description Michael Posner Overview
Michael I. Posner is an American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist whose research has examined the neural mechanisms of attention. He developed the spatial cueing task commonly called the Posner cueing paradigm, which measures how advance information about a location affects the speed of detecting or identifying a target. With colleagues, he helped distinguish alerting, orienting, and executive control as interacting attention networks supported by partly different brain systems.
His methods are widely used in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
insights Ranking position
Michael Posner ranks #20 of 228 in the Psychologist ranking, behind Larry Squire, ahead of Ulric Neisser.
help Michael Posner FAQ
How does the Posner cueing task measure attention?
A cue directs attention toward a possible target location before the target appears. People usually respond faster after a valid cue and slower after an invalid cue, revealing the benefit and cost of shifting spatial attention.
Can attention move in the Posner task without moving the eyes?
Yes. The task was designed to study covert orienting, in which attention shifts while the eyes remain fixed on a central point.
What are Posner's three attention networks?
The framework distinguishes alerting, orienting, and executive control. Posner and Steven Petersen presented this influential network account in 1990, and the later Attention Network Test was designed to measure all three.
What is the difference between endogenous and exogenous cues in Posner experiments?
Endogenous cues guide attention through learned meaning or instruction, such as an arrow pointing toward a likely location. Exogenous cues capture attention through a sudden event at a location, even when that event does not reliably predict the target.
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