Timing of reflexive visuospatial orienting in young, young-old, and old-old adults

This study examined adult age differences in reflexive orienting to two types of uninformative spatial cues: central arrows and peripheral onsets. In two experiments using a Posner cuing task, young adults (ages 18–28 years), young-old adults (60–74 years), and old-old adults (75–92 years) responded to targets that were preceded 100–1,000 ms earlier by a central arrow or a peripheral abrupt onset. In Experiment 1, the cue remained present upon target onset. Facilitation effects at short cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were prolonged in duration for the two older groups relative to the young adults. At longer cue–target SOAs, inhibition of return (IOR) that was initiated by peripheral onset cues was observed in the performance of young adults but not in that of the two older groups. In Experiment 2, the cue was presented briefly and removed prior to target onset. The change in cue duration minimized age differences (particularly for young-old adults) in facilitation effects and led to IOR for all three age groups. The findings are consistent with the idea that attentional control settings change with age, with higher settings for older adults leading to delayed disengagement from spatial cues.     

The functional interaction of visual-perceptual and response mechanisms during selective attention in young adults, young-old adults, and old-old adults

A response compatibility paradigm was employed to address how the perceptual and response activation processes functionally interact during selective attention and how they may be influenced by aging. The results showed that increasing the visual similarity of targets within response sets reduced the magnitude of the interference effect, but only with a narrow interletter distance. In a dissimilar condition, the magnitude of the interference effect did not vary with age. However, in a similar condition, the magnitude of the interference effect was larger for both young (18–30 years) and young-old adults (55–79 years) than for old-old adults (≥80 years). In contrast, all three groups showed similar facilitation effects. These results failed to provide support for the notion that enhanced spatial filtering of the target from the flankers produces a corresponding decrease in response competition. Rather, the decrease in the interference effect can be attributed to a functional interaction between the perceptual availability of partial information and the magnitude of response competition. The results also suggest that age does not impair response activation but that advanced age diminishes the availability of local, but not global, feature information.     

The functional interaction of visual-perceptual and response mechanisms during selective attention in young adults, young-old adults, and old-old adults.

A response compatibility paradigm was employed to address how the perceptual and response activation processes functionally interact during selective attention and how they may be influenced by aging. The results showed that increasing the visual similarity of targets within response sets reduced the magnitude of the interference effect, but only with a narrow interletter distance. In a dissimilar condition, the magnitude of the interference effect did not vary with age. However, in a similar condition, the magnitude of the interference effect was larger for both young (18-30 years) and young-old adults (55-79 years) than for old-old adults (> or = 80 years). In contrast, all three groups showed similar facilitation effects. These results failed to provide support for the notion that enhanced spatial filtering of the target from the flankers produces a corresponding decrease in response competition. Rather, the decrease in the interference effect can be attributed to a functional interaction between the perceptual availability of partial information and the magnitude of response competition. The results also suggest that age does not impair response activation but that advanced age diminishes the availability of local, but not global, feature information.     

Reflexive orienting to gaze is not luminance dependent

In the investigation of reflexive orienting to cues, two major theories have emerged: One proposes that transients created by the cue trigger attentional shifts, whereas the other argues that object changes are responsible for instigating orienting. In the present study, we examined whether luminance transients produced by the cue can generate reflexive orienting to gaze. Using a temporal order judgment paradigm under luminant or subjectively equiluminant conditions, participants judged which of two peripheral targets onset first. An uninformative gaze cue served to reflexively shift attention toward one object location, thereby temporally prioritizing the target presented there. The results revealed that attention was successfully shifted toward the cued object, as was evidenced by the participants’ selecting the cued object as appearing first significantly more often than the uncued object, even when the two onset simultaneously. Critically, the results were comparable across luminance conditions. Our findings reveal that luminance transients are not necessary for triggering orienting to gaze cues. We suggest that the orienting observed here can be better explained via an object-based hypothesis whereby object changes, not transients, trigger reflexive orienting.     

Understanding unfamiliar words in young, young-old, and old-old adults: inferential processing and the abstraction-deficit hypothesis

Previous research suggests that older adults derive interpretations of unfamiliar words that are less precise than those of young adults (D. McGinnis & E. M. Zelinski, 2000). Thirty-one adults aged 18-37, 27 aged 65-74, and 28 aged 75-87 read passages containing unfamiliar words (1 per passage) and were asked to think aloud during reading. After reading each passage, participants selected meaning-relevant cues and rated the quality of 4 definition options. Compared with the 2 younger groups, the oldest group rated thematic and irrelevant definitions significantly higher, and their think-aloud protocols included more generalized inferences. Results pertaining to cue selection were not significant. Taken together, these results suggest that age differences in meaning derivation may be related to inferential processing that is overgeneralized, providing support for the abstraction-deficit hypothesis.     

Differential effects of age on prospective and retrospective memory tasks in young, young-old, and old-old adults

Remembering to do something in the future (termed prospective memory) is distinguished from remembering information from the past (retrospective memory). Because prospective memory requires strong self-initiation, Craik (1986) predicted that age decrements should be larger in prospective than retrospective memory tasks. The aim of the present study was to assess Craik's prediction by examining the onset of age decline in two retrospective and three prospective memory tasks in the samples of young (18-30 years), young-old (61-70 years), and old-old (71-80 years) participants recruited from the local community. Results showed that although the magnitude of age effects varied across the laboratory prospective memory tasks, they were smaller than age effects in a simple three-item free recall task. Moreover, while reliable age decrements in both retrospective memory tasks of recognition and free recall were already present in the young-old group, in laboratory tasks of prospective memory they were mostly present in the old-old group only. In addition, older participants were more likely to report a retrospective than prospective memory failure as their most recent memory lapse, while the opposite pattern was present in young participants. Taken together, these findings highlight the theoretical importance of distinguishing effects of ageing on prospective and retrospective memory, and support and extend the results of a recent meta-analysis by Henry, MacLeod, Phillips, and Crawford (2004).     

Attentional control and reflexive orienting to gaze and arrow cues

A wealth of data indicate that central spatially nonpredictive eyes and arrows trigger very similar reflexive spatial orienting, although the effects of eyes may be more strongly reflexive (e.g., Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004). Pratt and Hommel (2003) recently reported that the orienting effect for arrows is sensitive to arbitrary cue-target color contingencies; for example, an attentional orienting effect for blue colored arrows is evident only for blue targets. We reasoned that if the orienting effect elicited by eye direction is more strongly reflexive than the orienting effect elicited by arrow direction, it follows that eyes, unlike arrows, may trigger orienting effects that generalize across congruent and incongruent cue-target color contingencies. Replicating Pratt and Hommel (2003), we found that the reflexive attention effect elicited by arrows is specific to color-congruent target stimuli. The attention effect triggered by eyes, however, generalizes across color-congruent and color-incongruent target stimuli. These data support the hypothesis that eye direction and arrow direction trigger similar reflexive shifts in spatial attention, but that the attention effect triggered by eye direction is more strongly reflexive.     

Prospective memory and ageing paradox with event-based tasks: A study of young,young-old,and old-old participants

Research on ageing and prospective memory—remembering to do something in the future—has resulted in paradoxical findings, whereby older adults are often impaired in the laboratory but perform significantly better than younger adults in naturalistic settings. Nevertheless, there are very few studies that have examined prospective memory both in and outside the laboratory using the same sample of young and old participants. Moreover, most naturalistic studies have used time-based tasks, and it is unclear whether the prospective memory and ageing paradox extends to event-based tasks. In this study, 72 young (18–30 years), 79 young-old (61–70 years), and 72 old-old (71–80 years) participants completed several event-based tasks in and outside the laboratory. Results showed that the ageing paradox does exist for event-based tasks but manifests itself differently from that in time-based tasks. Thus, younger adults outperformed old-old participants in two laboratory event-based tasks, but there were no age effects for a naturalistic task completed at home (remembering to write the date and time in the upper left corner of a questionnaire). The young and old-old also did not differ in remembering to retrieve a wristwatch from a pocket at the end of the laboratory session. This indicates that the paradox may be due to differences in ongoing task demands in the lab and everyday life, rather than the location per se. The findings call for a concentrated effort towards a theory of cognitive ageing that identifies the variables that do, or do not, account for this paradox.     

Looking while unhappy: mood-congruent gaze in young adults, positive gaze in older adults

Recent findings that older adults gaze toward positively valenced stimuli and away from negatively valenced stimuli have been interpreted as part of their attempts to achieve the goal of feeling good. However, the idea that older adults use gaze to regulate mood, and that their gaze does not simply reflect mood, stands in contrast to evidence of mood-congruent processing in young adults. No previous study has directly linked age-related positive gaze preferences to mood regulation. In this eye-tracking study, older and younger adults in a range of moods viewed synthetic face pairs varying in valence. Younger adults demonstrated mood-congruent gaze, looking more at positive faces when in a good mood and at negative faces when in a bad mood. Older adults displayed mood-incongruent positive gaze, looking toward positive and away from negative faces when in a bad mood. This finding suggests that in older adults, gaze does not reflect mood, but rather is used to regulate it.     

Poor vigilance affects attentional orienting triggered by central uninformative gaze and arrow cues

Behaviour and neuroimaging studies have shown that poor vigilance (PV) due to sleep deprivation (SD) negatively affects exogenously cued selective attention. In the current study, we assessed the impact of PV due to both partial SD and night-time hours on reflexive attentional orienting triggered by central un-informative eye-gaze and arrow cues. Subjective mood and interference performance in emotional Stroop task were also investigated. Twenty healthy participants performed spatial cueing tasks using central directional arrow and eye-gaze as a cue to orient attention. The target was a word written in different coloured inks. The participant’s task was to identify the colour of the ink while ignoring the semantic content of the word (with negative or neutral emotional valence). The experiment took place on 2 days. On the first day, each participant performed a 10-min training session of the spatial cueing task. On the second day, half of participants performed the task once at 4:30 p.m. (BSL) and once at 6:30 a.m. (PV), whereas the other half performed the task in the reversed order. Results showed that mean reaction times on the spatial cueing tasks were worsened by PV, although gaze paradigm was more resistant to this effect as compared to the arrow paradigm. Moreover, PV negatively affects attentional orienting triggered by both central un-informative gaze and arrow cues. Finally, prolonged wakefulness affects self-reported mood but does not influence interference control in emotional Stroop task.     

Eye gaze is not unique: automatic orienting in response to uninformative arrows

Recent studies (Driver et al., 1999; Friesen & Kingstone, 1998; Langton & Bruce, 1999) have argued that the perception of eye gaze may be unique, as compared with other symbolic cues (e.g., arrows), in being able to automatically trigger attentional orienting. In Experiment 1, 17 participants took part in a visuospatial orienting task to investigate whether arrow cues might also trigger automatic orienting. Two arrow cues were presented for 75 msec to the left and right of a fixation asterisk. After an interval of either 25 or 225 msec, the letter O or X appeared. After both time intervals, mean response times were reliably faster when the arrows pointed toward, rather than away from, the location of the target letter. This occurred despite the fact that the participants were informed that the arrows did not predict where the target would appear. In Experiment 2, the same pattern of data was recorded when several adjustments had been made in an attempt to rule out alternative explanations for the cuing effects. Overall, the findings suggest that the eye gaze is not unique in automatically triggering orienting.     

Orienting to counterpredictive gaze and arrow cues

In separate experiments, counterpredictive arrow, eye gaze, or abrupt-onset cues were used to test the hypothesis that individual differences in voluntary control influence involuntary orienting. In contrast with previous findings (Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004), involuntary orienting effects were found for arrow cues.Furthermore, for both eye gaze and arrow cues, individual differences in voluntarycontrol were associatedwith involuntary orienting: Involuntary orienting effects were larger for participants who were more effective at using the cue to reorient attention, and also for participants who reported greater ability to control attention. Orienting to abrupt-onset cues was not correlated to individual differences in self-reported attentional control. The findings show that eye gaze and arrow cues instigate similar involuntary and voluntary effects and that involuntary orienting to symbolic cues is linked to individual differences in voluntary control.     

Visual orienting in response to attentional cues: Spatial correspondence is critical,conscious awareness is not

Three experiments examined visual orienting in response to spatial precues. In Experiments 1 and 2, attentional effects of central letters were stimulus driven: Orienting was dependent on the spatial layout of the cue display. When there were no correspondences between spatial features of the cue display and target location, attentional effects were absent, despite a conscious intention to orient in response to the symbolic information carried by the cue letters. In Experiment 3 clear orienting effects were observed when target location corresponded with spatial features of the cue display, but the magnitude of these effects was unaffected by whether participants were aware or unaware of the cue–target relationship. These findings are consistent with the view that (1) spatial correspondences between cues and targets are a critical factor driving visual orienting in cueing paradigms, and (2) attentional effects of spatial precues are largely independent of participants’ conscious awareness of the cue–target relationship.     

Habituation of the visual orienting response in young children1, 2

The eye tracks of 29 children (aged 2-7 years) were recorded by a reflection eye camera while they were looking ata4by 4 matrix of 16 white geometric shapes. When a circle suddenly changed to red, the children immediately looked at it for two-thirds of the presentation time, a reading which was 16 times the initial level before this novel color was introduced. With repeated presentations of the novel red circle display, progressively fewer fixations fell on the red circle. After 20 trials, this habituation was incomplete, and the red circle was still drawing six times the initial amount of looking found on the original white circle. Ss were apparently relatively slow to form a neural representation of the visual environment due to the wide range of choices in the original display. The age of the children had no monotonic effect on the high, and virtually equal, initial visual concentration, nor on the rate at which habituation occurred. An interesting contrast, therefore, appeared between these data and the marked age effects noted by others in the recognition of letter-like shapes. Unlike recognition tasks, orienting and habituation need a minimum of stimulus interpretation. Children, even as young as 2 years, have demonstrated a remarkable efficiency in these processes of orienting and habituation to novelty.     

Reflexive fighting in response to aversive stimulation

Reflexive fighting was elicited between paired rats as a reflex reaction to electric shock prior to any specific conditioning. Such fighting was fairly stereotyped and easily differentiated from the rats' usual behavior. The strength of this reflex was not attributable to any apparent operant reinforcement. Elicitation of fighting was a direct function of the enclosed floor area and a nonmonotonic function of the shock intensity.

Failure to scramble the polarity of the electrified grid produced inconsistent fighting. Under optimal conditions fighting was consistently elicited by shock regardless of the rat's sex, strain, previous familiarity with each other, or the number present during shock. Repeated shock presentations did not produce an appreciable decrease in fighting until signs of physical debility appeared. Although shock did not cause a rat to attack inanimate objects, it did produce attack movements toward other small animals. Failure of guinea pigs to defend themselves revealed that the elicitation of fighting from the rat does not require reciprocal attack. Paired hamsters showed fighting reactions similar to those of the rats, whereas guinea pigs failed to fight. Electrode shock and a heated floor elicited fighting between the rats, but intense noise and a cooled floor did not.

     

Attention orienting by eye gaze and arrows reveals flexibility to environmental changes

This study aimed to evaluate the difference in non-predictive cues between gaze and arrows in attention orienting. Attention orienting was investigated with gaze or arrows as separate cues in a simple condition (i.e., block design) in Experiment 1 and in an unpredictable condition (i.e., randomized design) in Experiment 2. Two kinds of sound (voice and tone) stimuli were used as targets. Results showed that gaze and arrow cues induced enhanced attention orienting to a voice versus tone target in the block condition. However, in the randomized condition, enhanced attention orienting to a voice versus tone target was found in gaze but not arrow cues. The congruency of the meaning between a social cue (i.e., gaze) and a social target (i.e., voice) was clear in the randomized but not blocked design, because social gaze and non-social arrow cues were implemented in the same block. Thus, attention orienting might be mediated by the associated relationship of cue–target in a randomized condition, as an enhanced orienting effect was found when the associated relationship of cue–target was strong (i.e., social cue and target). The present study suggests that the difference in attention orienting between gaze and arrows is apparent in a randomized design (the unpredictable condition), and people employ a flexibly strategy of orienting to better respond to environmental changes.     

Intimacy in response to direct gaze

Believing that they were participating in a study of encounter groups, male and female subjects were encouraged to deliver a personally revealing monologue to a same-sex listener whose visual behavior had been “programmed” by the experimenter. In the four experimental conditions, designed to explore the role of gaze as a stimulus, as a potential reinforcer, and as a source of feedback, the listener provided (a) continuous direct gaze; (b) direct gaze contingent upon intimate statements; (c) continuous gaze aversion; or (d) gaze aversion contingent upon intimate statements. The intimacy of the speaker's monologue was rated by a “blind” observer, the listener, and the speaker himself. Direct gaze, whether constant or contingent, appeared to promote intimacy between females and reticence between males, while gaze avoidance had the opposite effects. The only raters who disagreed with this assessment were the male speakers, who felt that they had been most intimate in the two direct gaze conditions. Positive feelings including liking for the listener and task satisfaction also were associated both with self-revelation and with direct gaze among females but not among males.     

Children's use of gaze and limb movement cues to infer deception

A sample of 96 children from kindergarten, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades judged the truthfulness of peers who varied in gaze and limb movement while providing verbal communications. Results indicated that children attributed greater lying to the peers who displayed indirect rather than direct gaze and active rather than nonactive limb movement. The use of these cues was more evident in 4th- and 6th-grade children than it was in kindergarten and 2nd-grade children. Pilot studies indicated that adults and children as young as 5-6 years of age associated indirect gaze and active limb movement with anxiety. The findings are discussed with respect to children's theory of mind, concepts of lying, understanding of display rules, and learning of physiological cues associated with deception.     

Investigating hemispheric lateralization of reflexive attention to gaze and arrow cues

Recent studies have demonstrated that central cues, such as eyes and arrows, reflexively trigger attentional shifts. However, it is not clear whether the attentional mechanisms induced by these two cues are similar or rather differ in some important way. We investigated hemispheric lateralization of the orienting effects induced by the two cue types in a group of 48 healthy participants comparing arrows and eye gaze as central non-predictive cues in a discrimination task, in which a target stimulus was briefly presented in one of two peripheral positions (left or right of fixation). As predicted by neuropsychological data, reflexive orienting to gaze cues was only observed when the target was presented in the left visual field, whereas reflexive orienting to arrow cues occurred for targets presented in both left and right visual fields.