Ganea Natasa, Aslin Richard N, Lewkowicz David J
Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Jun 5. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03097-4.
Attention and visual gaze are usually tightly linked. Sometimes, however, we attend covertly to peripheral events without redirecting our gaze from the event that first attracted our overt attention. Despite evidence in adults that the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) varies with modulation of covert attention, paradigms used with adults are not suitable for use with infants and young children who cannot be instructed to perform tasks that dissociate overt from covert attention. Here, we provide evidence from a paradigm suitable for infants and young children that when gaze remains fixed on a central flickering visual stimulus while covert attention is directed briefly to the peripheral visual field, the SSVEP response undergoes significant attenuation. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and intertrial coherence (ITC) measures of the SSVEP response to the central stimulus were lower when participants covertly deployed their attention to the peripheral stimulus than when central gaze and attention were aligned. Crucially, SNR was a more robust measure of attentional modulation than ITC, even though both measures were significantly correlated. Moreover, a 6 Hz flicker of the central stimulus resulted in a more reliable measure of attentional modulation than 12 Hz, and the inclusion of higher harmonics did not improve the reliability of either the SNR or the ITC measures. Our paradigm is unique in that it relies on short (2 s) response epochs, validates eye position during rapid shifts of covert attention, and makes it possible to obtain SSVEP measures of covert attention from infants, young children, and special populations.
注意力和视觉凝视通常紧密相连。然而，有时我们会在不将目光从最初吸引我们显性注意力的事件上转移的情况下，暗中关注周边事件。尽管有证据表明成年人的稳态视觉诱发电位（SSVEP）会随着暗中注意力的调节而变化，但用于成年人的范式并不适用于婴幼儿，因为无法指导他们执行区分显性注意力和暗中注意力的任务。在此，我们通过一种适用于婴幼儿的范式提供证据表明，当目光固定在中央闪烁视觉刺激上，而暗中注意力短暂指向周边视野时，SSVEP反应会显著衰减。当参与者将注意力暗中投向周边刺激时，对中央刺激的SSVEP反应的信噪比（SNR）和试间相干性（ITC）测量值低于中央凝视和注意力一致时的测量值。至关重要的是，尽管两种测量方法都显著相关，但SNR是比ITC更可靠的注意力调节测量方法。此外，中央刺激的6赫兹闪烁比12赫兹闪烁能产生更可靠的注意力调节测量值，并且包含更高谐波并未提高SNR或ITC测量值的可靠性。我们的范式独特之处在于它依赖于短（2秒）反应时段，在暗中注意力快速转移期间验证眼睛位置，并使得能够从婴幼儿和特殊人群中获得暗中注意力的SSVEP测量值。
