Finding a new target in an old display: Evidence for a memory recency effect in visual search

Visual search often involves searching the same environment, consecutively, for a number of different targets. Here we investigate the extent to which search benefits from such previous exposure. In the experiment participants searched the same display consecutively for two different targets. Manual responses were faster in the second search than the first search regardless of whether a target was present or absent in the second search. Eye movement recordings demonstrated that the time necessary to find a target letter in the second search depended on when that letter was last fixated in the previous search. This fixation recency effect lasted for about four fixations. In addition, when a target was absent during the second search, participants were less likely to refixate a distractor if it had been recently fixated in the previous search and refixations tended to also occur later on in the search. These results provide evidence for a limited capacity short-term memory store in this kind of visual search.     

Local and global processes in surface lightness perception

Various demonstrations show that a target of constant luminance can be made to appear darker in perceived lightness merely by introducing an adjacent region of higher luminance. This has often been interpreted as a manifestation of contrast effects produced by lateral inhibition, a relatively local process. An alternative interpretation holds that the highest luminance in such a display serves as an anchor that defines the white level. This interpretation is global in the sense that the anchor need not be located near any particular target in order to serve as its standard. Edge integration processes have been postulated that would enable such remote comparisons, but there is controversy about the strength of these processes. We report a series of experiments in which local and global processes were assessed. Specifically, we tested whether the introduction of a higher luminance has a greater darkening effect on an adjacent target than on a remote target. We found no difference, suggesting that the darkening effect is a matter of anchoring, not contrast, and that edge integration processes required by anchoring are relatively strong.     

Associations between Physical Self-Concept and Anticipated Guilt and Shame: The Moderating Role of Gender

Body-related emotions have been identified as important predictors of mental and physical health. Evaluations of the physical self are inextricably linked with body-related emotions. However, little research has addressed how physical self-concept is associated with anticipated emotions and how associations may differ between men and women. The current study examined associations between physical self-concept and anticipated guilt and shame and examined gender as a moderator of these associations. The sample consisted of 353 Canadian undergraduate students (55% female; M_age?=?21.94. range?=?18–64). Participants read a hypothetical scenario commonly associated with guilt and shame experiences and were asked to anticipate their emotional experience when imagining themselves in the scenario. Participants also indicated their gender and completed a measure of physical self-concept. Gender moderated the relationship between physical self-concept and anticipated shame but not guilt. Specifically, there was a negative association between physical self-concept and anticipated shame for women but not for men. Findings are consistent with the notion that gender role socialization shapes the emotional experiences, specifically feelings of shame, of men and women differently. The results demonstrate that even imagining a situation that runs counter to societal ideals for women’s bodies as thin and toned coincides with the anticipation of shame among adult women with more negative physical self-concept.

     

Group interpersonal skills training in a natural setting: an experimental study.

This study assessed effectiveness of group interpersonal skills training conducted in a natural setting with nonanalogue clients. Subjects (Ss) in a behavioral-training condition received 4 hr of instruction consisting of modeling, behavioral rehearsal, coaching, feedback and reinforcement. Training focused on positive and negative social responses and on initiating interactions, as well as reacting to interactions initiated by others. Subjects in a discussion-control condition engaged in focused discussion of interpersonal concerns but received no experiential practice. Within a pre-test-post-test control group design, subjective and objective measures were used to assess training effects. When compared to Ss involved in group discussion. Ss participating in group behavioral training revealed greater pre- to post-test changes on selfreported probability of engaging in selected interpersonal responses and on objective measures of eye contact, speech duration, positive affective responses, use of no-statements, compliance, refusals and requests for new behavior. Support for generalization of training is presented and methodological issues are discussed.     

Perceived area and the luminosity threshold.

Observers made forced-choice opaque/luminous responses to targets of varying luminance and varying size presented (1) on the wall of a laboratory, (2) as a disk within an annulus, and (3) embedded within a Mondrian array presented within a vision tunnel. Lightness matches were also made for nearby opaque surfaces. The results show that the threshold luminance value at which a target begins to appear self-luminous increases with its size, defined as perceived size, not retinal size. More generally, the larger the target, the more an increase in its luminance induces grayness/blackness into the surround and the less it induces luminosity into the target, and vice versa. Corresponding to this luminosity/grayness tradeoff, there appears to be an invariant: Across a wide variety of conditions, a target begins to appear luminous when its luminance is about 1.7 times that of a surface that would appear white in the same illumination. These results show that the luminosity threshold behaves like a surface lightness value--the maximum lightness value, in fact--and is subject to the same laws of anchoring (such as the area rule proposed by Li & Gilchrist, 1999) as surface lightness.     

Love,That Indispensable Supplement: Irigaray and Kant on Love and Respect

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant's view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.     

Non-lateralised deficits of drawing production in hemispatial neglect

Spatially lateralised deficits that typically define the hemispatial neglect syndrome have been shown to co-occur with other non-lateralised deficits of attention, memory, and drawing. However even a simple graphic task involves multiple planning components, including the specification of drawing start position and drawing direction. In order to investigate the influence of these factors in neglect we presented patients with a circle-copying task, and specified the drawing start point. The ability to draw from the instructed location was strongly related to tests that measure constructional abilities, but not related to start point laterality. In contrast, the direction in which patients drew the circle was affected by start point laterality: patients with neglect were less likely to draw in a typical direction when the cue was on the affected side of space and this was strongly related to severity of the neglect. Patients with neglect consistently produced circles that were smaller than the model; however, the scaling was not affected by the laterality of the start point, nor was the proportion of drawings correctly started at the cue. These findings demonstrate the complex relationship between neglect and even the simplest test for the syndrome.     

Effort during visual search and counting: insights from pupillometry

We investigated the processing effort during visual search and counting tasks using a pupil dilation measure. Search difficulty was manipulated by varying the number of distractors as well as the heterogeneity of the distractors. More difficult visual search resulted in more pupil dilation than did less difficult search. These results confirm a link between effort and increased pupil dilation. The pupil dilated more during the counting task than during target-absent search, even though the displays were identical, and the two tasks were matched for reaction time. The moment-to-moment dilation pattern during search suggests little effort in the early stages, but increasingly more effort towards response, whereas the counting task involved an increased initial effort, which was sustained throughout the trial. These patterns can be interpreted in terms of the differential memory load for item locations in each task. In an additional experiment, increasing the spatial memory requirements of the search evoked a corresponding increase in pupil dilation.These results support the view that search tasks involve some, but limited, memory for item locations, and the effort associated with this memory load increases during the trials. In contrast, counting involves a heavy locational memory component from the start.     

Eye movements in a simple spatial reasoning task

We report two experiments in which participants read a question about the spatial relationship between two letters, then viewed a visual display containing the letters and were required to respond to the question. The format of the question influenced the nature of the eye movements generated to the visual display. Participants also had a tendency to make additional eye movements in order to generate a fixation sequence that corresponded to the order of the letters in the question. This demonstrates an influence of stored information on eye movement generation, and suggests that the scanpath plays a role in structuring the visual information to facilitate reasoning.