Behavioral results
During the pre-cue baseline conditions participants detected on average 78.50 % (± 3.43 s. e. m.) of the luminance changes in both peripheral rings with a false alarm rate of 5.01 % (± 0.96 s. e. m.). Surprisingly, the performance during the central fixation cross task was worse with a mean detection rate of 57.58 % (± 4.28 s. e. m.) and a mean false alarm rate of 15.54 % (± 2.52 s. e. m.). However, in both pre-cue conditions performance was better than chance as for both tasks all individual d’ indices were greater than zero (peripheral rings condition: range d’ = 1.37 – 3.96; central fixation cross condition: range d’ = 0.41 – 2.75). Therefore, all participants were engaged in the pre-cue tasks. In general, comparing the d’ indices between the pre-cue conditions, participants were more sensitive detecting the luminance changes of the peripheral rings than the size changes of the central fixation cross (t(19) = 7.01, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.57). However, participants applied the same response criteria for both tasks (mean c-index peripheral rings condition: 0.42 ± 0.09 s. e. m.; mean c-index central fixation cross task: 0.48 ± 0.10; t(19) = -0.57, p = 0.575, Cohen’s d = 0.13).
During the post-cue task, participants detected on average 76.25 % (± 3.59 s. e. m.) of the luminance changes within a sector of the spatially cued ring with a false alarm rate of 1.66 % (± 0.49 s. e. m. ). Mean d’ indices of 3.32 (range: 1.44 to 4.79) indicated a high sensibility of the participants to detect the post-cue targets with an average response criteria c of 0.85 (± 0.11 s. e. m.).