A biased-competition approach to spatial cueing: Combining empirical studies and computational modelling

Abstract

We examined the effects of cue luminance on visual orienting. Experiment 1 established that the commonly-found early facilitation and late inhibition of return (IOR) effects were independent of cue luminance with single cues in terms of their amplitude, although IOR was delayed in the low compared to the high luminance cue condition. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that, with dual cues of mixed luminance, both facilitation and IOR effects were found only with bright cues. When cues had equal luminance, however, there were cueing effects for two cued locations but only when the cues were bright. The data were accommodated in a neural network model of biased competition in which cueing effects emerge at more than one location provided input activation is sufficient to overcome competitive damping of the selection system.

Keywords:

• Biased-competition
• Computational modelling
• Inhibition of return
• Visual attention

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out in partial fulfilment of a PhD in Psychology at the University of Birmingham (YZ) and it was supported by grants from the EPSRC to the third author and from the BBSRC and MRC to GWH.

Notes

¹This argument is based on the commonly made assumption that the luminance contrast between stimuli is reversely proportional to the speed of the convergence of the competition for selection. In the equal luminance condition the contrast is solely induced by noise and therefore is fairly small. Hence, we assume that, within the timeline of the early SOAs, competition is not fully resolved in favour of one cue.

²In this figure and all other figures the error bars were determined by a method proposed by Cousineau (2005). This method adjusts the standard confidence interval for the within-participants design.

³We would like to thank Herman Mueller for this suggestion.