Effects of cue location and object orientation on object-based attention

Spatial cues have previously been found to facilitate information processing not only at cued locations but also within cued objects, so-called object-based attention. We used different variants of the classic two-rectangle paradigm to investigate the interaction of cue location and object orientation on object-based attentional effects. First, we re-analyzed data from a prior study using the classical two-rectangle paradigm. We expected faster attentional shifts along the horizontal compared to the vertical meridian. Results confirmed that cue location and rectangle orientation interactively influence object-based attention, with horizontal objects combined with upper left visual field cues eliciting faster responses than other conditions. In Experiment 2, we removed object contours to examine the benefits of shifting attention based purely on cue location. The results showed that these differences remained, indicating that attentional shifts are not solely guided by object contours. In Experiment 3, we added a third possible target location to the original two-rectangle experiment to examine whether attentional shifts followed a predictable pattern across the stimulus display. Despite faster responses to cued targets, no consistent and organized visual search pattern was observed when participants searched for targets at invalidly cued locations. Our findings suggest that object-based effects are influenced by both cue location and the orientation of attentional shifts. Shifts from left to right in the upper visual field consistently demonstrated significant benefits, whereas the benefits of vertical shifts were less consistent across experiments.