Spatial cueing
Measure whether a hint about where a target will appear lets you respond to it sooner, while your eyes stay still.
Method
Procedure
- Keep your eyes on the centre of the screen. Two boxes are shown, one on each side.
- An arrow at the centre points to one box, or a double-headed arrow points to both.
- Between 0.3 and 0.7 seconds later a white square appears in one of the boxes. Say on which side it appeared, as quickly as you can.
- When the arrow points to one box, the square appears there on 80% of trials, but not always. On 6 of the 82 trials no square appears; then do not respond.
Responses
- F
- the square is in the left box
- J
- the square is in the right box
- Touch
- tap the box, or the Left or Right button
Measures
The reaction time from the appearance of the square to your response, on correct trials, after three kinds of cue: valid (the arrow pointed to the box where the square appeared), invalid (it pointed to the other box) and neutral (a double-headed arrow). If attention can be moved to a place before the eyes move, a valid cue should speed responses and an invalid one should slow them.
Practice
Six practice trials, including one in which the arrow points the wrong way and one with no square, tell you after each trial whether your response was right.
Terms
- Cue: A signal that gives information about what is coming, here an arrow that points to the likely place of the square.
- Valid and invalid cue: A valid cue points to where the target appears; an invalid cue points elsewhere.
- Validity effect: Reaction time after invalid cues minus reaction time after valid cues. Comparison with neutral cues divides it into a benefit and a cost.
- Covert attention: Attending to a place without moving the eyes to it.
- Catch trial: A trial with no target, included to check that responses are made to the target and not merely by anticipation.
- Parietal lobe: The part of the cerebral cortex at the top and back of the head, involved in directing attention in space.
Experiment
Responses stay in this browser tab. Nothing is stored or sent, and everything is lost when the page is closed or reloaded.
Results
Interpretation
A positive validity effect means that you moved attention to the cued box before the square appeared: you were quicker when the hint was right and slower when it was wrong. The comparison with the neutral cue shows whether the difference came mainly from a benefit of valid cues, a cost of invalid cues, or both. Responses on catch trials show whether you were sometimes responding before you had seen a square.
Comparison with published studies
A positive validity effect follows the pattern reported by Posner (1980). The paper gives no single typical value for comparison.
Limitations
The invalid condition has only 12 trials, so its median is the least certain of the three. The page cannot check whether your eyes stayed at the centre; looking towards a box would change what is being measured.
The result comes from one person in one session, on a device whose timing and display are not calibrated. It describes this run, not a stable characteristic of the participant, and a second run could differ by chance alone. Research studies test many participants under controlled conditions and report the average with its variability. The experiment is educational; it is not a test of ability or health.
One row per trial: cue type, direction of the arrow, side of the square, time from cue to square, your response, reaction time and outcome (including trials repeated because the response came too soon). In the file, 1 means yes and 0 means no. The file is created on this device and can be opened in a spreadsheet.
Background
Original findings
Posner (1980) described experiments in which a cue at fixation indicated where a target was likely to appear. He reported that, compared with a neutral cue, a cue that pointed to the correct location speeded responses to the target, and a cue that pointed to the other location slowed them, even when the eyes stayed still. The classic interpretation is that attention can be moved to a location in advance of the eyes. The difference between invalid and valid cues is called the validity effect; comparison with neutral cues splits it into a benefit and a cost. In this version, on the trials on which the arrow points to one side and a square appears, it points to the correct box on 80% of them.
Neural basis
Brain-imaging studies associate the voluntary direction of attention to a location, as prompted by a central arrow, with a network that includes the intraparietal cortex and the superior frontal cortex, and the reorienting of attention to an unexpected location with a network in the right temporoparietal and ventral frontal cortex (Corbetta and Shulman, 2002).
References
- Posner, M. I. (1980). Orienting of attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335558008248231
- Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(3), 201–215. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn755
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