NEUTRAL LOCATION CUES AND COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF VISUAL-ATTENTION SHIFTS/

The effects of location cuing on target responses can be examined by c omparing informative and neutral cuing conditions. In particular, the magnitudes of costs of invalid location cuing and of benefits of valid location cuing can be determined by comparing invalid and valid cue r esponses to location-nonspecific neutral cue responses. Cost/benefit a nalysis is based on the assumption that neutral baseline measures refl ect a general warning effect about the impending target's onset but no other specific target information. The experiments we report were car ried out to determine the appropriateness of two baseline measures for cost/benefit analyses of direct (nonsymbolic) location cuing effects. We found that a multiple-cue baseline attenuated the benefits of vali d cuing, and that a background-flash baseline arbitrarily attenuated c osts or benefits depending on flash intensity. It is proposed that a b ackground flash is the more suitable neutral cue because it is target- location-nonspecific, but that its intensity should be adjusted to eli cit a target-onset warning signal of the same magnitude as the locatio n cues with which it will be compared.