IT’S ABOUT TIME: CONVERGING METHODS FOR DISTINGUISHING THE INFLUENCE OF ENDOGENOUS AND EXOGENOUS MODES WITHIN THE TEMPORAL DOMAIN OF ATTENTION

Abstract

Endogenous (volitional) and exogenous (reflexive) modes of temporal attention are independent and differently impact performance (Lawrence and Klein, 2013; McCormick, Redden, Lawrence, & Klein, 2018). Despite this, these modes are often conflated within the various sub-domains of temporal attention research (Weinbach and Henik, 2012) and therefore, it is not well understood how the modes differently impact the processing of information. This dissertation aims to better identify the behavioural effects of endogenous and exogenous modes of temporal attention and theorize how these modes distinctly impact information processing via converging evidence from several methodological and analytic techniques. In Chapter 2, a meta-analysis inspired by Posner’s theory of alerting (1975) was conducted on 16 studies from the alerting literature to identify the likely effect size for reaction time and accuracy, and to evaluate whether improvements in speed always come at a cost to accuracy across different signal-target intervals. In Chapter 3, participants used a temporal cueing paradigm that manipulated temporal cue validity and the intensity of a warning stimulus, which allowed for the measurement of the endogenous and exogenous modes, respectively. Participants provided a speeded detection response of the briefly presented target and reported the target’s colour as accurately as possible on a continuous response colour-wheel. A Bayesian analysis on response fidelity used a von Mises distribution to evaluate the speed at which target-colour information accumulated. Chapter 4 applied a drift-diffusion model to data from a replication of Posner, Klein, Summers, & Buggie (1973), with a novel signaling procedure added to manipulate the contribution of the exogenous mode of temporal attention. The drift-rate and boundary separation parameters generated from this model allowed us to evaluate whether the modes of temporal attention increased the speed at which information accumulated, as well as whether a shift in response criterion occurred. In Chapter 5, converging evidence from the prior chapters is summarized to establish how these modes of temporal attention affect the processing of information, and revisions to past theories of attention are proposed. The dissertation concludes with suggestions for the future study of the temporal domain of attention.