Abstract
The consequences of attending to points in orientation-space are examined in two experiments. Subjects are cued to attend to lines of a particular orientation, and cue validity (Experiment 1) and probe orientation (Experiment 2) are varied. Performance is directly related to the difference between attended and presented/probed orientations. Performance is superior when these values are coincident, most adversely affected when the presented/probed orientation is near the attended orientation, and intermediate for presented/probed orientations far from the attended orientation. As has been observed in the spatial domain, these results indicate that an inhibitory surround exists when attention is directed to a point in orientation space. These results are discussed in the context of the Selective Tuning Model and the Biased Competition Model.
Funding provided by NSERC and CIHR