The pupillary light response reflects exogenous attention and inhibition of return

, , ,
1 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive UMR 7290, CNRS, Marseille, France
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
3 Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.422v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, Psychiatry and Psychology
Keywords
pupillometry, eye movements, visual attention, inhibition of return, experimental psychology, visual perception
Copyright
© 2014 Mathôt et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Mathôt S, Dalmaijer ES, Grainger J, Van der Stigchel S. 2014. The pupillary light response reflects exogenous attention and inhibition of return. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e422v1

Abstract

Here we show that the pupillary light response reflects exogenous (involuntary) shifts of attention and inhibition of return. Participants fixated in the center of a display that was divided into a bright and a dark half. An exogenous cue attracted attention to the bright or dark side of the display. Initially, the pupil constricted when the bright, as compared to the dark side of the display was cued, reflecting a shift of attention towards the exogenous cue. Crucially, this pattern reversed about one second after cue presentation. This later-occurring, relative dilation (when the bright side was cued) reflected disengagement from the previously attended location, analogous to the behavioral phenomenon of inhibition of return. Indeed, we observed a strong correlation between 'pupillary inhibition' and behavioral inhibition of return. We conclude that the pupillary light response is a complex eye movement that reflects how we selectively parse and interpret visual input.

Author Comment

This manuscript has been submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed venue.