STEP: Splitting the Beam: Distributon of Attention over Noncontinuous Regions of the Visual Field [35228]

This article applies to:
E-Prime 3.0
E-Prime 1.0

 
Detail
Experiment Author: Adapted from STEP and used with permission of Brian MacWhinney
 
Experiment Description

Two regions on the screen that do not touch are cued, and participants are supposed to determine which target appears in them. Distractors are flashed between them, in an effort to confuse the participants.
 
Experiment Instructions

This experiment displays two letters on opposite sides of the computer screen and participants must determine if the letters do or do not match. There is a fixation point followed by the stimuli. There are distractors present but the target letters will appear in boxes that are always located in the same area of the screen. The letters are determined using an InLine script object and randomized sampling from the List Objects, Onset and NoOnset. Both lists contain 60 samples which are set to cycle three times each for 360 total trials. Users must respond to stimuli using a capital "L" or "D".

Device display properties in E-Studio should be set to 640x480 pixels. Caps lock should be active to make responding easier for participants.
 
Experiment Citation

Kramer, A.F., & Hahn, S. (1995). Splitting the beam: Distribution of attention over noncontiguous regions.

Experiment Abstract
In an effort to examine the flexibility with which attention can be allocated in visual space, we investigated whether subjects could selectively attend to multiple noncontiguous locations in the visual field. We examined this issue by pre-queueing two separate areas of the visual field and requiring subjects to decide whether the letters that appeared in these locations matched or mismatched while distractors that primed either the match or mismatch response were presented between the cued locations. If the distractors had no effect on performance, it would provide evidence that subjects can divide attention over noncontiguous areas of space. Subjects were able to ignore the distractors when the targets and distractors were presented as non-onset stimuli (i.e., when pre-masks were changed into the targets and distractors). In contrast, when the targets and distractors were presented as sudden-onset stimuli, subjects were unable to ignore the distractors. These results begin to define the conditions under which attention can be flexibly deployed to multiple noncontiguous locations in the visual field.

 
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