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Abstract

Recently we have begun to explore the incidental processing of biological motion. We ask whether walking figures that an observer is told to ignore still affect performance on a primary task. Using a number of different paradigms, we have shown that to-be-ignored walkers are still processed and can affect behaviour. During the course of these studies we have observed that such incidental effects are often modulated by the left - right orientation of the ignored walkers. More specifically, the extent of interference tends to be much larger when the to-be-ignored figures are shown in left profile versus right profile. Furthermore, the magnitude of the asymmetry tends to be much larger when the primary task itself is attentionally demanding. Here, we present data from two paradigms, an Eriksen flanker task and a novel 'checkerboard' task. In the latter, alternate display squares contain either a walking figure or a patch of randomly moving dots. Observers are told to ignore the walkers and have to make judgments on the relative phase of the dot patterns. Data from both tasks are used to illustrate the aforementioned direction asymmetry and the results are discussed in terms of canonical viewpoints for attentional sprites.