1.

Visual Attention Research

Evidence in support of spotlight theory came from a study by LaBerge (1983). He presented participants with five-letter words and a probe requiring them to respond as quickly as possible. The probe (or target) could appear in the position of any of the five letters in a word. In one condition participants were asked top respond to the whole word by categorizing it. In another condition they were asked to respond to the middle letter only by categorizing it. It was expected that, when being asked to respond to the middle letter, a narrow attentional beam would be employed. The results of the study indicate that where participants were asked to respond to the word and their attentional beam was broad, it did not matter at which point on the display the visual probe occurred, response times were equally fast. However, when participants focused on the middle letter, the position of the probe was critical. Response times were significantly slower where the probe had not been presented in the center of the five-letter display. LaBerge demonstrated the probe would be responded to more quickly when if fell within the attentional spotlight than when it did not. He also demonstrated the attentional spotlight can have a narrow beam (letter task) or a broad beam (word task). According to spotlight theory of visual attention there should be minimal processing of visual stimuli falling outside the spotlight.

Studies have confirmed this predicted. For example, Johnston and Dark (1986) investigated the time taken by participant to identify words which were first out of focus, but gradually became clearer. They discovered that presenting the same word or word of similar meaning to an unattended part of the visual field, immediately prior to the test word, usually had no positive effect in identifying the test word. This suggests, in line with the spotlight theory, no semantic processing of the unattended words. However, other studies have shown the spotlight theory of attention to be over simplified. Juola et al. (1991) conducted a study involving a target letter being presented in one of three concentric circles#: the inner, the middle and the outer ring. 2.Another popular interpretation of the observable differences between conjunction and feature search comes from Posners theory of visual orienting, or VO (Posner, 1980). VO is based on the idea that attention can be focused on a restricted region of visual space in order to facilitate processing at that location, in much the same way that physically orienting the fovea of the eye on a particular

region enhances the perception of objects located there. Because the attention spotlight has a limited spatial extent, the voluntary inspection of multiple locations must be done serially. Research with neurological patients (Posner & Petersen, 1990) and various brain imaging techniques (Posner & Raichle, 1994) has led to the view that VO involves the coordinated activity of widely distributed brain regions. The engagement of attention on a stimulus is governed by a thalamic brain structure (pulvinar nucleus) that acts to block neural inputs to the cortex from stimuli that are currently unattended; the movement of attention from one location to another is governed by a midbrain structure (superior colliculus); and the disengagement of Visual Search 371 attention from one stimulus in order to process another is governed by a cortical

structure (parietal lobe). According to this view, the onset of the display in a feature search task initiates a disengagement of attention from the fixation point, a movement of attention to the salient target item, and an engagement of attention by the target. The non-target items that are also in the display play no other role than to form a contrasting background for the target item. Compare this with the operations putatively involved in conjunction search. Here the observer is forced to disengage, move, and engage attention voluntarily, going from item to item until the target is found. This is necessary because the target does not differ sufficiently from the distracters to draw attention to itself. In support of this view, patients with parietal lobe lesions, who typically show the clinical condition of neglect,

have difficulty with conjunction search, but not with feature search (Posner & Raichle, 1994). FIT and VO thus emphasize very different aspects of attention in