Spatial Orienting and Attentional Capture

Author(s):  
Jan Theeuwes

The present review discusses basic findings and current controversies regarding spatial orienting and attentional capture. Endogenous and exogenous spatial orienting and their interaction are discussed in relation to recent debates regarding the role of orienting in the preparation of eye movements, in relation to subliminal cueing, and to the debate whether spatial attention is needed for the detection of basic features. The review also discusses whether it is possible to cue a distractor location in order to reduce its effect on target processing. Stimulus-driven attentional capture and contingent capture are discussed in relation to controversies regarding non-spatial filtering, the existence of assumed search modes, and the concept of the attentional window. The review concludes that contingent capture may be nothing other than endogenous orienting.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Robert Harrison Brown

Attention has long been characterised within prominent models as reflecting a competition between goal-driven and stimulus-driven processes. It remains unclear, however, how involuntary attentional capture by affective stimuli, such as threat-laden content, fits into such models. While such effects were traditionally held to reflect stimulus-driven processes, recent research has increasingly implicated a critical role of goal-driven processes. Here we test an alternative goal-driven account of involuntary attentional capture by threat, using an experimental manipulation of goal-driven attention. To this end we combined the classic ‘contingent capture’ and ‘emotion-induced blink’ (EIB) paradigms in an RSVP task with both positive or threatening target search goals. Across six experiments, positive and threat distractors were presented in peripheral, parafoveal, and central locations. Across all distractor locations, we found that involuntary attentional capture by irrelevant threatening distractors could be induced via the adoption of a search goal for a threatening category; adopting a goal for a positive category conversely led to capture only by positive stimuli. Our findings provide direct experimental evidence for a causal role of voluntary goals in involuntary capture by irrelevant threat stimuli, and hence demonstrate the plausibility of a top-down account of this phenomenon. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to current cognitive models of attention and clinical disorders.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Snowden

Although transient changes in luminance have been well documented to automatically attract attention to their location, experiments looking at abrupt changes in color have failed to find similar attentional capture. These results are consistent with current theories of the role of the magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) streams that postulate that the M stream, which is “color-blind,” plays the dominant role in guiding attention and eye movements. The experiment reported here used stimuli that contained only information defined by color, and masked residual luminance information with dynamic noise, to assess the capacity of purely chromatic cues to automatically guide spatial attention. Such stimuli were as effective as those containing large luminance signals in guiding attention. To the extent that these purely chromatic signals isolated the P stream, these results suggest that this stream is also capable of automatic attentional capture. Hence, color vision not only aids target identification but also is a strong aid for target detection and localization.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émilie Leblanc ◽  
David J. Prime ◽  
Pierre Jolicoeur

Currently, there is considerable controversy regarding the degree to which top-down control can affect attentional capture by salient events. According to the contingent capture hypothesis, attentional capture by a salient stimulus is contingent on a match between the properties of the stimulus and top-down attentional control settings. In contrast, bottom-up saliency accounts argue that the initial capture of attention is determined solely by the relative salience of the stimulus, and the effect of top-down attentional control is limited to effects on the duration of attentional engagement on the capturing stimulus. In the present study, we tested these competing accounts by utilizing the N2pc event-related potential component to track the locus of attention during an attentional capture task. The results were completely consistent with the contingent capture hypothesis: An N2pc wave was elicited only by distractors that possessed the target-defining attribute. In a second experiment, we expanded upon this finding by exploring the effect of target-distractor similarity on the duration that attention dwells at the distractor location. In this experiment, only distractors possessing the target-defining attribute (color) captured visuospatial attention to their location and the N2pc increased in duration and in magnitude when the capture distractor also shared a second target attribute (category membership). Finally, in three additional control experiments, we replicated the finding of an N2pc generated by distractors, only if they shared the target-defining attribute. Thus, our results demonstrate that attentional control settings influence both which stimuli attract attention and to what extent they are processed.


1970 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-207
Author(s):  
Євген Карпенко

У статті проаналізовано місце феномену емоційної компетентності в становленні дискурсу життєтворення особистості. Відзначено, що її засадничими ознаками є відкритість і діалогічність, що фасилітують процеси життєтворчості в інтра- та інтерпсихічному просторі та сприяють здобуттю певних експірієнтальних «знань» і формуванню відповідних комунікативних «умінь». Отже, емоційна компетентність виконує функцію орієнтації в знаково-символічній реальності внутрішнього та зовнішнього середовища і, відповідно, бере участь у прийнятті рішень стосовно них. Це сприяє реалізації функції особистісного вибору у значущих обставинах життя. Вважається, що цей вибір повинен ґрунтуватися на домінуючій екзистенційній ідентичності та релевантно реалізовуватися на всіх її рівнях: базовому, характерологічному, ситуативному. В цьому контексті емоційна компетентність виступає в якості з’єднувальної ланки між ідентичністю та її зовнішньою поведінковою маніфестацією, в якій вона, власне, й проявляється. Інтегруючи первинні емоції, емоційна компетентність сприяє формуванню системи цінностей, мотивів і світоглядних орієнтацій особистості, а також сприяє їх коректному втіленню в практиці міжособистісного спілкування і, відповідно, конструювання дискурсу власного життя. У цьому полягає ключова роль емоційної компетентності в процесі життєтворення особистості. The article analyzes the role of emotional competence in establishing the discourse of personal life creation. It has been stated that its basic features are openness and readiness to dialog that facilitate life creation processes in the intra- and interpsychic space and promote acquirement of certain experiential "knowledge" as well as formation of relevant communicative "skills". So, emotional competence has a function of orienting in sign and symbol reality of the internal and external environment and, therefore, takes part in decision-making in respect thereof. This enables realization of the function of personal choice in significant life circumstances.  This choice is considered to be based on dominant existential identity and realized in the relevant manner at all its levels: basic, characterological, situational. In this sense emotional competence forms a link between identity and its outer behavioral manifestation.  While integrating primary emotions emotional competence facilitates formation of a system of values, motives and world view of personality as well as their correct implementation in the course of interpersonal communication and personal life discourse construction. This embodies the key role of emotional competence in the process of life creation of personality.


Author(s):  
Alec Stone Sweet ◽  
Jud Mathews

This book focuses on the law and politics of rights protection in democracies, and in human rights regimes in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. After introducing the basic features of modern constitutions, with their emphasis on rights and judicial review, the authors present a theory of proportionality that explains why constitutional judges embraced it. Proportionality analysis is a highly intrusive mode of judicial supervision: it permits state officials to limit rights, but only when necessary to achieve a sufficiently important public interest. Since the 1950s, virtually every powerful domestic and international court has adopted proportionality as the central method for protecting rights. In doing so, judges positioned themselves to review all important legislative and administrative decisions, and to invalidate them as unconstitutional when they fail the proportionality test. The result has been a massive—and global—transformation of law and politics. The book explicates the concepts of “trusteeship,” the “system of constitutional justice,” the “effectiveness” of rights adjudication, and the “zone of proportionality.” A wide range of case studies analyze: how proportionality has spread, and variation in how it is deployed; the extent to which the U.S. Supreme Court has evolved and resisted similar doctrines; the role of proportionality in building ongoing “constitutional dialogues” with the other branches of government; and the importance of the principle to the courts of regional human rights regimes. While there is variance in the intensity of proportionality-based dialogues, such interactions are today at the heart of governance in the modern constitutional state and beyond.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 934-947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masafumi Ohki ◽  
Hiromasa Kitazawa ◽  
Takahito Hiramatsu ◽  
Kimitake Kaga ◽  
Taiko Kitamura ◽  
...  

The anatomical connection between the frontal eye field and the cerebellar hemispheric lobule VII (H-VII) suggests a potential role of the hemisphere in voluntary eye movement control. To reveal the involvement of the hemisphere in smooth pursuit and saccade control, we made a unilateral lesion around H-VII and examined its effects in three Macaca fuscata that were trained to pursue visually a small target. To the step (3°)-ramp (5–20°/s) target motion, the monkeys usually showed an initial pursuit eye movement at a latency of 80–140 ms and a small catch-up saccade at 140–220 ms that was followed by a postsaccadic pursuit eye movement that roughly matched the ramp target velocity. After unilateral cerebellar hemispheric lesioning, the initial pursuit eye movements were impaired, and the velocities of the postsaccadic pursuit eye movements decreased. The onsets of 5° visually guided saccades to the stationary target were delayed, and their amplitudes showed a tendency of increased trial-to-trial variability but never became hypo- or hypermetric. Similar tendencies were observed in the onsets and amplitudes of catch-up saccades. The adaptation of open-loop smooth pursuit velocity, tested by a step increase in target velocity for a brief period, was impaired. These lesion effects were recognized in all directions, particularly in the ipsiversive direction. A recovery was observed at 4 wk postlesion for some of these lesion effects. These results suggest that the cerebellar hemispheric region around lobule VII is involved in the control of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements.


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