Accounting for belief bias in a mental model framework: comment on Klauer, Musch, and Naumer (2000)

K. C. Klauer, J. Musch, and B. Naumer (2000; see record 2000-02818-008) presented a general multinomial model of belief bias effects in syllogistic reasoning. They claimed to map a particular mental model account of belief bias (J. V. Oakhill, P. N. Johnson-Laird, & A. Garnham, 1989; see record 1989-38845-001)) onto this model and to show empirically that it is incorrect. The authors argue that this mental model account does not map onto the multinomial model and that it can account for the data presented by Klauer et al. (Experiments 1-4). The authors further argue that additional data Klauer et al. presented in support of a new model of their own (Experiments 5-8) are explained by this mental model account. The mental model account is, therefore, refuted neither by Klauer et al.'s theoretical analysis nor by any of the results they presented. Furthermore, the account can accommodate more recent findings on belief bias in a more satisfactory way than can alternative models that have been proposed.     

Testing comprehension abilities in users of British Sign Language following CVA

Recent imaging (e.g., MacSweeney et al., 2002) and lesion (Hickok, Love-Geffen, & Klima, 2002) studies suggest that sign language comprehension depends primarily on left hemisphere structures. However, this may not be true of all aspects of comprehension. For example, there is evidence that the processing of topographic space in sign may be vulnerable to right hemisphere damage (e.g., Hickok, Say, Bellugi, & Klima, 1996), and the influence of iconicity on comprehension has yet to be explored. In this study, comprehension testing was conducted with 15 signers with unilateral brain damage, and with elderly Deaf controls. Four tests were administered: a test of iconic and non-iconic noun comprehension, a test of verb and sentence comprehension, a test of locative sentence comprehension, and a test of classifier comprehension. All tests were administered in British Sign Language (BSL), a language that has only recently been explored with lesioned signers (see Atkinson, Marshall, Thacker, & Woll, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Thacker, Woll, & Smulevitch, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Woll, & Thacker, in press). People with left hemisphere damage were impaired relative to controls on all tests. Those with right hemisphere damage performed well in the first two tests, but were impaired on locative sentences and classifiers. Neither group showed any effect of iconicity. The results shed further light on the laterality of sign language comprehension.     

Attentional inhibition has social-emotional consequences for unfamiliar faces

Visual attention studies often rely on response time measures to show the impact of attentional facilitation and inhibition. Here we extend the investigation of the effects of attention on behavior and show that prior attentional states associated with unfamiliar faces can influence subsequent social-emotional judgments about those faces. Participants were shown pairs of face images and were asked to withhold a response if a transparent stop-signal cue appeared over one of the faces. This served to associate the cued face with an inhibitory state. Later, when asked to make social-emotional choices about these face pairs, participants chose uncued faces more often than cued faces as "more trustworthy" and chose cued faces more often than uncued faces as "less trustworthy." For perceptual choices, there was no effect of how the question was framed (which face is "on a lighter background" vs. "on a darker background"). These results suggest that attentional inhibition can be associated with socially relevant stimuli, such as faces, and can have specific, deleterious effects on social-emotional judgments.     

Cortical regions associated with different aspects of object recognition performance

In the present object recognition study, we examined the relationship between brain activation and four behavioral measures: error rate, reaction time, observer sensitivity, and response bias. Subjects perceptually matched object pairs in which structural similarity (SS), an index of structural differentiation, and exposure duration (DUR), an index of task difficulty, were manipulated. The SS manipulation affected the fMRI signal in the left anterior fusiform and parietal cortices, which in turn reflected a bias to respond same. Conversely, an SS-modulated fMRI signal in the right middle frontal gyrus reflected a bias to respond different. The DUR manipulation affected the fMRI signal in occipital and posterior fusiform regions, which in turn reflected greater sensitivity, longer reaction times, and greater accuracy. These findings demonstrate that the regions most strongly implicated in processing object shape (SS-modulated regions) are associated with response bias, whereas regions that are not directly involved in shape processing are associated with successful recognition performance.     

Recognizing a plane-misoriented view of a familiar object is not influenced by the ease of specifying the main axis of elongation of that object

Participants saw three versions of pictures of familiar objects: the original unaltered (axis-normal) pictures, axis-extended pictures in which the main axes of the axis-normal pictures were elongated, and axis-switched pictures in which objects that were originally horizontally elongated were depicted as vertically elongated and vice versa. Relative to axis-normal pictures, axis extension aided decisions about whether the picture of the object was wide or tall, and axis switching hindered these decisions for both upright and plane-misoriented views. Nevertheless, although these axis manipulations clearly influenced decisions about the location of the object's main axis of elongation, axis-switched pictures were no harder to name than axis-extended pictures. Changing the depicted main axis of elongation by axis switching and axis extension did not influence object recognition in itself, whether for upright or for plane-misoriented views. This suggests that specifying the main axis of elongation of an object does not play an important role in the orientation-sensitive processes involved in identifying plane-misoriented views of that object.     

High familiarity enhances visual change detection for face stimuli

Does high familiarity with a face enable particularly efficient visual processing? In three experiments, we presented briefly and successively two pairs of faces (either famous or recently learned), masking each presentation. Between the first and the second presentations, one face changed, and the task was to locate this change. Performance was significantly better when the change involved a famous face. This superfamiliarity effect was found only for changes occurring in the left visual field and was abolished by inverting the faces. Extended prior study of the recently learned faces did not improve performance with these stimuli. The results suggest that superfamiliarity promotes highly efficient visual processing and may especially activate a configural mode of analysis.