Movements of attention in the three spatial dimensions and the meaning of “neutral” cues

Six experiments were conducted to examine the effect of various attentional manipulations on reaction time to visual stimuli. The first three experiments compared the responses to stimuli presented in the depth (Experiment 1), along the horizontal (Experiment 2), and vertical (Experiment 3) meridians in a valid condition (stimulus presented in the cued position), an invalid condition (stimulus presented in the alternative position to the cued position) and a neutral condition (no information on stimulus position). The most interesting result was the demonstration that attention can be moved along the sagittal plane in the absence of vergence eye movements and that when attention is focused on a certain point, unattended points between this point and the observer (i.e. near points) are responded faster than unattended points beyond it (i.e. far points). In the frontal plane no asymmetry was found between the responses to unattended points above or below the fixation, whereas a certain, albeit non-constant, advantage was present for unattended stimuli on the right of the fixation point in respect to those on the left of it. The second series of experiments was similar to the first one, except that a new situation was introduced in which the fixation point was cued and stimuli could appear either in correspondence to it or in a peripheral position (invalid condition with attention at the fixation point). The results showed that in this new situation the responses to unattended stimuli are much longer than they are under neutral conditions, and as long as they are under conventional invalid condition. It is suggested that the so called neutral condition is a condition of diffuse attention and an attempt is made to explain it in terms of a premotor theory of attention.