In the Peripheral Spatial Cuing Task, upon given a cue that does not require interpretation (exogenous), such as a flash or spot in a certain direction, subjects will likely involuntarily reorient themselves towards that sudden event. Their reflexive attention has been reoriented towards this cue. This is considered to be a bottom-up process because attention is being captured and controlled by sensory inputs from lower levels of the nervous system.

Johns Hopkins University

New York University

Involuntary attention, also called reflexive or exogenously controlled attention, is the involuntary reorientation toward a sudden or important event. Loud noise or sudden silence, flashes, moving objects - any striking or important change - can potentially capture attention without cognitive effort. 

Involuntary Attention

The cue that appears before the target can be classified in multiple ways.
- Valid or Invalid Cue
- Exogenous Cue
- Endogenous Cue

Posner: Cue Classifications

Breedlove, S. & Watson, N. (2017). Behavioral neuroscience, eighth edition. Oxford University Press.

Behavioral Neuroscience 8th Edition

The cocktail party effect refers to the brain's ability to filter out "background noise" and focus on one stimulus or certain stimuli in an environment. The interesting aspect comes in when we consider that, though we may be seemingly focusing our attention on the conversation at hand, if someone at the party calls out our name, our attention will snap towards said person. In this way, the effect is considered to be an example of late selection since we are seemingly processing everything in our environment semantically before the attentional filter. 

Cocktail Party Effect

Posner: Exogenous Cue

In the Symbolic Cuing Task, upon given a cue that does require interpretation (endogenous), such as an arrow or the word "LEFT," subjects will likely voluntarily reorient themselves towards that event. There is a conscious steering of one's attention towards this cue, one that we need to interpret first. 

Posner: Endogenous Cue

In most trials of the Posner Cuing Task, the cue given will be an arrow. A Valid cue would be where the arrow points in the correct direction, towards the target. Sometimes, however, there will be an invalid cue, where the arrow points in the opposite direction of where the target subsequently appears. With most subjects, there is a longer reaction time associated with the invalid cues as opposed to valid cues. 

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