Multiple object tracking in the presence of a goal: Attentional anticipation and suppression.

In previous studies, we found that tracking multiple objects involves anticipatory attention, especially in the linear direction, even when a target bounced against a wall. We also showed that active involvement, in which the wall was replaced by a controllable paddle, resulted in increased allocation of attention to the bounce direction. In the current experiments, we wanted to further investigate the potential influence of the valence of the heading of an object. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were instructed to catch targets with a movable goal. In Experiment 3, participants were instructed to manipulate the permeability of a static wall in order to let targets either approach goals (i.e., green goals) or avoid goals (i.e., red goals). The results of Experiment 1 showed that probe detection ahead of a target that moved in the direction of the goal was higher as compared to probe detection in the direction of a no-goal area. Experiment 2 provided further evidence that the attentional highlighting found in the first experiment depends on the movement direction toward the goal. In Experiment 3, we found that not so much the positive (or neutral) valence (here, the green and no-goal areas) led to increased allocation of attention but rather a negative valence (here the red goals) led to a decreased allocation of attention.

Influences of active control on attention allocation in MOT.

We investigated the influence of active involvement on the way visual attention is distributed during multiple-object tracking (MOT), specifically when objects bounce, using two experiments modeled after the videogame Pong. In both experiments, participants were either assigned to an active group or a passive group. The active groups were instructed to move a virtual paddle in order to bounce target objects as often as possible. Participants in the passive groups viewed recordings of trials from the active groups. In all conditions, participants were asked to track the target objects and to detect dot probes that briefly appeared on the screen. Using probe detection, we explored the distribution of attentional resources over the linear and bounce trajectories of tracked objects. We found that active involvement can enhance probe detection along the future post-bounce trajectory, but it depends on the difficulty of the task.

Distinguishing influences of overt and covert attention in anticipatory attentional target tracking.

This study investigated the relative contributions of overt and covert attention on the apparent anticipatory nature of attention in two experiments, using two different object tracking tasks, both combined with a probe detection task. In Experiment 1, we investigated the distribution of attention for overtly and covertly tracked targets separately at low tracking load using a single-object tracking task (one target, one distractor). We found anisotropic distributions of probe detection rates for both overtly tracked and covertly tracked targets, with highest detection rates at locations ahead of the target's movement. In Experiment 2, we investigated the distribution of attention in overt and covert tracking at a relatively higher tracking load using a multiple-object tracking task (two targets, two distractors) in which viewers overtly tracked one target while simultaneously covertly tracking a second target. We found anisotropic distributions of probe detection rates around covertly tracked targets only. We conclude that covert attention always anticipates motion when keeping track of moving objects, while overt attention is more flexible and its anticipatory nature depends on the tracking task.