Inference-driven attention in symbolic and perceptual tasks: Biases toward expected and unexpected inputs

The aims of this paper are (a) to gather support for the hypothesis that some basic mechanisms of attentional deployment (i.e., its high efficiency in dealing with expected and unexpected inputs) meet the requirements of the inferential system and have possibly evolved to support its functioning, and (b) to show that these orienting mechanisms function in very similar ways in two perceptual tasks and in a symbolic task. The general hypothesis and its predictions are sketched in the Introduction, after a discussion of current findings concerning visual attention and the generalities of the inferential system. In the empirical section, three experiments are presented where participants tracked visual trajectories (Experiments 1 and 3) or arithmetic series (Experiments 2 and 3), responding to the onset of a target event (e.g., to a specific number) and to the repetition of an event (e.g., to a number appearing twice consecutively). Target events could be anticipated when they were embedded in regular series/trajectories; they could be anticipated, with the anticipation later disconfirmed, when a regular series/trajectory was abruptly interrupted before the target event occurred; and they could not be anticipated when the series/trajectory was random. Repeated events could not be anticipated. Results show a very similar pattern of allocation in tracking visual trajectories and arithmetic series: Attention is focused on anticipated events; it is defocused and redistributed when an anticipation is not confirmed by ensuing events; however, performance decreases when dealing with random series/trajectory—that is, in the absence of anticipations. In our view, this is due to the fact that confirmed and disconfirmed anticipations are crucial events for “knowledge revision”—that is, the fine tuning of the inferential system to the environment; attentional mechanisms have developed so as to enhance detection of these events, possibly at all levels of inferential processing.     

No anticipation without intention: Response–effect compatibility in effect-based and stimulus-based actions

Goal-directed behavior is characterized by the anticipation of the resulting effect during response selection. Such anticipations can be contextualized in the sense that response–effect relationships in one stimulus context are inverted in another stimulus context. The primary study aim was to test the hypothesis that contextualized effect anticipation might depend on whether subjects adopt either an effect-based action control style or a stimulus-based control style. Importantly, we hypothesized that the choice of control styles depends on explicit instruction. Effect anticipation during response selection was determined by assessing the behavioral impact of spatial compatibility between the required response and an additional task-irrelevant spatial feature attached to the anticipated effect that would be produced by that response in a given context. In two experiments we found a compatibility effect exclusively in blocks with effect-based instruction but not in stimulus-based blocks. Furthermore, subjects could quickly switch between styles without one strategy dominating the others. Together, this shows that contextualized anticipation of distal visual effects is not an automatic process but depends on the intention to produce an effect.     

Selective looking with minimal eye movements

Neisser and Becklen (1975) showed that one of two visually superimposed events could be followed without interference from the other. Neisser and Becklen allowed their subjects to move their eyes without restriction. The present experiment eliminated the possibility that the tracking eye movements of the subjects, which could have been used to maintain the stability of the event on the retina, were instrumental in following the desired event. The experiment of Neisser and Becklen was essentially replicated with one exception: subjects were required to fixate a spot in the center of the visual field during one-half of the trials. It was no more difficult for subjects to follow either a single event or one of two superimposed events when fixation was required. The suggestion was made that eye movements do not initiate a perceptual act, but rather are dependent upon perceptual anticipations.     

The effect of visual and cognitive distraction on driver’s anticipation in a simulated car following scenario

Distraction is a common cause of accidents (e.g. NHTSA, 2009), and different distraction conditions influence the driving behaviour in a specific way. Despite a lot of research in this area, most studies concentrate on perception errors as a result of visual distraction. The effects of different distraction conditions on higher cognitive processes are still unclear. The fact that accidents happen even if the drivers perceive all relevant information implies that cognitive factors contribute to accidents, too. For this reason, this study was conducted to investigate how different distraction conditions influence the anticipation of events in a car–following scenario. Anticipation is required to know what will happen next, and to react adequately to the situation. In a driving simulator, scenarios with different manoeuvres of a preceding car were created to generate various anticipations and therefore a different adaptation of the driving behaviour. Additionally, a cognitive and a visual secondary task were introduced. The question was in which way either a cognitive or visual distraction influences the generation of anticipations and the construction of an appropriate situation model.The results indicate that in the phase when the preceding car showed braking manoeuvres, drivers prolonged their safety distance only when being visually distracted which is probably done to compensate for this visual distraction. This compensation ensued to some extent in the second phase where the preceding cars drove with a constant speed. Additionally, drivers who were visually distracted went somewhat slower when the car in front had braked in phase one. Thus, the drivers seemed to anticipate that the car might brake again and adapted their speed accordingly. This was not found in drivers with cognitive distraction. Thus, cognitive distraction seems to disturb this anticipation.Finally, at an intersection, drivers with visual distraction had a smaller TTC and a higher velocity when the car in front made an unexpected turn. Thus, the impairment of perception due to the visual distraction leads to a slower reaction as compared to a cognitive distraction. Overall, cognitive distraction influences the anticipation of possible future actions of other car drivers negatively while visual distraction deteriorates perception and thus the reaction to critical, sudden events. Thus, different intervention strategies are required to prevent these kinds of accidents.     

Prediction,events, and the advantage of Agents: The processing of semantic roles in visual narrative

Agents consistently appear prior to Patients in sentences, manual signs, and drawings, and Agents are responded to faster when presented in visual depictions of events. We hypothesized that this “Agent advantage” reflects Agents’ role in event structure. We investigated this question by manipulating the depictions of Agents and Patients in preparatory actions in wordless visual narratives. We found that Agents elicited a greater degree of predictions regarding upcoming events than Patients, that Agents are viewed longer than Patients, independent of serial order, and that visual depictions of actions are processed more quickly following the presentation of an Agent vs. a Patient. Taken together these findings support the notion that Agents initiate the building of event representation. We suggest that Agent First orders facilitate the interpretation of events as they unfold and that the saliency of Agents within visual representations of events is driven by anticipation of upcoming events.     

Selective attention, inhibition for repeated events and hemispheric specialization

When two visual events appear consecutively in the same spatial location, our response to the second event is slower than to the first. This inhibition for repeated events may reflect a bias toward sampling novel locations, a bias useful for exploring visual space. It has been shown that the left hemisphere is more specialized in selective attentional processes than the right one. The aim of the present experiment was to test if this hemispheric specialization for selective attention may also affect the inhibition for repeated events. For this purpose, we asked 11 normal subjects to perform an identity-based discrimination task in which the target to be detected could appear alone or surrounded by flanking letters, in the left or in the right visual field. Results show that inhibition for repeated events is present only when selective attention is required and when the task is performed in the right specialized visual field.     

Attention and perception: An information-integration perspective

Attentional effects in perceptual processing are analyzed within a framework of a fuzzy logical model of perception. The recognition of a pattern is conceptualized as involving three stages of processing: featural evaluation, integration of features, and pattern classification. The model predicts no loss of resolution when multiple sources of information are integrated to recognize a perceptual event. This model is contrasted with a single-channel model in which only one source of information can be recognized at a time. The task involves a relatively novel situation of speech perception by ear and eye. No attentional decrement is observed when observers process both auditory and visual speech specifying a single speech event. This result contrasts with previous studies showing a loss when attention has to be divided between different events along auditory and visual modalities. The different results are interpreted in terms of the number of events that have to be processed. Processing two different modalities leads to an attentional decrement when the two inputs specify different events whereas no attentional decrement occurs when these inputs are integrated to recognize a single event. A distinction is made between detection that requires only the evaluation of a single source of information and recognition that requires the evaluation and integration of multiple sources of information. The current framework is also used to discuss previous empirical and theoretical work and the issue of early versus late selection.     

视觉预期的类型及神经机制

视觉预期是一种运用视觉信息的部分资源和先行资源对即将发生的事件进行预测的能力。为了人们更加清楚地认识视觉预期的内在加工过程,同时也有助于国内外研究者更为科学深入地探讨这种自上而下的加工,本文主要从婴幼儿和成人运动员两方面来阐述视觉预期的相关研究。首先从婴幼儿对物体相关属性和行为目标的视觉预期两方面探讨了视觉预期的类型,然后论述了成人视觉预期的神经机制。最后,指出今后的研究应加强视觉预期相关技术在临床诊断中的应用,注重环境在视觉预期中的作用,从神经网络角度研究视觉预期的神经基础。     

Rats’ anticipation of current and future trial outcomes in the ordered RNR/RNN serial pattern task

In the ordered RNR/RNN serial pattern task, rats often reduce their running speeds on trial 2 less within the RNR than within the RNN series. Initially, investigators (Capaldi, 1985; Capaldi et al., 1983) considered this trial 2 differential speed effect evidence for rats’ anticipation of inter-trial outcomes within each series. Later findings, however, suggest that this effect reflects some generalization of the ordinal position of trial 3 (Burns et al., 1986) or its similar runway cues during trial 2 (Capaldi et al., 1999). To test these generalization hypotheses, we made trial 2 more distinct from trial 3 in each series by forcing rats to alternate runways in a T-maze only on the last trial rather than on trial 2 in each series in Experiment 1, or by forcing rats to alternate runways between trials rather than to run down the same runway on all trials within each series in Experiment 2. Although enhancing the distinctiveness between these trials reduced the trial 2 differential speed effect, extensive training failed to eliminate it. Therefore, this residual difference between trial 2 speeds could reflect rats’ anticipation of trial 3 outcomes during trial 2 as originally proposed by Capaldi (1985) Experiment 3 was designed to determine whether we could enhance rats’ final trial outcome expectancies during trial 2 by making different trial 2 choices distinctive cues for each trial 3 outcome. The trial 2 speed effect was greater when rats were forced to alternate over all trials only within one of the series than when they were sometimes forced to do so in either series. Post-training probe tests revealed that both series position and the relevant within-series runway events contributed to this enhanced anticipation of trial 3 outcomes.     

Predictive inferences take time to develop

In order to determine the time course of inferences about predictable events, predicting or control contexts were presented, followed by a target word (Exps. 1A, B, and C) or a continuation sentence (Exp. 2) that confirmed or disconfirmed the predicted event. Relative to the control condition, under the predicting condition there was facilitation in naming the confirming target words 1500 ms after the onset of the last word in the context (Exp. 1C), but not after 500 ms (Exp. 1A), and only a tendency after 1000 ms (Exp. 1B). In addition, there was facilitation in reading the post-target and final regions of the continuation sentence that confirmed the predicted event, as well as inhibition when the predicted event was disconfirmed, but no effect was observed on the target word itself (Exp. 2). It is concluded that, when the predicted event is highly constrained by the context, predictive inferences are likely to be drawn on-line, but they take time to construct. Received: 14 January 1998 / Accepted: 21 April 1998     

Some considerations about the biological appearance of pacing stimuli in visuomotor finger-tapping tasks

Sensorimotor synchronization is a crucial function for human daily activities, which relies on the ability of predicting external events. Synchronization performance, as assessed in finger-tapping (FT) tasks, is characterized by an anticipation tendency, as the tap generally precedes the pacing event. This synchronization error (SE) depends on many factors, in particular on the features of the pacing stimulus. Interest is growing in the facilitation effect that action observation has on motor execution. So far, neuroimaging and neurophysiology studies of motor priming via action observation have mainly employed tasks requiring single action instances. The impact of action observation on motor synchronization to periodic stimuli has not yet been tested; to this aim, a synchronization FT task may be an eligible probing task. The purpose of this study was to characterize a biological pacer at the behavioral level and provide information for those interested in studying the brain processes of continuous observation/execution coupling in timed actions using FT tasks. We evaluated the influence of the biological appearance of a pacer (a tapping finger) on SE, when compared to an abstract, kinematically equivalent pacer (a tilting hinged bar) and a more standard stimulus (a pulsating dot). We showed that the continuous visual display of a biological pacer yields comparable results to the abstract pacer, and a more robust performance and larger anticipations than a traditional pulsating stimulus.     

Unconscious modulation of the conscious experience of voluntary control

How does the brain generate our experience of being in control over our actions and their effects? Here, we argue that the perception of events as self-caused emerges from a comparison between anticipated and actual action-effects: if the representation of an event that follows an action is activated before the action, the event is experienced as caused by one's own action, whereas in the case of a mismatch it will be attributed to an external cause rather than to the self. In a subliminal priming paradigm we show that participants overestimated how much control they had over objectively uncontrollable stimuli, which appeared after free- or forced-choice actions, when a masked prime activated a representation of the stimuli immediately before each action. This prime-induced control-illusion was independent from whether primes were consciously perceived. Results indicate that the conscious experience of control is modulated by unconscious anticipations of action-effects.     

Three‐year‐olds express suspense when an agent approaches a scene with a false belief

Research on early false belief understanding has entirely relied on affect‐neutral measures such as judgments (standard tasks), attentional allocation (looking duration, preferential looking, anticipatory looking), or active intervention. We used a novel, affective measure to test whether preschoolers affectively anticipate another's misguided acts. In two experiments, 3‐year‐olds showed more expressions of suspense (by, e.g. brow furrowing or lip biting) when they saw an agent approach a scene with a false as opposed to a true belief (Experiment 1) or ignorance (Experiment 2). This shows that the children anticipated the agent's surprise and disappointment when encountering reality. The findings suggest that early implicit knowledge of false beliefs includes anticipations of the affective implications of erring. This vital dimension of beliefs should no longer be ignored in research on early theory of mind.     

Attentional load modulates mislocalization of moving stimuli,but does not eliminate the error

Localization of the onset and offset of a moving target is subject to a number of errors that have to be attributed to events following or preceding the target event. Apparently, observers are unable to ignore the spatiotemporal context surrounding the target event. In two experiments, observers’ attention was directed toward a single position along a trajectory, two positions along a single trajectory, or two positions along two different trajectories. In the latter condition, attention to details of a single trajectory was reduced. At the same time, motion type was manipulated by varying the temporal interval between successive target presentations. The localization error was not affected by attentional load; however, effects of motion type were eliminated when two trajectories had to be attended to. It may be sufficient to notice that the target has moved for localization errors to occur, while specifics of the trajectory are ignored.     

Attention and probabilistic sequence learning

Limitations of using fixed sequences of events in studies of learning in the sequential reaction-time task led us to develop a probabilistic version of the task. When sequences occur probabilistically, transitions usually follow a sequence, but with some small probability, events occur out of sequence. This variation on the paradigm provides new evidence associated with manipulations of attentional load. Most notably, single-task learning leads to particularly high error rates on improbable transitions, suggesting anticipation of the sequence. Dual-task learning shows sensitivity to the sequence (by reaction-time differences to probable and improbable transitions), but without inflated errors on improbable transitions. Sensitivity to the sequence and anticipatory errors disappeared when participants transferred from single-task learning to dual-task conditions, suggesting that what is learned with single-task practice cannot be applied under conditions of limited attention. When learners transferred from dual- to single-task conditions, sensitivity of RT to the sequence increased but anticipation errors remained the same, suggesting that attentional load limits performance, but not learning. Qualitative differences in performance result from variations in attentional resources, which may reflect different learning processes. Received: 17 February 1997 / Accepted: 5 January 1998     

The quality of suggested memories

Alarge number of studies have demonstrated that participants could be led to report suggested events that were never witnessed (Loftus & Palmer, 1974 ). The present study attempts to explore the quality of such suggested memories. Thirty‐six participants were exposed to a live event of brief duration (20 s). They were then misled about certain aspects of the event. Memory was assessed using a forced‐choice recognition test. The participants were also required to give remember/know/guess responses, together with confidence ratings, and also to indicate how they came to remember the item. Thirty‐six per cent of the suggested memories were “know” responses, while 43% were “remember” responses. Moreover, whenever the participants had a remember experience they always recalled a wealth of visual information. With regards to the confidence level of the suggested memories, it was observed that the suggested memories were as confidently held as accurate memories. The results indicate that suggestions may become integrated with other kinds of information and that these falsely remembered memories are often accompanied with varied kinds of information; predominant among them seems to be visual imagery and past associations. For accurate memories, too, visual imagery was recalled the most, followed by other kinds of information (e.g., past associations, emotional, auditory, and inferential). The study points to the difficulties of differentiating between true recollections of actual events and false recollections of events that did not occur.     

Mediational use of internal representations of food and no-food events by pigeons

Two experiments were conducted with pigeons to determine whether internal representations of food and no-food events can act as mediators in the formation of new associations. Specifically we asked if the representation of an anticipated event can replace the event itself in an established conditional discrimination. In Phase 1 of both experiments pigeons were differentially autoshaped to peck hue stimuli, only one of which was followed by access to food. In Phase 2 they were trained on a symbolic 0-delay matching-to-sample (DMTS) task with food and no-food samples and line-orientation comparisons. In Phase 3 the birds were tested on a symbolic DMTS task in which the hue stimuli from Phase 1 were substituted for the Phase 2 food-event samples. For the Pos group, the hue followed by food in Phase 1 was substituted for the food sample and the hue associated with no-food was substituted for the no-food sample so that the resulting sample/comparison pairings were consistent with the food-event mediator. For the Neg group the pairings were reversed so that the sample/comparison pairings were inconsistent with the food-event mediators. In Experiment 1, when the no-food event was the absence of an event, acquisition of the transfer task was significantly more rapid in the Pos than in the Neg condition. In Experiment 2, when the no-food event was the presentation of an empty food hopper, the Pos group transferred at a significantly higher level than the Neg group. The two experiments provide evidence that in pigeons, representations involving event anticipations can be substituted for, and are thus similar to, the events themselves.     

Detection of collision events on curved trajectories: optical information from invariant rate-of-bearing change

Previous research (Andersen & Kim, 2001) has shown that a linear trajectory collision event (i.e., a collision between a moving object and an observer) is specified by objects that expand and maintain a constant bearing (the object location remains constant in the visual field). In the present study, we examined the optical information for detecting a collision event when the trajectory was of constant curvature. Under these conditions, a collision event is specified by expansion of an object and a constant rate-of-bearing change. Three experiments were conducted in which trajectory curvature and display duration were varied while time to contact, speed, and initial image position of the collision objects were maintained. The results indicated that collision detection performance decreased with an increase in trajectory curvature and decreased with a decrease in display duration, especially for highly curved trajectories. In Experiment 3, we found that the presentation of a constant rate-of-bearing change in noncollision stimuli resulted in an increase in the false alarm rate. These results demonstrate that observers can detect collision events on curved trajectories and that observers utilize bearing change information.     

Making sense of surprise: an investigation of the factors influencing surprise judgments

Surprise is often defined in terms of disconfirmed expectations, whereby the surprisingness of an event is thought to be dependent on the degree to which it contrasts with a more likely, or expected, outcome. The authors investigated the alternative hypothesis that surprise is more accurately modeled as a manifestation of an ongoing sense-making process. In a series of experiments, participants were given a number of scenarios and rated surprise and probability for various hypothetical outcomes that either confirmed or disconfirmed an expectation. Experiment 1 demonstrated that representational specificity influences the relationship that holds between surprise and probability ratings. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inclusion of an enabling event lowers surprise ratings for disconfirming outcomes. Experiment 3 explored the reason for this effect, revealing that enabling events lower surprise by reducing uncertainty, thus enhancing ease of integration. Experiment 4 evaluated the contrast hypothesis directly, showing that differences in contrast are not correlated with differences in surprise. These results provide converging support for the view that the level of surprise experienced for an event is related to the difficulty of integrating that event with an existing representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Neural correlates of inference-driven attention in perceptual and symbolic tasks: An event-related potential study

The inferential system anticipates the external environment by building up internal representations of its regularities. To that purpose, two sources of information are especially important and attract attentional resources: expected and unexpected events, which are useful for checking the accuracy of internal representations. In the present study, we investigated the behavioural properties and the neural mechanisms underlying the strategic allocation of attention triggered by those events. To that end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the performance of two tasks requiring detection of predictable and unpredictable response events embedded in a visuospatial or numeric sequence. The behavioural results in the two tasks mirror each other, suggesting the recruitment of similar attentional allocation processes between the two domains. The ERPs showed partially similar effects. In both tasks, a P3a-like component signalled the capture of attention by events clashing with previous expectations, whilst a P3b-like component marked the focusing of attention on predicted events and its redistribution among all possible response events occurring after the detection of an unexpected event.