A new component of visual orienting: Implicit effects of peripheral information and subthreshold cues on covert attention

Abstract

Four experiments examined effects of peripheral cue stimuli on covert spatial attention. In Experiment 1 target stimuli were preceded by a pair of bilaterally presented cue letters. The relative location of the cues predicted target location (left or right), but participants were not informed of this. After a brief practice period, visual orienting was influenced by the letter cues. This implicit peripheral cuing effect was unrelated to participants' awareness of the cue–target relationship. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that visual orienting may occur independently of both perceptual awareness of the peripheral cue event itself and contingency awareness concerning the cue–target relation. Experiment 4 demonstrated that implicit peripheral cuing is qualitatively distinct from voluntary orienting. These findings are discussed in relation to work on spatial attention, implicit learning, and perception without awareness. What role does conscious awareness play in the control of visual orienting? This article describes research examining the role of conscious awareness in visual orienting tasks. In four experiments there was a contingent relationship between peripherally presented cue stimuli and the location of target objects. The results suggest two main conclusions. First, visual orienting can be influenced by a predictive relationship between peripheral cue stimuli and the location of target objects in the absence of explicit awareness concerning the nature of the cue–target relationship. We argue that a form of implicit learning underlies this ability to capitalize on cue–target relationships of which participants are unaware, and we use the term implicit peripheral cuing to refer to this process. A second conclusion is that visual orienting can be influenced by perceptually faint cues that are below the threshold for conscious detection as assessed by a two-alternative forced-choice cue detection procedure.