A delay in sampling information from temporally autocorrelated visual stimuli

Chloe Callahan-Flintoft (), Alex O. Holcombe and Brad Wyble
Additional contact information
Chloe Callahan-Flintoft: Buidling 459 (RDRL-HRS) CCDC Army Research Lab, Aberdeen Proving Ground
Alex O. Holcombe: The University of Sydney
Brad Wyble: University Park

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Much of our world changes smoothly in time, yet the allocation of attention is typically studied with sudden changes – transients. A sizeable lag in selecting feature information is seen when stimuli change smoothly. Yet this lag is not seen with temporally uncorrelated rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stimuli. This suggests that temporal autocorrelation of a feature paradoxically increases the latency at which information is sampled. To test this, participants are asked to report the color of a disk when a cue was presented. There is an increase in selection latency when the disk’s color changed smoothly compared to randomly. This increase is due to the smooth color change presented after the cue rather than extrapolated predictions based on the color changes presented before. These results support an attentional drag theory, whereby attentional engagement is prolonged when features change smoothly. A computational model provides insights into the potential underlying neural mechanisms.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15675-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15675-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15675-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().