Target Type Modulates the Effect of Task Demand on Reflexive Focal Attention

Abstract

Abstract:Focusing attention on a limited space within the environment allows us to concentrate our resources selectively on that location while ignoring the rest of the space. In this study we investigated how the deployment of the focal attention in foveal vision can be affected by task and stimuli specificity. In particular, we measured the cue-size effect in four experiments: shape detection (Experiment 1), shape discrimination (Experiment 2), letter detection (Experiment 3), and letter discrimination (Experiment 4). Our results highlight that, although the focal component can be elicited by different tasks (i.e., detection or discrimination) and by using different types of stimuli (i.e., shapes or letters), those effects interact with each other. Specifically, the effect of focal attention is more noticeable when letter stimuli are used in the case of a detection task, while no difference between letters and geometrical shapes is observed in the discrimination task. Furthermore, the analysis of the cue-size effect across the four experiments confirmed that the deployment of focal attention in foveal vision is mainly reflexive.

The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

“…The abovementioned studies seem to point toward a theory, in which the chosen tasks, stimuli, and the relative cognitive demands, which will be shown later, may play a key role in generating the RAS phenomenon. This interpretation seems to be confirmed by Albonico et al [30] and Kulke's [31] contributions to this special issue, which underlined the importance of choosing the appropriate set of tasks and stimuli when the aim is to measure an attentional shift.…”

“…In line with Albonico et al [30], Kulke [31] pointed out the importance of comparing the results of different paradigms (the fixation shift paradigm and the gap-overlap paradigm) used to measure an attentional shift between stimuli that are often used as predictors for developmental outcomes. Hence, Kulke [29] investigated the effect of eccentricity (defined as the angular distance from the center of the visual field) and target size on attentional shift latencies (the time taken from the appearance of a target to the beginning of a saccade in response to that target).…”

“…Albonico et al [30] provided evidence that the deployment of focal attention depends on the interaction between the task demand and the type of stimuli. Furthermore, they show that this process is mainly reflexive.…”

“…Although Morgan et al [32] share with Teufel et al [12] the same position, they underlined that Teufel et al's work [12] presented a number of weaknesses that could limit the interpretation in favour of the social account of RAS. Hence, Morgan et al [30] specifically noted that Teufel et al [12] (1) used a response time task. This method may not be sensitive enough to detect subtle attentional shifts.…”

Supervisors’ Visual Attention Allocation Modeling Using Hybrid Entropy

“…Salience-driven factors depend on visual features such as salience, blinking, shape, and colors [7-9]. The task-driven factors in the supervisory task depend on the task features such as urgency, expectation, effort, and value [10][11][12][13]. Supervisors always comprehensively consider the above task-factors during the task process, then establish the priority of the information.…”