Foggy windows: Pupillary responses during task preparation

Abstract

We investigated pupil dilation in 96 subjects during task preparation and during a post-trial interval in a visual search task and an auditory working memory task. Completely informative difficulty cues (easy, medium, or hard) were presented right before task preparation to examine whether pupil dilation indicated advance mobilisation of attentional resources; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have argued for the existence of such task preparation, and the literature shows that pupil dilation tracks attentional effort during task performance. We found, however, little evidence for such task preparation. In the working memory task, pupil size was identical across cues, and although pupil dilation in the visual search task tracked the cue, pupil dilation predicted subsequent performance in neither task. Pupil dilation patterns in the post-trial interval were more consistent with an effect of emotional reactivity. Our findings suggest that the mobilisation of attentional resources in the service of the task does not occur during the preparatory interval, but is delayed until the task itself is initiated.