Visual orienting in response to attentional cues: Spatial correspondence is critical, conscious awareness is not

Abstract

Three experiments examined visual orienting in response to spatial precues. In Experiments 1 and 2, attentional effects of central letters were stimulus driven: Orienting was dependent on the spatial layout of the cue display. When there were no correspondences between spatial features of the cue display and target location, attentional effects were absent, despite a conscious intention to orient in response to the symbolic information carried by the cue letters. In Experiment 3 clear orienting effects were observed when target location corresponded with spatial features of the cue display, but the magnitude of these effects was unaffected by whether participants were aware or unaware of the cue–target relationship. These findings are consistent with the view that (1) spatial correspondences between cues and targets are a critical factor driving visual orienting in cueing paradigms, and (2) attentional effects of spatial precues are largely independent of participants’ conscious awareness of the cue–target relationship.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Endogenous
• Orienting
• Spatial correspondence
• Spatial cues

Notes

¹It is important to recognize that we make this proposal solely in relation to covert orienting. We take it as self-evident that participants would be able to initiate overt orienting, by moving their eyes or head, in response to any arbitrary symbolic stimulus, such as “Look left”. The simple detection task employed in this study and previously (Lambert & Duddy, 2002; Lambert et al., 2006) may represent an ideal method for studying covert orienting. In this very simple task situation participants have little incentive to move their eyes, and early work by Posner showed, first, that they rarely do so, and second, that patterns of behavioural performance were unaffected by eye movements (Posner, 1978; Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980).

²Even though we predicted that a clear validity effect would be observed only at the SOA of 500 ms, and only in the double cue conditions, the two brief SOAs (0 ms and 150 ms) were included in the experimental design in order to maintain comparability and consistency with a longer series of experiments (see Lambert & Shin, 2010).