It is the flash which appears, the movement will follow: Investigating the relation between spatial attention and obstacle avoidance

Abstract

Obstacles are represented in the attentional landscape. However, it is currently unclear what the exclusive contribution of attention is to the avoidance response. This is because in earlier obstacle avoidance designs, it was impossible to disentangle an effect of attention from the changing features of the obstacle (e.g., its identity, size, or orientation). Conversely, any feature manipulation could be interpreted as an attentional as well as an obstacle effect on avoidance behavior. We tested the possible tuning of avoidance responses by a spatial cue in two experiments. In both experiments, spatial and nonspatial cues were separately given as go cues for an obstacle avoidance task. Participants had to reach past two obstacles in Experiment 1, and past a single obstacle in Experiment 2. We found that when the right obstacle was flashed, participants veered away more and produced more-variable trajectories over trials than in conditions with nonspatial and left spatial cues, regardless of the presence or absence of another obstacle. Therefore, we concluded that the tuning of avoidance responses can be influenced by spatial cues. Moreover, we speculated that a flashed obstacle receives more attentional weighting in the attentional landscape and prompts a stronger repulsion away from the obstacle.