The interaction of orientation-specific surround suppression and visual-spatial attention

Orientation selective surround suppression (OSSS) is a reduction in the perceived contrast of a stimulus, which occurs when a collinear grating is placed adjacent to the stimulus. Attention affects performance on many visual tasks, and we asked whether the perceptual effects of OSSS are mitigated through the allocation of voluntary visual-spatial attention. Participants were tested in a contrast discrimination task: at the beginning of each trial, one location on the screen was cued and a subsequent contrast judgment was then more likely (70%) to be performed in that location. Replicating previous results, we found that the point of subjective equality (PSE) was elevated for a collinear, relative to an orthogonal, surround. While the PSE was similar for validly and invalidly cued trials, the just noticeable difference (JND) was larger for invalid cue trials, and for collinear, relative to orthogonal surround, suggesting that while OSSS affects both perceived contrast and sensitivity, voluntary attention affects only perceptual sensitivity. In another experiment no informative cue was provided, and attention was distributed over the entire display. In this case, JND and PSE were shifted depending on the contrast of the distractor, suggesting that OSSS is affected by the allocation of visual-spatial attention, but only under conditions of distributed attention.