Covert attention facilitates detection within the foveola at locations only 20 arcminutes apart, with an effect similar in magnitude to the parafovea¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 2017 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? With retinal stabilization, observers were faster at detecting targets at attended foveolar locations only 20′ (0.33°) from unattended ones, and the valid-invalid reaction-time difference did not differ from the parafoveal experiment (22 ms ± 5 ms vs 25 ms ± 10 ms, p=0.31). → Poletti Martina 2017

Evidence¶

Poletti Martina 2017¶

Poletti Martina, Rucci Michele, Carrasco Marisa. (2017). Selective attention within the foveola. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4622

q3 · i? · causal · r1

Experiment 2 used gaze-contingent retinal stabilization to present targets at 10′ eccentricity within the foveola in five observers. The article reports the foveola valid-invalid difference as "22 ms ± 5 ms; parafovea: 25 ms ± 10 ms; two-tailed paired t-test, p=0.31" and accuracy slightly increased in valid trials (F(2,4) = 9.6; p=0.008).

"observers were faster at detecting targets presented at the attended location (ANOVA F(2,4) = 25.5; p=0.0003). Notably, the effect of attention did not change with retinal distance."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Covert attention enhances fine spatial discrimination (orientation d′) within the foveola with high selectivity across 20′ separations
• Detection is slower for targets within the foveola than in the parafovea despite equal detectability
• Fine foveolar attentional effects persist during normal, non-stabilized fixation with natural retinal image motion — related
• Endogenous spatial cueing speeds detection at the attended parafoveal location and slows it at the unattended location — related