The current study tested the effect of varying target type and target set size during simple detection versions of Posner's exogenous spatial cueing task. The four target conditions consisted of a single letter, a single number, one of four possible letters, or one of four possible numbers. Responses were faster for numbers than for letters, but only when the cue-target lag was short, the target set included more than one potential number, and the cue and target appeared in different locations. These findings suggest that even during detection tasks, responses are influenced by the object features of the target. Methodological implications for spatial cueing studies and other types of visual perception research were discussed.
American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th ed. Washington, DC: Author.
2.
Bar-HaimY.LamyD.GlickmanS. (2005) Attentional bias in anxiety: A behavioral and ERP study. Brain and Cognition59(1): 11–22.
3.
BarkleyR. A.MurphyK. R. (1998) Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A clinical workbook, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
4.
ChicaA. B.Martín-ArévaloE.BottaF.LupiáñezJ. (2014) The spatial orienting paradigm: How to design and interpret spatial attention experiments. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews40: 35–51.
5.
CislerJ. M.KosterE. H. (2010) Mechanisms of attentional biases towards threat in anxiety disorders: An integrative review. Clinical Psychology Review30(2): 203–216.
6.
CohenJ. (1988) Statistical power for the social sciences, Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum and Associates.
7.
CohenJ. (1992) A power primer. Psychological Bulletin112(1): 155–159.
8.
CollingsR. D.KwasmanA. (2006) Visual orienting deficits among boys with ADHD-inattentive type. Individual Differences Research4(2): 111–122.
9.
CoullJ. T.NobreA. C. (1998) Where and when to pay attention: The neural systems for directing attention to spatial locations and to time intervals as revealed by both PET and fMRI. The Journal of Neuroscience18(18): 7426–7435.
10.
CrombezG.Van RyckeghemD. M.EcclestonC.Van DammeS. (2013) Attentional bias to pain-related information: A meta-analysis. Pain154(4): 497–510.
11.
DesimoneR.DuncanJ. (1995) Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. Annual Review of Neuroscience18(1): 193–222.
12.
Fernandez-DuqueD.PosnerM. I. (1997) Relating the mechanisms of orienting and alerting. Neuropsychologia35(4): 477–486.
13.
FrischenA.BaylissA. P.TipperS. P. (2007) Gaze cueing of attention: Visual attention, social cognition, and individual differences. Psychological Bulletin133(4): 694.
14.
HolmesA.VuilleumierP.EimerM. (2003) The processing of emotional facial expression is gated by spatial attention: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Cognitive Brain Research16(2): 174–184.
15.
Huang-PollockC. L.NiggJ. T.HalperinJ. M. (2006) Single dissociation findings of ADHD deficits in vigilance but not anterior or posterior attention systems. Neuropsychology20(4): 420.
16.
LosierB. J.KleinR. M. (2001) A review of the evidence for a disengage deficit following parietal lobe damage. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews25(1): 1–13.
17.
LuckS. J.YardS. A. H. (1995) The role of attention in feature detection and conjunction discrimination: An electrophysiological analysis. International Journal of Neuroscience80(1–4): 281–297.
18.
LupiáñezJ.RuzM.FunesM. J.MillikenB. (2007) The manifestation of attentional capture: Facilitation or IOR depending on task demands. Psychological Research71(1): 77–91.
19.
PalermoR.RhodesG. (2007) Are you always on my mind? A review of how face perception and attention interact. Neuropsychologia45(1): 75–92.
20.
ParkJ.HebrankA.PolkT. A.ParkD. C. (2012) Neural dissociation of number from letter recognition and its relationship to parietal numerical processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience24(1): 39–50. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00085.
21.
PolkT. A.StallcupM.AguirreG. K.AlsopD. C.D'EspositoM.DetreJ. A.FarahM. J. (2002) Neural specialization for letter recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience14(2): 145–159. doi:10.1162/089892902317236803.
22.
PosnerM. I. (1980) Orienting of attention. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology32(1): 3–25. doi:10.1080/00335558008248231.
23.
PosnerM. I.CohenY. (1984) Components of visual orienting. In: BoumaH.BouwhuisD. (eds) Attention and performance(Vol. X: 531–556). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
24.
PosnerM. I.PetersenS. E. (1990) The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience13: 25–42.
25.
PosnerM. I.RafalR. D.ChoateL. S.VaughanJ. (1985) Inhibition of return: Neural basis and function. Cognitive Neuropsychology2(3): 211–228. doi:10.1080/02643298508252866.
26.
RatcliffR. (1993) Methods for dealing with reaction time outliers. Psychological Bulletin114(3): 510–532.
27.
RosenthalR.RosnowR. L. (2008) Essentials of behavioral research: Methods and data analysis, 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
28.
SamuelA. G.KatD. (2003) Inhibition of return: A graphical meta-analysis of its time course and an empirical test of its temporal and spatial properties. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review10(4): 897–906.
29.
VogtJ.De HouwerJ.KosterE. H.Van DammeS.CrombezG. (2008) Allocation of spatial attention to emotional stimuli depends upon arousal and not valence. Emotion8(6): 880.
30.
VuilleumierP.ArmonyJ. L.DriverJ.DolanR. J. (2001) Effects of attention and emotion on face processing in the human brain: An event-related fMRI study. Neuron30(3): 829–841.
31.
WilliamsL. M.LiddellB. J.RathjenJ.BrownK. J.GrayJ.PhillipsM.GordonE. (2004) Mapping the time course of nonconscious and conscious perception of fear: An integration of central and peripheral measures. Human Brain Mapping21(2): 64–74.
32.
ZhouG.ChengZ.YueZ.TredouxC.HeJ.WangL. (2015) Own-race faces capture attention faster than other-race faces: Evidence from response time and the N2pc. PloS One10(6): e0127709.
