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Goal-driven and stimulus-driven control of visual attention in a multiple-cue paradigm

University of British Columbia

Twelve spatial-cueing experiments examined stimulus-driven and goal-driven control of visual attention orienting under multiple-cue conditions. Spatial cueing involves presenting a cue at a potential target location before a target appears in a display, and measuring the cue's effect on responses to the target stimulus. Under certain conditions, a cue that appears abruptly in a display (direct cue) can speed responses to a target appearing at the previously cued location relative to other uncued locations (called the cue effect). The experiments in this dissertation used a new multiple-cue procedure to decouple the effects of stimulus-driven and goal-driven processes on the control of attention. This technique involved simultaneously presenting a red direct cue (Unique Cue) that was highly predictive of the target location along with multiple grey direct cues (Standard Cues) that were not predictive of the target location. The basic finding was that while cue effects occurred at all cued locations, they were significantly larger at the Unique-Cue location. This finding was interpreted as evidence for stimulus-driven cue effects at all cued locations with additional goal-driven cue effects at the Unique-Cue location. Further experiments showed that Standard-Cue effects could occur independently at multiple locations, that they seemed to involve a sensory-based interaction between the cues and the target, and that they were mediated by a limitedcapacity tracking mechanism. In addition, Unique-Cue effects were found to be the product of goal-driven operations, to interact with Standard-Cue effects, and to involve inhibited processing at unattended locations. These results were explained in terms of a filter-based model of attention control that assigns priority to potential attention-shift destinations. According to this model, stimulus-driven and goal-driven factors generate signals (activity distributions) that drive a filter to open an attention channel at the highest priority location by suppressing the signals at other locations. The final experiments confirmed the central assumptions of this model by providing evidence that the prioritydestination process was sufficient to produce cue effects independent of attention, and that attending to a location involved a suppression of processing at unattended locations. The implications of this model for the larger visual attention literature were also discussed.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-07-03

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10087

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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