A preliminary investigation of the interaction between expectation and the reflexive allocation of covert spatial attention.

ABSTRACT: Sudden onsets in the visual periphery elicit reflexive shifts of covert exogenous spatial attention. Here, we asked: are the behavioral effects of such an irrelevant exogenous cue modulated by implicit knowledge about the probability of the cue's presence? Participants discriminated the orientation of a visual target that was preceded, on some trials, by an abrupt-onset task-irrelevant disk (exogenous cue). A color at fixation (red or green) signaled the probability that a cue would appear (0.8, "high-probability", or 0.2, "low-probability"). When presented, this cue flashed briefly in the periphery, either near the target (valid cue) or non-target stimulus (invalid cue, equally likely). We used a speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) procedure to vary the time given for participants to process th

SUBMITTER: Crotty N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11833114 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature