Spatial cueing effects are not what we thought: On the timing of attentional deployment.

Abstract

Extensive research has shown that objects that are salient or match our task goals are most likely to capture our attention. But are we at the mercy of the constant changes occurring in our environment, and automatically move our attention to the ever-changing location with the highest priority? Or do we wait for clues that the appropriate moment has arrived to deploy our attention? We addressed this hitherto neglected issue in three experiments. Using a spatial-cuing paradigm, we examined whether attention is deployed as soon as a salient change occurs (the cue), or only when the context signaling that attention should be deployed appears (the search display). The cue matched the target color and was expected to enjoy high attentional priority. We used two separate response compatibility manipulations, one pertaining to the cue, in the cuing display, and the other to the cued distractor, in the search display. Neutral conditions allowed us to disentangle the respective effects of these manipulations. Participants deployed their attention in the search display when they could rely on contextual information, and in the cue display when such information was absent. These findings challenge the traditional interpretation of spatial-cuing effects. They are discussed within the Priority Accumulation Framework (PAF) that we confront to other attention models.

Unseeing the white bear: Negative search criteria guide visual attention through top-down suppression.

“…Similar to older interpretations of validity effects as reflecting processes in the target displays (cf. Shiu & Pashler, 1994), researchers recently suggested that some validity effects could also reflect processes following the target’s onset, during target search, and dependent on the difficulty of target search (Yaron & Lamy, 2021). Thus, in line with the priority-accumulation framework by Yaron and Lamy (2021), the spatial de-prioritization induced by our negative features might not solely reflect cue-elicited suppression.…”

Terms of debate: Consensus definitions to guide the scientific discourse on visual distraction

“…Therefore, the peak on this map depends on the relative strengths of the different guiding factors at any given moment. Note that while this peak is often thought to determine where attention will be shifted next, other suggestions have been put forward (see, e.g., Moran et al, 2013, for a probabilistic relation between priority and attention allocations; Yaron & Lamy, 2021 for the idea that contextual information constrains when the next shift of attention to the peak on the priority map is triggered).…”

On the timing of overt attention deployment: Eye-movement evidence for the priority accumulation framework.

“…Elucidating what type of contextual information may influence the probability that attention is deployed at any given moment is an important avenue for future research. In a previous study (Yaron & Lamy, 2021), we showed that participants waited for the search display to deploy their attention when the cue and search displays were easy to discriminate, but not when these could be distinguished only by temporal order (i.e., the search display was similar to the cue display but always came last). This finding suggests that to allocate their attention, participants were not able to rely on temporal information alone (see Pomper et al, 2023 for a similar conclusion) and instead relied on characteristics of the search display (the critical aspects of which are yet to be identified).…”

“…According to PAF, our visual selection system enjoys more degrees of freedom than is implied by online-prioritization theories, as to when we deploy our attention to the highest-priority location (Darnell & Lamy, 2022; Gabbay et al, 2019; D. Lamy et al, 2018; Yaron & Lamy, 2021). This model differs from online-prioritization models by two main hypotheses.…”

“…The debate has traditionally opposed the salience-based view, according to which certain classes of stimuli mandatorily summon attention to their location irrespective of their relevance to the task at hand (e.g., Franconeri & Simons, 2003;Jonides & Yantis, 1988;Schreij et al, 2008;Theeuwes, 2010Theeuwes, , 2018, and the goal-directed view, according to which the observer's current goals (or attentional set) entirely determine what object in the visual field will receive attention (e.g., Eimer & Kiss, 2008; The PAF According to PAF, our visual selection system enjoys more degrees of freedom than is implied by online-prioritization theories, as to when we deploy our attention to the highest-priority location (Darnell & Lamy, 2022;Gabbay et al, 2019;D. Lamy et al, 2018;Yaron & Lamy, 2021). This model differs from onlineprioritization models by two main hypotheses.…”