Question

Posner, Snyder, and Davidson (1980) examined spatial attention using arrows as a prime. Most of the time the arrow pointed to the area where the stimulus would appear, but 20% of the time it did not. They compared reaction times (RTs) when the cue was valid, when it was invalid, and when a neutral cue was presented. Which of the following statements was NOT supported by their findings?

	a.	RTs were slower in the invalid condition than in the valid condition.
	b.	We can attend to two different locations without a reduction in performance.
	c.	Spatial attention is limited in capacity.
	d.	RTs were faster for responses to valid cues relative to neutral cues.

Answer 1

Ans. (b) We can attend to two different locations without a reduction in performance.

Posner, Snyder, and Davidson (1980) examined spatial attention. Such cueing tasks are used to assess an individual’s ability to perform an attentional shift. This phenomenon has found its use to assess disorders such as focal brain injury and the effects of spatial attention.