (change in quality without a change in intensity; analogous to isoluminant colour change in vision) or a combination of endogenous and exogenous (change in both quality and intensity). We expected to replicate the U-shaped preparation function and SAT observed by Posner and colleagues. Based on Lawrence and Klein's findings we also expected the SAT to be more robust with the intense signal in comparison to the isointense signal.
Highlights
Alerting, which involves the maintenance of arousal and an increase in sensitivity to stimuli, is one of the three networks in Posner’s widely used model of attention [1]
The number of trials contributed by each participant was checked to ensure that there were no participants who lost a substantial amount of their data and needed to be excluded from analyses
A 4 (SOA) × 2 × 2 type III mixed-factorial ANOVA was conducted on reaction times (RTs), revealing a significant main effect of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), F2.5,115.12 = 140.09, mean squared error (MSE) = 725.28, p < 0.001, h2G 1⁄4 0:260, with a typical U-shaped function showing a minimum at our 250 ms SOA
Summary
Alerting, which involves the maintenance of arousal and an increase in sensitivity to stimuli, is one of the three networks in Posner’s widely used model of attention [1]. In their purely endogenous condition, Lawrence and Klein observed pure improvements in participant performance, with benefits to both speed and accuracy In their combined alerting condition, they observed a SAT, as would be predicted from Posner et al [7]. We presented two-different signal types between-participants in a contingent-only signal-target design: a signal that increases in intensity, which elicits a combination of endogenous and exogenous alerting, and a signal that remains isointense through the use of stereo signalling, which elicits purely endogenous alerting. These two conditions will be referred to as the combined condition and the purely endogenous condition, respectively. In our purely endogenous condition, we expect to observe genuine improvements to performance as a consequence of the no-intensity warning signal relative to no warning signal SOA condition [11]
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