Feature-based attention across saccades and immediate postsaccadic selection

Abstract

Before each eye movement, attentional resources are drawn to the saccade goal. This saccaderelated attention is known to be spatial in nature, and in this study we asked whether it also evokes any feature selectivity that is maintained across the saccade. After a saccade toward a colored target, participants performed a postsaccadic feature search on an array displayed at landing. The saccade target either had the same color as the search target in the postsaccadic array (congruent trials) or a different color (incongruent or neutral trials). Our results show that the color of the saccade target did not prime the subsequent feature search. This suggests that Blandmark search^, the process of searching for the saccade target once the eye lands (Deubel in Visual Cognition, 11, 173-202, 2004), may not involve the attentional mechanisms that underlie feature search. We also analyzed intertrial effects and observed priming of pop-out (Maljkovic & Nakayama in Memory & Cognition, 22, 657-672, 1994) for the postsaccadic feature search: the detection of the color singleton became faster when its color was repeated on successive trials. However, search performance revealed no effect of congruency between the saccade and search targets, either within or across trials, suggesting that the priming of pop-out is specific to target repetitions within the same task and is not seen for repetitions across tasks. Our results support a dissociation between feature-based attention and the attentional mechanisms associated with eye movement programming.

Feature-based guidance of attention during post-saccadic selection

“…However, a limitation of the Eymond et al (2016) study is that the results may have been caused by a failure to generalize feature representations across two substantially different tasks (i.e., simple saccadic orienting and full-array visual search), rather than reflecting the mechanisms inherent to gaze control. Substantial post-saccadic changes in a display can provide unambiguous evidence that the scene has changed, supplanting the processes designed to establish transsaccadic correspondence (Deubel et al, 1998;Deubel, Schneider, & Bridgeman, 1996;Poth & Schneider, 2016;Tas, Moore, et al, 2012).…”

“…Two studies found that the shift of spatial attention to the target before the saccade failed to generate feature-based biases; there was no presaccadic perceptual enhancement at other locations sharing target features (Jonikaitis & Theeuwes, 2013;White, Rolfs, & Carrasco, 2013; but see Born, Ansorge, & Kerzel, 2012). More directly relevant to trans-saccadic processes, Eymond, Cavanagh, and Collins (2016) tested feature-based selection after the saccade using a combined eye movement and singleton search task. The participants executed a saccade to a colored object appearing in isolation.…”

“…In these experiments, which support feature-based guidance, array rotations occurred on a substantial proportion of trials. As discussed by Eymond et al (2016), if the participants anticipated the need to conduct color-based visual search after the saccade, then it is possible that they strategically encoded the saccade target color as a general template to support this search. That is, efficient gaze correction could have reflected the general goals of search rather than the specific processes involved in programming and executing the primary saccade.…”

Feature-based attention across saccades: Pop-out in color search is spatiotopic

“…In this study, we aimed to determine whether feature-based attention, which processes features independently of their location, could also take part in establishing visual stability across saccades. Some studies have examined the link between the attentional deployment and the visual properties of the saccade target and found no interplay between them (Eymond, Cavanagh, & Collins, 2016;Jonikaitis & Theeuwes, 2013;White, Rolfs, & Carrasco, 2013). Here we tested feature-based selection independently of the attentional resources allocated to the saccade target.…”

Remapping versus short-term memory in visual stability across saccades

“…The saccade target itself benefits from prioritized encoding into VSTM (Irwin & Gordon, 1998), and a variant of the object-file theory proposes that a search process attempts to locate the target object after every saccade, based on remembered visual features of the presaccadic object (Deubel, Schneider, & Bridgeman, 2002;McConkie & Currie, 1996). However, attempts to measure such a search have not been successful (Eymond, Cavanagh, & Collins, 2016;Jonikaitis & Theeuwes, 2013). According to the VSTM account of visual stability, establishing object correspondence across a saccade depends on similarity between the visual features before and after the saccade.…”