Increased conflict resolution precise to cardinal orientation

Selective attention is a complex behavioral and cognitive process often intertwined and multifaceted with perception. A well-known phenomenon in perception is the visual anisotropy, oblique effect, now novally explored in attention. This effect refers to the increase of orientation discriminability and neural sensitivity towards stimuli located in the cardinal directions (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°). While past research reported increased effective attention deployment to certain positions, the cause of such elevation remains unclear. We hypothesize that the attentional oblique effect is related to the increase in conflict resolution in cardinal positions. To test this, we measured the spatial resolution and conflict resolution of cardinal-oblique and vertical-horizontal anisotropy in healthy subjects using a modified spherical Ericksen Flanker task. We assessed the subject’s reaction time (RT) to target onset in twelve (12) different clock-like positions during incongruent and congruent trials which are thought to reflect conflict resolution in selective attention. Oblique positions were separated into counter-clockwise and clockwise positions relative to the cardinals to take into account the precision of resolution. Consistent with previous research, we found a significant elevation of attention with targets located in the cardinal and vertical directions. When further explored into conflict resolution, we found a more precise attentional receptive field in cardinal compared to off-side oblique. We also found interactions between oblique effect and vertical-horizontal bias in which vertical cardinal is significantly more precise than horizontal cardinal. Together, our findings suggested that visual orientations are beneficial across spatial conflict resolution due to the narrowing of attentional receptive fields in cardinal degrees.