Differential effects of visual-spatial attention on response latency and temporal-order judgment.
Theorists from both classical structuralism and modern attention research have claimed that attention to a sensory stimulus enhances processing speed. However, they have used different operations to measure this effect, viz., temporal-order judgment (TOJ) and reaction-time (RT) measurement. We report two experiments that compared the effect of a spatial cue on RT and TOJ. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a nonmasked, peripheral cue (the brief brightening of a box) affected both RT and TOJ. However, the former effect was significantly larger than the latter. A masked cue had a smaller, but reliable, effect on TOJ. In Experiment 2, the effects of a masked cue on RT and TOJ were compared under identical stimulus conditions. While the cue had a strong effect on RT, it left TOJ unaffected. These results suggest that a spatial cue may have dissociable effects on response processes and the processes that lead to a conscious percept. Implications for the concept of direct parameter specification and for theories of visual attention are discussed.
Neumann
O
O
Abteilung für Psychologie, Universität Bielefeld, Germany.
Esselmann
U
U
Klotz
W
W
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception