The pupillary light response reflects exogenous attention and inhibition of return
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
- (Oct 31, 2014) A peer-reviewed version of this preprint has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Vision.
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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.
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2014. The pupillary light response reflects exogenous attention and inhibition of return. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e422v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.422v1note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
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This manuscript has been submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed venue.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Sebastiaan Mathôt conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Edwin S. Dalmaijer conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Jonathan Grainger conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Stefan Van der Stigchel conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Human Ethics
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
The experiment was conducted with approval of the Aix-Marseille Université (formerly Université de Provence) ethics committee in the context of ERC grant 230313.
Grant Disclosures
The following grant information was disclosed by the authors:
European Union FP7 ERC grant 230313
European Union FP7 Marie Curie ITN grant 606901
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding the deposition of related data:
https://github.com/smathot/materials_for_P0009.1
Funding
SM and JG were supported by ERC grant 230313. ESD was supported through European Union FP7 Marie Curie ITN grant 606901. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
