Top-Down Contributions to Attention Shifting and Disengagement: A Template Model of Visual Attention

Motonori Yamaguchi, Ashvanti Valji, Felicity Wolohan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
202 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Two separate systems are involved in the control of spatial attention; one that is driven by a goal, and the other that is driven by stimuli. While the goal- and stimulus-driven systems follow different general principles, they also interplay with each other. However, the mechanism by which the goal-driven system influences the stimulus-driven system is still debated. The present study examined top-down contributions to two components of attention orienting, shifting and disengagement, with an experimental paradigm in which participants held a visual item in short-term memory (STM) and performed a prosaccade task with a manipulation of the gap between fixation offset and target onset. Four experiments showed that the STM content accelerated shifting and impaired disengagement, but the influence on disengagement depended on the utility of STM in guiding attention toward the target. Thus, the use of STM was strategic. Computational models of visual attention were fitted to the experimental data, which suggested that the top-down contributions to shifting was more prominent than those to disengagement. The results indicate that the current modeling framework was particularly useful when examining the contributions of theoretical constructs for the control of visual attention, but it also suggests limitations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)859-887
Number of pages29
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume147
Issue number6
Early online date19 Feb 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2018

Keywords

  • Spatial attention
  • attention capture
  • disengagement
  • memory-guided attention
  • gap task
  • Attention capture
  • Gap task
  • Memory-guided attention
  • Disengagement

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