Abstract
Martin et al. (2005) demonstrated that visual attention could be entrained to temporal structure much like auditory attention, but their design confounded choice reaction and go-no go processes, clouding the interpretation of the benefit to entrained attention. Design improvements corrected the confound and revealed a reduced but still significant reaction time benefit of entrained visual attention. In two new experiments, flashes of light counted down to a target that required a choice reaction. Reaction time and accuracy were measured. Accuracy was uniformly high. Manipulations of target location relative to cue location revealed no evidence of location specificity at entrainment to 2 Hz. There was a benefit to reaction time whether the target occurred at the same visual field location as the cue or a different location. There was limited location specificity of entrainment to 1 Hz. The benefit of entrainment was present but reduced when the target was at a different visual field location than the cue. Manipulation of timing to make the cue uninformative reduced the benefit to the expected pattern of a simple warning stimulus paradigm, indicating that when the cue was uninformative participants either did not entrain visual attention or ignored the entrained process.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012