The effect of novel distractors on performance in focused attention tasks: A cognitive-psychophysiological approach

In the present study, we examined whether or not novel stimuli affect performance in a focused attention task. Participants responded to a central target while an irrelevant distractor in the visual display was occasionally changed. In Experiment 1, both target and distractor were presented centrally within the focus of attention. In Experiment 2, a central target was presented along with an irrelevant distractor at a peripheral location, outside the focus of attention. Novel distractors were associated with longer latencies and enhanced orienting responses (as measured by skin conductance responses) only when presented at an attended location. In contrast, as is demonstrated in Experiment 3, the same peripheral novel distractors interfered with task performance when they possessed task-relevant information. These results indicate that there is a fundamental difference between novel stimuli and task-relevant stimuli. Whereas the former exert influence only within the focus of attention, the latter affect performance even when positioned in an unattended location. Our findings have important implications for the operation of visual attention.     

Another look at the relationship between phonetic symbolism and the feeling of knowing

Koriat (1975), using a word-matching phonetic symbolism task, found a significant relationship between translation accuracy and the degree of subjective confidence associated with the response. This study examined the hypothesis that since responses on which subjects are in consensus are more likely correct than incorrect, confidence ratings may actually be related to the degree of consensus, regardless of the correctness of the response. The results strongly supported this hypothesis. For items with a consensually correct response, translation accuracy increased with degree of subjective confidence, while for items with a consensually incorrect response it decreased. Consensual responses were judged subjectively more compelling than nonconsensual responses regardless of their accuracy. Some implications of these findings are outlined.     

Facing immortality

This study is primarily a call to philosophers to attend the concerns raised by the increasing possibility of indefinitely extended human life. While these concerns are largely moral and socio-political, questions arising from this possibility are seen to involve other philosophical areas, including epistemology. Starting with the age-old desire for extended, enjoyable life, possible strategies for realizing such life are considered. Such realization is shown to conflict with the desire for children. Various reasons for choice between the alternatives of indefinitely extended life and what is currently understood to be a normal life, including the possibility of offspring, are examined. Competing social visions are sketched for the purpose of resolving this dilemma. It is argued that humanity's likely choice from among the competing social sketches favors the decision for extended life against that for limited lifespan with the possibility of children. Assuming that the extended life will be a life of learning leads to epistemological considerations regarding what is to be learned.     

The effect of pre-cueing on spatial attention across perception and action

It is well established that processes of perception and action interact. A key question concerns the role of attention in the interaction between perception-action processes. We tested the hypothesis that spatial attention is shared by perception and action. We created a dual-task paradigm: In one task, spatial information is relevant for perception (spatial-input task) but not for action, and in a second task, spatial information is relevant for action (spatial-output task) but not for perception. We used endogenous pre-cueing, with two between-subjects conditions: In one condition the cue was predictive only for the target location in the spatial-input task; in a second condition the cue was predictive only for the location of the response in the spatial-output task. In both conditions, the cueing equally affected both tasks, regardless of the information conveyed by the cue. This finding directly supports the shared input-output attention hypothesis.     

Implicit sequence learning based on instructed task set

How does the way we code and control actions influence automatic skill acquisition processes? Wenke and Frensch (2005) showed that instructions can lead participants to code spatial responses based on color. Here, we tested in 3 experiments to what extent response labeling and instruction-based response coding can determine what is learned in implicit sequence learning. Instructions mapped 4 gray shape stimuli to 1 of the 4 keys each in a serial reaction task, referring to the keys in terms of either their color or their spatial location. In Experiments 1 and 2 we found that people in the color instruction conditions used color for action control and acquired sequence knowledge containing color: They were susceptible to irrelevant stimulus colors at transfer and could transfer color sequence knowledge to a new arrangement of response positions and fingers, whereas participants who had received spatial instructions could not. Implicit sequence learning was thus surprisingly flexible. Depending on whether an arbitrary nonspatial response feature was used or not used to explain the stimulus-response mappings, we either found or did not find evidence that this feature became part of action control and sequence learning. Furthermore, Experiment 3 suggested that response position might become part of the sequence knowledge even if instructions do not emphasize this response feature. Together, the findings suggest that implicit sequence learning is based on action control, which in turn strongly, but not entirely, depends on which response features are used to explain the stimulus-response mappings in the instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Subjective confidence in perceptual judgments: a test of the self-consistency model

Two questions about subjective confidence in perceptual judgments are examined: the bases for these judgments and the reasons for their accuracy. Confidence in perceptual judgments has been claimed to rest on qualitatively different processes than confidence in memory tasks. However, predictions from a self-consistency model (SCM), which had been confirmed for general-information questions (Koriat, 2010) and social attitudes (Koriat & Adiv, 2010), are shown to hold true also for perceptual judgments. In SCM, confidence is modeled by the procedure for assessment of statistical level of confidence: For a 2-alternative, forced-choice item, confidence is based on the consistency with which the choice is favored across a sample of representations of the item, and acts as a monitor of the likelihood that a new sample will yield the same choice. Assuming that these representations are drawn from commonly shared populations of representations associated with each item, predictions regarding the basis of confidence were confirmed by results concerning the functions relating confidence and choice latency to interparticipant consensus and to intraparticipant consistency for majority and minority choices. With regard to the confidence-accuracy (C/A) relationship, the consensuality principle, documented for general-knowledge tasks (Koriat, 2008a), was replicated for perceptual judgments: Confidence correlated with the consensuality of the choice rather than with its correctness, suggesting that the C/A correlation is due to the relationship between confidence and self-consistency and is positive only as long as the correct choices are the consistently made choices. SCM provides a general model for the basis and accuracy of confidence judgments across different domains.     

Smith on Indexicals

In this paper, I advance a new view of the semantics of indexicals, using a paper by Quentin Smith as my starting point. I make use of Smith’s examples, refined and expanded upon by myself to argue, as Smith does, that the standard view, that indexicals refer to some prominent features of the context according to an invariant rule called the character, does not agree with a wide range of phenomena. I depart from Smith, however, in denying that we need more complex rules, which he does not give, called metacharacters to account for all the deviations, and instead argue for a view of indexicals as just being special cases of demonstratives. I show how demonstratives can be substituted for indexicals to support this view, and I adduce recent work in the semantics of demonstratives to explain how it can work.     

Alleviating inflation of conditional predictions

Previous studies indicated that conditional predictions—the assessed probability that a certain outcome will occur given a certain condition—tend to be markedly inflated. Five experiments tested the effects of manipulations that were expected to alleviate this inflation by inducing participants to engage in analytic processing. Rewarding participants for accurate predictions proved ineffective. A training procedure in which participants assessed the likelihood of each of several outcomes before assessing the probability of a target outcome was partly effective in reducing overestimation. Most effective was the requirement to work in dyads and to come to an agreement about the assessed likelihood. Working in dyads helped alleviate prediction inflation even after participants made their individual predictions alone, and its debiasing effect also transferred to the estimates that were made individually on a new set of stimuli. The results were discussed in terms of the factors that make prediction inflation resistant to change.     

Was it designed to do that? Children's focus on intended function in their conceptualization of artifacts

Do young children who seek the conceptual kind of an artifact weigh the plausibility that a current function constitutes the function intended by the object designer? Three- and four-year-olds were encouraged to question adults about novel artifacts. After inquiring about what an object was, some children were shown a function that plausibly accounted for the structural features of the object; others were shown a possible, but implausible function. Children given implausible functions were less satisfied with these responses than those given plausible functions, as shown by their more persistent attempts to ask follow-up questions about function. Accordingly, preschoolers appear to take into account matters of intentional design when assigning artifacts to conceptual kinds.