title: Attentional selection of a peripheral ring overrules the central attentional bias.
abstract: In visual search, distractors that fall between fixation and the target are more disruptive than distractors that fall at the same eccentricity as the target (Wolfe, O'Neill, & Bennett, 1998). This sensitivity to the relative eccentricity of target and distractor elements originates from a space-based bias favoring stimuli closer to the fovea. We show that this spatial bias can be overruled by cuing attention to a ring-shaped object. We rule out various space-based explanations of these findings, including (1) attention to fronto-parallel planes in depth and (2) serial attention to different portions of a ring. We suggest that attentional selection of a ring-shaped object operates independently of, and can overrule, spatial biases in selection.
authors.affiliation: University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England. k.j.linnell@gold.ac.uk
authors.forename: Karina J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Linnell
authors.forename: Glyn W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Humphreys
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception