Reflexive orienting in response to short- and long-duration gaze cues in young,young-old,and old-old adults

Shifting visual focus on the basis of the perceived gaze direction of another person is one form of joint attention. In the present study, we investigated whether this socially relevant form of orienting is reflexive and whether it is influenced by age. Green and Woldorff (Cognition 122:96–101, 2012) argued that rapid cueing effects (i.e., faster responses to validly than to invalidly cued targets) were limited to conditions in which a cue overlapped in time with a target. They attributed slower responses following invalid cues to the time needed to resolve the incongruent spatial information provided by the concurrently presented cue and target. In the present study, we examined the orienting responses of young (18–31 years), young-old (60–74 years), and old-old (75–91 years) adults following uninformative central gaze cues that overlapped in time with the target (Exp. 1) or that were removed prior to target presentation (Exp. 2). When the cue and target overlapped, all three groups localized validly cued targets more quickly than invalidly cued targets, and validity effects emerged earlier for the two younger groups (at 100 ms post-cue-onset) than for the old-old group (at 300 ms post-cue-onset). With a short-duration cue (Exp. 2), validity effects developed rapidly (by 100 ms) for all three groups, suggesting that validity effects resulted from reflexive orienting based on the gaze cue information rather than from cue–target conflict. Thus, although old-old adults may be slow to disengage from persistent gaze cues, attention continues to be reflexively guided by gaze cues late in life.     

Transient suppression of processing during rapid serial visual presentation: Acquired distinctiveness of probes modulates the attentional blink

The attentional blink is revealed in studies of rapid serial visual processing, in which observers view a stream of letters presented sequentially at the same location in a visual display. Reporting the identity of a specially marked letter (the target) amidst distractors causes a transient loss of accuracy for detection of another prespecified symbol (the probe). In two experiments, observers viewed lists of letters, identified a randomly selected letter as a target, and detected the presence of a probe from a different category (a digit or a Greek letter). After several days of training, probe detection following a target had improved markedly. Posttarget probe detection was again impaired when the distractor set included members of the probe set. These results are compatible with an explanation of the attentional blink as an act of suppression aimed at the current set of distractors, but additional mechanisms are needed to account for the effects of training.     

Good Guys Can Finish First: How Brand Reputation Affects Extension Evaluations

This research investigates how consumer evaluations of brand extensions are affected by two distinct types of brand reputation: a reputation for social responsibility built through commitments to societal obligations, versus a reputation for ability developed by delivering quality offerings. Through six studies, we establish that while the two reputation types equivalently influence high fit brand extensions, a reputation for social responsibility (vs. ability) leads to more favorable responses toward low fit brand extensions by inducing a desire to support and help the company that has acted to benefit consumers. Furthermore, the facilitative effect of social responsibility on low fit brand extension evaluations is more prominent among consumers who value close relationships and caring for one another's well‐being (i.e., those with high communal orientation), and tends to dissipate when social responsibility initiatives are tainted with self‐serving motives (i.e., when these initiatives are aligned with the brand's core offering).     

The tale of uncertain choices: inclusion versus exclusion

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of perceived uncertainty on two types of screening strategies – exclusion and inclusion. Results from five studies showed that perceived uncertainty increases the preference for exclusion strategy. Using both mediation and moderation methods, we find support for accuracy consideration as the driver underlying the effect of perceived uncertainty on screening strategy. Furthermore, we demonstrated a reversal of the relationship between perceived uncertainty and screening strategy by manipulating the consideration set size. While perceived uncertainty strengthened the preference for the exclusion strategy when forming smaller consideration sets, this relationship flipped when forming larger consideration sets. We also demonstrated the effects of perceived preference uncertainty on screening strategy over and above knowledge uncertainty, choice uncertainty, as well as dispositional attitude toward uncertainty. Finally, we demonstrated the generalisability of our results by analysing verbal protocol data from the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?     

Functional connectivity differences in autism during face and car recognition: underconnectivity and atypical age‐related changes

Face recognition abilities improve between adolescence and adulthood over typical development (TD), but plateau in autism, leading to increasing face recognition deficits in autism later in life. Developmental differences between autism and TD may reflect changes between neural systems involved in the development of face encoding and recognition. Here, we focused on whole‐brain connectivity with the fusiform face area (FFA), a well‐established face‐preferential brain region. Older children, adolescents, and adults with and without autism completed the Cambridge Face Memory Test, and a matched car memory test, during fMRI scanning. We then examined task‐based functional connectivity between the FFA and the rest of the brain, comparing autism and TD groups during encoding and recognition of face and car stimuli. The autism group exhibited underconnectivity, relative to the TD group, between the FFA and frontal and primary visual cortices, independent of age. Underconnectivity with the medial and rostral lateral prefrontal cortex was face‐specific during encoding and recognition, respectively. Conversely, underconnectivity with the L orbitofrontal cortex was evident for both face and car encoding. Atypical age‐related changes in connectivity emerged between the FFA and the R temporoparietal junction, and R dorsal striatum for face stimuli only. Similar differences in age‐related changes in autism emerged for FFA connectivity with the amygdala across both face and car recognition. Thus, underconnectivity and atypical development of functional connectivity may lead to a less optimal face‐processing network in the context of increasing general and social cognitive deficits in autism.     

A variant selection mechanism in the deformed and recrystallized β matrix of a metastable β-titanium alloy

ABSTRACT

The variant selection criteria during β to α phase transformations in a metastable β-titanium alloy (Ti-5553) in the presence of deformation are examined. Two distinct metallurgical states in the β matrix, heavily deformed and fully recrystallized, were obtained from a 90% cold-rolled alloy. The deformed and recrystallized samples were subjected to aging heat treatment for a short time to allow the precipitation of an intragranular α phase. Electron backscattered diffraction was used to assess the α crystallographic variant occurrence in the deformed as well as in the recrystallized β grains. A discrete pole figure analysis revealed that a limited number of variants were evolved in the deformed β grains while there was no variant selection in the recrystallized β matrix. The results suggest that activation of {112}<111>_β slip systems determines a strong variant selection in the plastically deformed β matrix.     

Downward Causation in Self-Organizing Systems: Problem of Self-Causation

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Enabling constraints are bottom up causes which create the possibility of the existence of a system. Disabling constraints reduce the degrees...     

Vulnerability of facial attractiveness perception to early and multi-year visual deprivation

Judgments of facial attractiveness invariably accompany our perception of faces. Even neonates appear to be capable of making such judgments in a manner consistent with adults. This suggests that the processes supporting facial attractiveness require little, if any, visual experience to manifest. Here we investigate the resilience of these processes to several years of early-onset visual deprivation. Specifically, we study whether congenitally blind children treated several years after birth possess the ability to rate facial attractiveness in a manner congruent to normally sighted individuals. The data reveal significant individual variability in the way each newly sighted child perceives attractiveness. This is in marked contrast to data from normally sighted controls who exhibit strong across-subject agreement in facial attractiveness ratings. This variability may be attributable, in part, to atypical facial encoding strategies used by the newly sighted children. Overall, our results suggest that the development of facial attractiveness perception is likely to be vulnerable to early visual deprivation, pointing to the existence of a possible sensitive period early in the developmental trajectory.