Transient attention does increase perceived contrast of suprathreshold stimuli: A reply to Prinzmetal, Long, and Leonhardt (2008)

Cross-modal attention enhances perceived contrast

“…Crucially, the cueing of attention enhanced neural processing in the same ventral regions of the visual cortex, which, as the authors confirm, are responsive to physical differences in contrast. These results are consistent with the proposal that attention increases perceived contrast by boosting early sensory processing in visual cortex (9,(12)(13)(14), and they contradict the hypothesis that the effect of attention is due to a decisional bias (20).…”

“…The visual system does not provide an internal one-to-one copy of the external visual world; rather, it optimizes processing resources. Attention is a pervasive example of this perceptual optimization: attention augments perception by optimizing our representation of sensory input and by emphasizing relevant details at the expense of a faithful representation (4,11,14). By providing converging evidence from human electrophysiology and behavior, Störmer et al (1) demonstrate that the enhanced perceived contrast at the cued location is attributable to an effect of attention on early visual processing.…”

“…Using this paradigm, studies have shown that exogenous attention alters our subjective impression of many dimensions of spatial and temporal vision: e.g., contrast (9,(12)(13)(14), spatial resolution (15), color saturation (16), size of moving patterns (17), and speed (18). However, the issue continues to be debated (19,20).…”

“…By computing the contrast that is necessary for the attended stimulus to match the apparent contrast of the unattended stimulus, this paradigm allows one to measure the change that attention effects on the perceived contrast of a stimulus. This paradigm, coupled with control experiments, has ruled out alternative cue bias and response bias explanations (9,(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18).…”

Are the effects of attention on speed judgments genuinely perceptual?

“…The authors suggested that, when near-threshold stimuli are used, participants may guess that a stimulus had been presented near the cued location and, thus, may infer and report that it had a higher contrast. This account, however, has been rejected, given that Carrasco, Fuller, and Ling (2008) showed that the cues used by Carrasco et al (2004) were clearly suprathreshold, while further replicating the previous attentional modulation.…”