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| Research article summary (published 29 Apr 2003): |
The effect of attentional cueing on conscious awareness of stimulus and response.
Full Abstract
Attending to a cued location in space leads to faster reaction times when a stimulus is presented there. The reasons for this attentional effect, and its specific locus in the information-processing chain between stimulus and response, remain unclear. One suggestion is that attention speeds the conscious detection of stimuli. Surprisingly, this possibility appears not to have been tested directly. To resolve this question, we asked subjects to make simple responses to lateralised targets that followed either a valid, invalid or neutral cue, and to judge the perceived time of the target onset, or of their response, by delayed report of the position of a clock hand. Our results showed that only a small and non-significant part of the attentional effect is due to delayed conscious awareness of the stimulus. The greater part of the attentional effect is localised either subsequent to conscious detection of stimuli or occurs in a separate, parallel processing stream from that which generates the motor response.
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Author information
Author/s: Johnson, Helen (H); Haggard, Patrick (P);
Affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR, London, UK. helen.johnson(-atsign-)ucl.ac.uk
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article
Journal: Experimental brain research. Experimentelle Hirnforschung. Expérimentation cérébrale (Exp Brain Res), published in Germany. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-Jun; vol 150 (issue 4) : pp 490-6
Dates: Created 2003/06/03; Completed 2003/08/08; Revised 2008/02/15;
PMID: 12728292, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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