Long-term visual associations affect attentional guidance

When observers perform a visual search task, they are assumed to adopt an attentional set for what they are looking for. The present experiment investigates the influence of long-term visual memory associations on this attentional set. On each trial, observers were asked to search a display for a grayscale version of a known traffic sign. On each trial, a distractor sign was drawn in full color. This color could either be related or unrelated to the target sign. Distractors interfered more with search when their color was related (e.g. red when the target was a stop sign), implying that long-term color associations resulted in inadvertent attentional guidance, even though color was irrelevant to the task. The results add to the growing body of evidence that long-term memory representations automatically affect attentional orienting.     

Looking, language, and memory: Bridging research from the visual world and visual search paradigms

In the visual world paradigm as used in psycholinguistics, eye gaze (i.e. visual orienting) is measured in order to draw conclusions about linguistic processing. However, current theories are underspecified with respect to how visual attention is guided on the basis of linguistic representations. In the visual search paradigm as used within the area of visual attention research, investigators have become more and more interested in how visual orienting is affected by higher order representations, such as those involved in memory and language. Within this area more specific models of orienting on the basis of visual information exist, but they need to be extended with mechanisms that allow for language-mediated orienting. In the present paper we review the evidence from these two different – but highly related – research areas. We arrive at a model in which working memory serves as the nexus in which long-term visual as well as linguistic representations (i.e. types) are bound to specific locations (i.e. tokens or indices). The model predicts that the interaction between language and visual attention is subject to a number of conditions, such as the presence of the guiding representation in working memory, capacity limitations, and cognitive control mechanisms.     

The impact of school-based mentoring on youths with different relational profiles

Associations between youths' relationship profiles and mentoring outcomes were explored in the context of a national, randomized study of 1,139 youths (54% female) in geographically diverse Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring programs. The sample included youths in Grades 4-9 from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, the majority of whom were receiving free or reduced-price lunch. Latent profile analysis, a person-oriented approach, was used to identify 3 distinct relational profiles. Mentoring was found to have differential effects depending on youths' preintervention approach to relationships. In particular, youths who, at baseline, had satisfactory, but not particularly strong, relationships benefited more from mentoring than did youths with profiles characterized by either strongly positive or negative relationships. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A thematic dialogue: towards a conclusion and a follow-up

Following the themed debate that took place after the panel, we reconsidered and explored further our hypotheses in light of the comments made by our colleagues. Clearly, it is the structural approach that underlies both the Freudian primal phantasies and the Jungian archetypes, while taking account at the same time that their approaches are informed by contemporary emergentist theories. Our discussion centred on the divergences in the cases of psychosis and neurosis, on the roles, in turn, of a return to childhood and the play of archaic representations, on the transference and countertransference functions and finally on the need to pay attention to what are deemed synchronous moments in the event.     

Similarity and categorization: from vision to touch

Even though human perceptual development relies on combining multiple modalities, most categorization studies so far have focused on the visual modality. To better understand the mechanisms underlying multisensory categorization, we analyzed visual and haptic perceptual spaces and compared them with human categorization behavior. As stimuli we used a three-dimensional object space of complex, parametrically-defined objects. First, we gathered similarity ratings for all objects and analyzed the perceptual spaces of both modalities using multidimensional scaling analysis. Next, we performed three different categorization tasks which are representative of every-day learning scenarios: in a fully unconstrained task, objects were freely categorized, in a semi-constrained task, exactly three groups had to be created, whereas in a constrained task, participants received three prototype objects and had to assign all other objects accordingly. We found that the haptic modality was on par with the visual modality both in recovering the topology of the physical space and in solving the categorization tasks. We also found that within-category similarity was consistently higher than across-category similarity for all categorization tasks and thus show how perceptual spaces based on similarity can explain visual and haptic object categorization. Our results suggest that both modalities employ similar processes in forming categories of complex objects.     

Intolerance of uncertainty and decisions about delayed, probabilistic rewards

Worry is the inflated concern about potential future threats and is a hallmark feature of generalized anxiety disorder. Previous theoretical work has suggested that worry may be a consequence of intolerance of uncertainty (IU). The current study seeks to explore the behavioral consequences of IU. Specifically, we examine how IU might be associated with aspects of reward-based decision making. We utilized a simple laboratory gambling task in which participants chose between small, low-probability rewards available immediately at the beginning of each trial and large, high-probability rewards only available after some variable delay. Results demonstrate that higher levels of intolerance of uncertainty were associated with a tendency to select the immediately available, but less valuable and less probable rewards. IU also predicted decision-makers' sensitivity to outcomes. We discuss the cognitive and affective mechanisms that are likely to underlie the observed decision-making behavior and the implications for anxiety disorders.     

Assessing group-level participation in fluid teams: testing a new metric

Participation is an important factor in team success. We propose a new metric of participation equality that provides an unbiased estimate across groups of different sizes and across those that change size over time. Using 11 h of transcribed utterances from informal, fluid, colocated workgroup meetings, we compared the associations of this metric with coded equality of participation and standard deviation. While coded participation and our metric had similar patterns of findings, standard deviation had a somewhat different pattern, suggesting that it might lead to incorrect assessments with fluid teams. Exploratory analyses suggest that, as compared with mixed-age/status groups, groups of younger faculty had more equal participation and that the presence of negative affect words was associated with more dominated participation. Future research can take advantage of this new metric to further theory on team processes in both face-to-face and distributed settings.     

Can computer mice be used as low-cost devices for the acquisition of planar human movement velocity signals?

The main goal of this work is to determine whether a computer mouse can be used as a low-cost device for the acquisition of two-dimensional human movement velocity signals in the context of psychophysical studies and biomedical applications. A comprehensive overview of the related literature is presented, and the problem of characterizing mouse movement acquisition is analyzed and discussed. Then, the quality of velocity signals acquired with this kind of device is measured on horizontal oscillatory movements by comparing the mouse data to the signals acquired simultaneously by a video motion tracking system and a digitizing tablet. A synthesis of the information gathered in this work indicates that the computer mouse can be used for the reliable acquisition of biosignals in the context of human movement studies, particularly for many applications dealing with the velocity of the end effector of the upper limb. This paper concludes by discussing the possibilities and limitations of such use.     

酒精对视觉加工和眼动行为控制的影响(中文)

Although moderate alcohol consumption is known to degrade performance in a variety of tasks, the exact nature and extent of such impairments is not well understood. We examined alcohol effects on different levels of visual processing and oculomotor control. On the lowest level(automatic), reflexive responses were tested using the prosaccade task. The‘automated’level, incorporating routine behavior based on implicit learning, was studied using the double step paradigm, while the highest level, representing voluntary control, was examined with antisaccade and memory guided tasks. In addition, sentence reading was included as a prototypical complex task with high ecological validity. Participant′s baseline performance was compared to alcohol conditions with intoxication levels around 70mg% of breath alcohol concentration. Functioning on the automatic level was intact, except for a substantial slowing in saccade latencies. On the automated level, deficits in the ability to adaptively reprogram saccades on the basis of new information were found. Impairments in voluntary control were apparent in hypermetric saccade amplitudes whenever a reprogramming of the initial saccade target was necessary. There was also a small but significant detrimental effect on visuospatial short term memory. Somewhat surprisingly, no alcohol related deficits emerged with regard to inhibitory functions. ‘Reading under the influence’resulted in substantially prolonged fixation durations with only a modest increase in total viewing time per word. A trade-off between increased duration and decreased number of fixations pointed to the possibility that the extra time available under alcohol can be used for linguistic processing, which in itself did not appear to be impaired. This idea is supported by the fact that there was no interaction between alcohol and word frequency. Contrary to expectation, the processing of parafoveal information during reading was not impeded. Overall, results provide a largely coherent pattern of selective effects that begin to form a comprehensive picture of alcohol related deficits.