Fine foveolar attentional effects persist during normal, non-stabilized fixation with natural retinal image motion¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 2017 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2022: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Without retinal stabilization, attention still produced higher and faster discrimination at the attended foveolar location and lower and slower discrimination at the unattended location. → 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 4 repeated the Experiment 3 discrimination task with normal fixation in five observers. The article reports effects also present in trials without microsaccades and when the center of gaze remained far from the target (>14′; F(2,4) = 52; p<0.0001) or close to the fixation marker (<7′; F(2,4) = 19; p=0.0009).

"Also in this case there were significant accuracy (ANOVA F(2,4) = 79; p<0.0001) and reaction time (ANOVA F(2,4) = 98; p<0.0001) effects."

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
• Covert attention facilitates detection within the foveola at locations only 20 arcminutes apart, with an effect similar in magnitude to the parafovea — related
• Endogenous spatial cueing speeds detection at the attended parafoveal location and slows it at the unattended location — related