Hands Up: Attentional Prioritization of Space Near the Hand

This study explored whether hand location affected spatial attention. The authors used a visual covert-orienting paradigm to examine whether spatial attention mechanisms-location prioritization and shifting attention-were supported by bimodal, hand-centered representations of space. Placing 1 hand n...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2006-02, Vol.32 (1), p.166-177
Main Authors: Reed, Catherine L, Grubb, Jefferson D, Steele, Cleophus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Body Awareness
Choice Behavior
Cognition & reasoning
Cues
Eyes & eyesight
Functional Laterality
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hand (Anatomy)
Hands
Human
Humans
Kinesthesis
Multimodal perception
Needs Assessment
Neurons
Orientation
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Perception
Performance Tests
Personal Space
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Psychophysics
Reaction Time
Selective Attention
Shift Studies
Space Perception
Spatial Ability
Spatial Perception
Task Analysis
Validity
Visual Perception
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study explored whether hand location affected spatial attention. The authors used a visual covert-orienting paradigm to examine whether spatial attention mechanisms-location prioritization and shifting attention-were supported by bimodal, hand-centered representations of space. Placing 1 hand next to a target location, participants detected visual targets following highly predictive visual cues. There was no a priori reason for the hand to influence task performance unless hand presence influenced attention. Results showed that target detection near the hand was facilitated relative to detection away from the hand, regardless of cue validity. Similar facilitation was found with only proprioceptive or visual hand location information but not with arbitrary visual anchors or distant targets. Hand presence affected attentional prioritization of space, not the shifting of attention.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.32.1.166