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Abstract:
Mechanisms of selective attention serve to facilitate the
selection of appropriate objects and events from amongst the
cluttered and noisy scenes of everyday life. Many researchers have
claimed to show that selective attention can also be directed to
nociceptive (i.e., painful) stimuli? However, a number of
alternative interpretations of these findings remain possible in
terms of criterion shifts, task-switching, and spatial confounds.
We examined whether attention to nociception could still be
demonstrated when these alternatives were ruled out. Participants
made speeded footpedal discrimination responses to an unpredictable
sequence of nociceptive (pulsed CO2 laser) and visual stimuli
presented to two locations on the left volar forearm. Attention was
directed to one or the other modality by means of a symbolic cue at
the start of each trial that predicted the likely modality for the
upcoming target on the majority of trials. Significantly larger
cuing effects were reported for visual stimuli than for nociceptive
stimuli. The implication of these results for the multiple resource
view of attention, and for the attentional account of visual
dominance are discussed.
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