NCT06587113

An Investigation of Attentional and Inhibitory Processes During Active Visual Search in Humans

Contributions of Attentional and Inhibitory Functioning to Saccadic Decisions

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 225 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Colorado, Denver · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The goal of this study is to investigate the finding that there are large individual differences in how participants move their eyes during active visual search. For example, some individuals tend to fixate, that is point their eyes steadily at a single location, for longer than other individuals before moving to another location. This experiment will use behavioral tasks to measure an individual's attentional and inhibitory functioning, and then see how each of these contributes to between-participant variability in eye movement behavior during visual search.

Detailed description

To accomplish the goal of understanding the source of individual variability in eye movement patterns, each participant will complete three separate tasks. The first task will require participants to find a target and eye movements will be measured to assess individual differences in fixation duration and other types of eye movement behavior. A second task will evaluate attentional functioning over the visual field by requiring participants to detect briefly-presented targets using their peripheral vision. Finally, a third task will assess inhibitory functioning by having participants attempt to stop eye movements after they have been programmed.

Conditions

• Eye Movements
• Attention
• Executive Function

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Contour Search Task	In this task, participants sit in front of a computer screen with their head in a chinrest to control for distance from the monitor and eye-tracking equipment. For the visual search task, participants will search for a visual target among distractors and make a response regarding its orientation. The target is defined by a contour formed through oriented Gabor patches.
BEHAVIORAL	Stop signal Task	In this task, participants sit in front of a computer screen with their head in a chinrest to control for distance from the monitor and eye-tracking equipment. For the stop-signal task, participants will make an eye movement to a target that appears on the screen, except on trials where a visual signal appears indicating they should cancel this behavior.
BEHAVIORAL	Useful field of View	In this task, participants sit in front of a computer screen with their head in a chinrest to control for distance from the monitor and eye-tracking equipment. In the useful field of view task, participants will report the location of a briefly-presented and masked target, while also responding to the identify of a central target in some blocks.
BEHAVIORAL	Attentional capture search task	In this task, participants sit in front of a computer screen with their head in a chinrest to control for distance from the monitor and eye-tracking equipment. For this visual search task, participants will search for a visual target among distractors and make a response regarding its orientation. The target is defined as a unique shape, and is sometimes shown with a salient distractor.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-09-15
• Primary completion: 2026-05-15
• Completion: 2026-05-15
• First posted: 2024-09-19
• Last updated: 2026-02-20

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States