Gender Differences in the Orienting of Visuospatial Attention: The Influences of Cue Types and Expectancy

• Main Authors: Hung-Chi Li, 黎虹綺
• Other Authors: Wen-Jui Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/90912067963324912042

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 神經科學研究所 === 98 === Previous studies have established a small but robust gender differences in the orienting of spatial attention triggered by eye gazes and arrowheads. Three hypotheses have been proposed to explain the phenomenon: (1) perceptual hypothesis, (2) attentional control hypothesis, and (3) hybrid of the above two hypotheses. In the current study, we adopted counterpredictive cueing paradigm to clarify which of the three hypotheses better explain the gender differences in the cueing effects of eye gaze or arrow cues. In Experiment 1, there were two potential target locations. We found gender difference only for peripheral flash cues, where females showed stronger control abilities than males in using top-down information of counterpredictive probability to process peripheral cues. In Experiment 2 and 3, eye gaze cues were used and there were four potential target locations. Experiment 2 showed gender difference in eye gaze cueing where males had larger control ability than females in using the top-down information of probability. In Experiment 3, fewer SOAs were used in the counterpredictive gaze-cueing paradigm and the gender differences rescinded. Taken together, we suggested that the gender differences in the attentional control abilities of spatial orienting depends on the type of cues. Females have stronger top-down control of their attention when processing peripheral cues; on the contrary, males have stronger top-down control of their attention when processing eye gaze cues.