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Posner Cueing Task

Attention

Posner spatial cueing task measuring covert orienting of visuospatial attention through the validity effect — faster target detection at validly than invalidly cued locations.

The Posner cueing task (Posner, 1980) is the foundational laboratory measure of the covert orienting of visuospatial attention — the ability to shift the focus of attention across the visual field without moving the eyes. It provides a behavioural window onto how a spatial cue prepares the visual system to process information at a location.

Participants fixate a central cross flanked by two peripheral placeholder boxes. On each trial a central arrow cue points left or right, or is non-directional (a double-headed arrow). After a short cue–target interval, a target dot appears in one of the boxes and the participant presses a key as quickly as possible to indicate that they detected it. Because the eyes stay fixed on the centre, any speed-up must reflect a covert shift of attention.

This implementation uses the classic endogenous (central-cue) detection variant. The arrow is predictive: it points to the box where the target will actually appear on 75% of directional-cue trials (valid trials); on the remaining 25% it points to the opposite box (invalid trials). Neutral trials present a non-directional cue that carries no spatial information, providing a baseline. A minority of catch trials present a cue but no target, discouraging anticipatory responding and allowing false-alarm rates to be measured.

The hallmark result is the validity effect: detection is faster on valid than on invalid trials. Comparing each condition to the neutral baseline decomposes this into a benefit of valid cueing (neutral − valid) and a cost of invalid cueing (invalid − neutral), the cost/benefit logic introduced by Posner and colleagues.

The template ships with a short practice block (with correct/incorrect feedback) followed by 48 balanced main-task trials. Cue–target timing, response deadline, and inter-trial interval are exposed as re-usable parameters, and every participant-facing string is a translatable parameter, so researchers can retime or translate the task in the Open Lab study builder without editing individual screens.

attentionspatial attentioncovert orientingvisuospatial attentionspatial cueingvalidity effectendogenous attentionreaction timePosner
Duration~4 min
InputKeyboard required
Complexity

Configuration complexity

Simple — few parameters, works out of the box with no changes required.
Moderate — multiple options across several groups; some parameters must be updated together. No code required.
Flexible — involves custom scripts or task logic; requires programming knowledge or deep familiarity with the paradigm structure.
Moderate
Versionv1.1
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