LE3 .A278 2017

2017

Champod, Anne Sophie

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology with Neuroscience option

Psychology

Initial studies using an ecologically valid spatial cueing task (Spatial Delivery) found that there may be differences in how endogenous attention is oriented to spatial locations embedded in complex visual scenes (Champod et al., unpublished manuscript). These studies cued attention to one side of a scene, each side encompassing two possible target locations. In these studies, endogenous cueing effects were not significant at the group level, but significant relationships were found between cueing effects and attention-related behaviours. In the present three studies, attention was cued to more specific and smaller locations (different locations in each study) in a modified version of Spatial Delivery to assess if the lack of significant cueing effects in previous studies can be explained by the larger size of the cued areas. There were 79 young healthy adults tested using Spatial Delivery and the Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scale. Consistent with the hypothesis, significant cueing effects were elicited in the three studies. Unexpectedly, the association between attention-related behaviours and cueing effects was largely non-significant. Lower task demands in the modified version of Spatial Delivery may explain this finding, highlighting the importance of exploring further the relationship between cueing effects and attention behaviours.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1602