Abstract
The human visual system has a high-resolution fovea and a low-resolution periphery. When actively searching for a target, humans perform a covert search during each fixation, and then shift gaze to the most likely target locations. Models of attention often assume an even allocation of attentional resources across the visual field, but recent evidence challenges this view. Here we measured human search performance and contrast sensitivity at multiple eccentricities and showed that attention redistributes sensitivity in a target-specific way. Foveal sensitivity decreases when attention is deployed to peripheral target locations, supporting the conclusion that attentional sensitivity gain is allocated efficiently across the visual field rather than being uniform.