The role of flicker and abrupt displacement in attention capture by motion onsets

Sunny and von Mühlenen (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 1050–1056, 2011) showed that an onset of motion captured attention only when the motion was jerky (refreshed at 8 or 17 Hz), but not when it was smooth (33 or 100 Hz). However, it remained unclear why the onset of jerky motion captures attention. In the present study, we systematically tested the role of different aspects of jerky motion in capturing attention. Simple flicker without motion did not capture attention in the same way as jerky motion (Exp. 1). An abrupt displacement between 0.26° and 1.05° captured attention, irrespective of whether the stimulus subsequently continued to move smoothly (Exp. 2) or whether it remained stationary (Exps. 3 and 4). A displaced stimulus that was preceded briefly at the new location by a figure-8 placeholder did not capture attention (Exp. 5). These results are explained within a masking account, according to which abrupt onsets and abrupt displacements receive a processing advantage because they escape forward masking by the preceding figure-8 placeholders.     

Dissociable yet tied inhibitory processes: The structure of inhibitory control

Cognitive and neural models have proposed the existence of a single inhibitory process that regulates behavior and depends on the right frontal operculum (rFO). The aim of this study was to make a contribution to the ongoing debate as to whether inhibition is a single process or is composed of multiple, independent processes. Here, within a single paradigm, we assessed the links between two inhibitory phenomena—namely, resistance to involuntary visual capture by abrupt onsets and resolving of spatial stimulus–response conflict. We did so by conducting three experiments, two involving healthy volunteers (Exps. 1 and 3), and one with the help of a well-documented patient, R.J., with selectively weakened inhibition following a lesion of the rFO. The results suggest that resistance to capture and stimulus–response conflict are independent, because (a) additive effects were found (Exps. 1 and 3), (b) capture did not correlate with compatibility effects (Exp. 1), (c) dual tasking affected the two phenomena differently (Exp. 3), and (d) a dissociation was found between the two in patient R.J. (Exp. 2). However, the results also show that these two phenomena may share some processing components, given that (a) both were affected in patient R.J., but to different degrees (Exp. 2), and (b) increasing the difficulty of dual tasking produced an increasingly negative correlation between capture and compatibility (Exp. 3), which suggests that when resources are withdrawn from the control of the former, they are used to control the latter.     

Effects of study time and meaningfulness on environmental context-dependent recognition

In two experiments, we examined whether the size of place-context-dependent recognition decreased with study time and with the meaningfulness of the to-be-remembered materials. A group of 80 undergraduates intentionally studied a list of words in a short (1.5?s per item) or a long (4.0?s per item) study-time condition (Exp. 1). Another 40 undergraduates studied lists consisting of words and nonwords in the long-study-time condition (Exp. 2). After a short retention interval, recognition for the targets was tested in the same or in a different context. Context was manipulated by means of the combination of place, subsidiary task, and experimenter. Significant context-dependent recognition discrimination was found for words in the short-study-time condition (Exp. 1), but not in the long-study-time condition (Exps. 1 and 2). Significant effects were found as well for nonwords, even in the long-study-time condition (Exp. 2). These results are explained well by an outshining account: that is, by principles of outshining and encoding specificity.     

Guidance of attention by information held in working memory

Information held in working memory (WM) can guide attention during visual search. The authors of recent studies have interpreted the effect of holding verbal labels in WM as guidance of visual attention by semantic information. In a series of experiments, we tested how attention is influenced by visual features versus category-level information about complex objects held in WM. Participants either memorized an object’s image or its category. While holding this information in memory, they searched for a target in a four-object search display. On exact-match trials, the memorized item reappeared as a distractor in the search display. On category-match trials, another exemplar of the memorized item appeared as a distractor. On neutral trials, none of the distractors were related to the memorized object. We found attentional guidance in visual search on both exact-match and category-match trials in Experiment 1, in which the exemplars were visually similar. When we controlled for visual similarity among the exemplars by using four possible exemplars (Exp. 2) or by using two exemplars rated as being visually dissimilar (Exp. 3), we found attentional guidance only on exact-match trials when participants memorized the object’s image. The same pattern of results held when the target was invariant (Exps. 2–3) and when the target was defined semantically and varied in visual features (Exp. 4). The findings of these experiments suggest that attentional guidance by WM requires active visual information.     

Strength cues and blocking at test promote reliable within-list criterion shifts in recognition memory

In seven experiments, we explored the potential for strength-based, within-list criterion shifts in recognition memory. People studied a mix of target words, some presented four times (strong) and others studied once (weak). In Experiments 1, 2, 4A, and 4B, the test was organized into alternating blocks of 10, 20, or 40 trials. Each block contained lures intermixed with strong targets only or weak targets only. In strength-cued conditions, test probes appeared in a unique font color for strong and weak blocks. In the uncued conditions of Experiments 1 and 2, similar strength blocks were tested, but strength was not cued with font color. False alarms to lures were lower in blocks containing strong target words, as compared with lures in blocks containing weak targets, but only when strength was cued with font color. Providing test feedback in Experiment 2 did not alter these results. In Experiments 3A–3C, test items were presented in a random order (i.e., not blocked by strength). Of these three experiments, only one demonstrated a significant shift even though strength cues were provided. Overall, the criterion shift was larger and more reliable as block size increased, and the shift occurred only when strength was cued with font color. These results clarify the factors that affect participants’ willingness to change their response criterion within a test list.     

Top-down constraint on recognition memory

Can recognition memory be constrained “at the front end,” such that people are more likely to retrieve information about studying a recognition-test probe from a specified target source than they are to retrieve such information about a probe from a nontarget source? We adapted a procedure developed by Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 12:852–857, 2005) to address this question. Experiment 1 yielded evidence of source-constrained retrieval, but that pattern was not significant in Experiments 2, 3, and 4 (nor in several unpublished pilot experiments). In Experiment 5, in which items from the two studied sources were perceptibly different, a pattern consistent with front-end constraint of recognition emerged, but this constraint was likely exercised via visual attention rather than memory. Experiment 6 replicated both the absence of a significant constrained-retrieval pattern when the sources did not differ perceptibly (as in Exps. 2, 3 and 4) and the presence of that pattern when they did differ perceptibly (as in Exp. 5). Our results suggest that people can easily constrain recognition when items from the to-be-recognized source differ perceptibly from items from other sources (presumably via visual attention), but that it is difficult to constrain retrieval solely on the basis of source memory.     

Disrupting perceptual grouping of face parts impairs holistic face processing

Face perception is widely believed to involve integration of facial features into a holistic perceptual unit, but the mechanisms underlying this integration are relatively unknown. We examined whether perceptual grouping cues influence a classic marker of holistic face perception, the “composite-face effect.” Participants made same–different judgments about a cued part of sequentially presented chimeric faces, and holistic processing was indexed as the degree to which the task-irrelevant face halves impacted performance. Grouping was encouraged or discouraged by adjusting the backgrounds behind the face halves: Although the face halves were always aligned, their respective backgrounds could be misaligned and of different colors. Holistic processing of face, but not of nonface, stimuli was significantly reduced when the backgrounds were misaligned and of different colors, cues that discouraged grouping of the face halves into a cohesive unit (Exp. 1). This effect was sensitive to stimulus orientation at short (200 ms) but not at long (2,500 ms) encoding durations, consistent with the previously documented temporal properties of the holistic processing of upright and inverted faces (Exps. 2 and 3). These results suggest that grouping mechanisms, typically involved in the perception of objecthood more generally, might contribute in important ways to the holistic perception of faces.     

What skilled typists don’t know about the QWERTY keyboard

We conducted four experiments to investigate skilled typists’ explicit knowledge of the locations of keys on the QWERTY keyboard, with three procedures: free recall (Exp.?1), cued recall (Exp.?2), and recognition (Exp.?3). We found that skilled typists’ explicit knowledge of key locations is incomplete and inaccurate. The findings are consistent with theories of skilled performance and automaticity that associate implicit knowledge with skilled performance and explicit knowledge with novice performance. In Experiment?4, we investigated whether novice typists acquire more complete explicit knowledge of key locations when learning to touch-type. We had skilled QWERTY typists complete a Dvorak touch-typing tutorial. We then tested their explicit knowledge of the Dvorak and QWERTY key locations with the free recall task. We found no difference in explicit knowledge of the two keyboards, suggesting that typists know little about key locations on the keyboard, whether they are exposed to the keyboard for 2 h or 12 years.     

Feeling of knowing and restudy choices

Feeling-of-knowing judgments (FOK-Js) reflect people’s confidence that they would be able to recognize a currently unrecallable item. Although much research has been devoted to the factors determining the magnitude and accuracy of FOK-Js, much less work has addressed the issue of whether FOK-Js are related to any form of metacognitive control over memory processes. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that FOK-Js are related to participants’ choices of which unrecallable items should be restudied. In three experiments, we showed that participants tend to choose for restudy items with high FOK-Js, both when they are explicitly asked to choose for restudy items that can be mastered in the restudy session (Exps. 1a and 2) and when such specific instructions are omitted (Exp. 1b). The study further demonstrated that increasing FOK-Js via priming cues affects restudy choices, even though it does not affect recall directly. Finally, Experiment 2 showed the strategy of restudying unrecalled items with high FOK-Js to be adaptive, because the efficacy of restudy is greater for these items than for items with low FOK-Js. Altogether, the present findings underscore an important role of FOK-Js for the metacognitive control of study operations.     

Can we shield ourselves from task disturbance by emotion-laden stimulation?

Emotion-laden stimuli can disturb information processing in an unrelated cognitive task. We investigated the possibilities and limitations for shielding from such disturbance. Participants performed a simple categorization task while being simultaneously exposed to negative, neutral, and positive pictures. Performance dropped with negative pictures, relative to positive and neutral stimuli. Unlike Stroop or Simon interference effects, this negativity-based disturbance did not reduce as a function of previous experience of disturbance (Exp. 1) or of announcement of such disturbance on a trial-by-trial basis (Exps. 2 and 3). We found hints of a reduction of negativity-based disturbance, however, when negative stimulation occurred with high list-wide probability (Exp. 4). These observations suggest that the control of negativity-based task disturbance might be possible in a sustained manner, but that it is severely limited when operating in a transient, moment-to-moment manner.     

Detecting lies about consumer attitudes using the timed antagonistic response alethiometer

The Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer (TARA) is a true–false statement classification task that diagnoses lying on the basis of slower average response speeds. Previous research (Gregg in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 621–647, 2007) showed that a computer-based TARA was about 80 % accurate when its statements conveyed demographic facts or religious views. Here, we tested the TARA’s diagnostic potential when its statements conveyed attitudes—here, toward both branded and generic consumer products—across different versions of the TARA (Exps. 1a, 1b, and 1c), as well as across consecutive administrations (Exp. 2). The results generalized well across versions, and maximal accuracy rates exceeding 80 % were obtained, although accuracy declined somewhat upon readministration. Overall, the TARA shows promise as a comparatively cheap, convenient, and diagnostic index of lying about attitudes.     

Body position differentially influences responses to exogenous and endogenous cues

The influence of vestibular inputs on exogenous (Exp. 1) and endogenous (Exp. 2) orienting of visual attention was examined. The vestibular system was manipulated through a change in static body position. Participants engaged in an exogenous or endogenous response task while in a seated position, while lying in a prone position, and while in a prone position with their head down and neck flexed (HDNF). An attenuation of inhibition and facilitation effects during the exogenous task was observed in the HDNF position. However, responses to the cues remained similar in the endogenous task, irrespective of body position. The results reveal a potential dissociation between reflexive and volitional orienting of visual attention that is dependent on vestibular inputs.     

Asymmetric binding in serial memory for verbal and spatial information

As the number of studies showing that items can be retained as bound representations in memory increases, researchers are beginning to investigate how the different features are bound together. In the present study, we examined the relative importances of the verbal and spatial features in serial memory for visual stimuli. Participants were asked to memorize the order of series of letters presented visually in different locations on the computer screen. The results showed that manipulating the phonological similarity of the letters affected recall of their spatial locations, but that increasing the complexity of the spatial pattern had no effect on recall of the letters. This finding was observed in both order reconstruction (Exps. 1 and 2) and probe serial recall (Exps. 3 and 4), suggesting that verbal–spatial binding in serial memory for visual information is asymmetric.     

Metacognitive effects of initial question difficulty on subsequent memory performance

In two experiments, we examined whether relative retrieval fluency (the relative ease or difficulty of answering questions from memory) would be translated, via metacognitive monitoring and control processes, into an overt effect on the controlled behavior—that is, the decision whether to answer a question or abstain. Before answering a target set of multiple-choice general-knowledge questions (intermediate-difficulty questions in Exp. 1, deceptive questions in Exp. 2), the participants first answered either a set of difficult questions or a set of easy questions. For each question, they provided a forced-report answer, followed by a subjective assessment of the likelihood that their answer was correct (confidence) and by a free-report control decision—whether or not to report the answer for a potential monetary bonus (or penalty). The participants’ ability to answer the target questions (forced-report proportion correct) was unaffected by the initial question difficulty. However, a predicted metacognitive contrast effect was observed: When the target questions were preceded by a set of difficult rather than easy questions, the participants were more confident in their answers to the target questions, and hence were more likely to report them, thus increasing the quantity of freely reported correct information. The option of free report was more beneficial after initial question difficulty than after initial question ease, in terms of both the gain in accuracy (Exp. 2) and a smaller cost in quantity (Exps. 1 and 2). These results demonstrate that changes in subjective experience can influence metacognitive monitoring and control, thereby affecting free-report memory performance independently of forced-report performance.     

Between-list lag effects in recall depend on retention interval

Although the benefits of spaced retrieval for long-term retention are well established, the majority of this work has involved spacing over relatively short intervals (on the order of seconds or minutes). In the present experiments, we evaluated the effectiveness of spaced retrieval across relatively short intervals (within a single session), as compared to longer intervals (between sessions spaced a day apart), for long-term retention (i.e., one day or one week). Across a series of seven experiments, participants (N = 536) learned paired associates to a criterion of 70 % accuracy and then received one test–feedback trial for each item. The test–feedback trial occurred within 10 min of reaching criterion (short lag) or one day later (long lag). Then, a final test occurred one day (Exps. 1–3) or one week (Exps. 4 and 5) after the test–feedback trial. Across the different materials and methods in Experiments 1–3, we found little benefit for the long-lag relative to the short-lag schedule in final recall performance—that is, no lag effect—but large effects on the retention of information from the test–feedback to the final test phase. The results from the experiments with the one-week retention interval (Exps. 4 and 5) indicated a benefit of the long-lag schedule on final recall performance (a lag effect), as well as on retention. This research shows that even when the benefits of lag are eliminated at a (relatively long) one-day retention interval, the lag effect reemerges after a one-week retention interval. The results are interpreted within an extension of the bifurcation model to the spacing effect.     

Effects of direct and averted gaze on the subsequent saccadic response

The saccadic latency to visual targets is susceptible to the properties of the currently fixated objects. For example, the disappearance of a fixation stimulus prior to presentation of a peripheral target shortens saccadic latencies (the gap effect). In the present study, we investigated the influences of a social signal from a facial fixation stimulus (i.e., gaze direction) on subsequent saccadic responses in the gap paradigm. In Experiment 1, a cartoon face with a direct or averted gaze was used as a fixation stimulus. The pupils of the face were unchanged (overlap), disappeared (gap), or were translated vertically to make or break eye contact (gaze shift). Participants were required to make a saccade toward a target to the left or the right of the fixation stimulus as quickly as possible. The results showed that the gaze direction influenced saccadic latencies only in the gaze shift condition, but not in the gap or overlap condition; the direct-to-averted gaze shift (i.e., breaking eye contact) yielded shorter saccadic latencies than did the averted-to-direct gaze shift (i.e., making eye contact). Further experiments revealed that this effect was eye contact specific (Exp. 2) and that the appearance of an eye gaze immediately before the saccade initiation also influenced the saccadic latency, depending on the gaze direction (Exp. 3). These results suggest that the latency of target-elicited saccades can be modulated not only by physical changes of the fixation stimulus, as has been seen in the conventional gap effect, but also by a social signal from the attended fixation stimulus.     

Searching the same display twice: Properties of short-term memory in repeated search

Consecutive search for different targets in the same display is supported by a short-term memory mechanism: Distractors that have recently been inspected in the first search are found more quickly in the second search when they become the target (Exp. 1). Here, we investigated the properties of this memory process. We found that this recency advantage is robust to a delay between the two searches (Exp. 2) and that it is only slightly disrupted by an interference task between the two searches (Exp. 3). Introducing a concurrent secondary task (Exp. 4) showed that the memory representations formed in the first search are based on identity as well as location information. Together, these findings show that the short-term memory that supports repeated visual search stores a complex combination of item identity and location that is robust to disruption by either time or interference.     

Impact of planned movement direction on judgments of visual locations

The present study examined if and how the direction of planned hand movements affects the perceived direction of visual stimuli. In three experiments participants prepared hand movements that deviated regarding direction (“Experiment 1” and “2”) or distance relative to a visual target position (“Experiment 3”). Before actual execution of the movement, the direction of the visual stimulus had to be estimated by means of a method of adjustment. The perception of stimulus direction was biased away from planned movement direction, such that with leftward movements stimuli appeared somewhat more rightward than with rightward movements. Control conditions revealed that this effect was neither a mere response bias, nor a result of processing or memorizing movement cues. Also, shifting the focus of attention toward a cued location in space was not sufficient to induce the perceptual bias observed under conditions of movement preparation (“Experiment 4”). These results confirm that characteristics of planned actions bias visual perception, with the direction of bias (contrast or assimilation) possibly depending on the type of the representations (categorical or metric) involved.     

The production effect in paired-associate learning: Benefits for item and associative information

In five experiments, we extended the production effect—better memory for items said aloud than for items read silently—to paired-associate learning, the goal being to explore whether production enhances associative information in addition to enhancing item information. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used a semantic-relatedness task in addition to the production manipulation and found no evidence of a production effect, whether the measure was cued recall or item recognition. Experiment 3 showed that the semantic-relatedness task had overshadowed the production effect; the effect was present when the semantic-relatedness task was removed, again whether cued recall or item recognition was the measure. Experiments 4 and 5 provided further evidence that production can enhance recall for word pairs and, using an associate recognition test with intact versus rearranged pairs, indicated that production may also enhance associative information. That production boosts memory for both types of information is considered in terms of distinctive encoding.     

When disfluency is—and is not—a desirable difficulty: The influence of typeface clarity on metacognitive judgments and memory

There are many instances in which perceptual disfluency leads to improved memory performance, a phenomenon often referred to as the perceptual-interference effect (e.g., Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughn (Cognition 118:111–115, 2010); Nairne (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 14:248–255, 1988)). In some situations, however, perceptual disfluency does not affect memory (Rhodes & Castel (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 137:615–625, 2008)), or even impairs memory (Glass, (Psychology and Aging 22:233–238, 2007)). Because of the uncertain effects of perceptual disfluency, it is important to establish when disfluency is a “desirable difficulty” (Bjork, 1994) and when it is not, and the degree to which people’s judgments of learning (JOLs) reflect the consequences of processing disfluent information. In five experiments, our participants saw multiple lists of blurred and clear words and gave JOLs after each word. The JOLs were consistently higher for the perceptually fluent items in within-subjects designs, which accurately predicted the pattern of recall performance when the presentation time was short (Exps. 1a and 2a). When the final test was recognition or when the presentation time was long, however, we found no difference in recall for clear and blurred words, although JOLs continued to be higher for clear words (Exps. 2b and 3). When fluency was manipulated between subjects, neither JOLs nor recall varied between formats (Exp. 1b). This study suggests a boundary condition for the desirable difficulty of perceptual disfluency and indicates that a visual distortion, such as blurring a word, may not always induce the deeper processing necessary to create a perceptual-interference effect.