Discrimination within and between hemifields: A new constraint on theories of attention

doi:10.1016/0028-3932(91)90100-M

Neuropsychologia

Volume 29, Issue 7, 1991, Pages 659-675

https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(91)90100-M Get rights and content

Abstract

Subjects were presented with two groups of characters and were to decide whether they were the same or different. The stimulus groups differed either by a single feature (“preattentive” trials) or by a conjunction of features (“attentive” trials). The two stimulus groups appeared at the corners of an imaginary square centered about the fixation point, falling either in the same or different hemifields. In two experiments, subjects evaluated both types of stimuli faster when they were presented in different hemifields than in the same hemifield. Subjects also compared pairs of single characters faster when they appeared in different hemifields. Finally, this different-hemifield advantage was eliminated when the characters appeared sequentially. These results indicated that two stimuli that appear simultaneously in the same hemifield engender either a competition for common processing structures or intrahemispheric inhibition.

References (47)

R. Davis et al.
Timing the transfer of information between hemispheres in man
Acta psychol.
(1971)
R. Desimone et al.
Visual areas in the temporal cortex of the macaque
Brain Res.
(1979)
H.C. Hughes et al.
Natural boundaries for the spatial spread of directed visual attention
Neuropsychologia
(1987)
J. Liederman et al.
Interhemispheric collaboration in response to simultaneous bilateral input
Neuropsychologia
(1985)
S.E. Petersen et al.
Contributions of the pulvinar to visual attention
Neuropsychologia
(1987)
G. Rizzolatti et al.
Reorienting attention across the horizontal and vertical meridians: Evidence in favor of a premotor theory of attention
Neuropsychologia
(1987)
G.L. Shulman et al.
Gradients of spatial attention
Acta psychol.
(1986)
A. Treisman et al.
A feature-integration theory of attention
Cognit. Psychol.
(1980)
S. Zeki
Colour coding in the cerebral cortex: The reaction of cells in monkey visual cortex to wavelengths and colours
Neuroscience
(1983)
J. Allman et al.
Direction- and velocity-specific responses from beyond the classical receptive fields in the middle temporal visual area (MT)
Perception
(1985)

J. Beck

Perceptual grouping produced by line figures

Percept. Psychophys.

(1967)

J.R. Bergen et al.

Parallel versus serial processing in rapid pattern discrimination

Nature

(1983)

R. Desimone et al.

Form, color, and motion analysis in prestriate cortex of macaque monkey

C.J. Downing et al.

The spatial structure of visual attention

H. Egeth et al.

Differential specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres for the perception of sameness and difference

Percept. Psychophys.

(1972)

C.W. Eriksen et al.

Movement of attentional focus across the visual field: A critical look at the evidence

Percept. Psychophys.

(1987)

C.W. Eriksen et al.

Allocation of attention in the visual field

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

(1985)

A. Friedman et al.

Hemispheres as independent resource systems: Limited-capacity processing and cerebral specialization

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

(1981)

A. Friedman et al.

Dividing attention within and between hemispheres: Testing a multiple resources approach to limited-capacity information processing

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

(1982)

C.G. Gross

Visual functions of inferotemporal cortex

H. Hughes et al.

Spatial maps of directed visual attention

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

(1985)

B. Julesz et al.

Textons, the fundamental elements in preattentive vision and perception of textures

Bell Syst. tech. J.

(1983)

D. Kahneman

Attention and Effort

(1973)

Cited by (91)

Behavioural and neural effects of eccentricity and visual field during covert visuospatial attention
2021, Neuroimage: Reports
The attentional priority map plays a key role in the distribution of attention, and is modulated by bottom-up sensory as well as top-down task-dependent factors. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is a key candidate to hold a neural representation of the attentional priority map. In the current study, we examined the role of the IPS during covert attention to spatial locations with high or low eccentricity in one or both visual hemifields. To this end, eighteen neurologically healthy participants performed a cued letter discrimination task in which they were endogenously cued to attend to a location at a 5 or 10° eccentricity in the left and/or right visual field. We briefly presented a four-letter target array and subsequently probed perceptual performance while acquiring event-related functional MRI data. While behavioural results showed greater letter discrimination performance at the low eccentricity compared to the high eccentricity location, no neural effect of eccentricity was observed. The results further showed that attending to one visual hemifield produced higher activation in the left parietal and occipital cortex compared to attending bilaterally. Future studies may consider increasing the involvement of top-down control of attention to the cued location to study the neural effect of eccentricity, e.g., through manipulating the task difficulty.
Modulating the influence of recent trial history on attentional capture via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of right TPJ
2020, Cortex
Citation Excerpt :
As expected, the analysis indicated a significant interaction between Target side and Distractor side, F (1, 7969.6) = 26.63, p < .001, reflecting longer RTs when target and distractor were on the same side (M = 480 ms, SD = 257 ms) compared to opposite sides (M = 462 ms, SD = 256 ms). This is in line with previous studies, demonstrating a bilateral field advantage (BFA) in early visual attentional processing, i.e., enhanced visual processing when (relevant) stimuli are spread across both visual hemifields (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2005; Kraft et al., 2005; Lega et al., 2019; Sereno & Kosslyn, 1991). However, TMS did not interact with either Target side, F (2, 7971.9) < 1, p = .39, or Distractor side F (2, 7970.0) = 1.82, p = .16, or their interaction F (2, 7967.2) = 1.10, p = .33.
In visual search, salient yet task-irrelevant distractors in the stimulus array interfere with target selection. This is due to the unwanted shift of attention towards the salient stimulus-the so-called attentional capture effect, which delays deployment of attention onto the target. Although powerful and automatic, attentional capture by a salient distractor is nonetheless antagonized by distractor-filtering mechanisms and is further modulated by cross-trial contingencies: The distractor cost is typically more robust when no distraction has been experienced in the immediate past, compared to when a distractor was present on the immediately preceding trial. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to shed light on the causal role of two crucial nodes of the ventral attention network, namely the Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ) and the Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG), in the exogenous control of attention (i.e., attentional capture) and its history-dependent modulation. Participants were asked to discriminate the direction of a target arrow while ignoring a task-irrelevant salient distractor, when present. Immediately after display onset, 10 Hz triple-pulse TMS was delivered either to TPJ or MFG on the right hemisphere. Results demonstrated that stimulation of right TPJ–but not of right MFG, strongly modulated attentional capture as a function of the type of previous trial, by somewhat enhancing the distractor-related cost when the preceding trial was a distractor-absent trial and significantly decreasing the cost when the preceding trial was a distractor-present trial. These findings indicate that TMS of right TPJ exacerbates the effect of the recent history, likely reflecting enhanced updating of the predictive model that dynamically governs proactive distractor-filtering mechanisms. More generally, the results attest to a role of TPJ in mediating the history-dependent modulation of attentional capture.
Changes in visual cortical processing attenuate singleton distraction during visual search
2020, Cortex
The ability to suppress distractions is essential to successful completion of goal-directed behaviors. Several behavioral studies have recently provided strong evidence that learned suppression may be particularly efficient in reducing distractor interference. Expectations about a distractor's repeated location, color, or even presence are rapidly learned and used to attenuate interference. In this study, we use a visual search paradigm in which a color singleton, which is known to capture attention, occurs within blocks with high or low frequency. The behavioral results show reduced singleton interference during the high compared to the low frequency block (Won et al., 2019). The fMRI results provide evidence that the attenuation of distractor interference is supported by changes in singleton, target, and non-salient distractor representations within retinotopic visual cortex. These changes in visual cortex are accompanied by findings that singleton-present trials compared to non-singleton trials produce greater activation in bilateral parietal cortex, indicative of attentional capture, in low frequency, but not high frequency blocks. Together, these results suggest that the readout of saliency signals associated with an expected color singleton from visual cortex is suppressed, resulting in less competition for attentional priority in frontoparietal attentional control regions.
Same-object costs and benefits in the object-based attentional blink
2020, Vision Research
Object-based attention (OBA) studies using the double-rectangle paradigm have revealed same-object costs with vertical rectangles but same-object benefits with horizontal rectangles, showing asymmetry in the OBA effect. Attentional blink (AB) studies using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms have shown that when two targets (T1 and T2) are successively presented within 400 msec, T2 performance is significantly impaired (i.e., an AB effect). Some object-based AB studies have indicated that the stable representation of single objects before T1 reduced the same-object AB effect, and some have claimed that the inhibition of the global objects representation by T1 processing enhanced the same-object AB effect. However, these studies did not directly explore whether and how the object representation modulated the object-based AB effect. In the present study, we used a hybrid of the RSVP and double-rectangle paradigms to address this issue. The results revealed that when the object representation was inhibited by T1 processing, the AB effect spread across the object groupings showing an enhanced same-object AB effect; when the object representation was created before T1 processing, there was a reliably reduced same-object AB effect that was not mediated by OBA (i.e., no difference in T2 performance between the same and different objects). Additionally, a horizontal configuration benefit independent of OBA was obtained in the AB.
Overt and covert attention to location-based reward
2018, Vision Research
Recent research on the impact of location-based reward on attentional orienting has indicated that reward factors play an influential role in spatial priority maps. The current study investigated whether and how reward associations based on spatial location translate from overt eye movements to covert attention. If reward associations can be tied to locations in space, and if overt and covert attention rely on similar overlapping neuronal populations, then both overt and covert attentional measures should display similar spatial-based reward learning. Our results suggest that location- and reward-based changes in one attentional domain do not lead to similar changes in the other. Specifically, although we found similar improvements at differentially rewarded locations during overt attentional learning, this translated to the least improvement at a highly rewarded location during covert attention. We interpret this as the result of an increased motivational link between the high reward location and the trained eye movement response acquired during learning, leading to a relative slowing during covert attention when the eyes remained fixated and the saccade response was suppressed. In a second experiment participants were not required to keep fixated during the covert attention task and we no longer observed relative slowing at the high reward location. Furthermore, the second experiment revealed no covert spatial priority of rewarded locations. We conclude that the transfer of location-based reward associations is intimately linked with the reward-modulated motor response employed during learning, and alternative attentional and task contexts may interfere with learned spatial priorities.
Impaired visual short-term memory capacity is distinctively associated with structural connectivity of the posterior thalamic radiation and the splenium of the corpus callosum in preterm-born adults
2017, NeuroImage
Citation Excerpt :
FA in the splenium of the corpus callosum has been shown to be related to the degree of such a bilateral processing advantage (Davis and Cabeza, 2015). Thus, especially in preterm-born adults, FA of the corpus callosum might be critical for a potential compensatory hemispheric interaction between parallel vSTM storage systems with relatively independent resources in both hemispheres (e.g., Sereno and Kosslyn, 1991). In order to test these hypotheses, 28 pre- and 27 full-term born young adults were assessed by both diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and a TVA-based whole-report task.
Preterm birth is associated with an increased risk for lasting changes in both the cortico-thalamic system and attention; however, the link between cortico-thalamic and attention changes is as yet little understood. In preterm newborns, cortico-cortical and cortico-thalamic structural connectivity are distinctively altered, with increased local clustering for cortico-cortical and decreased integrity for cortico-thalamic connectivity. In preterm-born adults, among the various attention functions, visual short-term memory (vSTM) capacity is selectively impaired. We hypothesized distinct associations between vSTM capacity and the structural integrity of cortico-thalamic and cortico-cortical connections, respectively, in preterm-born adults.
A whole-report paradigm of briefly presented letter arrays based on the computationally formalized Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) was used to quantify parameter vSTM capacity in 26 preterm- and 21 full-term-born adults. Fractional anisotropy (FA) of posterior thalamic radiations and the splenium of the corpus callosum obtained by diffusion tensor imaging were analyzed by tract-based spatial statistics and used as proxies for cortico-thalamic and cortico-cortical structural connectivity.
The relationship between vSTM capacity and cortico-thalamic and cortico-cortical connectivity, respectively, was significantly modified by prematurity. In full-term-born adults, the higher FA in the right posterior thalamic radiation the higher vSTM capacity; in preterm-born adults this FA-vSTM-relationship was inversed. In the splenium, higher FA was correlated with higher vSTM capacity in preterm-born adults, whereas no significant relationship was evident in full-term-born adults.
These results indicate distinct associations between cortico-thalamic and cortico-cortical integrity and vSTM capacity in preterm-and full-term-born adults. Data suggest compensatory cortico-cortical fiber re-organization for attention deficits after preterm delivery.

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Discrimination within and between hemifields: A new constraint on theories of attention

Abstract

Acta psychol.

Brain Res.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Acta psychol.

Cognit. Psychol.

Neuroscience

Direction- and velocity-specific responses from beyond the classical receptive fields in the middle temporal visual area (MT)

Perception

Perceptual grouping produced by line figures

Percept. Psychophys.

Parallel versus serial processing in rapid pattern discrimination

Nature

Form, color, and motion analysis in prestriate cortex of macaque monkey

The spatial structure of visual attention

Differential specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres for the perception of sameness and difference

Percept. Psychophys.

Movement of attentional focus across the visual field: A critical look at the evidence

Percept. Psychophys.

Allocation of attention in the visual field

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

Hemispheres as independent resource systems: Limited-capacity processing and cerebral specialization

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

Dividing attention within and between hemispheres: Testing a multiple resources approach to limited-capacity information processing

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

Visual functions of inferotemporal cortex

Spatial maps of directed visual attention

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform.

Textons, the fundamental elements in preattentive vision and perception of textures

Bell Syst. tech. J.

Attention and Effort