Mechanisms of facilitation in primed perceptual identification

We investigated the mechanism that produces priming in perceptual identification. In Experiment 1, subjects studied a series of compound words (e.g.,outdoor,sideline); in Experiment 2, subjects studied a series of pictures (photographs) of objects. All subjects later received perceptual identification tests in which old (primed) and new (unprimed) words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2) were presented for varying durations and masked. In both experiments, performance for primed and unprimed stimuli was predicted essentially perfectly by a model that assumes that prior exposure to a stimulus results in increased visual information-acquisition rate when it is subsequently encountered. An ancillary purpose of Experiment 1 was to test whether or not priming occurs for recombined words (e.g.,outline); there was no evidence for such priming at any exposure duration.     

A note on response-decision in perceptual identification

Summary Perceptual identification is conceived here as a two-stage process which includes perceptual processing and a response-decision. Three models for the decision part are discussed. Nakatani's (1972) model is based on choice theory and incorporates sophisticated guessing. Rumelhart's (1971) model assumes that the probability of a response equals either the prior or posterior probability of the stimulus corresponding to this response. A third model is derived which incorporates assumptions from both Nakatani's and Rumelhart's model. According to the results of two visual identification experiments Rumelhart's model has been rendered implausible whereas the third model provides a more plausible interpretation of the results.     

A new mode of fear expression: perceptual bias in height fear

Emotion and psychopathology researchers have described the fear response as consisting of four main components--subjective affect, physiology, cognition, and behavior. The current study provides evidence for an additional component in the domain of height fear (perception) and shows that it is distinct from measures of cognitive processing. Individuals High (N = 35) and Low (N = 36) in acrophobic symptoms looked over a two-story balcony ledge and estimated its vertical extent using a direct height estimation task (visual matching), and an indirect task (size estimation); the latter task seems to exhibit little influence from cognitive factors. In addition, implicit and explicit measures of cognitive processing were obtained. Results indicated that, as expected, the High Fear group showed greater relative, implicit height fear associations and explicit threat cognitions. Of primary interest, the High (compared to Low) Fear group estimated the vertical extent to be higher, and judged target sizes to be greater, even when controlling for the cognitive bias measures. These results suggest that emotional factors such as fear are related to perception.     

Attention and perceptual priming in the perceptual identification task

Prior research indicates that manipulations of attention during encoding sometimes affect perceptual implicit memory. Two hypotheses were investigated. One proposes that manipulations of attention affect perceptual priming only to the extent that they disrupt stimulus identification. The other attributes reduced priming to the disruptive effects of distractor selection. The role of attention was investigated with a variant of the Stroop task in which participants either read words, identified their color, or did both. Identifying the color reduced priming even when the word was also overtly identified. This result held regardless of whether color and word were presented as a single object (Experiments 1 and 2) or as separate objects (Experiment 4). When participants read and identified a color, the overt order of the responses did not matter; both conditions reduced priming relative to reading alone (Experiment 3). The results provide evidence against the stimulus-identification account but are consistent with the distractor-selection hypothesis.     

A Bayesian model for implicit effects in perceptual identification

Retrieving effectively from memory (REM; R. M. Shiffrin & M. Steyvers, 1997), an episodic model of memory, is extended to implicit memory phenomena, namely the perceptual identification studies reported in R. Ratcliff and G. McKoon (1997). In those studies, the influence of prior study was greatest when words were presented most briefly and when forced-choice targets and foils were most similar. R. Ratcliff and G. McKoon use these data to argue against models in which prior study changes a word's representation. A model in which prior study changes a word's representation by adding context information is fit to their data; at test, the model uses a Bayesian decision process to compare the perceptual and context features associated with the test flash to stored traces. The effects of prior study are due to matching extra context information and are larger when alternatives share many features, thereby reducing noise that attenuates these effects.     

敌意解释偏向与攻击的关系

敌意解释偏向是一种认知加工偏向, 指个体将模棱两可信息以敌意的方式进行解释的倾向, 它会对个体的攻击行为产生影响。攻击也会影响个体的敌意解释偏向:作为一种人格特质, 高攻击性使个体更容易产生敌意解释偏向; 作为一种行为反应, 攻击对敌意解释偏向具有发展和强化作用。敌意解释偏向和攻击之间可能存在循环关系。两者关系会受到性别、年龄以及人格特点等因素影响。未来研究需要改进敌意解释偏向与攻击的测量工具, 使测量更为直接、客观; 拓展两者不同亚类之间的交互研究, 以全面系统地了解两者之间的关系; 深入探究情绪在敌意解释偏向与攻击行为关系中的作用; 整合信息加工过程, 探究它们的交互作用对攻击行为的影响等。     

Sex differences in interpretation bias in adolescents

Interpretation biases, in which ambiguous information is interpreted negatively, have been hypothesized to place adolescent females at greater risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders than same‐aged males. We tested the hypothesis that adolescent girls interpret ambiguous scenarios more negatively, and/or less positively, than same‐aged males using the Adolescent Interpretation and Belief Questionnaire (N = 67, 11–15 years old). We also tested whether adolescent girls and boys differed in judging positive or negative interpretations to be more believable and whether the scenario content (social vs. non‐social) affected any sex difference in interpretation bias. The results showed that girls had higher average negative interpretation scores than boys, with no sex differences in positive interpretation scores. Girls and boys did not differ on which interpretation they found to be most believable. Both sexes reported that positive interpretations were less likely to come to mind, and were less believable, for social than for non‐social scenarios. These results provide preliminary evidence for sex differences in interpretation biases in adolescence and support the hypothesis that social scenarios are a specific source of anxiety to this age group. A greater understanding of the aetiology of interpretation biases will potentially enhance sex‐ and age‐specific interventions for anxiety and mood disorders.     

Dissociation of sensory facilitation and decision bias in statistical learning

ABSTRACT

The detection of regularities in the sensory environment, known as statistical learning, is an important brain function that has been observed in many experimental contexts. In these experiments, statistical learning of patterned sensory stimulation leads to improvements in the speed and/or accuracy with which subsequent stimuli are recognized. That is, statistical learning facilitates the transformation of sensory stimuli into motor responses, but the mechanism by which this occurs is unclear. Statistical learning could improve the efficiency of sensory processing, or it could bias responses toward particular outcomes. The distinction is important, as these different hypotheses imply different functions and different neural substrates for statistical learning. Here we address this problem by studying statistical learning as a decision-making process, which allows us to leverage the extensive computational literature on this topic. Specifically we describe a method for applying the Diffusion Decision Model (DDM) to isolate different sensory and cognitive processes associated with decision-making. The results indicate that statistical learning improves performance on a visual learning task in two distinct ways: by altering the efficiency of sensory processing and by introducing biases in the decision-making process. By fitting the parameters of the DDM to data from individual subjects, we find that the prominence of these two factors differed substantially across the population, and that these differences were predictive of individual performance on the psychophysical task. Overall, these results indicate that different cognitive processes can be recruited by statistical learning, and that the DDM is a powerful framework for detecting these influences.     

Shape constancy and a perceptual bias towards symmetry

In attempting to judge whether a briefly presented rotated figure was symmetrical (circle or square) or asymmetrical (ellipse or rectangle), a bias towards perceiving symmetry was evident. This bias appears to be perceptual rather than judgmental in origin in that it was affected neither by variations in the probability of occurrence of symmetrical figures nor by familiarization with the stimuli. A characterization of the stimulus similarity space based on the shape-slant invariance hypothesis is presented, and a model which incorporates both the similarity space and the symmetry bias is proposed. The model can account for our paradoxical finding that the more asymmetrical some projected images, the more likely they will be perceived as symmetrical. This model can also account for Massaro’s (1973, 1975) results on shape constancy. However, Massaro’s theory was not supported in that extension in depth did not account for increased difficulty of shape judgments.     

Induced emotional interpretation bias and anxiety

Five experiments are reported showing that the interpretation of personally relevant emotional information can be modified by systematic exposure to congruent exemplars. Participants were induced to interpret ambiguous information in a relatively threatening or a benign way. Comparison with a baseline condition suggested that negative and positive induction had similar but opposing effects. Induction of an interpretative bias did not require active generation of personally relevant meanings, but such active processing was necessary before state anxiety changed in parallel with the induced interpretative bias. These findings provide evidence consistent with a causal link between the deployment of interpretative bias and anxiety and reveal something of the processes underlying this association.     

Recognition without perceptual identification: A measure of familiarity?

Previous work has shown that when items in a perceptual identification task are presented too quickly to identify, participants can still discriminate between studied and unstudied items. Such recognition without perceptual identification (RWPI) has been shown to occur in a variety of situations, including the false recognition of semantic associates of studied items. The present study investigated the utility of the RWPI paradigm for isolating instances of recognition that are familiarity based from those that are recollection based. Toward this end, the magnitude of the RWPI effect was compared in item versus associative recognition and in short versus long lists. The RWPI effect was larger in item than in associative recognition, and larger with short than with long study lists. These results are interpreted within the context of a dual-process approach to recognition and support the notion that RWPI taps familiarity-based recognition.     

The mnemonic value of perceptual identification

In four experiments, subjects were required to name words presented on a CRT screen. On generate trials, the words were presented quickly, at a point where roughly half could be identified correctly; on read trials, the items were presented for a full second, allowing for rapid and easy naming. A surprise recognition test for the presented items then revealed a substantial retention advantage for the briefly presented items, but no similar advantage was produced in a recall. It is argued that under rapid viewing conditions subjects may fail to extract enough visual features to allow for immediate resolution, requiring the initiation of a kind of data-driven generation process. This latter process then produces a generation effect for the briefly presented items compared with the read items, but only on a retention test that shows sensitivity to data-driven processing. These results are discussed from the standpoint of current theoretical views on the generation effect.     

Unconscious memory bias in depression: perceptual and conceptual processes

Mood-congruent memory (MCM) bias in depression was investigated using 4 different implicit memory tests. Two of the implicit tests were perceptually driven, and 2 were conceptually driven. Depressed participants and nondepressed controls were assigned to 1 of 4 implicit memory tests after studying positive and negative adjectives. Results showed no MCM bias in the perceptually driven tests. MCM was demonstrated in 1 of the conceptually driven tests, but only for adjectives that were conceptually encoded. Results support the theory that mood-congruent processes in depression are limited to conceptual processing. However, activation of conceptual processes may not be sufficient for demonstrating mood congruency.     

Cross-modal bias and perceptual fusion with auditory-visual spatial discordance

Investigations of situations involving spatial discordance between auditory and visual data which can otherwise be attributed to a common origin have revealed two main phenomena:cross-modal bias andperceptual fusion (or ventriloquism). The focus of the present study is the relationship between these two. The question asked was whether bias occurred only with fusion, as is predicted by some accounts of reactions to discordance, among them those based on cuesubstitution. The approach consisted of having subjects, on each trial, both point to signals in one modality in the presence of conflicting signals in the other modality and produce same-different origin judgments. To avoid the confounding of immediate effects with cumulative adaptation, which was allowed in most previous studies, the direction and amplitude of discordance was varied randomly from trial to trial. Experiment 1, which was a pilot study, showed that both visual bias of auditory localization and auditory bias of visual localization can be observed under such conditions. Experiment 2, which addressed the main question, used a method which controls for the selection involved in separating fusion from no-fusion trials and showed that the attraction of auditory localization by conflicting visual inputs occurs even when fusion is not reported. This result is inconsistent with purely postperceptual views of cross-modal interactions. The question could not be answered for auditory bias of visual localization, which, although significant, was very small in Experiment 1 and fell below significance under the conditions of Experiment 2.     

Crossmodal facilitation of masked visual target identification

In the present study, participants identified the location of a visual target presented in a rapidly masked, changing sequence of visual distractors. In Experiment 1, we examined performance when a high tone, embedded in a sequence of low tones, was presented in synchrony with the visual target and observed that the high tone improved visual target identification, relative to a condition in which a low tone was synchronized with the visual target, thus replicating Vroomen and de Gelder's (2000, Experiment 1) findings. In subsequent experiments, we presented a single visual, auditory, vibrotactile, or combined audiotactile cue with the visual target and found similar improvements in participants' performance regardless of cue type. These results suggest that crossmodal perceptual organization may account for only a part of the improvement in participants' visual target identification performance reported in Vroomen and de Gelder's original study. Moreover, in contrast with many previous crossmodal cuing studies, our results also suggest that visual cues can enhance visual target identification performance. Alternative accounts for these results are discussed in terms of enhanced saliency, the presence of a temporal marker, and attentional capture by oddball stimuli as potential explanations for the observed performance benefits.