The applicability of a cueing paradigm to study individual differences in the spotlight of attention

Abstract

Our spotlight of attention allows selecting and filtering relevant information from the world around us, and thereby influences how we perceive the world. However, it remains poorly understood whether there are, next to state influences, also stable differences in the sharpness of the spotlight between individuals: trait differences. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the validity of a cueing paradigm to assess group and individual differences. In an online experiment, we presented a cue to covertly direct attention to one side of the screen. This was followed by a target (gapped circle) appearing at varying distances from the cue, in either the valid or the invalid hemifield. The accuracy of reporting the gap direction was used to map the size of the attentional spotlight. First, results indicated that our task elicited the standard exogeneous cueing effects. Then, we fitted linear slopes to index the spatial gradient of the spotlight and demonstrated performance decline as a function of increasing target distance, showing that attention modulates the sharpness of the spotlight. Test-retest analyses revealed that while the patterns observed at the group level are robust, performance on the individual level was not reliably stable over a 2-week period, limiting the validity of the cueing paradigm for individual differences research. Whereas not suitable to detect variance in the homogeneous neurotypical population, we discuss potential use of the task for future research in clinical populations where altered attentional functioning are hallmarks in the clinical diagnosis (e.g., autism spectrum conditions), and in reassessing previously reported group level differences.