Attention spotlight

PBS4

Posner's Cueing Experiment

Posner conducted an experiment using arrow cues to direct attention to different locations, showing that correct cues led to faster responses than misleading cues.

Attention Spotlight

Posner proposed the concept of an attention spotlight in the visual field, where cues direct attention to specific locations, affecting response times.

Exogenous Cues

Certain cues can involuntarily shift the attention spotlight to different locations in the visual field.

Eriksen & Eriksen's Flanker Test

They tested the impact of distracting flankers at varying distances from a target, determining that distractions beyond 0.5 degrees of retinal angle had minimal effects.

Minimum Spotlight Size

Eriksen & Eriksen concluded that the minimum size of the attention spotlight is around 1 degree of retinal angle.

Multiple Object Tracking (MOT)

Participants track a specific number of objects moving among identical objects, with findings showing accurate tracking of 3-4 objects before a decline.

Object-based Attention

Egly's experiments demonstrated that attention is focused on objects rather than spatial areas, supporting the object-based attention theory.

Balint's Syndrome

Caused by bilateral parietal lobe damage, leading to patients only perceiving one object at a time, even when multiple objects are present in the same location.