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College of Arts and Sciences Psychology

Spatial Cueing Task

An interactive classroom demonstration of Posner's spatial cueing task, measuring how a brief visual cue speeds or slows detection of a target at a validly or invalidly cued location.

Contributed by Psychology Department

Students respond to left or right targets that are preceded by a cue at either the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) location, using the left and right arrow keys. After 4 practice trials and 24 experimental trials, the tool displays mean and median reaction time and accuracy for valid and invalid trials, and lets students download their trial-level data as a CSV.

Reference: Posner, M. I., Snyder, C. R. R., & Davidson, B. J. (1980). Attention and the detection of signals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109(2), 160–174.

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<iframe src="https://king.edu/tools/embed/spatial-cueing-task" width="100%" height="700" style="border:0;" title="Spatial Cueing Task"></iframe>
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