Rebecca LawrenceGriffith University · School of Applied Psychology
Rebecca Lawrence
PhD
About
11
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (11)
An important mechanism used to selectively process relevant information in the environment is spatial attention. One fundamental way in which spatial attention is deployed is attentional scaling – the process of focusing attentional resources either narrowly or broadly across the visual field. Although early empirical work suggested that narrowing...
The functioning of spatial attention and its effects on visual processing are typically studied using chronometric and accuracy measures of behaviour. However, a growing body of literature has studied the attentional repulsion effect (ARE). Simply put, when attention is focused on one location in the visual field, stimuli appearing nearby the atten...
The attention repulsion effect (ARE) refers to distortions in the perception of space for areas nearby the focus of attention. For instance, when attending to the right-hand side of the visual field, objects in central vision may appear as though they are shifted to the left. The phenomenon is likely caused by changes in visual cell functioning. To...
Attention is often captured by irrelevant but salient changes in the environment, and usually results in slowed search speeds and increased errors during a typical visual search task. Nonetheless, a recent study conducted by Moher (2020, Psychological Science, 31[1], 31–42) found that the effect of a highly salient distractor on visual search depen...
Attention can be flexibly changed to optimize visual processing: it can be oriented, resized, or even divided. Although much is known about these processes individually, much less is known about how they interact with one another. In the present study we examined how the spatial extent of the attentional focus modulates the efficiency of the first...
The current study aimed to explore cultural differences in the covert spatial distribution of attention. In particular, we tested whether those born in an East Asian country adopted a different distribution of attention compared to individuals born in a Western country. Previous work suggests that Western individuals tend to distribute attention na...
Originally, the zoom lens model of attention scaling proposed that narrowing attention to a small area of the visual field improves visual perception (Eriksen & St. James, 1986). A large body of empirical evidence supports this model, showing that narrow attention enhances performance in spatial acuity tasks. Despite this, the zoom lens model does...
Spatial attention is a necessary cognitive process, allowing for the direction of limited capacity resources to varying locations in the visual field for improved visual processing. Thus, understanding how ageing influences these processes is vital. The current study explored the relationship between the spatial spread of attention and healthy agei...
There are volumes of information available to process in visual scenes. Visual spatial attention is a critically important selection mechanism that prevents these volumes from overwhelming our visual system’s limited-capacity processing resources. We were interested in understanding the effect of the size of the attended area on visual perception....
Projects
Project (1)
In my PhD I explored the dynamics of attentional scaling. This can be thought of as the ability to focus in, or spread out spatial attention resources in the visual field. This is an important cognitive process for a variety of tasks such as reading and driving.
During the project, I researched how differences in age and cultural background influence attentional scaling, as well as how this relates to different streams of visual perception (i.e. the parvocellular and magnocellular pathways).
