Endogenous shifts of attention cause distortions in the perception of space: Reviewing and examining the attentional repulsion effect

ABSTRACT

The functioning of spatial attention and its effects on visual processing are typically studied using chronometric and accuracy measures of behaviour. However, a growing body of literature has studied the attentional repulsion effect (ARE). Simply put, when attention is focused on one location in the visual field, stimuli appearing nearby the attended location are perceived as being located further away from the attended location than they physically are. The ARE is particularly compelling, as it is best explained by considering the receptive field properties of visual cells, thus allowing for more direct comparisons between behaviour and neural functioning. Nonetheless, most research testing the ARE has manipulated spatial attention exogenously. Furthermore, for studies that have explored endogenous attention and the ARE, empirical evidence is conflicting. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to address this inconsistency by testing the effect of voluntary attention on spatial repulsion using an optimal operationalization of endogenous attention. Centrally presented, highly informative double-cues were used to shift attention, and placeholders were included in the display to help anchor attention. Overall, we observed strong spatial repulsion effects when attention was shifted endogenously, providing compelling evidence that voluntary deployments of attention can cause perceptual distortions of space.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention repulsion
• endogenous attention
• exogenous attention

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by an NSERC Grant (2016-06359) awarded to Jay Pratt.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although eye movements were not recorded in the current study, it is important to note that eye movements would have been unlikely to occur in this task. This is because, on each trial, two targets would appear at opposite corners of the visual field simultaneously, or in central vision. It would have therefore been detrimental for participants to shift their eyes in response to the cue as they could only move their eyes to one, and not both of the locations. This would likely lower performance to chance level.

2 Two participants completed the practice block four times and failed to achieve an accuracy of greater than 75%. Nonetheless, they completed the experimental block and performed the peripheral cueing task above chance (i.e., greater than 60% in at least one condition). As such, their data were included in our main analyses.

3 In an earlier version of this manuscript, data from all forty participants was erroneously included in analysis. Specifically, data from one participant had been reverse scored due to what was believed to be reverse responding (i.e. performance consistently below chance). However, it was later realized that the participant performed below chance due to using invalid response keys rather than reverse responding. Thus, their reverse scored data has been removed from the final analysis presented in this manuscript.

4 We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded to J.P: [grant number 2016-06359].