Spatial uncertainty explains exogenous and endogenous attentional cuing effects in visual signal detection

Abstract

Attentional cues may increase the detectability of a stimulus by increasing its signal-to-noise ratio (signal enhancement) or by increasing the efficiency of the observer's decision making by reducing uncertainty about the location of the stimulus (uncertainty reduction). Although signal enhancement has typically been found in detection tasks only when stimuli are backwardly masked, some recent studies have reported signal enhancement with unmasked stimuli under conditions of spatial uncertainty (E. L. Cameron, J. C. Tai, & M. Carrasco, 2002; M. Carrasco, C. Penpeci-Talgar, & M. Eckstein, 2000). To test whether these increases in sensitivity in unmasked displays were due to signal enhancemen..