情境特异比例一致变化对冲突效应的影响

采用Hedge和Marsh任务与比例一致性操纵相结合,分别以刺激的空间位置和形状作为比例一致操纵的情境线索,考察刺激-反应联结学习与注意调节在比例一致效应中的作用。结果发现,在情境比例一致操纵下,冲突效应的效应量受到比例一致操纵的影响产生反转。表明刺激-反应联结学习在情境特异比例一致效应中起到主要作用。     

Action-related objects influence the distribution of visuospatial attention

Previous studies have shown that attention is drawn to the location of manipulable objects and is distributed across pairs of objects that are positioned for action. Here, we investigate whether central, action-related objects can cue attention to peripheral targets. Experiment 1 compared the effect of uninformative arrow and object cues on a letter discrimination task. Arrow cues led to spatial-cueing benefits across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs: 0 ms, 120 ms, 400 ms), but object-cueing benefits were slow to build and were only significant at the 400-ms SOA. Similar results were found in Experiment 2, in which the targets were objects that could be either congruent or incongruent with the cue (e.g., screwdriver and screw versus screwdriver and glass). Cueing benefits were not influenced by the congruence between the cue and target, suggesting that the cueing effects reflected the action implied by the central object, not the interaction between the objects. For Experiment 3 participants decided whether the cue and target objects were related. Here, the interaction between congruent (but not incongruent) targets led to significant cueing/positioning benefits at all three SOAs. Reduced cueing benefits were obtained in all three experiments when the object cue did not portray a legitimate action (e.g., a bottle pointing towards an upper location, since a bottle cannot pour upwards), suggesting that it is the perceived action that is critical, rather than the structural properties of individual objects. The data suggest that affordance for action modulates the allocation of visual attention.     

Action-related objects influence the distribution of visuospatial attention

Previous studies have shown that attention is drawn to the location of manipulable objects and is distributed across pairs of objects that are positioned for action. Here, we investigate whether central, action-related objects can cue attention to peripheral targets. Experiment 1 compared the effect of uninformative arrow and object cues on a letter discrimination task. Arrow cues led to spatial-cueing benefits across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs: 0?ms, 120?ms, 400?ms), but object-cueing benefits were slow to build and were only significant at the 400-ms SOA. Similar results were found in Experiment 2, in which the targets were objects that could be either congruent or incongruent with the cue (e.g., screwdriver and screw versus screwdriver and glass). Cueing benefits were not influenced by the congruence between the cue and target, suggesting that the cueing effects reflected the action implied by the central object, not the interaction between the objects. For Experiment 3 participants decided whether the cue and target objects were related. Here, the interaction between congruent (but not incongruent) targets led to significant cueing/positioning benefits at all three SOAs. Reduced cueing benefits were obtained in all three experiments when the object cue did not portray a legitimate action (e.g., a bottle pointing towards an upper location, since a bottle cannot pour upwards), suggesting that it is the perceived action that is critical, rather than the structural properties of individual objects. The data suggest that affordance for action modulates the allocation of visual attention.     

Spatial Stroop and spatial orienting: the role of onset versus offset cues

The present study investigated whether offset cues have the same attentional consequences in the spatial Stroop effect as onset cues. Experiments 1 and 2 compared the attentional effects of onset–offset cues versus offset cues on the spatial Stroop effect, whereas Experiment 3 compared the attentional effects of onset versus offset cues. Across these experiments, independent of cue type (onset–offset or onset vs. offset) and even at long stimulus-onset asynchrony, attentional cueing did not revert into inhibition of return and was modulated by spatial Stroop with greater cueing effects for incongruent arrow’s direction and position. In addition, onset–offset or onset and offset cues produced comparable cueing effects in the location-direction congruent condition, and onset–offset or onset cues produced greater facilitation than offset cues in the incongruent condition. From a different perspective, peripheral cueing modulated the spatial Stroop effect in the same direction for onset–offset or onset and offset cues, although the reduction in spatial Stroop at cued locations was smaller with offset than with onset–offset or onset cues.     

Is positivity a cue or a response option? Warm glow vs evaluative matching in the familiarity for attractive and not-so-attractive faces

Monin (2003) showed that the attractiveness of a face increases its perceived familiarity regardless of prior exposure, and suggested that this beautiful-is-familiar effect was due to the misattribution to familiarity of the positive affect (or “warm glow”) elicited by attractive faces. This research tests the alternative interpretation that an evaluative match between a positive stimulus (an attractive face) and a positive response (“familiar”) accounts for this effect in the absence of any misattribution. In a face recognition task, participants were led to signal their sense of familiarity with previously seen and unseen faces by selecting either a pleasant (affectively congruent) or unpleasant (affectively incongruent) image. Consistent with the warm glow heuristic, higher false alarm rates were obtained for more attractive distracters, and this effect survived (and was, if anything, stronger) when an affectively incongruent response format was used. These findings are discussed in the context of current face memory and perceptual fluency models.     

Dimension-based working memory-driven capture of visual selection

We studied attentional capture by dimensional cueing of visual objects. Participants received two dimension cues, one relevant for a memory test and the other relevant for an attention test. Performance in the attention task was impaired on incongruent trials (i.e., when the relevant dimensions for memory and attention did not match) relative to congruent trials. Dimensional cueing effects were enhanced when the cued dimension was held “online” in working memory through the trial, compared to when the cued dimension did not have to be held in memory. The findings demonstrate that dimensional cueing of visual selection can occur in a largely automatic manner, with working memory exerting a strong modulatory influence. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the interaction between memory and attention.     

Attentional control in the aging brain: insights from an fMRI study of the stroop task

Several recent studies of aging and cognition have attributed decreases in the efficiency of working memory processes to possible declines in attentional control, the mechanism(s) by which the brain attempts to limit its processing to that of task-relevant information. Here we used fMRI measures of neural activity during performance of the color-word Stroop task to compare the neural substrates of attentional control in younger (ages: 21-27 years old) and older participants (ages: 60-75 years old) during conditions of both increased competition (incongruent and congruent neutral) and increased conflict (incongruent and congruent neutral). We found evidence of age-related decreases in the responsiveness of structures thought to support attentional control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices), suggesting possible impairments in the implementation of attentional control in older participants. Consistent with this notion, older participants exhibited more extensive activation of ventral visual processing regions (i.e., temporal cortex) and anterior inferior prefrontal cortices, reflecting a decreased ability to inhibit the processing of task-irrelevant information. Also, the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in evaluatory processes at the level of response (e.g., detecting potential for error), showed age-related increases in its sensitivity to the presence of competing color information. These findings are discussed in terms of newly emerging models of attentional control in the human brain.     

Audiovisual interactions depend on context of congruency

In this study, we addressed how the particular context of stimulus congruency influences audiovisual interactions. We combined an audiovisual congruency task with a proportion-of-congruency manipulation. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that the perceived duration of a visual stimulus is modulated by the actual duration of a synchronously presented auditory stimulus. In the following experiments, we demonstrated that this crossmodal congruency effect is modulated by the proportion of congruent trials between (Exp. 2) and within (Exp. 4) blocks. In particular, the crossmodal congruency effect was reduced in the context with a high proportion of incongruent trials. This effect was attributed to changes in participants' control set as a function of the congruency context, with greater control applied in the context where the majority of the trials were incongruent. These data contribute to the ongoing debate concerning crossmodal interactions and attentional processes. In sum, context can provide a powerful cue for selective attention to modulate the interaction between stimuli from different sensory modalities.     

Intuitive (in)coherence judgments are guided by processing fluency, mood and affect

Recently proposed accounts of intuitive judgments of semantic coherence assume that processing fluency results in a positive affective response leading to successful assessment of semantic coherence. The present paper investigates whether processing fluency may indicate semantic incoherence as well. In two studies, we employ a new paradigm in which participants have to detect an incoherent item among semantically coherent words. In Study 1, we show participants accurately indicating an incoherent item despite not being able to provide an accurate solution to coherent words. Further, this effect is modified by affective valence of solution words that are not retrieved from memory. Study 2 replicates those results and extend them by showing that mood moderates incoherence judgments independently of affective valence of solutions. The results support processing fluency account of intuitive semantic coherence judgments and show that it is not fluency per se but fluency variations that drive judgments.     

Physical attractiveness stereotype and memory

Three experiments examined explicit and implicit memory for information that is congruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-positive and unattractive-negative) and information that is incongruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-negative and unattractive-positive). Measures of explicit recognition sensitivity and implicit discriminability revealed a memorial advantage for congruent compared to incongruent information, as evident from hit and false alarm rates and reaction times, respectively. Measures of explicit memory showed a recognition bias toward congruent compared to incongruent information, where participants tended to call congruent information old, independently of whether the information had been shown previously or not. This recognition bias was unrelated to reports of subjective confidence in retrieval. The present findings shed light on the cognitive mechanisms that might mediate discriminatory behavior towards physically attractive and physically unattractive individuals.     

Gaze cueing as a function of perceived gaze direction

Previous studies have found that attention is automatically oriented in the direction of other people's gaze. This study directly investigated whether the perceiving gaze direction modulates the orienting of observers' attention. Gaze perception was manipulated by changing the face context (head orientation) of the gaze cue: the perceived gaze angle was increased (or decreased) when the head and gaze are congruent (or incongruent), while the local‐feature information of the eye region was preserved for all stimuli. The results showed that gaze‐cueing effects were enhanced when the perceived gaze direction was averted more toward left or right, and reduced when the perceived gaze direction was closer to direct gaze. The results suggest that gaze‐cueing effects are based on mechanisms specialized for gaze perception, and the magnitude of gaze‐cueing effects was probably a function of the perceived gaze direction.     

Watch out! Directional threat-related postures cue attention and the eyes

Previous work indicates that threatening facial expressions with averted eye gaze can act as a signal of imminent danger, enhancing attentional orienting in the gazed-at direction. However, this threat-related gaze-cueing effect is only present in individuals reporting high levels of anxiety. The present study used eye tracking to investigate whether additional directional social cues, such as averted angry and fearful human body postures, not only cue attention, but also the eyes. The data show that although body direction did not predict target location, anxious individuals made faster eye movements when fearful or angry postures were facing towards (congruent condition) rather than away (incongruent condition) from peripheral targets. Our results provide evidence for attentional cueing in response to threat-related directional body postures in those with anxiety. This suggests that for such individuals, attention is guided by threatening social stimuli in ways that can influence and bias eye movement behaviour.     

Attentional deployment in visual half-field tasks: the effect of cue position on word naming latency

Divided visual-field research suggests that attentional factors may contribute to the left hemisphere's (LH) superiority for language processing. The LH's parallel recognition strategy, specialised for whole word encoding, is largely unaffected by the distribution of spatial attention. In contrast, the right hemisphere's (RH) serial, letter-by-letter strategy places far greater demands on attentional resources. By manipulating spatial attention, the present study gauged the effect of cueing the beginning vs. the end of the word on LH and RH naming latency. Results indicated no effect of cue position on LH performance, consistent with research indicating that the LH enjoys an attentional advantage, deploying attention in parallel across the stimulus. As anticipated, the RH showed a facilitatory effect of beginning cue, which draws spatial attention to the initial letter cluster, enabling efficient implementation of the RH's sequential strategy. These findings suggest that differences in attentional deployment contribute to hemispheric asymmetries for word recognition.     

The roles of attention and awareness in the false recognition effect

Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) reported that masked words can unconsciously bias memory judgments. Others suggest that these results cannot be taken as evidence that words are perceived without awareness, as Jacoby and Whitehouse claimed. In the present experiments, participants' ability to attend to briefly presented context words was manipulated by masking the context words and by an instructional manipulation. In Experiment 1, masked context words increased false recognitions. Different from Jacoby and Whitehouse's results, nonmasked context words showed a similar pattern. In Experiment 2, these effects were replicated and an attended condition was added in which participants read the context words aloud and tried to remember them. False recognition was increased in both masked and unmasked conditions and decreased in the attended condition. These results suggest that the condition for increase or decrease in false recognition is not whether a stimulus is seen or not but whether a stimulus is attended. They suggest that the qualitative difference criterion proposed by Jacoby and Whitehouse is insufficient for determining whether participants are aware of masked presentations.     

Distinguishing highly confident accurate and inaccurate memory: insights about relevant and irrelevant influences on memory confidence

It is generally believed that accuracy and confidence in one's memory are related, but there are many instances when they diverge. Accordingly it is important to disentangle the factors that contribute to memory accuracy and confidence, especially those factors that contribute to confidence, but not accuracy. We used eye movements to separately measure fluent cue processing, the target recognition experience, and relative evidence assessment on recognition confidence and accuracy. Eye movements were monitored during a face-scene associative recognition task, in which participants first saw a scene cue, followed by a forced-choice recognition test for the associated face, with confidence ratings. Eye movement indices of the target recognition experience were largely indicative of accuracy, and showed a relationship to confidence for accurate decisions. In contrast, eye movements during the scene cue raised the possibility that more fluent cue processing was related to higher confidence for both accurate and inaccurate recognition decisions. In a second experiment we manipulated cue familiarity, and therefore cue fluency. Participants showed higher confidence for cue-target associations for when the cue was more familiar, especially for incorrect responses. These results suggest that over-reliance on cue familiarity and under-reliance on the target recognition experience may lead to erroneous confidence.     

Effects of processing fluency on comparative performance judgments

Research has shown that performance predictions are biased by the impact of processing fluency. However, existing data are inconclusive with regard to comparative judgments of performance. In five experiments, participants in an easy condition gave more favorable comparative judgments than participants in a difficult condition. Participants judged their performance more favorably if they named colors of non-color words rather than non-matching color words (Experiment 1), if they had to generate six words of a category rather than 12 words (Experiment 2), if they had to run in place for 15 s rather than 2 min (Experiment 3), but the latter result holds only true if participants were not active in sports (Experiment 4). When 67% of the items in a recognition test were old words, participants thought that their recognition performance was better than when 33% of the items were old words, although recognition performance did not differ between groups (Experiment 5). We discuss this result in the light of recent theories about effects of processing fluency on judgments.     

The negative cascade of incongruent generative study-test processing in memory and metacomprehension

Previous research suggests that when participants engage in generative study activities, the processing of text is enhanced and improvements in memory and metacomprehension result. However, few studies have investigated the influence of processes required by the testing situation or the interaction between encoding and retrieval processes on metacomprehension accuracy. The present experiments examine whether the congruency of processes generated during study and required at retrieval affect memory, metacomprehension, and control processes. Study orientation and test type were congruent (i.e., letter-reinsertion: detailed test), incongruent (i.e., letter-reinsertion: conceptual test), or neutral (i.e., read: conceptual test). After generative study, but before testing, participants made metacomprehension predictions for previously studied texts. Controlled strategy selection was measured in Experiment 2. When processes at study and test were congruent, cued recall performance and metacomprehension predictions were more accurate than when study and test were incongruent. For incongruent conditions, metacomprehension predictions were no better than chance; thus, controlled strategy selection was based on inaccurate metacomprehension, thereby further penalizing memory performance relative to congruent conditions. These findings extend a transfer-appropriate processing framework to metacomprehension.     

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed

In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20–34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.     

Contextual mood priming following left and right hemisphere damage

This research examined the influence of mood-congruent and mood-incongruent contexts on recognizing affective prosody after brain damage. Predictions stemmed from an associative network theory of learning and memory. Thirty-three male subjects, 11 each in right hemisphere damaged (RHD), left hemisphere damaged (LHD), and normal control groups judged moods from the prosody of semantically neutral phrases. In one task, the prosodic stimulus phrases were judged in isolation. In another task, the phrases were preceded by short paragraphs which were either congruent or incongruent in emotional tone with the prosodic stimuli. These paragraphs were designed to prime specific mood choices. As anticipated, LHD subjects' prosodic mood recognition was more accurate when given congruent rather than incongruent affective contexts. Congruent contexts facilitated, and incongruent contexts disrupted, their prosodic mood judgments to the same extent as normals. RHD subjects showed a partial context decrement. They were less accurate than normal or LHD subjects in the congruent condition, and were unaffected by incongruent contexts. When given congruent biasing paragraphs, however, RHD subjects did experience facilitation on a par with that found for the other groups, indicating spared sensitivity to certain contextual factors. The distinction between automatic and effortful processes is offered as a potential explanation for the RHD group's pattern of performance.     

Look away! Eyes and arrows engage oculomotor responses automatically

The present study investigates how people’s voluntary saccades are influenced by where another person is looking, even when this is counterpredictive of the intended saccade direction. The color of a fixation point instructed participants to make saccades either to the left or right. These saccade directions were either congruent or incongruent with the eye gaze of a centrally presented schematic face. Participants were asked to ignore the eyes, which were congruent only 20% of the time. At short gaze—fixation-cue stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 0 and 100 msec), participants made more directional errors on incongruent than on congruent trials. At a longer SOA (900 msec), the pattern tended to reverse. We demonstrate that a perceived eye gaze results in an automatic saccade following the gaze and that the gaze cue cannot be ignored, even when attending to it is detrimental to the task. Similar results were found for centrally presented arrow cues, suggesting that this interference is not unique to gazes.