Presaccadic Attention Enhances and Reshapes the Contrast Sensitivity Function Differentially around the Visual Field.

Contrast sensitivity (CS), which constrains human vision, decreases from fovea to periphery, from the horizontal to the vertical meridian, and from the lower vertical to the upper vertical meridian. It also depends on spatial frequency (SF), and the contrast sensitivity function (CSF) depicts this relation. To compensate for these visual constraints, we constantly make saccades and foveate on relevant objects in the scene.

Eye and hand movements disrupt attentional control.

Voluntary attentional control is the ability to selectively focus on a subset of visual information in the presence of other competing stimuli-a marker of cognitive control enabling flexible, goal-driven behavior. To test its robustness, we contrasted attentional control with the most common source of attentional orienting in daily life: attention shifts prior to goal-directed eye and hand movements. In a multi-tasking paradigm, human participants attended at a location while planning eye or hand movements elsewhere.