Vision Attachment

Visual Attachment is a form of visual attention that involves directing attention to a location in space.

Visual Attachment allows humans to selectively process visual information through prioritization of an area within the visual field. A region of space within the visual field is selected for Visual Attachment and the information within this region then receives further processing. Visual Attachment Research shows that when spatial attention is evoked, an observer is typically faster and more accurate at detecting a target that appears in an expected location compared to an unexpected location.

Visual Attachment is distinctive from other forms of visual attention such as object-based attention and feature-based attention. These other forms of visual Attachment select an entire object or a specific feature of an object regardless of its location, whereas Visual Attachment selects a specific region of space and the objects and features within that region are processed.

A key property of visual attention is that attention can be selected based on spatial location and spatial cueing experiments have been used to assess this type of selection. In Posner’s cueing paradigm, of Visual Attachment , the task was to detect a target that could be presented in one of two locations and respond as quickly as possible. At the start of each Visual Attachment trial, a cue is presented that either indicates the location of the target (valid cue) or indicates the incorrect location thus misdirecting the observer (invalid cue). In addition, on some Visual Attachment trials there is no information given about the location of the target, as no cue is presented (neutral trials). Two distinct cues were used; the cue was either a peripheral ‘flicker’ around the target’s location (peripheral cue) or the cue was centrally displayed as a symbol, such as an arrow pointing to the location of the target (central cue).

Visual Attachment cueing tasks typically assess covert Visual Attachment, which refers to attention that can change spatially without any accompanying eye movements. To investigate Visual Attachment , it is necessary to ensure that observer’s eyes remain fixated at one location throughout the task. In Visual Attachment tasks, subjects are instructed to fixate on a central fixation point. Typically it takes 200 ms to make a saccadic eye movement to a location. Therefore, the combined duration of the cue and target is typically presented in less than 200 ms. This ensures that covert Visual Attachment is being measured and the effects are not due to overt eye movements. Some Visual Attachment studies specifically monitor eye movements to ensure that the observer’s eyes are continually fixated on the central fixation point.