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When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain

Nature Neuroscience volume 13, pages 1554–1559 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Covert attention, the selective processing of visual information in the absence of eye movements, improves behavioral performance. We found that attention, both exogenous (involuntary) and endogenous (voluntary), can affect performance by contrast or response gain changes, depending on the stimulus size and the relative size of the attention field. These two variables were manipulated in a cueing task while stimulus contrast was varied. We observed a change in behavioral performance consonant with a change in contrast gain for small stimuli paired with spatial uncertainty and a change in response gain for large stimuli presented at one location (no uncertainty) and surrounded by irrelevant flanking distracters. A complementary neuroimaging experiment revealed that observers' attention fields were wider with than without spatial uncertainty. Our results support important predictions of the normalization model of attention and reconcile previous, seemingly contradictory findings on the effects of visual attention.

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Figure 1: Normalization model of attention exhibits qualitatively different forms of attentional modulation, depending on stimulus size and attention field size (adapted from ref. 1).
Figure 2: Experimental protocols.
Figure 3: Effects of exogenous and endogenous attention on performance (d′) as a function of contrast.
Figure 4: Effects of stimulus and attention field size on parameter estimates of individual observers.
Figure 5: Attention field size depends on spatial uncertainty.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Mike Landy and members of the Carrasco and Heeger laboratories for their helpful comments. The psychophysical experiments were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Science Society (2009) and the European Conference on Visual Perception (2009). This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grants R01-EY019693 (D.J.H. and M.C.), R01-MH06980 (D.J.H.) and R01-EY016200 (M.C.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Katrin Herrmann, Leila Montaser-Kouhsari, Marisa Carrasco & David J Heeger

  2. Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Marisa Carrasco & David J Heeger

Authors
  1. Katrin Herrmann
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  2. Leila Montaser-Kouhsari
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  3. Marisa Carrasco
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  4. David J Heeger
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Contributions

K.H. programmed, conducted and analyzed the experiments and co-wrote the manuscript. L.M.-K. conducted and analyzed the psychophysics experiments and assisted in conducting and programming the fMRI experiment. M.C. and D.J.H. conceived and supervised the project and co-wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to David J Heeger.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Herrmann, K., Montaser-Kouhsari, L., Carrasco, M. et al. When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain. Nat Neurosci 13, 1554–1559 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2669

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