Cai Yuqing, Van der Stigchel Stefan, Ganama Julia, Naber Marnix, Strauch Christoph
Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Psychophysiology. 2025 Mar;62(3):e70036. doi: 10.1111/psyp.70036.
Spatial visual attention prioritizes specific locations while disregarding others. The location of spatial attention can be deployed without overt movements (covertly). Spatial dynamics of covert attention are exceptionally difficult to measure due to the hidden nature of covert attention. One way to implicitly index covert attention is via the pupillary light response (PLR), as the strength of PLR is modulated by where attention is allocated. However, this method has so far necessitated simplistic stimuli and targeted only one driver of covert attention per experiment. Here we report a novel pupillometric method that allows tracking multiple effects on covert attention with highly complex stimuli. Participants watched movie clips while either passively viewing or top-down shifting covert attention to targets on the left, right, or both sides of the visual field. Using a recent toolbox (Open-DPSM), we evaluated whether luminance changes in regions presumably receiving more attention contribute more strongly to the pupillary responses-and thereby reveal covert attention. Three established effects of covert attention on pupil responses were found: (1) a bottom-up effect suggesting more attention drawn to more dynamic regions, (2) a top-down effect suggesting more attention towards the instructed direction, and (3) an overall tendency to attend to the left side (i.e. pseudoneglect). Beyond the successful validation of our method, these drivers of covert attention did not modulate each other's effects, indicating independent contributions of bottom-up, top-down, and pseudoneglect to covert attention in stimuli as dynamic as the present. We further explain how to use Open-DPSM to track covert attention in a brief tutorial.
空间视觉注意力会优先关注特定位置，而忽略其他位置。空间注意力的位置可以在不进行明显动作的情况下（隐蔽地）进行部署。由于隐蔽注意力的隐藏性质，其动态过程极难测量。一种隐式索引隐蔽注意力的方法是通过瞳孔光反应（PLR），因为PLR的强度会受到注意力分配位置的调制。然而，到目前为止，这种方法需要使用简单的刺激，并且每个实验仅针对一种隐蔽注意力驱动因素。在此，我们报告一种新颖的瞳孔测量方法，该方法能够使用高度复杂的刺激来追踪对隐蔽注意力的多种影响。参与者观看电影片段，同时要么被动观看，要么自上而下将隐蔽注意力转移到视野左侧、右侧或两侧的目标上。使用最近的一个工具箱（Open-DPSM），我们评估了推测接收更多注意力的区域中的亮度变化是否对瞳孔反应有更强的贡献，从而揭示隐蔽注意力。发现了隐蔽注意力对瞳孔反应的三种既定影响：（1）一种自下而上的效应，表明更多注意力被吸引到更动态的区域；（2）一种自上而下的效应，表明更多注意力朝向指示的方向；（3）一种总体上倾向于关注左侧的趋势（即假性忽视）。除了成功验证我们的方法之外，这些隐蔽注意力驱动因素并未相互调节彼此的效应，这表明在像当前这样动态的刺激中，自下而上因素、自上而下因素和假性忽视对隐蔽注意力有独立贡献。我们还在一个简短的教程中进一步解释了如何使用Open-DPSM来追踪隐蔽注意力。
