The orienting of attention across binocular disparity B Caziot1, M Rolfs2, B Backus3 |
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1SUNY College of Optometry, NY, United States |
| Attention is often described as a spotlight, which disregards depth information within the visual scene. Here we study the orienting of attention across binocular disparity, a depth cue. A discrimination target was displayed 2 degrees above fixation and—in each eye independently—displaced 20 arcmin to the right or left, resulting in 4 possible binocular locations: right, left, closer or farther than fixation. 200 ms before target onset, a small, uninformative cue was flashed either at the target location (valid cue) or at fixation (neutral cue). The cue, blank and target durations were each 100 ms, and the target was masked until response. Observers reported the orientation of the target (Gabor, 30 arcmin envelope, tilted ±30º), whose overall contrast was kept constant while pixel noise caused the Signal-to-Noise Ratio to range between 5 values (-35 to -15dB). We found a significant decrease in threshold for the valid cue at both target locations in depth and for the lateral locations. Cuing did not change vergence eye posture, measured using Nonius lines in randomly interleaved control trials. We conclude that the cue attracted attention to a specific depth plane. We currently investigate whether this cueing effect is monocular, cyclopean, or both. |
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