Attention improves perceptual quality
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BRIEF REPORT
Attention improves perceptual quality Britt Anderson & Michael Druker
Published online: 2 October 2012 # Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2012
Abstract Attention has been demonstrated to affect response speed, signal detection, and perceptual enhancement. We wished to determine whether exogenously cued attention had the additional effect of improving the veridicality of perceptual representations. We determined the accuracy and precision of orientation judgments for static and dynamic stimuli when they were, and when they were not, exogenously cued (luminance change). Valid exogenous cues led to more accurate responses that were also quicker. The attentional accuracy benefits were robust to stimulus degradation. Since our task displayed only one test stimulus at a time, response biases cannot account for our results. We concluded that exogenous cues can lead to percepts that are, on average, more similar to the external stimulus. Thus, exogenous cuing can improve perceptual quality. Keywords Attention . Orientation . Exogenous cues . Coherent motion To evaluate whether attention improves perception, one needs to show that perception is “better” with attention than without it. Demonstrations of attentional improvements have included shortened response times (RTs; Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980), improved signal detection (Moray, Fitter, Ostry, Favreau, & Nagy, 1976), reduced noise (Dosher & Lu, 2000b; Lee, Itti, Koch, & Braun, 1999), and increases in signal intensity (Carrasco, Ling, & Read, 2004). Another sense in which attention might render perception “better” would be if it led to a more consistent, veridical B. Anderson (*) : M. Druker Department of Psychology and Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 1J6, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
representation of a stimulus. Such a characterization of attentional improvement has been much less studied than other varieties. The most thorough treatment has been by Prinzmetal and colleagues (Prinzmetal, Amiri, Allen, & Edwards, 1998; Prinzmetal, Nwachuku, Bodanski, Blumenfeld, & Shimizu, 1997; Prinzmetal & Wilson, 1997). They combined classic matching tasks with a second, dual task. Prinzmetal et al. (1998) reported that a simultaneously performed dual task made color, location, orientation, or spatial frequency matching more variable. Prinzmetal et al. (1997) found the same result for stimulus brightness and contrast. In Prinzmetal and Wilson (1997), the same effect was demonstrated for length estimation. The studies of Prinzmetal et al. were conducted from the perspective of attention as a capacity-limited resource. By and large, they did not investigate spatial attention as manipulated by exogenous cues. In the two experiments that came closest to this, the results were mixed. In their Experiment 3, Prinzmetal et al. (1998) found an effect of attention on accuracy, but in Experiment 5 of Prinzmetal et al. (1997), in which an 80 % valid location cue was used, the authors did not. The pr
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