Gaze Patterns When Looking at Emotional Pictures: Motivationally Biased Attention

Pictures of either emotionally neutral, pleasant (affectionate), or unpleasant (threat and injury) scenes were paired with nonemotional control pictures and presented for 3 s, while eye fixations were monitored. Preferential attention to the emotional picture of eah pair occurred at an early processing stage: The probability of placement of the first fixation and the proportion of viewing time during the first 500 ms were higher for both pleasant and unpleasant pictures than for neutral pictures, whereas later fixation location and time were not differentially affected. This suggests that, when emotional and nonemotional stimuli are presented simultaneously, emotional meaning captures initial overt orienting and engages attention early, as measured by gaze direction and duration. The possibility that this effect could be accounted for by perceptual differences—such as luminance and complexity—between emotional and neutral pictures was ruled out.     

Group Communication During Resource Dilemmas: 4: The Effect of Group Size

Previous theory and research implies that increasing the size of groups facing resource dilemmas results in poorer outcomes, but no previous study has allowed for communication among group members. The present study relates group size with communication content, task outcomes, and participant perceptions of their experience. With communication, actual group size was irrelevant; to the extent that groups chose to cooperate, outcomes were more equal within groups and participants had more positive perceptions. Greater information exchange and negative maintenance talk was related with less equal outcomes and more negative perceptions; more discussion relevant to specific strategy was associated with more equal outcomes. Findings are instructive concerning the genesis and role of group cooperation.     

Visual Attention Patterns of Socially Anxious Individuals When Using Facebook: An Eye Tracking Study

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an increasingly used medium for social interactions. For socially anxious individuals, SNS-based communication is often preferred over traditional face-to-face socializing. Yet, research on SNSs usage and social anxiety is still less common, with extant studies being mostly correlational among healthy nonanxious participants. Conversely, here, we examined differences in actual gaze patterns to social and nonsocial stimuli between socially anxious and nonanxious individuals while using Facebook. Socially anxious and nonanxious student participants freely viewed a genuine Facebook profile page designed for the present study, for 3.5 minutes, containing 12 social and 12 nonsocial picture stimuli. Gaze patterns on social and nonsocial areas of interest (AOIs) were explored. Subjective uneasiness experienced when viewing the social pictures and state anxiety were also assessed. Finally, 2 weeks following the task, we evaluated participants’ willingness to participate in a follow-up (fictitious) study that required them to passively view their own Facebook profile, and then to actively use it. Results showed that compared with nonanxious participants, socially anxious participants demonstrated a viewing pattern less favoring social pictures, reflecting an attentional avoidance tendency. A significant inverse correlation between subjective uneasiness and percent of dwell time spent on the social AOI emerged. Socially anxious participants also reported higher levels of state anxiety, which was significantly positively correlated with uneasiness scores. Finally, socially anxious participants were also less willing to actively use their Facebook profile page. This study suggests that social anxious individuals are characterized by attentional and behavioral avoidance tendencies when using Facebook.     

任务类型对面孔联合效应和特征效应的调节

采用特征-联合范式的研究发现, 面孔再认阶段可记录到明显的联合效应和特征效应; 然而, 与再认同属情景记忆的另一任务(来源提取)条件的相应效应尚未报道, 背景信息一致性对联合面孔和特征面孔提取的调节作用以及面孔不同特征对特征效应的影响也未考察。为澄清上述问题, 本文采用特征-联合范式, 并以位置为背景展开研究。实验含一个学习任务和两个测验任务(再认和来源提取)。结果显示, 再认和来源提取阶段均记录到显著的联合效应和特征效应, 且两类效应均在来源提取阶段更强; 任务类型与位置背景一致性交互影响提取绩效; 面孔外部特征和内部特征对特征效应的影响相似。表明联合效应和特征效应具有显著的任务类型敏感性, 这些效应是联合面孔和特征面孔的熟悉性较强且对源面孔的回忆加工相对较弱的结果, 且这两类面孔的提取为背景一致性所调节; 任务类型对两类效应的调节与双重加工理论模型相吻合。     

Conversation and Communication by J. A. M. Meerloo

Recent research shows that adolescents are a high-risk group for HIV infection, and that educational campaigns designed to reduce risk taking concerning HIV/AIDS have been largely ineffective with this population. It is probable that irrational psychodynamic processes underlie this risky behavior. In order to explore these behaviors, a sample of low-risk high-school adolescents and one of high-risk institutionalized juvenile offenders were formed into small groups for psychodynamic group therapy. This article presents preliminary findings based on qualitative analysis of the group process. Several sources of participants' difficulties in forming realistic appraisals of HIV/AIDS risk and of acting in accordance with them were unidentified, especially attempts to cope with experiences of loss, developing sexuality, and sexual identity and changing relations with adults. Certain problems were developmentally salient with all adolescents, whereas others were especially marked for the high-risk population of developmentally disturbed adolescents.     

基于视觉传播理论探索视觉素养与读片技能的整合

视觉素养是"读图"时代人们的基本文化素养,鉴于医学影像学的特点和要求,影像诊断学专业学生必须拥有良好的视觉素养.本文从视觉素养概念、视觉基本理论以及视觉素养培养的策略等方面探索了视觉素养与读片技能的整合.作者建议在影像诊断学中,应讲授有关视觉素养的基本知识.     

Hemispheric Asymmetries: Attention to Visual and Auditory Primitives

A computational theory of hemispheric asymmetries in perception (double filtering by frequency) is described. Its central tenet is that the cerebral hemispheres first perform symmetric filtering of visual and auditory information. Functional hemispheric asymmetry arises from a second filtering stage (containing filters skewed in different directions in the two hemispheres). The first stage selects a range of task-relevant spatial or auditory frequencies from the absolute values. This range is passed to the asymmetric filters. In this way, the hemispheric difference becomes one of relative rather than absolute information. Behavioral deficits due to unilateral lesions in neurological patients and neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures in normal subjects implicate posterior cortex in these hemispheric differences.     

知觉适应对种族融合面孔的种族分类和知觉辨别的影响

面孔加工的种族效应(the other-race effects)指人们对面孔做个体辨别任务时辨别本族面孔的绩效优于辨别他族面孔的绩效, 而做种族分类任务时分类他族面孔的绩效优于分类本族面孔的绩效。本研究通过知觉适应操纵被试对种族两歧(高加索和亚洲)融合面孔的种族知觉, 进而比较被试在两种条件下对同一张融合面孔进行种族分类和知觉辨别的绩效的差异。结果发现, 知觉适应能使被试产生将两歧融合面孔知觉为与原始面孔所属种族相反种族的知觉偏向, 并且, 伴随着这种知觉偏向, 两歧融合面孔的加工出现了他族分类优势和本族辨别优势, 提示社会认知因素对面孔加工的种族效应有重要作用。     

Temporal Relationships Between Gaze and Vocal Behavior in Prelinguistic and Linguistic Communication

This work reports longitudinal evaluation of the temporal relationships between gaze and vocal behavior addressed to interactive partners (mother or experimenter) in a free-play situation. Thirteen children were observed at the ages of 1;0 and 1;8 during laboratory sessions, and video recordings of free-play interactions with mother and a female experimenter were coded separately for children's vocal behavior (vocalizations and words) and gaze toward their interactive partners. The difference between the observed and expected cooccurrence of these two communicative behaviors was evaluated by transformation into z-scores. The most important findings are related to differences in the temporal relationship observed at age 1;0 between gaze and vocalizations and at age 1;8 between gaze and words. At the earlier age, the infants who exhibited greater coordination between gaze and vocal behavior than was expected by chance (z-score > +1.96) preferred to look at the interlocutor at the beginning of the vocal turn. Instead, when they were older and began to produce words, they frequently looked at the interlocutor at the end of the vocal turn. These results are interpreted as referring to characteristics of conversational competence in the prelinguistic and linguistic periods. Moreover, looking at the interlocutor at the beginning of the vocal turn at age 1;0 was found to be related to language production at age 1:8, highlighting a significant relationship between conversational competence during the prelinguistic period and language acquisition.     

Curious Objects: How Visual Complexity Guides Attention and Engagement

Some things look more complex than others. For example, a crenulate and richly organized leaf may seem more complex than a plain stone. What is the nature of this experience—and why do we have it in the first place? Here, we explore how object complexity serves as an efficiently extracted visual signal that the object merits further exploration. We algorithmically generated a library of geometric shapes and determined their complexity by computing the cumulative surprisal of their internal skeletons—essentially quantifying the “amount of information” within each shape—and then used this approach to ask new questions about the perception of complexity. Experiments 1–3 asked what kind of mental process extracts visual complexity: a slow, deliberate, reflective process (as when we decide that an object is expensive or popular) or a fast, effortless, and automatic process (as when we see that an object is big or blue)? We placed simple and complex objects in visual search arrays and discovered that complex objects were easier to find among simple distractors than simple objects are among complex distractors—a classic search asymmetry indicating that complexity is prioritized in visual processing. Next, we explored the function of complexity: Why do we represent object complexity in the first place? Experiments 4–5 asked subjects to study serially presented objects in a self-paced manner (for a later memory test); subjects dwelled longer on complex objects than simple objects—even when object shape was completely task-irrelevant—suggesting a connection between visual complexity and exploratory engagement. Finally, Experiment 6 connected these implicit measures of complexity to explicit judgments. Collectively, these findings suggest that visual complexity is extracted efficiently and automatically, and even arouses a kind of “perceptual curiosity” about objects that encourages subsequent attentional engagement.     

Biases in Visual Attention in Depressed and Nondepressed Individuals

Abstract

The present study utilised a cognitive paradigm to examine attentional biases in mildly depressed persons. Twelve depressed and 12 nondepressed subjects completed an attentional task similar to that employed by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). A tachistiscope was used to present subjects with a series of word pairs, each with one word printed above the other. Three types of word pairs were presented: manic-neutral, depressed-neutral, and manic-depressed. Selective attention to one member of a word pair was assessed using ac perception task. Based on cognitive models of depression, it was hypothesised that the depressed subjects would attend more to depressed-content words than to manic- or neutral-content words, whereas the nondepressed subjects would not exhibit any attentional biases. In contrast to these predictions, analyses indicated that whereas the depressed subjects attended equally to depressed-, manic-, and neutral-content words, the nondepressed subjects attended more to manic-content than they did to neutral- or depressed-content words. These results add support to the documentation of evenhandedness in the cognitive functioning of depressed subjects, and of self-sewing biases in nondepressed subjects. The present findings are discussed in terms of a zoom lens model of attention, in which depressed persons attempt to exhaustively process their sensory world, but with a loss of attentional resolution. In contrast, nondepressed individuals attempt to process a more limited portion of their sensory world, but with an increase in attentional power. Finally, directions for future research in this area are offered.     

基于视觉传播理论探索视觉素养与读片技能的整合

视觉素养是"读图"时代人们的基本文化素养,鉴于医学影像学的特点和要求,影像诊断学专业学生必须拥有良好的视觉素养。本文从视觉素养概念、视觉基本理论以及视觉素养培养的策略等方面探索了视觉素养与读片技能的整合。作者建议在影像诊断学中,应讲授有关视觉素养的基本知识。     

Modulation of the Directional Attention Deficit in Visual Neglect by Hemispatial Factors

Using a visuo-spatial cuing paradigm, Posner and collaborators (Posner, Cohen, & Rafal, 1982; Posner, Walker, Friedrich, & Rafal, 1984) reported that subjects with a parietal lobe lesion have difficulty in disengaging their visual attention from an invalidly precued location in the ipsilesional hemifield when the target they have to respond to is presented in the contralesional field. Later, these authors (Posner, Walker, Friedrich, & Rafal, 1987) proposed that this disengagement deficit is one involving spatial shifts of attention in a contralesional direction, irrespective of the visual hemifield in which the target is presented. This proposal of a directional disengagement deficit along the horizontal axis, present in either hemifield, contrasts with a report by Baynes, Holtzman, & Volpe (1986) showing, in right parietal subjects, a disengagement deficit for shifts of attention along the vertical axis that is only manifest in the contralesional hemifield. In the present report, we assessed the disengagement deficit of a neglect subject along the horizontal and vertical axes. Results show a disengagement deficit restricted to shifts of attention in the contralesional direction (horizontal axis), which is significant only in the contralesional visual hemifield. However, there is a clear trend for a directional disengagement deficit in the ipsilateral field. These observations indicate that the attention deficit present in neglect is directional and is modulated either by hemispatial factors or by the lateral target location in the visual field. On the basis of the present results, it is proposed that the deficit of parietal subjects may best be conceptualized as one of attentional capture for stimuli located on the contralesional side of the current focus of attention rather than one of disengagement.     

Emergence of Joint Attention: Relationships Between Gaze Following,Social Referencing,Imitation, and Naming in Infancy

The authors investigated the extent to which the joint-attention behaviors of gaze following, social referencing, and object-directed imitation were related to each other and to infants' vocabulary development in a sample of 60 infants between the ages of 8 and 14 months. Joint-attention skills and vocabulary development were assessed in a laboratory setting. Split-half reliability analyses on the joint-attention measures indicated that the tasks reliably assessed infants' capabilities. In the main analysis, no significant correlations were found among the joint-attention behaviors except for a significant relationship between gaze following and the number of names in infants' productive vocabularies. The overall pattern of results did not replicate results of previous studies (e.g., M. Carpenter, K. Nagell, & M. Tomasello, 1998) that found relationships between various emerging joint-attention behaviors.     

视觉搜索任务中直视探测优势的眼动研究

已有研究发现在视觉搜索任务中对直视的探测比斜视更快且更准确, 该现象被命名为“人群中的凝视效应”。大多数研究者将该效应的产生归因于直视会捕获更多的注意。然而, 直视条件下对搜索项的匹配加工更容易也有可能导致对直视的探测比斜视快。此外,已有研究还发现头的朝向会影响对注视方向的探测, 但对于其产生原因缺乏实验验证。本研究采用视觉搜索范式, 运用眼动技术, 把注视探测的视觉搜索过程分为准备阶段、搜索阶段和反应阶段, 对这两个问题进行了探讨。结果显示：对直视的探测优势主要表现在搜索阶段和反应阶段; 在搜索阶段直视的探测优势获益于搜索路径的变短和分心项数量的变少以及分心项平均注视时间的变短; 头的朝向仅在搜索阶段对注视探测产生影响。该结果表明, 在直视探测中对搜索项的匹配加工比在斜视探测中更容易也是导致“人群中的凝视效应”的原因之一; 头的朝向仅仅影响了对注视方向的搜索并没有影响对其的确认加工。     

Role of Attention and Perceptual Grouping in Visual Statistical Learning

Statistical learning has been widely proposed as a mechanism by which observers learn to decompose complex sensory scenes. To determine how robust statistical learning is, we investigated the impact of attention and perceptual grouping on statistical learning of visual shapes. Observers were presented with stimuli containing two shapes that were either connected by a bar or unconnected. When observers were required to attend to both locations at which shapes were presented, the degree of statistical learning was unaffected by whether the shapes were connected or not. However, when observers were required to attend to just one of the shapes' locations, statistical learning was observed only when the shapes were connected. These results demonstrate that visual statistical learning is not just a passive process. It can be modulated by both attention and connectedness, and in natural scenes these factors may constrain the role of stimulus statistics in learning.     

Collective Contexts in Conversation: Grounding by Proxy

Anecdotal evidence suggests that participants in conversation can sometimes act as a coalition. This implies a level of conversational organization in which groups of individuals form a coherent unit. This paper investigates the implications of this phenomenon for psycholinguistic and semantic models of shared context in dialog. We present a corpus study of multiparty dialog which shows that, in certain circumstances, people with different levels of overt involvement in a conversation, that is, one responding and one not, can nonetheless access the same shared context. We argue that contemporary models of shared context need to be adapted to capture this situation. To address this, we propose “grounding by proxy,” in which one person can respond on behalf of another, as a simple mechanism by which shared context can accumulate for a coalition as a whole. We explore this hypothesis experimentally by investigating how people in a task‐oriented coalition respond when their shared context appears to be weakened. The results provide evidence that, by default, coalition members act on each other's behalf, and when this fails they work to compensate. We conclude that this points to the need for a new concept of collective grounding acts and a corresponding concept of collective contexts in psycholinguistic and semantic models of dialog.     

Children's Responses to Entry Failure: Attention Deployment Patterns and Self-Regulation Skills

In this study the authors investigated associations among children's observed responses to failure in an analogue entry situation, their attention deployment patterns, and skills and processes associated with self-regulation. Participants were 54 kindergarten and first-grade students who were either aggressive-rejected or low aggressive-popular based on peer nominations. Inhibitory control predicted the tendency to respond to entry failure by stopping and watching the group's activity. Baseline vagal tone and other-directed attention predicted children's tendency to change entry strategies after failure. Parent-rated attention skills moderated the relation between children's attention deployment patterns during the entry task and their responses to entry failure. Children who engaged in more other-directed attention were less likely to turn to solitary play after entry failure but only if they had high or moderate levels of attentional control. Other-directed attention was related to repeating previous entry bids without modification after entry failure but only when children had high levels of attention problems.     

Visual Search in Sport and Ergonomics: Its Relationship to Selective Attention and Performer Expertise

Visual search data has been frequently used to make direct implications about aspects of selective attention. In the first part of this article, the relationship between visual search and selective attention is examined to see what assumptions and limitations exist in making these implications. It is revealed that although much of the existing visual search research can be interpreted from within the selective attention notions of pertinence and context, measures of visual orientation alone, as provided by eye-movement recording, are inadequate solitary indicators of the allocation of attention. The capacity to make attentional shifts without eye movements, the distinction between looking and seeing, and the unknown role of information processed from the periphery of the retina in dynamic information pick-up emerge as essential limitations in the eye-movement recording approach to assessing selective attention. In the second part of the article, the extent to which visual search strategy, like selective attention, is mediated by the subject's level of task proficiency is examined by reviewing evidence from visual search analyses conducted within the applied settings of ergonomics and sport. It is revealed that experts and novices often systematically fixate upon different areas of a given display (implying differences in cue usage), although the evidence concerning differences in search rate (as indicative of processing load) is equivocal. Persistent failure to consider the assumptions and limitations within the methods used in applied visual research is highlighted, and some suggestions for future research direction are advanced.