Overt and covert object-based attention

To examine the role of perceptual object representations in the control of eye movements and attention, a pair of experiments adapted the object-cuing paradigm of Egly, Driver, and Rafal (1994) to require eye movements. Displays were pairs of adjacent rectangles, each containing two characters. Observers were asked to make a speeded judgment of a target character’s orientation, and a cue was provided prior to target/distractor onset to indicate the target’s likely location. Gaze-contingent presentation of target and distractors was used to demand overt scanning of displays. Eye movements during task performance evinced two forms of object-based effects. First, saccades following fixation on an invalidly cued item were more likely to be made within the cued rectangle than between rectangles. Second, saccades within the cued rectangle were preceded by shorter dwell times than saccades between rectangles. Extrafoveal processing of stimuli within the cued rectangle, however, was not facilitated, suggesting that covert attention was not allocated more densely within the cued than within the uncued object.     

Anxiety-related bias in the classification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions

High- and low-trait socially anxious individuals classified the emotional expressions of photographic quality continua of interpolated ("morphed") facial images that were derived from combining 6 basic prototype emotional expressions to various degrees, with the 2 adjacent emotions arranged in an emotion hexagon. When fear was 1 of the 2 component emotions, the high-trait group displayed enhanced sensitivity for fear. In a 2nd experiment where a mood manipulation was incorporated, again, the high-trait group exhibited enhanced sensitivity for fear. The low-trait group was sensitive for happiness in the control condition. The mood-manipulated group had increased sensitivity for anger expressions, and trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. Interpretations of the results related to the classification of fearful expressions are discussed.     

Emotion regulation and memory: the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool

An emerging literature has begun to document the affective consequences of emotion regulation. Little is known, however, about whether emotion regulation also has cognitive consequences. A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done.     

Responsibility attitudes and interpretations are characteristic of obsessive compulsive disorder

The cognitive-behavioural theory of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) proposes that a key factor influencing obsessional behaviour is the way in which the intrusive cognitions are interpreted. The present paper reports an investigation of links between clinical symptoms (of anxiety, depression and obsessionality) and responsibility beliefs. These beliefs include not only measures of general responsibility attitudes (assumptions) but also more specific responsibility appraisals consequent on intrusive cognitions. The characteristics of two new questionnaires specifically designed to measure these beliefs were assessed in patients suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, in patients suffering from other anxiety disorders and in non-clinical controls. The scales measuring negative beliefs about responsibility were found to have good reliability and internal consistency. Comparisons between criterion groups indicate considerable specificity for both assumptions and appraisals with respect to OCD. There was also good evidence of specificity in the association between responsibility cognitions and obsessional symptoms across groups, and that this association was not a consequence of links with anxiety or depressive symptoms. Although the two measures were correlated, they each made unique contributions to the prediction of obsessional symptoms. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that responsibility beliefs are important in the experience of obsessional problems.     

Age-related changes in the control of attention in depth

In 2 experiments, the authors examined the control of spatial attention in depth in advanced age. Observers viewed 2 sets of lines that overlapped in two-dimensional (2-D) space but that were presented at different depth locations. An exogenous cue indicated the depth at which a colored target line would appear. On some trials, a distracting colored element was also presented. The luminance of this distracter varied from high to low. For both older and younger adults, distractors slowed reaction time less if they were at a different depth from the target. This effect was more robust for older adults with low-luminance distractors, indicating an important role for target features as well as attentional control. Adding another feature (i.e., color) that distinguished between target and distracter reduced the effects of slowing shown by the older observers and eliminated the cost of low-luminance distractors for all observers. The results suggest that attentional control in depth is maintained in aging.     

The implications of cortical recruitment and brain morphology for individual differences in inhibitory function in aging humans

The authors assessed individual differences in cortical recruitment, brain morphology, and inhibitory task performance. Similar to previous studies, older adults tended toward bilateral activity during task performance more than younger adults. However, better performing older adults showed less bilateral activity than poorer performers, contrary to the idea that additional activity is universally compensatory. A review of the results and of extant literature suggests that compensatory activity in prefrontal cortex may only be effective if the additional cortical processors brought to bear on the task can play a complementary role in task performance. Morphological analyses revealed that frontal white matter tracts differed as a function of performance in older adults, suggesting that hemispheric connectivity might impact both patterns of recruitment and cognitive performance.     

Visual skills in airport-security screening

Abstract— An experiment examined visual performance in a simulated luggage-screening task. Observers participated in five sessions of a task requiring them to search for knives hidden in x-ray images of cluttered bags. Sensitivity and response times improved reliably as a result of practice. Eye movement data revealed that sensitivity increases were produced entirely by changes in observers' ability to recognize target objects, and not by changes in the effectiveness of visual scanning. Moreover, recognition skills were in part stimulus-specific, such that performance was degraded by the introduction of unfamiliar target objects. Implications for screener training are discussed.     

A comparative analysis of North American adolescent and adult mass murderers

Thirty adult mass murderers and 34 adolescent mass murderers in North America are compared on both offender and offense variables to delineate similarities and differences. Findings indicate a plethora of psychiatric disturbances and odd/reclusive and acting-out personality traits. Predisposing factors include a fascination with weapons and war among many of the adolescents and the development of a "warrior mentality" in most of the adults. Precipitating factors indicate a major rejection or loss in the hours or days preceding the mass murder. Results are interpreted through the lens of threat assessment for targeted violence (Borum, Fein, Vossekuil, & Bergland 1999), recognizing that a fact-based, dynamic behavioral approach is most useful for mitigating risk of such an extremely low-base-rate violent crime.     

Age-related differences in localized attentional interference

Attentional selection of an object in the visual field degrades processing of neighboring stimuli in young adults. A pair of experiments examined the effects of aging on such localized attentional interference. In Experiment 1, younger and older observers made speeded same-different judgments of target shapes that varied in spatial separation. Performance declined for both age groups as the distance between targets decreased, but an Age x Distance interaction indicated that the magnitude of this effect was larger for older adults. Experiment 2 ruled out sensory masking as an explanation for these findings. Results indicate that older observers experience losses in the ability to attend to multiple spatially proximal stimuli within the visual field.