Abstract:  The spotlight of attention is intrinsically rhythmic, which discretely sample a single or multiple objects. This phenomenon is called discrete attention. Here we summarized four paradigms used to investigate discrete attention in visual domain. In the wagon-wheel illusion paradigm, motion direction illusion is experienced. This paradigm is adopted to demonstrate the discreteness of attention. In the visual detection paradigm, participants are asked to detect the near-threshold stimuli, which is used to investigate relationship between neural oscillation and discrete attention. In the high time-resolved cue-target paradigm, a target occurs after a varying interval following a peripheral cue; while the target is embedded among distracters in the visual search paradigm. These two paradigms are developed to vividly show behavioral oscillation patterns.

Key words:  , discrete attention in visual domain, wagon-wheel illusion, cue-target paradigm, visual detection, visual search