Failures to see: attentive blank stares revealed by change blindness

Change blindness illustrates a remarkable limitation in visual processing by demonstrating that substantial changes in a visual scene can go undetected. Because these changes can ultimately be detected using top-down driven search processes, many theories assign a central role to spatial attention in overcoming change blindness. Surprisingly, it has been reported that change blindness can occur during blink-contingent changes even when observers fixate the changing location [O'Regan, J. K., Deubel, H., Clark, J. J., & Rensink, R. A. (2000). Picture changes during blinks: Looking without seeing and seeing without looking. Visual Cognition, 7, 191-212]. However, eye blinks produce a transient disruption of vision that is independent of any associated changes in the retinal image. We determined whether these 'attentive blank stares' could occur in the absence of blink-mediated visual suppression. Using a flicker change-blindness paradigm we confirm that despite direct attentive fixations, obvious scene changes often remain undetected. We conclude that change detection involves object or feature based attentional mechanisms, which can be 'misdirected' despite the allocation of spatial attention to the position of the change.     

Applying a Randomized Interdependent Group Contingency Component to Classwide Peer Tutoring for Multiplication Fact Fluency

Researchers have documented the positive effects of classwide peer tutoring on academic performance, engagement, and other social behaviors of students with and without disabilities. Commonly, in classwide peer tutoring, students are paired and the class is divided in half. Points are awarded for tutoring behavior and academic responding during the tutoring session. At the end of the session, the half of the class with the most points earns a reward. In the current study, a fifth-grade teacher implemented classwide peer tutoring for multiplication facts. Instead of the traditional reinforcement system, a randomized classwide interdependent group contingency was implemented. Applying a multiple-probe design across problem sets, students demonstrated increased multiplication fact fluency across three problem sets. Discussion focuses on applied implications for contingency management when implementing classwide peer tutoring programs.     

Disruption of short-term memory by changing and deviant sounds: support for a duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction

The disruption of short-term memory by to-be-ignored auditory sequences (the changing-state effect) has often been characterized as attentional capture by deviant events (deviation effect). However, the present study demonstrates that changing-state and deviation effects are functionally distinct forms of auditory distraction: The disruption of visual-verbal serial recall by changing-state speech was independent of the effect of a single deviant voice embedded within the speech (Experiment 1); a voice-deviation effect, but not a changing-state effect, was found on a missing-item task (Experiment 2); and a deviant voice repetition within the context of an alternating-voice irrelevant speech sequence disrupted serial recall (Experiment 3). The authors conclude that the changing-state effect is the result of a conflict between 2 seriation processes being applied concurrently to relevant and irrelevant material, whereas the deviation effect reflects a more general attention-capture process.     

Social support at university scale, a brief index

A brief, 3-item index of social support among college students, the Social Support at University Scale, is introduced. Its psychometric properties are examined in a sample of 90 college students (51 women, 39 men) and compared with those of an equivalent scale distributed among 100 university staff (67 women, 33 men). The Short-Form Social Support Questionnaire, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were also administered to each participant. The data suggest that the Social Support at University Scale possesses internal consistency reliability suitable for research (alpha = .68), external validity as indicated by comparisons between the student and staff samples, concurrent validity as indicated by correlations with measures of generic social support, and criterion validity as indicated by associations with known correlates of social support, namely, perceived stress, anxiety, and depression.     

Active artificial echolocation and the nonvisual perception of aperture passability.

The potential of airborne sonar to provide effective information about three-dimensional (3D) spatial layouts was assessed in four companion experiments. Blindfolded participants, never given visual access to the layout of a large room, were asked to use a sonar device whose output they had never previously encountered to judge the passability (by normal walking) of apertures between two aligned wall panels. Estimates were made from fixed and variable locations, approaches to the apertures were made from orthogonal and oblique angles, and the panels were at different distances and orientations. In each experiment, participants gave evidence of an ability to immediately use the information in structured echoes to make these judgments, though aperture location, approach angles, wall alignment and orientation each had significant effects on performance. The data are compared with performance under visual and nonechoic auditory conditions and are discussed with respect to the notions of potential information and effective information during these perceptually guided tasks.     

An isolation effect in serial memory for spatial information

This paper reports the first demonstration of an isolation effect or von Restorff effect (von Restorff, 1933) in the context of a spatial-memory task: Short-term serial recall was enhanced for both the location and the serial position of one red dot presented amongst a sequence of otherwise black dots. When the serial position of the isolate was fixed, the spatial isolation effect only emerged when participants received a control block of trials before the block of isolation trials (Experiment 1). However, when the serial position of the isolate was varied across isolation trials, an isolation effect was still produced regardless of condition order (Experiment 2). It is suggested that both temporal grouping strategies and greater item-specific processing may have contributed to the enhanced retention of the isolate.     

Simul What? Toward a Grace for the Fearful

The doctrines of forensic justification and simul iustus et peccator assume a primarily moral theo‐cosmology. However, the former constricts the excessiveness of divine grace, while the latter fails to adequately capture the fullness of the human condition. Freeing divine grace and theological anthropology from the moral requires a shift in emphasis toward suffering and an acknowledgment that a deep root of sin is creaturely vulnerability. In this case, the incurved self might symbolize the fearful, pulling goods toward the self for protection. While accountability for sin remains important, the first response to the fearful, who act from a sense of deep vulnerability, is compassion rather than judgment. In this way grace attends to but ultimately exceeds the moral.