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Related Experiment Video

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Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

Voluntary attention increases perceived spatial frequency.

Jared Abrams¹, Antoine Barbot, Marisa Carrasco

¹New York University, New York, New York, USA.

Attention, Perception & Psychophysics

|August 3, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Voluntary attention enhances visual perception by increasing the perceived spatial frequency of stimuli. This finding reveals a new subjective effect of attention, linking behavioral and neural studies.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Neuroscience
Visual perception

Background:

Voluntary covert attention prioritizes sensory information, with known behavioral and neural effects.
The subjective experience (phenomenology) of voluntary attention is less understood.
Involuntary attention alters spatial frequency perception, but voluntary attention's effects remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether voluntary attention influences the subjective perception of spatial frequency.
To determine if voluntary attention affects visual resolution, a process dependent on spatial frequency.

Main Methods:

A rapid serial visual presentation task was used to direct voluntary attention.
Perceived spatial frequency was measured at attended and unattended locations.
A concurrent orientation discrimination task assessed performance, with a control experiment to rule out response bias.

Main Results:

Voluntary attention increased the perceived spatial frequency of visual stimuli.
Attention also improved performance on the concurrent orientation discrimination task.
A control experiment with a lengthened interstimulus interval showed no such effects, ruling out response bias.

Conclusions:

Voluntary attention demonstrably increases perceived spatial frequency.
This phenomenological effect connects existing behavioral and neurophysiological findings on attention.
The study establishes a subjective consequence of voluntary attention on visual perception.