Abstract (eng)
In the present study we investigated the impact of covert attentional shifts on saccades, also respecting the theory of contingent capture. Within a dual-task-paradigma we wanted to answer two questions. Initiating with a detection task, we tested the contingent capture theory for the selection of visual stimuli. According to the theory, stimuli that were relevant for solving the task should be preferred over irrelevant stimuli. An EEG was recorded and we expected to observe an N2pc in the presence of taskrelevant stimuli as a component of attention. Second, a saccade task should clarify, if a covert attentional shift had a positive impact on the overt attentional shift towards the same target. With an eyetracker we measured the latency and the accurancy of saccadic eye movements. We expected shorter saccadic latencies while showing valid cue-target-displays. We could confirm our theory concerning the detection task. Although we observed an N2pc in the presence of both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, it was more significant in the relevant condition. We interpreted this as a sign for top-down contingent capture processing of visual information. Our theory concerning the saccade task could not be confirmed. When presenting valid stimuli, the saccades were especially long but also particularly accurate. We see a possible explenation in too long inter-stimulus-intervals between the presented stimuli resulting in a saccadic inhibition of return. Also, a lower saccadic speed for an improved performance in saccadic accuracy as postulated by the speed-acuracy trade-off theory seems possible.