Attentional shifts during visual search are accessible to introspection G Reyes1, J Sackur2 |
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1Université Pierre et Marie CURIE, France |
| Recent advances in metacognition have shown that participants are introspectively aware of different cognitive states. Here we set out to expand the range of introspective knowledge by asking whether participants could introspectively access the attentional shifts in two types of visual searches: feature and conjunction searches. To this end, we instructed participants to give, on a trial-by-trial basis, an estimate of the number of elements scanned before the perceptual decision. In addition, we collected eye movements, so as to distinguish overt and covert attentional shifts. Results show that participants gained access to the nature of the search process through introspective estimation of the number of attentional shifts. In a first experiment we allowed eye movements and analyses showed that participants were able to report the number of items scanned during the search. However, mediation analyses showed that this estimation tracked the search time and the number of saccades. In a second experiment we controlled voluntary eye movements, and showed that introspection presented the same pattern. This suggests that participants were indeed able to monitor covert attentional shifts. Additional experiments, were we manipulated attentional shifts with exogenous cues, confirmed that introspection is determined by the number of attentional shifts. |
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