Enhancing visual perception: The independent and additive effects of temporal and feature-based attention

Researchers often study selective attention in the temporal domain in isolation, but in real-life situations, it typically works together with other types of attention. The interplay between temporal attention (focusing on when) and feature-based attention (focusing on what) is one important aspect of attention that remains poorly understood. To investigate this, we asked subjects to report the orientation of one of the two stimuli sequentially presented at the same position. We used a cue consisting of two arrows to manipulate both temporal and feature-based attention: arrow size conveyed timing information, while direction conveyed orientation information of the upcoming target. This design effectively elicited temporal and feature-based attention to comparable extents, allowing us to examine their isolated and combined effects on perceptual sensitivity systematically. We observed that perceptual sensitivity was significantly influenced by the accuracy of the cue in predicting either target features or timing. When both aspects of the cue were accurate, perceptual sensitivity was maximized. Conversely, when both predictions were incorrect, perceptual sensitivity was minimized. When only one aspect of the cue was accurate, perceptual sensitivity showed an intermediate level. Crucially, our findings demonstrate that temporal and feature-based attention independently and additively affect perceptual sensitivity, suggesting that these attentional mechanisms operate autonomously and in concert to shape visual perception.