How many times have you heard: “Pay attention if you want to know what’s going on”? This everyday advice assumes that attention and consciousness are closely related: the more you attend, the more aware you become. However, decades of research have not reached a consensus. Some studies support a tight link between attention and consciousness, whereas others argue that one can attend without being conscious (or being conscious without attending).
Most previous work has focused on spatial attention, showing that orienting attention to a specific location can enhance visual awareness. Yet perception also unfolds in time, and much less is known about whether attention to time modulates conscious perception or how it interacts with spatial attention.
Researchers from the CIMCYC at the University of Granada and the University of Montpellier (France) have conducted a study combining attention to time and spatial attention in a single task. Participants reported whether they consciously saw a brief visual target. Before the target, a series of squares flickered regularly or irregularly, to the left or right of fixation. The target that participants had to report then appeared either inside the flickering stream or outside it.
They observed that rhythmic temporal attention did not improve conscious perception, whereas spatial attention reliably improved participants’ ability to detect the stimulus.
These findings reinforce the idea that spatial attention plays a key role in visual awareness and highlight the need for further research on how temporal attention contributes to consciousness. In short, in this study, seeing through space proved more effective than seeing through time..
Reference
Capizzi, M., Charras, P., & Chica, A. B. (2026). Seeing through space and time: Comparing the effects of exogenous spatial and rhythmic temporal attention on visual awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 141, 104040. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2026.104040
Contact at the CIMCYC
Mariagrazia Capizzi (@email)