Is gaze cuing more like endogenous or exogenous orienting?

People shift their attention in the direction of another person's gaze. This phenomenon, called gaze cuing, shares properties with purely endogenous (i.e., "deliberate") and purely exogenous (i.e., "reflexive") control of spatial attention. For example, as with purely endogenous orienting, gaze cues appear at visual fixation; yet, as with purely exogenous orienting, gaze cues elicit shifts of attention rapidly after their appearance. Prior experiments have shown that when controlled endogenously versus exogenously, the effects of attention upon the processing of targets are dramatically different. Briand and Klein (1987; see also Briand, 1998) showed that endogenous orienting is additive with opportunities for illusory conjunctions, whereas exogenous orienting is interactive. Klein (1994) showed that endogenous orienting is interactive with nonspatial expectancies, whereas exogenous orienting is additive. In the present project, we applied this double-dissociation strategy to attention controlled by gaze cues. In Experiment 1, gaze cuing effects (in accuracy) were additive with opportunities for illusory conjunctions (akin to endogenous control), whereas in Experiment 2, gaze cuing was additive with the nonspatial expectancy effect (akin to exogenous orienting). Therefore, in the nature of its effects upon performance, gaze cuing functions like a hybrid of endogenous and exogenous orienting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Slippage of the attentional beam when searching in space and in time.

"Slippage" of attention in time and space has been studied separately, using visual search (e.g., Snyder, 1972) and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) (e.g., McLean, Broadbent, & Broadbent, 1982). The primary purpose of the current study was to see if we could replicate these findings of slippage and if we did, to use individual differences to explore relationships between slippage in the temporal and spatial domains. The participants identified and localized targets in visual search and in RSVP sequences. In Experiment 1, we used visual search and RSVP tasks closely replicating the methods of Snyder and McLean et al. In Experiment 2, we closely equated the two tasks as far as possible while maintaining the crucial space/time difference. Consistent with the previous studies, and reflecting binding errors (or slippage) in both space and time, erroneously reported identities were predominantly from items adjacent to the targets. Correlations between measures of the slippage in space (visual search) and time (RSVP) were near zero, suggesting that different attentional 'beams' bind features in space and time, a possibility that is consistent with other behavioural as well as neuropsychological evidence.