The Costs of Paying Overt and Covert Attention Assessed With Pupillometry

2023/06/14 by Damian Koevoet, Christoph Strauch, Marnix Naber +1 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Neuroscience · Decision Sciences · #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Mind wandering and attention #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics

paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/09567976231179378

openalex publication_date 2023/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

Attention can be shifted with or without an accompanying saccade (i.e., overtly or covertly, respectively). Thus far, it is unknown how cognitively costly these shifts are, yet such quantification is necessary to understand how and when attention is deployed overtly or covertly. In our first experiment ( N = 24 adults), we used pupillometry to show that shifting attention overtly is more costly than shifting attention covertly, likely because planning saccades is more complex. We pose that these differential costs will, in part, determine whether attention is shifted overtly or covertly in a given context. A subsequent experiment ( N = 24 adults) showed that relatively complex oblique saccades are more costly than relatively simple saccades in horizontal or vertical directions. This provides a possible explanation for the cardinal-direction bias of saccades. The utility of a cost perspective as presented here is vital to furthering our understanding of the multitude of decisions involved in processing and interacting with the external world efficiently.

Citations

• The Premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?
• Reorienting attention across the horizontal and vertical meridians: Evidence in favor of a premotor theory of attention
• Saccade target selection and object recognition: Evidence for a common attentional mechanism
• AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF LOCUS COERULEUS-NOREPINEPHRINE FUNCTION: Adaptive Gain and Optimal Performance
• Orienting of Attention
• Microsaccades uncover the orientation of covert attention

Cited by

• Putting effort into task complexity
• A review of the costs of eye movements

Discussions

• With pupil size you can also measure the costs of shifting covert attention, see our paper from 2023 (doi.org/10.1177/0956...). [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]

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