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The influence of a salience distinction between bilateral cues on the latency of target‐detection saccades
Author(s) -
Kean Matthew,
Lambert Anthony
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1348/000712603767876280
Subject(s) - psychology , salience (neuroscience) , salient , stimulus (psychology) , facilitation , cognitive psychology , luminance , expectancy theory , stimulus onset asynchrony , inhibition of return , perception , saccadic masking , communication , audiology , eye movement , social psychology , visual attention , neuroscience , computer vision , artificial intelligence , computer science , medicine
The spatial cueing paradigm, with saccades to targets as the method of response, was used to investigate the influence of two simultaneously presented cues on the orienting of visual attention. Participants were presented with bilateral cues, one of which was perceptually salient (high luminance) relative to the other. They participated in one of three conditions: in the ‘bright side likely’ condition targets usually ( p = .8) appeared near the more salient cue; in the ‘dim side likely’ condition targets usually ( p = .8) appeared near the less salient cue; and in the ‘neutral’ condition the arrangement of the cues was uninformative with respect to target location. Brief SOAs (0, 50, 100 and 150 ms) were employed. Rapid reflexive orienting to the more salient stimulus was observed in the neutral condition: saccadic latencies were faster when the target appeared near the bright cue, and this was found even across the two shortest SOAs. However, this reflexive orienting was suppressed in both the bright side likely and dim side likely conditions: the advantage observed at the bright cue's location across the two shortest SOAs in the neutral condition was significantly attenuated in the two contingent conditions. Results point to rapid expectancy‐based interference in the reflexive process of attention capture.