Orienting Attention in Response to a Cue

1
Orienting Attention in Response to a Cue

• Cues can be stimulus cues or symbolic cues
• Cues can elicit reflexive orienting, voluntary
  orienting or both
• What cues tend to be reflexive? What cues tend
  to be voluntary?

2
Voluntary Orienting

• Symbolic cues tend to trigger voluntary orienting

Symbolic Cue
Symbolic cues may orient attention towards
another location. Stimulus cues orient attention
to the stimulated location.
3
Reflexive Orienting

• Attention can be automatically summoned to a
  location at which an important event has
  occurred

4
Reflexive Orienting

• Attention can be automatically summoned to a
  location at which an important event has
  occurred
• Loud noise
• Motion
• New Object
• We call this attentional capture

Transients
5
Reflexive Orienting

• The Posner cueing paradigm (with blinking boxes)
  confounds reflexive and voluntary orienting

in what way?
6
Reflexive Orienting

• The Posner cueing paradigm (with blinking boxes)
  confounds reflexive and voluntary orienting
• How could we change the Posner cueing paradigm to
  make it asses only reflexive orienting?

7
Reflexive Orienting

• The Posner cueing paradigm (with blinking boxes)
  confounds reflexive and voluntary orienting
• How could we change the Posner cueing paradigm to
  make it asses only reflexive orienting?
• Make validity 50 (non-informative cue)

8
Reflexive Orienting

• The Posner cueing paradigm (with blinking boxes)
  confounds reflexive and voluntary orienting
• How could we change the Posner cueing paradigm to
  make it asses only reflexive orienting?
• Make validity 50 (non-informative cue)
• Viewers are still faster and more accurate!

9
Reflexive Orienting

• Can symbolic cues be reflexive?

Almost never but
10
Reflexive Orienting

• Can symbolic cues be reflexive?

Reflexive orienting to direction of eye gaze
11
Reflexive Orienting

• Potential cues for Reflexive Orienting
• Loud noise
• Motion
• New Object
• New Objects are powerful attention grabbers!

Transients
12
New Objects Capture Attention
IS THERE AN H?
Initial scene viewed for several hundred ms
Yantis Jonides (1990) New-Object Paradigm
13
New Objects Capture Attention
IS THERE AN H?
New scene search for target letter
H may be revealed from an 8 or may appear as a
new object
Yantis Jonides (1990) New-Object Paradigm
14
Reflexive Orienting

• Steven Yantis and colleagues
• Result

15
Reflexive Orienting

• Steven Yantis and colleagues
• Result

Targets are found faster when they are new
objects than when they are revealed from old
objects
16
Reflexive Orienting

• Steven Yantis and colleagues
• Interpretation

The visual system prioritizes in dealing with
visual objects - relatively recent objects are
flagged while older objects are disregarded
17
Disordered Attention and Consciousness

• Sensory information must be attended for it to be
  entered into awareness

18
Disordered Attention and Consciousness

• The attention orienting system can be damaged
  which leads to hemispatial neglect or extinction
• The attention orienting mechanism can be confused
  leading to something called change blindness

19
Disordered Attention and Consciousness

• Change blindness
• Change blindness shows us that the feeling of
  being in a detailed visual environment is really
  just an illusion
• We only have access to the parts of the scene to
  which we have attended

20
Disordered Attention and Consciousness

• Change blindness
• Change blindness shows us that the feeling of
  being in a detailed visual environment is really
  just an illusion
• We only have access to the parts of the scene to
  which we have attended
• And that is often not very much!