ABSTRACT
Intuition suggests that paying attention enhances perception; indeed, it has been taken as a defining characteristic that items selected by attention will be processed better, and rejected items worse, than neutral items. Attention was either diffused to all four locations or focused on two opposite ones, top-bottom or left-right, according to instructions that were always valid. Focusing attention in the visual periphery can slow reaction times (RTs) and reduce accuracy for identifying offset letters but can help detection of offset optotypes. The positive effects of attention can transcend location; example, in an object-cueing procedure, attended objects are typically processed more precisely than un-attended ones, even when the locations of attended and unattended objects are identical. Intuition suggests that paying attention enhances perception; indeed, it has been taken as a defining characteristic that items selected by attention will be processed better, and rejected items worse, than neutral items.
