Paradigm and Hypotheses

This document plots the results of a 60 min version of Opposite Cueing. Prior to performing the main task, subjects performed a simple 1-up, 2-down calibration procedure prior to performing the main cueing task - adjusting the contrast of the target as subjects performed a discrimination task in the absence of cues. In the main task, subjects monitored two locations on either side of the screen for the occurrence of a turned (30 deg) gabor target. At the end of each trial, they were asked to report whether the target was turned clockwise or counterclockwise and rate the vividness of their target experience using the PAS. Prior to the target appearing, a Random one of these target locations flashes white. There were two versions of this task. In the “Random task” (curTask = 1), this cue was completely uninformative as to the location of the target and subjects were told to ignore the cue. In the “Informative task” (curTask = 2), this cue indicated where the target would not appear and subjects were informed that they should therefore attend to the opposite location of the cue. Subjects completed 6 blocks of each of these tasks in a counterbalanced order. Half of the subjects performed the Random task first (V1) and the other half (V2) performed the Informative task first.

The purpose of this study is to test whether subjects have “control” over where their attention is exogenously oriented. If exogenous attention is truly reflexive and independent of top-down information, then we should see a cueing effect of similar magnitude regardless of whether the cue is Random or Informative. However, if top-down information can influence the exogenous orienting of attention, then we would expect the cueing effect to disappear - or even flip! - in the Informative task. Given the time course of the exogenous cueing paradigm, this finding would be solely attributable to a “remapping” of exogenous attentional orienting.

Note: all error bars are within-subject SEM. Subjects who had a d’ of less than .5 or greater than 3 overall, or more than 10% of trials marked as RT outliers, were excluded.

Subject (N = 77) overall performance on cueing task, before exclusion

Overall d’ for each subject

Calibrated contrast values

Cueing task accuracy (N = 50) after exclusion

Target d’

Size of d’ cueing effect for each subject



Cueing task RT after exclusion

Response Time

Size of RT cueing effect in each subject



Cueing task vividness ratings after exclusion

Average Vividness Response

Vividness Response Distribution

Distribution of vividness ratings, based upon cue validity (Same or Different)

## Automatically converting the following non-factors to factors: curTask

Statistics

d’ ANOVA

Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p p<.05 ges partial_eta_squared
(Intercept) 1 49 451.717 71.382 310.080 0.000 * 0.836 0.864
cueValidity 1 49 2.221 5.533 19.668 0.000 * 0.024 0.286
curTask 1 49 0.638 8.247 3.791 0.057 0.007 0.072
cueValidity:curTask 1 49 0.122 3.644 1.637 0.207 0.001 0.032

d’ t-tests

comparison t_val p_val
Random task 4.611557 0.0000289
Informative task 2.458721 0.0175234


RT ANOVA

Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p p<.05 ges partial_eta_squared
(Intercept) 1 49 75350611.472 11967952.6 308.506 0.000 * 0.821 0.863
cueValidity 1 49 25.350 421473.2 0.003 0.957 0.000 0.000
curTask 1 49 9331.279 3677763.1 0.124 0.726 0.001 0.003
cueValidity:curTask 1 49 44458.199 404914.1 5.380 0.025 * 0.003 0.099

RT t-tests

comparison t_val p_val
Random task -1.700749 0.0953292
Informative task 1.562692 0.1245613


VR ANOVA

Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p p<.05 ges partial_eta_squared
(Intercept) 1 49 1714.800 64.021 1312.468 0.000 * 0.961 0.964
cueValidity 1 49 0.017 1.137 0.744 0.393 0.000 0.015
curTask 1 49 0.154 4.088 1.840 0.181 0.002 0.036
cueValidity:curTask 1 49 0.134 0.366 17.913 0.000 * 0.002 0.268

VR t-tests

comparison t_val p_val
Random task 2.893000 0.0056789
Informative task -1.312881 0.1953389