title: Spatial orienting of attention in stereo depth.
abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the spatial orienting of visual attention in depth under purely stereoscopic viewing conditions. Random-dot stereograms were used to present disparity-defined target stimuli that were either validly or invalidly cued in depth. In separate tasks, participants responded either to the relative depth of the target (protruding vs. receding) or to its shape (square vs. diamond). Stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between an uninformative exogenous cue and target were varied from 250 to 600 ms. For both tasks, mean response times (RTs) were shorter for validly than invalidly cued target depths and this RT advantage was essentially restricted to the shortest SOA of 250 ms. These results indicate that attention can be reflexively allocated to locations in stereo depth under conditions of low perceptual load, and independent of whether depth is relevant to the task or not.
authors: Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Ardeystrasse 67, 44139, Dortmund, Germany.
authors: Dieter
authors: D
authors: Bauer
authors: Axel
authors: A
authors: Plinge
authors: Walter H
authors: WH
authors: Ehrenstein
authors: Gerhard
authors: G
authors: Rinkenauer
authors: Marc
authors: M
authors: Grosjean
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology