Introduction

Cognitive psychologists have found that when attention is directed to a particular location in space, items that are located within that space are processed more efficiently. This is generally known as the spotlight theory of visual attention. One way this phenomenon has been studied has been through the use of spatial cueing experiments—experiments in which cues are used to direct attention to a particular location in space before the presentation of some targets. Processing time for cued targets is then compared to processing times for targets whose location is not cued ahead of time. There are two types of cues that experimenters use, exogenous and endogenous cues. Exogenous (or ‘push’) cues direct attention with information (e.g. the word ‘right’ would be an exogenous cue to direct attention to the right) and endogenous (or ‘pull’) cues which direct attention by appearing in a particular location in space (for example, a flash to the right would direct attention to the right). In this experiment, you will gain experience with both cue types.