Do peripheral non-informative cues induce early facilitation of target detection?

Tassinari, G.; Aglioti, Salvatore Maria; Chelazzi, Leonardo; Peru, Andrea; Berlucchi, Giovanni

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(94)90330-1

Cited by 129 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

126

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In these accounts, IOR and covert attention are conceptualised as separate cognitive processes which are triggered by the same peripheral cue. This view of IOR is consistent with a growing body of empirical evidence showing that the inhibitory and facilitatory effects of peripheral cues can be dissociated experimentally (Danziger & Kingstone, 1999;Tassinari, Aglioti, Chelazzi, Peru, & Berlucchi, 1994). We therefore argue that IOR is not necessarily a marker for a prior shift of attention, so studies measuring IOR but not early attentional facilitation cannot be used as evidence for or against the Premotor theory of attention.…”

Section: Motor Preparation Is Necessary For Spatial Attentionsupporting

confidence: 54%

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractSpatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item.

show abstract

Section: Motor Preparation Is Necessary For Spatial Attentionsupporting

confidence: 54%

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some years ago Tassinari et al (11) reported that they could not find any direct evidence of a facilitatory effect by noninfor-mative prime stimuli, despite using stimulatory conditions that should favor its appearance. These authors considered two possible reasons for their negative results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The early facilitatory effect of a peripheral spatially noninformative prime stimulus depends on target stimulus features

Azevedo

Squella

Ribeiro-do-Valle

2001

Braz J Med Biol Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigated the dependency of the early facilitatory effect of a prime stimulus (S1) on the physical characteristics of the target stimulus (S2). A go/no go reaction time paradigm was used. The S1 was a gray ring and the S2s were a white vertical line, a white horizontal line, a white cross and a white small ring, all inside a white ring with the same dimensions as the S1. S1 onset-S2 onset asynchrony was 100 ms. The stimuli appeared randomly in any one of the quadrants of a monitor screen. The S2 could occur at the same position as the S1 or at a different one. We observed a strong facilitatory effect when the vertical line or the horizontal line was the go stimulus and no effect when the cross was the go stimulus. These results show that the features of the target stimulus can be decisive for the appearance of the facilitatory effect of a peripheral spatially noninformative prime stimulus.

show abstract

“…It decreased monotonically with distance from the prime stimulus, disappearing at 6 deg far from it. Lambert and Hockey (6), Tassinari et al (19) and Efron and Yund (20) suggested a sensory mechanism, namely paracontrast (a case of forward masking), for the early inhibitory effect they observed. Efron and Yund (20) in particular presented evidence that their inhibitory effect could not be caused by other potential factors, such as a reduction of neural responsiveness after the initial activation by a light flash or an inhibition of return to an attended location.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The inhibitory effect was replaced by a facilitatory effect when a dim prime stimulus was used instead of the bright one. Tassinari et al (19) noticed in a first experiment an inhibitory effect of 41 and 39 ms when the target followed the prime stimulus by 65 and 130 ms, respectively. In this experiment the prime stimulus was an increase in luminance of the outline of one of four 1.2 x 1.2-deg empty squares centered on the horizontal meridian and the target stimulus was a 0.5 x 0.5-deg filled square appearing at the center of one of these empty squares; both stimuli lasted only 16 ms.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming effects of a peripheral visual stimulus in simple and go/no-go tasks

Squella

Ribeiro-do-Valle

2003

Braz J Med Biol Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The early facilitatory effect of a peripheral spatially visual prime stimulus described in the literature for simple reaction time tasks has been usually smaller than that described for complex (go/no-go, choice) reaction time tasks. In the present study we investigated the reason for this difference. In a first and a second experiment we tested the participants in both a simple task and a go/no-go task, half of them beginning with one of these tasks and half with the other one. We observed that the prime stimulus had an early effect, inhibitory for the simple task and facilitatory for the go/no-go task, when the task was performed first. No early effect appeared when the task was performed second. In a third and a fourth experiment the participants were, respectively, tested in the simple task and in the go/no-go task for four sessions (the prime stimulus was presented in the second, third and fourth sessions). The early effects of the prime stimulus did not change across the sessions, suggesting that a habituatory process was not the cause for the disappearance of these effects in the first two experiments. Our findings are compatible with the idea that different attentional strategies are adopted in simple and complex reaction time tasks. In the former tasks the gain of automatic attention mechanisms may be adjusted to a low level and in the latter tasks, to a high level. The attentional influence of the prime stimulus may be antagonized by another influence, possibly a masking one.

show abstract

Do peripheral non-informative cues induce early facilitation of target detection?

Cited by 129 publications

References 24 publications

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

The early facilitatory effect of a peripheral spatially noninformative prime stimulus depends on target stimulus features

Priming effects of a peripheral visual stimulus in simple and go/no-go tasks

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About