Parallel allocation of attention prior to the execution of saccade sequences.

Godijn, Richard; Theeuwes, Jan

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.5.882

Cited by 123 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Consistent with this account, Godijn and Theeuwes (2003) have shown that during a double-step saccade task attention is allocated to the endpoints of both eye-movements in parallel.…”

Section: Motor Activation Is Sufficient For Spatial Attentionsupporting

confidence: 53%

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

2012

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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.

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“…Consistent with this account, Godijn and Theeuwes (2003) have shown that during a double-step saccade task attention is allocated to the endpoints of both eye-movements in parallel.…”

Section: Motor Activation Is Sufficient For Spatial Attentionsupporting

confidence: 53%

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

2012

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“…Furthermore, the contextual effect on the learned target location, in comparison with that on the new object location, suggests that the new object location was prioritized at the same level as the target location. These results are consistent with recent work demonstrating that attention can be allocated to multiple noncontiguous locations in parallel (see, e.g., Awh & Pashler, 2000;Castiello & Umiltà, 1992;Godijn & Theeuwes, 2003;Hahn & Kramer, 1998;Kramer & Hahn, 1995). The present results advance the understanding of the role of contextual information in attentional guidance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Attentional prioritization to contextually new objects

Ogawa

Kumada

2006

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…In line with the modular view, it is known that if the task requires participants only to shift attention, they can do so without moving their eyes (see, e.g., Hoffman & Subramaniam, 1995). However, if the task requires that the eyes move, they will typically move to the location at which attention is directed (Deubel & Schneider, 1996;Godijn & Theeuwes, 2003). Thus, even though attention can shift without the eyes, one fundamental question is whether the oculomotor system would be involved even in a task that only requires the shifting of covert (and not overt) attention.…”

Section: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 93%

The relationship between covert and overt attention in endogenous cuing

Stigchel

Theeuwes

2007

Perception & Psychophysics

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developed the now classic cuing technique for manipulating spatial attention independently of eye movements. In this paradigm, participants typically have to detect or discriminate a target and respond manually by pressing the appropriate response key. The target stimulus is preceded by a cue that provides information about the location of the upcoming target. In a cuing version typically referred to as endogenous, a centrally displayed arrow points to the likely target location. Participants are instructed to use the arrow and focus their attention on the cued location before the appearance of the target. Results show that processing of the target is enhanced at the cued location. In the so-called exogenous version of the cuing paradigm, before the appearance of the target, the participant's attention is pulled to one of the locations by an uninformative peripheral cue (usually an abrupt increment or decrement in luminance). The target then appears either at the cued or the uncued location. Shortly after presentation of the cue, response times (RTs) for targets at the cued location (valid cue) are fast and accuracy is high, relative to when the target appears at the uncued location (invalid cue). However, when the interval between the cue and the target is long, RTs to targets at the cued location are delayed in comparison with those to targets at the uncued location (i.e., inhibition of return; Posner & Cohen, 1984).These cuing experiments have been important for understanding spatial attention as a "spotlight." Indeed, Posner et al. (1980) described attention as a "spotlight that enhances the efficiency of detection of events within its beam" (p. 172). Over the last 25 years, the spotlight metaphor has generated several important research questions regarding how the beam moves through space, whether the beam can split, and the extent to which it can be highly focused or not (for a review and discussion, see Cave & Bichot, 1999). Alternative approaches do not consider RT benefits and costs obtained in typical cuing tasks to be the result of a moving "spotlight," but instead to result from an efficient allocation of attention over the visual field. For example, Shaw and Shaw (1977;Shaw, 1978) proposed a parallel model of attention suggesting that attention can be allocated flexibly to multiple locations in parallel. According to their model, the attentional system has a fixed capacity for visual processing that is optimally distributed over the different spatial locations. The time it takes for a stimulus to be identified is a function of the capacity allocated to the corresponding location. Attention is divided across a visual scene on the basis of the likelihood of the target location. When chances are high that the target will be presented at a certain location, more attentional resources will be allocated to that location. Therefore, in an endogenous cuing experiment, more resources will be allocated to the valid location than to the invalid location. Because of the higher amount of resources allocated to t...

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Parallel allocation of attention prior to the execution of saccade sequences.

Cited by 123 publications

References 48 publications

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?

Attentional prioritization to contextually new objects

The relationship between covert and overt attention in endogenous cuing

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