Attention Allocation for Voluntary Smooth Eye Movements

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Project Summary Smooth pursuit is usually studied with small, spot stimuli, yet extended natural objects stimulate peripheral retina and have features of interest. It is unknown how peripheral motion interacts with pursuit, or how attention is allocated to features during it. We have evidence that peripheral motion improves pursuit by minimizing saccades, and that attention is not locked to the fovea, but can be allocated flexibly to the periphery when the foveal pursuit burden is reduced. Furthermore, pilot data show that merely diverting attention from the fovea improves pursuit. It follows that a motion system incorporating peripheral retina can drive ocular pursuit more smoothly and allow an attentive process to simultaneously monitor local motion features, and our pilot data support this hypothesis. In addition we find that attentional resources for these pursuit and feature monitoring systems appear to be separate. Specific Aims are: Aim 1) Is attention allocation during pursuit flexible? Experiments will assess attention allocation under conditions that manipulate foveal attention demands while controlling for low-level features such as luminance transients. Aim 2) Does foveal attention increase saccades during pursuit? Experiments in this aim measure pursuit and manipulate attention and the locus of retinal stimulation. Aim 3) Do multi-element stimuli simultaneously support independent eye and attention movements? Experiments investigate whether attentional resources for pursuit and feature tracking are independent using attention operating characteristic (AOC) analysis. Other experiments will determine if only the attended elements are pursued, and if they are, if attention still arises from two sources.