Enhanced detection in the aperture of focal attention during simple discrimination tasks

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that it is possible to shift an aperture of focal attention to a position in visual space independent of fixation and that this can be done much faster than the eyes are able to move^1–4. Recently, we showed⁴ that such serial scrutiny by the aperture of focal attention is required before an observer is able to tell what a target is (for example, to know whether the orientation of a line segment is horizontal or vertical). Here we considered whether attention directed towards a specific position in the visual field for an orientation discrimination task improves performance on a simple detection task in the area to which attention is directed. We found that a small test flash could be detected when it was positioned near a peripheral line target presented briefly, if the orientation of the target had to be identified. The test flash could not be detected when presented at some distance from the same target or when another target had to be identified. This enhancement implies that even simple identification tasks such as orientation discrimination are not performed passively by the visual system.