Understanding conceptual cueing

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In order for humans to successfully interact with our complex visual environments, we must prioritize visual information for subsequent perceptual and cognitive processing. The ability to selectively attend to portions of the visual field is vital for this prioritization, and recent research has shown that attentional orienting may be accomplished through exposure to conceptual cues that hold implicit spatial meaning. Such cues (e.g., ‘devil', ‘hat', ‘joy') activate internal spatial representations and exposure to them produces faster responses to peripheral targets at spatially-compatible locations. For example, work from my laboratory has shown facilitation effects at spatially compatible locations for a variety of conceptual cues, including words with implicit direction (‘boots'; Gozli, Pratt, Martin, & Chasteen, 2015), and words referring to religion (“god”; Chasteen, Burdzy, & Pratt, 2010), mood (‘happy'; Gozli, Chasteen, & Pratt, 2013), or self-esteem (‘proud'; Taylor, Lam, Chasteen, & Pratt, 2015). Although my lab and others have demonstrated the generalizability of cueing effects for different types of concepts, there is still much to be learned regarding the fundamental processes that determine how conceptual cues operate. Furthering this understanding is critical, because conceptual cues are ubiquitous – we encounter them through a variety of contexts, whether through aural cues from music or conversation with others, or visual cues through media. Thus, conceptual cues can be triggered in a number of ways and then subsequently influence what we attend and respond to in our visual environment.******In the proposed research I aim to make significant advances in understanding the link between conceptual cues and visual attention through rigorously testing two propositions. The first proposition is that the internal spatial representations that conceptual cues activate causes visual attention to be oriented to the corresponding region of space in the visual field, and this unique shift in attention has properties of exogenous attention (it happens automatically) and endogenous attention (it is internally driven). I will test this assumption in three subprograms of research. The second proposition I will test is that the internal spatial representation activated by conceptual cues is flexible, varying across time (short-term) and individuals (long-term). I will examine this proposition in two subprograms of research. Testing these two propositions will result in a more complete understanding of how the processing of conceptual information (which occurs throughout our daily experiences) influences what information from the visual field is selected for further processing. This is important to know, as the visual information we select to process is an important determinant of our current and future behaviour.