The Impact of Scaling Rather Than Shaping Attention: Changes in the Scale of Attention Using Global Motion Inducers Influence Both Spatial and Temporal Acuity

Abstract

Originally, the zoom lens model of attention scaling proposed that narrowing attention to a small area of the visual field improves visual perception (Eriksen & St. James, 1986). A large body of empirical evidence supports this model, showing that narrow attention enhances performance in spatial acuity tasks. Despite this, the zoom lens model does not explicitly consider how attention scaling influences different elements of vision, such as temporal processing. More recent models of attention scaling suggest that attentional scaling has different effects on spatial and temporal acuity (Goodhew, Lawrence, & Edwards, 2017; Goodhew, Shen, & Edwards, 2016). However, the evidence to date supporting these models has had one major pitfall: different-sized unfilled shapes are presented to focus attention in or spread it out broadly. This method is problematic because participants may not spread their attention across the entire region defined by unfilled shapes and instead may attend to only the annulus region of the shape. To address this, we developed a new method to manipulate attention-one which requires the pooling of information across the entire stimulus, not just around the outer border. We then tested the influence of attention scaling on perception using spatial and temporal gap tasks. Across 2 experiments, we found that sustaining a narrow attention scale improved both spatial and temporal acuity. These findings challenge recent research suggesting that attention scaling has differential impacts on spatial and temporal processing and instead support the zoom lens model that was proposed over 30 years ago.