Visual Attention at the Tip of the Tongue

Abstract

The brain shifts attention by selectively modulating sensory information about relevant environmental features. It has been shown that eye, head, trunk and limb position can bias spatial attention. This leads to the interesting question: Does the brain only recruit bodily information that is explicitly related to orienting behaviour to direct attention, or more generally? We tested whether tongue position, which does not explicitly functionally relate to orienting behaviour, biases attention in a visual search task. Thirty-six participants completed three visual search trial blocks of increased difficulty each consisting of three tongue positions for 50 trials. Response times and error rates were used to assess whether tongue position modulates visual attention. Results show that sensorimotor information from the tongue modulates attention in a difficult visual search task: faster responses to visual search targets presented ipsilateral with the tongue; slower responses when contralateral. In line with cognition being generally embodied, the tongue plays a surprising role in directing attention.