Visual priming through a boost of the target signal: Evidence from saccadic landing positions

Meeter, Martijn; Stigchel, Stefan Van der

doi:10.3758/s13414-013-0516-z

Cited by 18 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…It is interesting to contrast the results of Experiment 2 against the findings of a recent study on visual priming (Meeter & Van der Stigchel, 2013). The Meeter and Van der Stigchel study showed that repeating the color of the target in consecutive trials resulted in a stronger deviation of the saccade endpoint towards the target (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

The time course of top-down control on saccade averaging

Heeman¹,

Theeuwes²,

Stigchel³

2014

Vision Research

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When objects in a visual scene are positioned in close proximity, eye movements to these objects tend to land at an intermediate location between the objects (i.e., the global effect). This effect is most pronounced for short latency saccades and is therefore believed to be reflexive and dominantly controlled by bottom-up information. At longer latencies this effect can be modulated by top-down factors. The current study established the time course at which top-down information starts to have an influence on bottom-up averaging. In a standard global effect task two peripheral stimuli (a red and a green abrupt onset) were positioned within an angular distance of 20°. In the condition in which observers received no specific target instruction, the eyes landed in between the red and green element establishing the classic global effect. However, when observers were instructed to make a saccade to the red element during a whole block or when the target color varied from trial-to-trial (red or green), a clear effect of the target instruction on the accuracy of the landing position of the primary saccade was found. With increasing saccade latencies, the eyes landed closer to the instructed target. Crucially, however, this effect was even seen for the shortest saccade latencies (as early as 200 ms), suggesting that saccade averaging is affected early on by top-down processes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

The time course of top-down control on saccade averaging

Heeman¹,

Theeuwes²,

Stigchel³

2014

Vision Research

Self Cite

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“…The results are thus in line with the idea that priming improves visual search task performance by enhancing perceptual processing of the cued items. Such an enhancement may comprise of boosting the target signal prior to selection (Lee et al, 2009; Meeter and van der Stigchel, 2013), and speeding perceptual decision about the target identity once it is already selected (Huang et al, 2004). While the current results may not differentiate between these two possibilities, they nevertheless show how exact cues prime the perceptual processing of the search target and thereby influence measures of visual search task performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming and the guidance by visual and categorical templates in visual search

2014

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Visual search is thought to be guided by top-down templates that are held in visual working memory. Previous studies have shown that a search-guiding template can be rapidly and strongly implemented from a visual cue, whereas templates are less effective when based on categorical cues. Direct visual priming from cue to target may underlie this difference. In two experiments we first asked observers to remember two possible target colors. A postcue then indicated which of the two would be the relevant color. The task was to locate a briefly presented and masked target of the cued color among irrelevant distractor items. Experiment 1 showed that overall search accuracy improved more rapidly on the basis of a direct visual postcue that carried the target color, compared to a neutral postcue that pointed to the memorized color. However, selectivity toward the target feature, i.e., the extent to which observers searched selectively among items of the cued vs. uncued color, was found to be relatively unaffected by the presence of the visual signal. In Experiment 2 we compared search that was based on either visual or categorical information, but now controlled for direct visual priming. This resulted in no differences in overall performance nor selectivity. Altogether the results suggest that perceptual processing of visual search targets is facilitated by priming from visual cues, whereas attentional selectivity is enhanced by a working memory template that can formed from both visual and categorical input. Furthermore, if the priming is controlled for, categorical- and visual-based templates similarly enhance search guidance.

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“…In our experiment, the target-defining feature was indeed independent of the response-related feature (Goolsby & Suzuki, 2001;Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994. According to the attentional view of priming of pop-out, early perceptual and attentional stages are facilitated (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994;Eimer, Kiss, & Cheung, 2010;Meeter & Van der Stigchel, 2013). But the nature of the processes that speed attentional shifts to the locations of previously attended targets remains uncertain.…”

Section: Priming Of Pop-outmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…The efficiency of selecting and reporting the single salient target is modulated by the properties of the preceding search arrays, but the nature of this modulation is still a matter of debate (Becker, 2008b;Kristjánsson & Campana, 2010;Lamy et al, 2010). The main theoretical account stipulates that early perceptual processing of the feature is facilitated, resulting in faster attentional selection of the repeated target (Eimer et al, 2010;Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994;Meeter & Van der Stigchel, 2013). It remains unclear what aspects of attention to the search target on the previous trial actually speed the attentional selection on the current trial (Ásgeirsson & Kristjánsson, 2011;Becker, 2008a;Lee et al, 2009;Maljkovic & Nakayama, 2000).…”

Section: Priming Of Pop-outmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feature-based attention across saccades and immediate postsaccadic selection

Eymond

Cavanagh

Collins

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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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.

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Visual priming through a boost of the target signal: Evidence from saccadic landing positions

Cited by 18 publications

References 31 publications

The time course of top-down control on saccade averaging

The time course of top-down control on saccade averaging

Priming and the guidance by visual and categorical templates in visual search

Feature-based attention across saccades and immediate postsaccadic selection

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