Affective consequences of exogenous attentional orienting

The Frontal Cortex and Exogenous Attentional Orienting

Normal functioning of the attentional orienting system is critical for effective behavior and is predicated on a balanced interaction between goal-directed (endogenous) processes and stimulus-driven (exogenous) processes. Although both systems have been subject to much investigation, little is known about the neural underpinnings of exogenous orienting. In the present study, we examined the ear...

Stimulus discrimination following covert attentional orienting to an exogenous cue.

Five experiments explored exogenous covert visual-attentional orienting following a brief peripheral cue. On each trial an attentional cue was followed by a stimulus in an empty field at 1 of 8 locations on an imaginary circle centered on the fixation point. The cued area size and the cue-target spatial relation were manipulated. Accuracy and response time were affected by the exogenous cue val...

Exogenous visual orienting by reward.

Classic spatial cueing experiments have demonstrated that salient cues have the ability to summon attention as evidenced by performance benefits when the cue validly indicates the target location and costs when the cue is invalid. Here we show that nonsalient cues that are associated with reward also have the ability to capture attention. We demonstrate performance costs and benefits in attenti...

Attentional Orienting and Scene Semantics

Inference-driven Mechanisms of Attentional Orienting

In this paper we present some empirical data in support of a new view of attentional orienting, according to which (a) some basic mechanisms of attentional deployment (i.e. its high efficiency in dealing with expected and unexpected inputs) meet the requirements of the inferential system, and have possibly evolved to support its functioning; and (b) these orienting mechanisms function in very s...