Voluntary and involuntary attention affect face discrimination differently

Esterman, Michael; Prinzmetal, William; DeGutis, Joseph; Landau, Ayelet N.; Hazeltine, Eliot; Verstynen, Timothy D.; Robertson, Lynn C.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.11.014

Cited by 31 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…These results provide further evidence that voluntary and involuntary attention have different neural substrates (Kincade et al, 2005; Landau et al, 2007; Esterman et al, 2008). Allocation of voluntary attention can improve processing at an attended location at the cost of impaired processing in other locations (Bashinski and Bacharach, 1980; Posner et al, 1980).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

“…On the other hand, attention can be captured in an involuntary fashion by a salient event at a spatial location, even when that location is not task-relevant (Yantis and Jonides, 1990). These two forms of attention (voluntary and involuntary, or endogenous and exogenous) have different consequences for the processing of visual stimuli (Prinzmetal et al, 2005; Prinzmetal et al, 2008) and are associated with different neural mechanisms (Kincade et al, 2005; Landau et al, 2007; Esterman et al, 2008). Additionally, voluntary and involuntary attention differ in their time course.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cholinergic Enhancement Increases the Effects of Voluntary Attention but Does Not Affect Involuntary Attention

Rokem

Landau

Garg

et al. 2010

Neuropsychopharmacol

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Voluntary visual spatial attention can be allocated in a goal-oriented manner to locations containing behaviorally-relevant information. In contrast, involuntary attention is automatically captured by salient events. Allocation of attention is known to be modulated by release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) in cerebral cortex. We used an anti-predictive spatial cueing task to assess the effects of pharmacological enhancement of cholinergic transmission on behavioral measures of voluntary and involuntary attention in healthy human participants. Each trial began with the presentation of a cue in a peripheral location. In 80% of the trials, a target then appeared in a location opposite the cue. In the remaining 20% of trials, the target appeared in the cue location. For trials with short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue and target, involuntary capture of attention resulted in shorter reaction times (RTs) to targets presented at the cue location. For long SOA trials, allocation of voluntary attention resulted in the opposite pattern: RTs were shorter when the target appeared in the expected (opposite) location. Each subject participated in two sessions: one in which the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil was administered to increase synaptic acetylcholine levels and one in which placebo was administered. Donepezil selectively improved performance (reduced RT) for trials with the long SOA in which targets appeared in the expected location. Thus, cholinergic enhancement augments the benefits of voluntary attention but does not affect involuntary attention, suggesting that they rely on different neurochemical mechanisms.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cholinergic Enhancement Increases the Effects of Voluntary Attention but Does Not Affect Involuntary Attention

Rokem

Landau

Garg

et al. 2010

Neuropsychopharmacol

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“…Or are faces just more robust to manipulations of spatial attention than non-face stimuli [22]–[25]? We reconcile this issue in the present study by demonstrating for the first time reliable effects of both spatial and temporal attention on sex-classification processes within a behavioural task [16], [17], [26].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Where fMRI studies have documented clear and replicable effects of spatial attention on the neural response for faces [18], [20], [30], [31], [63], the behavioural evidence for this position has been inconsistent [13]–[17], [26]. In the present study, we have reconciled this issue by demonstrating a reliable effect of both spatial and temporal attention on an overt behavioural response to a face target.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Spatial and Temporal Attention Modulate the Early Stages of Face Processing: Behavioural Evidence from a Reaching Paradigm

Quek

Finkbeiner

2013

PLoS ONE

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A presently unresolved question within the face perception literature is whether attending to the location of a face modulates face processing (i.e. spatial attention). Opinions on this matter diverge along methodological lines – where neuroimaging studies have observed that the allocation of spatial attention serves to enhance the neural response to a face, findings from behavioural paradigms suggest face processing is carried out independently of spatial attention. In the present study, we reconcile this divide by using a continuous behavioural response measure that indexes face processing at a temporal resolution not available in discrete behavioural measures (e.g. button press). Using reaching trajectories as our response measure, we observed that although participants were able to process faces both when attended and unattended (as others have found), face processing was not impervious to attentional modulation. Attending to the face conferred clear benefits on sex-classification processes at less than 350ms of stimulus processing time. These findings constitute the first reliable demonstration of the modulatory effects of both spatial and temporal attention on face processing within a behavioural paradigm.

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“…However, previous studies using similar designs have reported behavioral differences between voluntary and involuntary attention (e.g., Prinzmetal, McCool, & Park, 2005;Prinzmetal, Park, & Garrett, 2005), as well as differences in neural activity, measured using fMRI (Esterman et al, 2008) and EEG (Landau, Esterman, Robertson, Bentin, & Prinzmetal, 2007).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Voluntary and involuntary attention vary as a function of impulsivity

et al. 2012

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In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.Keywords Spatial attention . Individual differences . Impulsivity . Voluntary attention . Involuntary attention Trait impulsivity has been shown to influence a range of psychological processes, including decision-making, career and social success, eating behavior, driving, and psychopathology (Dickman, 1993;Evenden, 1999). It has also been linked to attention in various tasks, including the stop-signal paradigm (Logan, Schachar, & Tannock, 1997), the attentional blink (Li, Chen, Lin, & Yang, 2005), and working memory tasks (Cools, Sheridan, Jacobs, & D'Esposito, 2007). These studies revealed performance deficits in participants with high trait impulsivity. In the experiments presented here, we probed different types of attention using two paradigms and found that both performance benefits and costs are associated with impulsivity. In addition, in the second experiment we tested two accounts that provide mechanisms for the differences we found between highand low-impulsive participants on attention tasks. Experiment 1Spatial attention refers to the ability to select and prioritize parts of the environment for processing while ignoring others. Voluntary attention is the type of attention that is goal-directed and determined by the relevant task at hand. Involuntary capture of attention results when stimuli are selected due to saliency rather than to task relevance (Jonides, 1981). In Experiment 1, voluntary and involuntary attention were investigated using the spatial-cueing paradigm shown in Fig. 1.We varied voluntary and involuntary attention in separate blocks by varying the proportions of trials on which the target appeared in the cued location. In the involuntaryattention condition, the target location was random with respect to the cue location. To investigate voluntary attention, in separate blocks, the cue was made predictive of the

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Voluntary and involuntary attention affect face discrimination differently

Cited by 31 publications

References 40 publications

Cholinergic Enhancement Increases the Effects of Voluntary Attention but Does Not Affect Involuntary Attention

Cholinergic Enhancement Increases the Effects of Voluntary Attention but Does Not Affect Involuntary Attention

Spatial and Temporal Attention Modulate the Early Stages of Face Processing: Behavioural Evidence from a Reaching Paradigm

Voluntary and involuntary attention vary as a function of impulsivity

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