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. Prior to the target appearing, a random one of these target locations flashes white. This cue indicated where the target would not appear (80% validity) and subjects were informed that they should therefore attend to the opposite location of the cue. Subjects completed 12 blocks this task.

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 despite the cue being counterpredictive. However, if top-down information can influence the exogenous orienting of attention, then we would expect the cueing effect to disappear - or even flip! 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 = 65) overall performance on cueing task, before exclusion

Overall d’ for each subject

Calibrated contrast values

Cueing task accuracy (N = 35) after exclusion

Target d’

Size of d’ cueing effect for each subject

D’ by experiment half

D’ by block and cue condition



Cueing task RT after exclusion

Response Time

Size of RT cueing effect in each subject

RT effect size by block

Statistics

d’ ANOVA

Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p p<.05 ges partial_eta_squared
(Intercept) 1 34 165.883 16.242 347.240 0.000 * 0.904 0.911
cueValidity 1 34 0.066 1.384 1.613 0.213 0.004 0.045

d’ t-tests


log10(RT) ANOVA

Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p p<.05 ges partial_eta_squared
(Intercept) 1 34 17218686.27 2754864.2 212.510 0.000 * 0.851 0.862
cueValidity 1 34 22915.67 269916.6 2.887 0.098 0.008 0.078

RT t-tests