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  1. (Oct 31, 2014) A peer-reviewed version of this preprint has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Vision.

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.

Additional Information

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.

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