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Attention during active visual tasks: counting, pointing, or simply looking.

John D Wilder1, Eileen Kowler, Brian S Schnitzer

  • 1Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.

Vision Research
|July 25, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Real-world tasks require visual attention for controlling eye movements (saccades). Complex cognitive tasks like counting demand more attention than simple viewing or pointing, impacting performance on other visual tasks.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Visual perception

Background:

  • Visual attention and saccades are often studied in artificial settings.
  • Real-world tasks involve complex, self-paced saccadic eye movements.
  • Understanding attentional demands in naturalistic viewing is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how different free-viewing tasks affect visual attention.
  • To compare the attentional load of saccade control versus higher-level cognitive tasks.
  • To determine if attention is modulated by task demands during naturalistic eye movements.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed three free-viewing tasks: counting dots, pointing to dots, and looking at dots.
  • Visual attention was measured using a Gabor orientation identification task during saccade pauses.

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Last Updated: Jul 3, 2026

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Published on: November 14, 2018

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
08:45

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

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09:44

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Published on: February 19, 2015

  • Contrast thresholds for Gabor probe identification were analyzed.

    • Main Results:

    • All tasks reduced identification performance, with counting causing the most significant losses.
    • Looking-only tasks increased contrast thresholds by 37%; counting losses were severe.
    • Detection and localization of the Gabor probe were unaffected, unlike identification.

    Conclusions:

    • Attention is necessary for controlling saccades, even in free-viewing tasks.
    • The attentional demands of saccades are lower than those of cognitively demanding tasks like counting.
    • Modest attentional requirements for saccades allow flexible resource allocation in complex environments.