No evidence of rhythmic visuospatial attention at cued locations in a spatial cuing paradigm, regardless of their behavioral relevance.

To these aims, we used a modified Egly-Driver task with three conditions: a fully informative cue, a moderately informative cue (replication condition), and a non-informative cue. We did not find evidence of rhythmic sampling at cued locations, failing to replicate earlier studies. However, we did find attentional rhythmicity at non-cued locations, specifically on different objects.

This effect was only present when the cue was informative, not when the cue was non-informative. These results suggest that the strongest evidence of rhythmic sampling can be found at spatial locations that bear relatively less behavioral relevance. This suggests an occasional dis-engagement mechanism, whereby attention regularly switches from behaviorally relevant locations to less behaviorally relevant locations.