EXPRESS: Can arrows change the subjective perception of space? Exploring symbolic attention repulsion

The attention repulsion effect (ARE) refers to distortions in the perception of space for areas nearby the focus of attention. For instance, when attending to the right-hand side of the visual field, objects in central vision may appear as though they are shifted to the left. The phenomenon is likely caused by changes in visual cell functioning. To date, research on the ARE has almost exclusively used exogenous manipulations of attention. In contrast, research exploring endogenous attention repulsion has been mixed, and no research has explored the effects of non-predictive arrow cues on this phenomenon. This gap in the literature is unexpected, as symbolic attention appears to be a unique form of attentional orienting compared to endogenous and exogenous attention. Therefore, the current study explored the effects of symbolic orienting on spatial repulsion and compared it to an exogenously generated ARE. Across four experiments, both exogenous and symbolic orienting resulted in AREs; however, the magnitude of the symbolic ARE was smaller than the exogenous ARE. This difference in magnitude persisted, even after testing both phenomena using stimulus timing parameters known to produce optimal effects in traditional attentional cueing paradigms. Therefore, compared to symbolic attention, it appears that exogenous manipulations may tightly constrict attention resources on the cued location, in turn potentially influencing the functioning of visual cells for enhanced perceptual processing.

Attentional Orienting in Front and Rear Spaces in a Virtual Reality Discrimination Task

Recent studies on covert attention suggested that the visual processing of information in front of us is different, depending on whether the information is present in front of us or if it is a reflection of information behind us (mirror information). This difference in processing suggests that we have different processes for directing our attention to objects in front of us (front space) or behind us (rear space). In this study, we investigated the effects of attentional orienting in front and rear space consecutive of visual or auditory endogenous cues. Twenty-one participants performed a modified version of the Posner paradigm in virtual reality during a spaceship discrimination task. An eye tracker integrated into the virtual reality headset was used to make sure that the participants did not move their eyes and used their covert attention. The results show that informative cues produced faster response times than non-informative cues but no impact on target identification was observed. In addition, we observed faster response times when the target occurred in front space rather than in rear space. These results are consistent with an orienting cognitive process differentiation in the front and rear spaces. Several explanations are discussed. No effect was found on subjects’ eye movements, suggesting that participants did not use their overt attention to improve task performance.

Focusing on the face or getting distracted by social signals? The effect of distracting gestures on attentional focus in natural interaction

Attentional orienting towards others’ gaze direction or pointing has been wellinvestigated in laboratory conditions. However, less is known about the operation ofattentional mechanisms in online naturalistic social interaction scenarios. It is equally plausible that following social directional cues (gaze, pointing) occurs reflexively, and/orthat it is influenced by top-down cognitive factors. In a mobile eye-tracking experiment,we show that under natural interaction conditions overt attentional orienting is notnecessarily reflexively triggered by pointing gestures or a combination of gaze shifts andpointing gestures. We found that participants conversing with an experimenter, who,during the interaction, would play out pointing gestures as well as directional gaze movements, continued to mostly focus their gaze on the face of the experimenter, demonstrating the significance of attending to the face of the interaction partner – in linewith effective top-down control over reflexive orienting of attention in the direction of social cues.

Semantic Influences on Overt and Covert Visual Attention

<p>People are constantly confronted by a barrage of visual information. Visual attention is the crucial mechanism which selects for further processing, subsets of information which are most behaviourally relevant, allowing us to function effectively within our everyday environment. This thesis explored how semantic information (i.e., information which has meaning) encountered within the environment influences the selective orienting of visual attention. Past research has shown semantic information does affect the orienting of attention, but the processes by which it does so remain unclear. The extent of semantic influence on the visual attention system was determined by parsing visual orienting into the tractable components of covert and overt orienting, and capture and hold process stages therein. This thesis consisted of a series of experiments which were designed, utilising well- established paradigms and semantic manipulations in concert with eye-tracking techniques, to test whether the capture and hold of either overt or covert forms of visual attention were influenced by semantic information. Taking together the main findings across all experiments, the following conclusions were drawn. 1) Semantic information differentially influences covert and overt attentional orienting processes. 2) The capture and hold of covert attention is generally uninfluenced by semantic information. 3) Semantic information briefly encountered in the environment can facilitate or prime action independent of covert attentional orienting.4) Overt attention can be both preferentially captured and held by semantically salient information encountered in visual environments. The visual attentional system thus appears to have a complex relationship with semantic information encountered in the visual environment. Semantic information has a differential influence on selective orienting processes that depends on the form of orienting employed and a range of circumstances under which attentional selection takes place.</p>

Semantic Influences on Overt and Covert Visual Attention

<p>People are constantly confronted by a barrage of visual information. Visual attention is the crucial mechanism which selects for further processing, subsets of information which are most behaviourally relevant, allowing us to function effectively within our everyday environment. This thesis explored how semantic information (i.e., information which has meaning) encountered within the environment influences the selective orienting of visual attention. Past research has shown semantic information does affect the orienting of attention, but the processes by which it does so remain unclear. The extent of semantic influence on the visual attention system was determined by parsing visual orienting into the tractable components of covert and overt orienting, and capture and hold process stages therein. This thesis consisted of a series of experiments which were designed, utilising well- established paradigms and semantic manipulations in concert with eye-tracking techniques, to test whether the capture and hold of either overt or covert forms of visual attention were influenced by semantic information. Taking together the main findings across all experiments, the following conclusions were drawn. 1) Semantic information differentially influences covert and overt attentional orienting processes. 2) The capture and hold of covert attention is generally uninfluenced by semantic information. 3) Semantic information briefly encountered in the environment can facilitate or prime action independent of covert attentional orienting.4) Overt attention can be both preferentially captured and held by semantically salient information encountered in visual environments. The visual attentional system thus appears to have a complex relationship with semantic information encountered in the visual environment. Semantic information has a differential influence on selective orienting processes that depends on the form of orienting employed and a range of circumstances under which attentional selection takes place.</p>

Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian

Human visual performance is not only better at the fovea and decreases with eccentricity, but also has striking radial asymmetries around the visual field: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along (1) the horizontal than vertical meridian and (2) the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries, known as performance fields, are pervasive -they emerge for many visual dimensions, regardless of head rotation, stimulus orientation or display luminance- and resilient -they are not alleviated by covert exogenous or endogenous attention, deployed in the absence of eye movements. Performance fields have been studied exclusively during eye fixation. However, a major driver of everyday attentional orienting is saccade preparation, during which visual attention automatically shifts to the future eye fixation. This presaccadic shift of attention is considered strong and compulsory, and relies on fundamentally different neural computations and substrates than covert attention. Given these differences, we investigated whether presaccadic attention can compensate for the ubiquitous performance asymmetries observed during eye fixation. Our data replicate polar performance asymmetries during fixation and document the same asymmetries during saccade preparation. Crucially, however, presaccadic attention enhanced contrast sensitivity at the horizontal and lower vertical meridian, but not at the upper vertical meridian. Thus, instead of attenuating polar performance asymmetries, presaccadic attention exacerbates them.