Is it possible to dissociate a voluntary process from a automatized process in endogenous orienting of attention in humans

JORDÃO, E. M. A. Is it possible to dissociate a voluntary process from a automatized process in endogenous orienting of attention in humans? 2019. 118f. Thesis (PhD) Biosciences Institute, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, 2019. Orienting of attention is considered to occur at least in two distinct ways, i.e. exogenously (or reflexive) or endogenously (or voluntary). However, evidence suggests that endogenous orienting of attention could involve both voluntary and automatized processes. The main objective of the three studies reported here was to differentiate, behaviorally and electrophysiologically, the temporal course of a voluntary process from an automatized process involved in endogenous orienting of attention. The experiments were designed to investigate the effects of voluntary orienting of attention when avoiding the possibility of an automatization usually observed after repetitive contiguous presentation of a cue and a target. For this, two variants of the classic cueing task were created. In the first chapter the task consisted of presenting a relevant visual stimulus between the cue and target presentation to prevent the contiguity of these stimuli. The results indicated that voluntary shift of attention appears to occur only at time intervals longer than 150 ms while automatized orienting occurs at times as short as 150 ms. For the task on the second chapter the symbolic cue was different for each trial requiring a new interpretation of its spatial meaning, and thus avoiding repetitive presentation of a single cue followed by the target at a location. It was observed that when there is a conflict in the interpretation of the cue the voluntary orienting of attention is impaired, but may still occur at a time interval of 250 ms. This impairment in shifting attention would related to a decrease in target decoding in working visual memory demonstrated by electrophysiological results. Moreover, chapter three investigated the time course required for automatized and voluntary orienting of attention processes using different types of cues such as arrows, geometric shapes associated with direction of attention in space, and a choice cue to which the subject could freely choose which side to direct her attention to. It was observed that the time courses of orienting attention are similar for processes involving cues associated with locations and choice cue, and may occur at time intervals as short as 200 ms. However, an automatized orienting of attention triggered by arrow cues has a much shorter time course. Thus, the results indicate that voluntary orienting of attention even without the interference of automatized processes can occur at shorter time intervals than the expected. This would be due to a facilitation of task performance related to a wellestablished contingencies in the task and the presence of many repetitions allowing learning mechanisms to reinforce processes involved on the task. From these evidences, a theoretical hypothesis was structured around the idea that the distinctions of an automatized endogenous orientation (fast and effortless) or voluntary (slow and effortful) would be related to the strengthening of the association between the cue and the indicated location that varies on a continuum from reinforcement mechanisms that would depend on the function of working memory components and their connection to long-term memory.