Journal article
Attentional Mechanisms in Simple Visual Detection: A Speed-Accuracy Trade-off Analysis
CC Liu, BJ Wolfgang, PL Smith
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance | AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC | Published : 2009
DOI: 10.1037/a0014255
Abstract
Recent spatial cuing studies have shown that detection sensitivity can be increased by the allocation of attention. This increase has been attributed to one of two mechanisms: signal enhancement or uncertainty reduction. Signal enhancement is an increase in the signal-to-noise ratio at the cued location; uncertainty reduction is a reduction in the uncertainty associated with the location of the target. In displays with low uncertainty, cuing effects are typically found only if targets are backwardly masked. This phenomenon is known as the mask-dependent cuing effect. This effect was investigated in four experiments using the response signal paradigm, which controlled for speed-accuracy trade..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Melbourne Research Scholarship to Charles C. Liu and by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP055876 to Philip Smith. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the Monash University Accident Research Centre. Portions of this research were presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Society of Mathematical Psychology, 2006, the 34th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, 2007, and the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, 2007. We would like to thank Adam Morris for many helpful discussions.