Examining inhibition of return with multiple sequential cues in younger and older adults

Studies with younger adults have shown that when multiple peripheral cues are presented sequentially, inhibition of return (IOR) occurs at several locations with the greatest IOR at the most recently cued location and the least at the earliest cued location. The inhibitory ability needed to tag multiple locations requires visuospatial working memory, and it is thought that this type of memory may be vulnerable to the effects of aging. The present experiments examined whether older adults would show less IOR at multiple cued locations than younger adults when placeholders were present (Experiment 1) and absent (Experiment 2). Of interest, in both experiments older adults showed an almost identical pattern of IOR, in both magnitude and number of inhibited locations, to that of younger adults. This finding, in conjunction with research on memory-guided saccades, suggests that there may be a form of visuospatial working memory, specific to oculomotor and visual attention processes, that is relatively resistant to the effects of aging.     

Pluralism,Postmodernism and Interreligious Dialogue

Interreligious dialogue does not take place in a vacuum, nor is it a matter of casual conversation. Dialogue is a contested phenomenon, advocated and embraced on one hand, eschewed and discarded on the other. By way of an exploration of the fact of plurality, the notions of modernism and postmodernism, and a brief discussion of select pertinent issues (unity, truth, and the very idea of theology), the paradigmatic context of pluralism will be critically discussed. Contemporary engagement in interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations requires to be underpinned by a carefully thought-out conceptualising of the context in which it can authentically occur. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the context of and for interreligious dialogue.

The effect of previous trial type on inhibition of return

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the finding that targets appearing at previously cued locations are more slowly responded to than targets appearing at previously uncued locations when a relatively long temporal interval occurs between the cue and target. This experiment was conducted to determine whether the magnitude of IOR is influenced by the type of preceding trial (cued or uncued) and/or the location of the cue/target on the previous trial. Although no effect of cue/target location is observed, there was a marked effect of previous trial type, as IOR was greater following an uncued trial relative to a cued trial. This effect was attributable to differences in the response time as a function of previous trial type: specifically, participants were faster to respond to cued and uncued trials when the previous trial type was identical.     

Visual layout modulates Fitts’s law: The importance of first and last positions

When a target in the last position of a structured visual array is aimed for, movement times (MTs) are shorter than predicted by Fitts’s law (Adam, Mol, Pratt, & Fischer, 2006). That study, however, confounded relative target position with absolute target location. To determine whether target position does, indeed, produce changes in the speed-accuracy trade-off function, the present experiment manipulated relative target position (e.g., first or last) independently of absolute target location (e.g., nearest or farthest). This was accomplished by presenting connected placeholders at three adjacent locations from a set of five possible locations (i.e., the middle location could be the first, middle, or last placeholder position in an array). The results of a speeded manual-pointing task showed that relative position is important for Fitts’s law; when absolute location was held constant, shorter MTs were found for last-position than for middle-position targets. In addition, a similar effect was found for first-position targets. These results suggest that Fitts’s law holds within, but not between, relative target positions in visible structured arrays.     

It's alive! animate motion captures visual attention

Across humans' evolutionary history, detecting animate entities in the visual field (such as prey and predators) has been critical for survival. One of the defining features of animals is their motion-self-propelled and self-directed. Does such animate motion capture visual attention? To answer this question, we compared the time to detect targets involving objects that were moving predictably as a result of collisions (inanimate motion) with the time to detect targets involving objects that were moving unpredictably, having been in no such collisions (animate motion). Across six experiments, we consistently found that targets involving objects that underwent animate motion were responded to more quickly than targets involving objects that underwent inanimate motion. Moreover, these speeded responses appeared to be due to the perceived animacy of the objects, rather than due to their uniqueness in the display or involvement of a top-down strategy. We conclude that animate motion does indeed capture visual attention.