It’s under control: Top-down search strategies can override attentional capture

Bacon and Egeth (1994) proposed that observed instances of attentional capture by feature singletons (e.g., color) were the result of a salience-based strategy adopted by subjects (singleton detection mode) and, thus, were not automatic. They showed that subjects could override capture by adopting strategies based on searching for specific target features (feature search mode). However, Theeuwes (2004) has recently argued that Bacon and Egeth’s results arose from experimental confounds. He elaborated a model in which attentional capture must be expected when salient distractors fall within a spatialwindow of attention. According to Theeuwes’s (2004) model, there exist two essential criteria for examining stimulus-driven capture. First, search latencies cannot increase with display size, since the search must be parallel; second, the salience of the irrelevant distractor must not be compromised by characteristics of the search display. Contrary to the predictions of Theeuwes’s (2004) model, we provide evidence that involuntary capture can be overridden when both of these criteria are met. Our results are consistent with Bacon and Egeth’s proposal.     

Are attentional dwell times inconsistent with serial visual search?

Duncan, Ward, and Shapiro (1994) estimated that attention must remain focused on an object for several hundred milliseconds before being shifted to another object, and they referred to this period as theattentional dwell time. An important implication of these long estimates of the dwell time for models of visual search is that the search process must not involve an item-by-item serial scanning mechanism. If it did, then searching through an array of items would require enormous amounts of time, which—based on data from visual search experiments—it does not. The present report, however, provides evidence that the long estimates of attentional dwell time were caused, at least in part, by the use of masked targets. Implications of these variable estimates of the attentional dwell time for models of visual search are discussed.     

Does temporal preparation facilitate visual processing in a selective manner? Evidence from attentional capture

The present study addressed the question of whether temporal preparation influences perceptual stimulus processing in a selective manner. In three visual search experiments, we examined whether temporal preparation aids spatial selection and thus reduces distraction caused by the onset of a task-irrelevant item. In each trial, participants had to detect a target amongst five non-targets and report a basic feature of the target. In some trials, an additional task-irrelevant singleton item (abrupt onset) appeared on the screen which distracted attention away from the target. To manipulate the degree of distraction, we varied the spatial distance and the stimulus-onset asynchrony between target and singleton. Temporal preparation for the target varied by means of constant foreperiods of different lengths. Though we observed overall faster responding in the case of high temporal preparation in all three experiments, temporal preparation did not reduce spatial distraction by the abrupt onset, even when the spatial position of the target was predictable. In sum, this pattern of results does not provide support for an influence of temporal preparation on spatial selection. Instead, it indicates that temporal preparation affects early visual processing in a non-selective manner.     

Emotional devaluation of distracting patterns and faces: a consequence of attentional inhibition during visual search?

Visual search has been studied extensively, yet little is known about how its constituent processes affect subsequent emotional evaluation of searched-for and searched-through items. In 3 experiments, the authors asked observers to locate a colored pattern or tinted face in an array of other patterns or faces. Shortly thereafter, either the target or a distractor was rated on an emotional scale (patterns, cheerfulness; faces, trustworthiness). In general, distractors were rated more negatively than targets. Moreover, distractors presented near the target during search were rated significantly more negatively than those presented far from the target. Target-distractor proximity affected distractor ratings following both simple-feature and difficult-conjunction search, even when items appeared at different locations during evaluation than during search and when faces previously tinted during search were presented in grayscale at evaluation. An attentional inhibition account is offered to explain these effects of attention on emotional evaluation.     

Detecting emotional faces and features in a visual search paradigm: are faces special?

In 2 experiments, participants were presented schematic faces with emotional expressions (threatening, friendly) in a neutral-faces context or neutral expressions in an emotional-faces context. These conditions were compared with detection performance in displays containing key features of emotional faces not forming the perceptual gestalt of a face. Supporting the notion of a threat detection advantage, Experiment 1 found that threatening faces were faster detected than friendly faces, whereas no difference emerged between the corresponding feature conditions. Experiment 2 increased task difficulty with a backward masking procedure and found corresponding results. In neither of the studies was the threat detection advantage associated with reduced accuracy. However, features were, in general, detected faster than faces when task difficulty was high.     

Happy with a difference, unhappy with an identity: Observers’ mood determines processing depth in visual search

Visual search for feature targets was employed to investigate whether the mechanisms underlying visual selective attention are modulated by observers’ mood. The effects of induced mood on overall mean reaction times and on changes and repetitions of target-defining features and dimensions across consecutive trials were measured. The results showed that reaction times were significantly slower in the negative than in the positive and neutral mood groups. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the processing stage that is activated to select visual information in a feature search task is modulated by the observer’s mood. In participants with positive or neutral moods, dimension-specific, but no feature-specific, intertrial transition effects were found, suggesting that these observers based their responses on a salience signal coding the most conspicuous display location. Conversely, intertrial effects in observers in a negative mood were feature-specific in nature, suggesting that these participants accessed the feature identity level before responding.     

Selective storage and maintenance of an object’s features in visual working memory

It has been shown that we have a highly capacity-limited representational space with which to store objects in visual working memory. However, most objects are composed of multiple feature attributes, and it is unknown whether observers can voluntarily store a single attribute of an object without necessarily storing all of its remaining features. In this study, we used a masking paradigm to measure the efficiency of encoding, and neurophysiological recordings to directly measure visual working memory maintenance while subjects viewed multifeature objects and were required to remember only a single feature or all of the features of the objects. We found that measures of both encoding and maintenance varied systematically as a function of which object features were task relevant. These experiments show that individuals can control which features of an object are selectively stored in working memory.     

Opposite haptic and visual induction effects observed with Titchener’s ⊥

Nineteen psychology undergraduates were requested to “grasp” the lines of a computer image of Titchener’s ⊥ with a thumb and index finger pincer grip immediately after the line to be grasped had been indicated and the whole figure extinguished. The hand remained visible. Lines were of three different lengths (6.5, 7, and 7.5 cm), and ⊥s were presented at eight different orientations (rotated in steps of 45°). Lines also had to be judged longer, shorter, or equal, relative to one another. Haptically, subjects responded correctly to the ⊥s’ undivided lines, but scaled their responses to the divided ones according to the undivided ones. Categorical judgments yielded comparable psychometric functions for both kinds of lines, with a significant shift of points of subjective equality from a difference in length between lines of 9.8% to 13.5% when the divided or the undivided line was target. Haptic sensitivity, therefore, appears to be constrained by context, whereas the classical “visual illusion,” associated with Titchener’s ⊥, may be regarded a mere decisional criterion shift.     

Subjective states associated with retrieval failures in Parkinson’s disease

Instances in which we cannot retrieve information immediately but know that the information might be retrieved later are subjective states that accompany retrieval failure. These are expressed in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences. In Experiment 1, participants with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and older adult controls were given general questions and asked to report when they experienced a TOT state and to give related information about the missing word. The PD group experienced similar levels of TOTs but provided less correct peripheral information related to the target when in a TOT state. In Experiment 2, participants were given a Semantic (general knowledge questions) and an Episodic (word pairs) FOK task. PD patients failed to accurately predict their future memory performance (FOK) in response to both episodic and semantic cues. Results are interpreted in the context of recent frameworks of memory and metacognition.     

Men’s experience of a guided self-help intervention for hot flushes associated with prostate cancer treatment

Up to 80% of men who receive androgen deprivation therapy report hot flushes and for many these are associated with reduced quality of life. However it is recognised that there are a number of barriers to men’s engagement with support to manage symptoms and improve quality of life. This qualitative study was embedded within a larger randomised controlled trial (MANCAN) of a guided self-help cognitive behavioural intervention to manage hot flushes resulting among men receiving androgen deprivation therapy. The study aimed to explore the engagement and experiences with the guided self-help intervention. Twenty men recruited from the treatment arm of the MANCAN trial participated in a semi-structured interview exploring acceptability of the intervention, factors affecting engagement and perceived usefulness of the intervention. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a Framework approach. Over two thirds of respondents (69%) reported reading the intervention booklet in full and over 90% reporting practising the relaxation CD at least once a week. Analysis of the interviews identified three super-ordinate themes and these related to changes in hot flush symptomatology (learned to cope with hot flushes in new ways), the skills that participants had derived from the intervention (promoting relaxation and reducing stressors), and to a broader usefulness of the intervention (broader impact of the intervention and skills). The present study identified positive engagement with a guided self-help intervention and that men applied the skills developed through the intervention to help them undertake general lifestyle changes. Psycho-educational interventions (e.g. cognitive behaviour therapy, relaxation, and positive lifestyle elements) offer the potential to be both effective and well received by male cancer survivors.     

The perception of speaking rate using visual information from a talker’s face

It has been well documented that listeners are able to estimate speaking rate when listening to a talker, but almost no work has been done on perception of rate information provided by looking at a talker’s face. In the present study, the method of magnitude estimation was used to collect estimates of the rate at which a talker was speaking. The estimates were collected under four experimental conditions: auditory only, visual only, combined auditory-visual, and inverted visual only. The results showed no difference in the slope of the functions relating perceived rate to physical rate for the auditory only, visual only, and combined auditory-visual presentations. There was, however, a significant difference between the normal visual-only and the inverted-visual presentations. These results indicate that there is visual rate information available on a talker’s face and, more importantly, suggest that there is a correspondence between the auditory and visual modalities for the perception of speaking rate, but only when the visual information is presented in its normal orientation.     

Assessment of driver’s attentional resource allocation to visual,cognitive, and action processing by brain and eye signals

Driving a vehicle is comprised of multiple tasks (e.g., monitoring the environment around the vehicle, planning the trajectory, and controlling the vehicle), and requires the allocation of capacity-limited attentional resources to visual, cognitive, and action processing; otherwise, the quality of task performance will deteriorate, increasing the risk of near-accidents or crashes. The present study proposes that variations in the total amount as well as the individual amounts of attentional resources allocated to visual, cognitive, and action processing depending on the driving situations could be objectively estimated by the combined use of three physiological measures: (1) the duration of eye blinks during driving, (2) the size of eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRPs), i.e., event-related potentials (ERPs) that are time-locked to the offset of saccadic eye-movements during driving, and (3) the size of auditory-evoked potentials (AEPs), i.e., ERPs time-locked to the onset of task-unrelated auditory stimuli discretely presented during driving. We implemented these measures when participants (N = 16) drove a vehicle on a slalom course under four driving conditions defined by a combination of two levels of speed requirement (fast and slow) and two levels of path width (narrow and wide). The findings suggested that, (1) when driving at fast compared to slow speeds, the total amount of resources allocated to overall processing increased, which consisted of an increase in the amount of resources allocated to cognitive (and possibly action) processing and a decrease in the amount of resources allocated to visual processing, and (2) when driving on narrow compared to wide paths, the total amount of resources allocated to overall processing remained almost the same (due to complementary speed reduction), which consisted of an increase in the amount of resources allocated to visual processing, a decrease in the amount of resources allocated to cognitive processing, and almost the same amount of resources allocated to action processing. The driver’s resource management strategies indicated by these results as well as the utility and limitations of the proposed method are discussed.     

Panum’s fusional area estimated with a criterion-free technique

It has been reported that criterion-free estimates of the upper disparity limits for fusion of line targets are small enough to be accounted for by monocular vernier sensitivity. However, targets such as lines, which contain high spatial frequencies, may ensure small fusion limits, since fusion limits obtained with criterion-dependent methods for narrow-band targets, such as sinusoids or difference-of-Gaussian luminance profiles, are proportional to target spatial periods. Experiment 1 therefore explored whether criterion-free methods give fusion limits for narrow-band targets that can be accounted for by vernier sensitivity. Vertical fusion limits were estimated by a method that forced observers to discriminate a disparate sinusoidal grating from an immediately adjacent zero-disparity grating. Fusion limits were too large to be explained by monocular vernier thresholds obtained for the same targets. In addition, fusion limits were not affected by large changes in target contrast, whereas vernier thresholds increased as contrast was decreased. The results of Experiment 1 also argued against interocular suppression as the cause of single vision, since vernier offsets that were visible when viewed monocularly were invisible under binocular viewing conditions. In Experiment 2, manual adjustment of disparities yielded fusion limits little different from those obtained with the forced-choice method of Experiment 1, demonstrating that it is possible to design adjustment methods for assessing fusion limits that are as sensitive as forced-choice methods. In Experiment 3, large reductions in target contrast, which have the effect of decreasing disparity sensitivity, did not alter fusion limits, disconfirming the idea that fusion limits estimated with discriminative procedures represent disparity-detection thresholds. In Experiment 4, disparities were adjusted until a just noticeable difference in grating contrast appeared. These disparities were larger than fusion limits, indicating that fusion limits did not represent a change in apparent contrast arising from disparity limitations of binocular summation. Together, the four experiments support the existence of binocular fusion as a unique category of sensory performance, disconfirm several nonfusional explanations of single vision, and support the use of criterion-free as well as adjustment methods in measuring fusion limits.     

Structural brain abnormalities in patients with Parkinson’s disease with visual hallucinations: A comparative voxel-based analysis

The objective is to evaluate clinical characteristics and cerebral alterations in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with diurnal visual hallucinations (VHs). Assessment was performed using magnetic resonance image (MRI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Thirty-nine patients with PD (53.8%) and ten controls were studied. Voxel based morphology analysis was performed. Eleven patients presented diurnal VHs and among these, six had cognitive dysfunction. Patients with VHs performed worse in the mentation-related UPDRS I (p = 0.005) and motor-related UPDRS III (p = 0.02). Patients with VHs showed significant clusters of reduced grey matter volume compared to controls in the left opercula frontal gyrus and left superior frontal gyrus. PD without hallucinations demonstrated reduced grey matter volume in the left superior frontal gyrus compared to controls. Comparisons between patients with VHs regarding the presence of cognitive dysfunction showed that cases with cognitive dysfunction as compared to those without cognitive dysfunction showed significant clusters of reduced grey matter volume in the left opercular frontal gyrus. Cases without cognitive dysfunction had reduced grey matter substance in the left insula and left trigonal frontal gyrus. Judging from our findings, an abnormal frontal cortex, particularly left sided insula, frontal opercular, trigonal frontal gyrus and orbital frontal would make PD patients vulnerable to hallucinations. Compromise of the left operculum distinguished cases with VHs and cognitive dysfunction. Our findings reinforce the theoretical concept of a top-down visual processing in the genesis of VHs in PD.     

Using virtual environments to assess visual perception judgements in patients with Parkinson’s disease

Visual perception is an exceedingly critical concern in the daily lives of older people, particularly for determining traffic behaviors. In this study, two simulation experiments were conducted to determine the difference in visual perception judgement ability between healthy older individuals and patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in simulated environments. The first experiment conducted in this study manipulated the sizes of different depth cues, reference objects, and vehicle size, and also requested participants to determine the distances between objects in different images to determine differences in depth perception between different groups. The second experiment simulates the participant in predicting the time to reach the front target in the driving state. In the experiment, different distances and different speeds are used to understand whether the participants of different groups will have differences in the time prediction. The results of the first experiment demonstrated that patients with PD exhibited significant depth perception degeneration in judging object distances. The second experiment revealed that when vehicles were traveling at high speeds, participants considerably underestimated vehicle speed. The results of this study demonstrate that patients with PD experience a degree of degeneration in terms of depth perception and perception of dynamic distance prediction. This result can assist patients with PD in understanding their visual perception degeneration and improving traffic awareness.     

Creating hospitable space to nurture children’s spirituality-possibilities and dilemmas associated with power

This article considers the idea of hospitable space and raises questions about what this entails in nurturing children’s spirituality in both religious and non-religious contexts. In particular, dilemmas associated with the use and abuse of adult power and authority and systemic forms of power are explored. It is argued that hospitable space is open, inclusive and reciprocal, with mutual learning. Adults must help to set the boundaries within which open exploration can take place, empowering children without overcontrolling activities or outcomes or coercing children into particular responses. The difficulty of creating hospitable space and the dangers related to power and control, even in activities intended and widely perceived as benign, are illustrated in relation to play and school classrooms. Structural issues such as a demand for conformity and a culture of competition and pace militate against creating and sustaining hospitable space to nurture children’s spirituality. High-stakes assessment and accountability mechanisms make this especially difficult in formal school settings.     

“It’s Like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb”

Abstract

Most observers of the evangelical purity culture situate it within a form of contemporary evangelicalism that prioritizes personal spiritual growth and self-fulfillment. As a result, portrayals of the movement emphasize the therapeutic individualism and optimism of new paradigm spirituality. But the new paradigm does not help us explain the language of spiritual warfare and what Jason Bivins calls a religion of fear within purity rhetoric. Evangelical purity culture is as equally informed by a religion of accommodation and new paradigm spirituality as it is by a religion of fear and the remnants of cold war fundamentalism. This discordance makes sense only when the contemporary purity culture is placed within a broader historical trajectory that marks its genesis in the fundamentalist resurgence of the 1940s, not the 1970s when new paradigm churches first emerged. By examining the seemingly discordant elements of evangelical purity culture, historians are able to recognize the theological and historical continuity between evangelicalism’s religion of fear and religion of accommodation.