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Combining attention: a novel way of conceptualizing the links between attention, sensory processing, and behavior

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Abstract

Many everyday behaviors appear to require both the interpretation of incoming sensory information and the maintenance of a current task goal. This intuitive notion suggests that combining attentional control processes might reflect a fundamentally novel way in which attention supports complex behavior. Using an established paradigm, here we show that joint recruitment in multiple attention control systems leads to corresponding combined increases in behavior and underlying sensory processing of attended targets. Moreover, our data also revealed that the nature of the combined effect depends on a flexible allocation of attentional resources to individual component processes, which change dynamically as a function of task demands. Together, these data provide a new conceptual framework for characterizing the role of attention in behavior and suggest important extensions to the prevailing theories of attention.

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Notes

  1. Participants also completed a condition in which the shape did not inform about the target location. Task-irrelevant shapes did not influence attention (RT & Accuracy: all Fs < 1), confirming that spatially predictive shape condition provided a measure of endogenous attention in isolation.

  2. Our results did not vary either as a function of target type (‘target’ vs ‘non-target’) or key assignment (‘b’/’h’ vs ‘h’/’b’ corresponding to target/non-target responses; RT & Accuracy: all Fs<2.5, ps > 0.12).

  3. We report analyses of the magnitudes of orienting in the easy task conditions for RT only due to the overall high response accuracy and a lack of meaningful difference scores across cue validity conditions in accuracy measures.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Stairs Foundation, and William Dawson fund to J.R., and fellowships from NSERC, Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologies Québec (FQRNT), and the Tomlinson foundation to M.L. We would also like to thank Brad Gibson and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Ave, Montreal, QC, H3A 1B1, Canada

    Jelena Ristic & Mathieu Landry

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  1. Jelena Ristic
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  2. Mathieu Landry
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Correspondence to Jelena Ristic.

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Ristic, J., Landry, M. Combining attention: a novel way of conceptualizing the links between attention, sensory processing, and behavior. Atten Percept Psychophys 77, 36–49 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0737-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0737-9

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