Twelve spatial-cueing experiments examined stimulus-driven and goal-driven
control of visual attention orienting under multiple-cue conditions. Spatial cueing
involves presenting a cue at a potential target location before a target appears in a display,
and measuring the cue's effect on responses to the target stimulus. Under certain
conditions, a cue that appears abruptly in a display (direct cue) can speed responses to a
target appearing at the previously cued location relative to other uncued locations (called
the cue effect). The experiments in this dissertation used a new multiple-cue procedure
to decouple the effects of stimulus-driven and goal-driven processes on the control of
attention. This technique involved simultaneously presenting a red direct cue (Unique
Cue) that was highly predictive of the target location along with multiple grey direct cues
(Standard Cues) that were not predictive of the target location. The basic finding was
that while cue effects occurred at all cued locations, they were significantly larger at the
Unique-Cue location. This finding was interpreted as evidence for stimulus-driven cue
effects at all cued locations with additional goal-driven cue effects at the Unique-Cue
location. Further experiments showed that Standard-Cue effects could occur
independently at multiple locations, that they seemed to involve a sensory-based
interaction between the cues and the target, and that they were mediated by a limitedcapacity
tracking mechanism. In addition, Unique-Cue effects were found to be the
product of goal-driven operations, to interact with Standard-Cue effects, and to involve
inhibited processing at unattended locations. These results were explained in terms of a
filter-based model of attention control that assigns priority to potential attention-shift
destinations. According to this model, stimulus-driven and goal-driven factors generate
signals (activity distributions) that drive a filter to open an attention channel at the highest
priority location by suppressing the signals at other locations. The final experiments
confirmed the central assumptions of this model by providing evidence that the prioritydestination
process was sufficient to produce cue effects independent of attention, and
that attending to a location involved a suppression of processing at unattended locations.
The implications of this model for the larger visual attention literature were also
discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10087 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Richard, Christian M. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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