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An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection

Human vision involves selectively directing the eyes to potential objects of interest. According to most prominent theories, selection is the quantal outcome of an ongoing competition between saliency-driven signals on the one hand, and relevance-driven signals on the other, with both types of signa...

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Autores principales: van Heusden, Elle, van Zoest, Wieske, Donk, Mieke, Olivers, Christian N. L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8979483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35378672
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02091-3
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author van Heusden, Elle
van Zoest, Wieske
Donk, Mieke
Olivers, Christian N. L.
author_facet van Heusden, Elle
van Zoest, Wieske
Donk, Mieke
Olivers, Christian N. L.
author_sort van Heusden, Elle
collection PubMed
description Human vision involves selectively directing the eyes to potential objects of interest. According to most prominent theories, selection is the quantal outcome of an ongoing competition between saliency-driven signals on the one hand, and relevance-driven signals on the other, with both types of signals continuously and concurrently projecting onto a common priority map. Here, we challenge this view. We asked participants to make a speeded eye movement towards a target orientation, which was presented together with a non-target of opposing tilt. In addition to the difference in relevance, the target and non-target also differed in saliency, with the target being either more or less salient than the non-target. We demonstrate that saliency- and relevance-driven eye movements have highly idiosyncratic temporal profiles, with saliency-driven eye movements occurring rapidly after display onset while relevance-driven eye movements occur only later. Remarkably, these types of eye movements can be fully separated in time: We find that around 250 ms after display onset, eye movements are no longer driven by saliency differences between potential targets, but also not yet driven by relevance information, resulting in a period of non-selectivity, which we refer to as the attentional limbo. Binomial modeling further confirmed that visual selection is not necessarily the outcome of a direct battle between saliency- and relevance-driven signals. Instead, selection reflects the dynamic changes in the underlying saliency- and relevance-driven processes themselves, and the time at which an action is initiated then determines which of the two will emerge as the driving force of behavior. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-022-02091-3.
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spelling pubmed-89794832022-04-05 An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection van Heusden, Elle van Zoest, Wieske Donk, Mieke Olivers, Christian N. L. Psychon Bull Rev Brief Report Human vision involves selectively directing the eyes to potential objects of interest. According to most prominent theories, selection is the quantal outcome of an ongoing competition between saliency-driven signals on the one hand, and relevance-driven signals on the other, with both types of signals continuously and concurrently projecting onto a common priority map. Here, we challenge this view. We asked participants to make a speeded eye movement towards a target orientation, which was presented together with a non-target of opposing tilt. In addition to the difference in relevance, the target and non-target also differed in saliency, with the target being either more or less salient than the non-target. We demonstrate that saliency- and relevance-driven eye movements have highly idiosyncratic temporal profiles, with saliency-driven eye movements occurring rapidly after display onset while relevance-driven eye movements occur only later. Remarkably, these types of eye movements can be fully separated in time: We find that around 250 ms after display onset, eye movements are no longer driven by saliency differences between potential targets, but also not yet driven by relevance information, resulting in a period of non-selectivity, which we refer to as the attentional limbo. Binomial modeling further confirmed that visual selection is not necessarily the outcome of a direct battle between saliency- and relevance-driven signals. Instead, selection reflects the dynamic changes in the underlying saliency- and relevance-driven processes themselves, and the time at which an action is initiated then determines which of the two will emerge as the driving force of behavior. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-022-02091-3. Springer US 2022-04-04 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8979483/ /pubmed/35378672 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02091-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Brief Report
van Heusden, Elle
van Zoest, Wieske
Donk, Mieke
Olivers, Christian N. L.
An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title_full An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title_fullStr An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title_full_unstemmed An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title_short An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
title_sort attentional limbo: saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection
topic Brief Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8979483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35378672
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02091-3
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