Visual Orienting

Basic mechanisms of attention shifts and eye movements

In this line of research, we are interested in cognitive processes behind attention shifts and the execution of every single eye movement. For example, we could show that the target object (for an eye movement) is already anticipated prior to the onset of the eye movement,  andthat this representation affects eye movement control. Furthermore, we could show that (covert) attention shifts are temporally closely coupled to (overt) gaze shifts: When we speed up the execution of saccades (by implementing specific experimental conditions), we can also speed up (covert) attention shifts that typically occur prior to the observable gaze shift. Finally, we also studied the impact of the mere presence of another person in the lab on the ability to voluntarily shift the locus of attention.