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Updated: Jun 2, 2026
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Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
The relationship between attentional capture and deviations in movement trajectories in a selective reaching task
1Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto, 55 Harbord St. Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 2W6. t.welsh@utoronto.ca
Acta Psychologica
|April 22, 2011
Summary
Attention and action are linked, with stimuli capturing attention automatically triggering responses. Movement deviations only occur when non-target cues share features with the target, supporting attention-action coupling.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Motor Control
Background:
- Action-centered models propose a tight link between attention and action systems.
- Attentional capture by stimuli can automatically initiate response-producing processes.
- Movement deviations towards or away from non-target stimuli suggest summation of attentional and target responses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the attention-action coupling hypothesis.
- To investigate if movement trajectories are affected by non-target stimuli that capture attention.
- To examine the role of feature matching between cues and targets in attention-action coupling.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed aiming movements towards a target (onset or color singleton).
- Movements were observed in the presence of non-predictive cues that either shared or did not share critical features with the target.
- Movement trajectories were analyzed for deviations.
Main Results:
- Movement trajectory deviations were observed only when cue and target features matched.
- No significant deviations were found when cue and target features did not match.
- These findings align with temporal interference effects observed in similar paradigms.
Conclusions:
- The results provide strong evidence for the link between attentional capture and the activation of response-producing processes.
- Attention-action coupling is feature-dependent, requiring shared characteristics between cues and targets.
- Movement deviations serve as a marker for the automatic activation of response systems by attentional capture.
