The Spatial Orienting paradigm: How to design and interpret spatial attention experiments

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.01.002

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

Volume 40, March 2014, Pages 35-51

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.01.002 Get rights and content

Highlights

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This paper is conceived as a guide to use the Spatial Orienting paradigm.
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We describe main experimental manipulations and help the reader interpreting the results.
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Adaptations of the paradigm to different methodologies and populations are provided.

Abstract

This paper is conceived as a guide that will describe the very well known Spatial Orienting paradigm, used to explore attentional processes in healthy individuals as well as in people suffering from psychiatric disorders and brain-damaged patients. The paradigm was developed in the late 1970s, and since then, it has been used in thousands of attentional studies. In this review, we attempt to describe, the paradigm for the naïf reader, and explain in detail when is it used, which variables are usually manipulated, how to interpret its results, and how can it be adapted to different populations and methodologies. The main goal of this review is to provide a practical guide to researchers who have never used the paradigm that will help them design their experiments, as a function of their theoretical and experimental needs. We also focus on how to adapt the paradigm to different technologies (such as event-related potentials, functional resonance imaging, or transcranial magnetic stimulation), and to different populations by presenting an example of its use in brain-damaged patients.

Section snippets

The Spatial Orienting paradigm

This guide on how to use the Spatial Orienting paradigm is intended to help the naïf reader in designing their tasks and interpreting their results. Of most importance, when designing an attentional orienting experiment, one of the first decisions to be taken is related to the type of orienting we are interested in (endogenous vs. exogenous), which will determine the cue type to be used. Depending on our interest on facilitation and/or Inhibition of Return (IOR; see below), we will have to

Types of orienting

In everyday life, attention can be oriented to locations in space in two ways: (1) top-down, “voluntarily”, and endogenously (according to our goals, intentions, or task demands), or (2) bottom-up, “involuntarily”, and exogenously (to salient or potentially relevant stimuli) (Jonides, 1981). These two types of orienting can be implemented in cue–target paradigms by manipulating cue type and cue validity.

Endogenous orienting is usually manipulated by using central symbolic cues that predict with

Typical results

Although the results observed when using the Spatial Orienting paradigm critically depend on many variables, as it will be described in detail below, we will firstly present the typical results observed with the most frequent manipulations used (see Fig. 2 and Table 1). When using spatially predictive central symbolic cues, reaction times (RTs) and/or accuracy are usually improved for cued as compared to uncued trials. This improvement of performance is known as “facilitation”. The effects of

Central cues

When manipulating endogenous orienting, arrow cues have been extensively used, assuming that they symbolically oriented attention to the location they were pointing at. This assumption was discarded when it was demonstrated that arrow cues orient attention to the location they are pointing at, even if they are not spatially predictive about the future location of the target (Bayliss et al., 2005, Dodd and Wilson, 2009, Hommel et al., 2001, Marotta et al., 2012, Ristic et al., 2002, Tipples, 2002

Eye movement control

It is always recommended to control gaze by using an eye tracker, both when overt and covert attention tasks are used. If eye movements are not controlled, any reported differences in performance between conditions could be accounted for by foveal processing of stimuli, which is faster and more precise than non-foveal, peripheral processing. Also, some attentional effects might depend on whether eye movements are monitored or not (Prinzmetal et al., 2009). Unfortunately, many researchers do not

Effect size and statistical power

Table 1 represents a meta-analysis of a subset of experiments from our lab. Data from this table can be used to perform power analyses and a priori sample size estimations, depending on key variables such as Cue Type, Cue Validity, SOA, and Task.

Table 1 demonstrates that for central cues (arrow cues, faces, and symmetrical stimuli), effect size is larger when cues are predictive than when they are not. Therefore, the estimated sample size is larger for central non-predictive than predictive

Comparing endogenous and exogenous orienting, a big dilemma

Some researchers are interested in comparing the effects of endogenous and exogenous attention on perceptual, decisional, or motor processes. Traditionally, this comparison has been made by using spatially predictive central symbolic cues for endogenous orienting, and spatially non-predictive peripheral cues for exogenous orienting. However, the differences between the consequences of the exogenous versus endogenous orienting of spatial attention observed in these studies could either be due

Patients: an example of adaptation of the paradigm for brain damaged patients suffering from neglect

In this section, we will describe an example of adaptation of the Spatial Orienting paradigm to patients with right fronto-parietal damage suffering from neglect. These patients’ attention is highly biased to right (ipsilesional) targets, which makes interesting the use of the Spatial Orienting paradigm to explore their attentional imbalance. Let's first envision the design of an experiment in which we would like to potentiate the observation of exogenous attentional facilitation. First of all,

Acknowledgments

Ana B. Chica was supported with a Ramón y Cajal fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. Elisa Martín-Arévalo was supported by a predoctoral grant (AP2008-02806) from the FPU program from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education. Fabiano Botta was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship form the eraNET-NEURON BEYONDVIS project. Research was funded by research projects PSI2011-22416, and eraNET-NEURON BEYONDVIS, EUI2009-04082, to Juan Lupiáñez, and Ramón y Cajal

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The present review examined the consequences of focal brain injury on spatial attention studied with cueing paradigms, with a particular focus on the disengagement deficit, which refers to the abnormal slowing of reactions following an ipsilesional cue. Our review supports the established notion that the disengagement deficit is a functional marker of spatial neglect and is particularly pronounced when elicited by peripheral cues. Recent research has revealed that this deficit critically depends on cues that have task-relevant characteristics or are associated with negative reinforcement. Attentional capture by task-relevant cues is contingent on damage to the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and is modulated by functional connections between the TPJ and the right insular cortex. Furthermore, damage to the dorsal premotor or prefrontal cortex (dPMC/dPFC) reduces the effect of task-relevant cues. These findings support an interactive model of the disengagement deficit, involving the right TPJ, the insula, and the dPMC/dPFC. These interconnected regions play a crucial role in regulating and adapting spatial attention to changing intrinsic values of stimuli in the environment.
Goal-directed utilization of threat-relevant and non-threat-relevant expressions in social anxiety: A general deficit related to social-emotional cues in an endogenous cueing task
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In various social-emotional situations, it is desirable to use emotional information in a flexible, goal-directed manner. When testing this flexibility in an endogenous spatial cueing task, in which threat-related facial expressions served as informative cues, socially anxious individuals showed a deficit in using the cues for task-relevant attention orienting (Folyi, Rohr, & Wentura, 2023). The present study investigated the scope of the social anxiety-related deficit in endogenous cueing by testing whether it is specifically related to threat-relevant emotions or extends to non-threat-relevant emotional faces.
First, we assessed social anxiety; second, participants with low or high social anxiety were invited to the experiment. In a block-balanced design, we presented threat-relevant (i.e., anger and fear) or non-threat-relevant (i.e., sadness and joy) expression cues to test if reduced cueing in high compared to low social anxiety extends to non-threat-relevant cues.
Whereas participants with low social anxiety showed a significant cueing effect, participants with high social anxiety had no significant effect. This pattern extended to all emotional faces. However, the significant group difference was limited to the first of the two task blocks, possibly due to extensive practice and carry-over effects.
Identifying the exact processes that hinder the flexible usage of emotional information remains an important question for future research.
Our results suggest that prepotent responses to social-emotional stimuli in general can hinder their goal-directed use in socially anxious individuals. Such an imbalance may have clinical implications, as it may interfere with overcoming rigid emotional responses to social-emotional stimuli.
The modulation of expectation violation on attention: Evidence from the spatial cueing effects
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The study sought to investigate whether and how expectation violation can modulate attention using the exogenous spatial cueing paradigm, under the theoretical framework of the Memory Encoding Cost (MEC) model. The MEC proposes that exogenous spatial cueing effects are mainly driven by a combination of two distinct mechanisms: attentional facilitation triggered by the presence of an abrupt cue, and attentional suppression induced by memory encoding of the cue. In current experiments, participants needed to identify a target letter that was sometimes preceded by a peripheral onset cue. Various types of expectation violation were introduced by regulating the probability of cue presentation (Experiments 1 & 5), the probability of cue location (Experiments 2 & 4), and the probability of irrelevant sound presentation (Experiment 3). The results showed that expectation violation could enhance the cueing effect (valid vs. invalid cue) in some cases. More crucially, all experiments consistently observed asymmetrical modulation of expectation violation on the cost (invalid vs. neutral cue) and benefit (valid vs. neutral cue) effects: Expectation violation increased the cost effects while did not modulate or decreased (or even reversed) the benefit effects. Furthermore, Experiment 5 provided direct evidence that violation of expectations could enhance the memory encoding of a cue (e.g., color) and this memory advantage could manifest quickly in the early stages of the experiment. The MEC better explains these findings than some traditional models like the spotlight: Expectation violation can both enhance the attentional facilitation of the cue and memory encoding of irrelevant cue information. These findings suggest that expectation violation has a general adaptive function in modulating the attention selectivity.
Fixation offset decreases pupillary inhibition of return
2023, Brain and Cognition
Inhibition of return (IOR) is reflected as a slower manual or saccadic response to a cued rather than an uncued target (manual IOR and saccadic IOR, respectively), and as a pupillary dilation when a bright, relative to a dark side of a display is cued (pupillary IOR). The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between an IOR and oculomotor system. According to the predominant view, only the saccadic IOR is strictly related to the visuomotor process, and the manual and pupillary IORs depend on non-motor factors (e.g., short-term visual depression). Alternatively, the after-effect of the covert-orienting hypothesis postulates that IOR is strictly related to the oculomotor system. As fixation offset affects oculomotor processes, this study investigated whether fixation offset also affects pupillary and manual IORs. The results show that fixation offset decreased IOR in pupillary but not manual responses, and provides support for the hypothesis that at least the pupillary IOR is tightly linked to eye movement preparation.
Spatial attention is not affected by alpha or beta transcranial alternating current stimulation: A registered report
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Using Electroencephalography (EEG) an event-related change in alpha activity has been observed over primary sensory cortices during the allocation of spatial attention. This is most prominent during top-down, or endogenous, attention, and nearly absent in bottom-up, or exogenous orienting. These changes are highly lateralised, such that an increase in alpha power is seen ipsilateral to the attended region of space and a decrease is seen contralaterally. Whether these changes in alpha oscillatory activity are causally related to attentional resources, or to perceptual processes, or are simply epiphenomenal, is unknown. If alpha oscillations are indicative of a causal mechanism whereby attention is allocated to a region of space, it remains an open question as to whether this is driven by ipsilateral increases or contralateral decreases in alpha power. This preregistered report set out to test these questions. To do so, we used transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) to modulate alpha activity in the somatosensory cortex whilst measuring performance on established tactile attention paradigms. All participants completed an endogenous and exogenous tactile attention task in three stimulation conditions; alpha, sham and beta. Sham and beta stimulation operated as controls so that any observed effects could be attributed to alpha stimulation specifically. We replicated previous behavioural findings in all stimulation conditions showing a facilitation of cued trials in the endogenous task, and inhibition of return in the exogenous task. However, these were not affected by stimulation manipulations. Using Bayes-factor analysis we show strong support for the null hypotheses – that the manipulation of Alpha by tACS does not cause changes in tactile spatial attention. This well-powered study, conducted over three separate days, is an important contribution to the current debate regarding the efficiency of brain stimulation.
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The ability to respond quickly and accurately to spatial cues is of great importance to performance on any task where quick decision-making is required. The two main effects of spatial attention are priming, when a response to a target is facilitated after being cued at the same location, and inhibition of return (IOR), when the response to the target is slower to the cued area. Whether priming or IOR occurs is largely dependent on the length of the interval between the cue and the target. To determine whether these effects are relevant to dueling sports with deceptive actions we created a boxing-specific task that mimicked combinations of feints and punches. Altogether, we recruited 20 boxers and 20 non-boxers and found significantly longer reaction times to a punch thrown on the same side as a fake punch after a 600 ms interval, consistent with the IOR effect. We also found a moderate positive correlation between years of training and the magnitude of the IOR effect. This latter finding indicates that even athletes trained to avoid deception can be as susceptible as novices if the timing of the feint is right. Finally, our approach highlights the benefits of studying IOR using more sport specific settings, broadening the scope of the field.

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ReviewThe Spatial Orienting paradigm: How to design and interpret spatial attention experiments

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

The Spatial Orienting paradigm

Types of orienting

Typical results

Central cues

Eye movement control

Effect size and statistical power

Comparing endogenous and exogenous orienting, a big dilemma

Patients: an example of adaptation of the paradigm for brain damaged patients suffering from neglect

Acknowledgments

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Consciousness and Cognition

Brain Stimulation

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Vision Research

Brain Research

Neuroscience Letters

Cognition

Neuroimage

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Neuropsychologia

Consciousness and Cognition

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Clinical Neurophysiology

Neuropsychologia

Neuroimage

Facilitation instead of inhibition for repeated right-sided events in left neglect

NeuroReport

Sex differences in eye gaze and symbolic cueing of attention

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section. A, Human Experimental Psychology

Competition between endogenous and exogenous orienting of visual attention

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General

Inhibition of return: a phenomenon in search of a mechanism and a better name

Cognitive Neuropsychology

Reduction of human visual cortex excitability using 1-Hz transcranial magnetic stimulation

Neurology

Is Posner's beam the same as Treisman's glue? On the relation between visual orienting and feature integration theory

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance

Inhibition of return in manual and saccadic response systems

Perception & Psychophysics

Dorsal and ventral attention systems underlie social and symbolic cueing

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Efficiency of visual selective attention is related to the type of target

Psychological Research

Depression of motor cortex excitability by low-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation

Neurology

Dorsal and ventral parietal contributions to spatial orienting in the human brain

Journal of Neuroscience

Spatial attention does improve temporal resolution. Attention

Perception & Psychophysics

Endogenous saccade preparation does not produce Inhibition of Return: failure to replicate Rafal, Calabresi, Brennan, & Sciolto (1989)

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception & Performance

Spatial attention and conscious perception: the role of endogenous and exogenous orienting

Attention, Perception & Psychophysics

Inhibition of return without return of attention

Psicothema

Dissociating inhibition of return from the endogenous orienting of spatial attention: evidence from detection and discrimination tasks

Cognitive Neuropsychology

Neural bases of the interactions between spatial attention and conscious perception

Cerebral Cortex

Comparing intramodal and crossmodal cuing in the endogenous orienting of spatial attention

Experimental Brain Research

Two mechanisms underlying inhibition of return

Experimental Brain Research

Attention networks and their interactions after right-hemisphere damage

Cortex

Spatiotemporal distribution of facilitation and inhibition of return arising from the reflexive orienting of covert attention

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance

A PET study of visuospatial attention

The Journal of Neuroscience

Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain

Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Training attention: Interactions between central cues and reflexive attention

Visual Cognition

Neural correlates of the spatial and expectancy components of endogenous and stimulus-driven orienting of attention in the Posner task

Review
The Spatial Orienting paradigm: How to design and interpret spatial attention experiments