Visual object imagery and autobiographical memory: Object Imagers are better at remembering their personal past

In the present study we examined whether higher levels of object imagery, a stable characteristic that reflects the ability and preference in generating pictorial mental images of objects, facilitate involuntary and voluntary retrieval of autobiographical memories (ABMs). Individuals with high (High-OI) and low (Low-OI) levels of object imagery were asked to perform an involuntary and a voluntary ABM task in the laboratory. Results showed that High-OI participants generated more involuntary and voluntary ABMs than Low-OI, with faster retrieval times. High-OI also reported more detailed memories compared to Low-OI and retrieved memories as visual images. Theoretical implications of these findings for research on voluntary and involuntary ABMs are discussed.     

Minding gaps on the skin: Opposite bisection biases on forehead and back of one’s head

Humans perceive the world from an egocentric perspective, while being able to mentally take a third person’s perspective. Graphesthesia tasks revealed that letters written on the back of one’s own head are consistently perceived from an embodied perspective, while the perspective on one’s front is less consistent and often disembodied. We developed a cutaneous gap bisection task as a more discrete measure of the perspective on the body. In analogy to a visual pseudoneglect, we expected bisections to deviate toward the left ear when perceived from an embodied perspective. While this hypothesis was confirmed for gap bisections on the back, the results on the front suggest overall a disembodied perspective. Contrary to our expectation, this pattern was not predicted by the spontaneous perspective participants took in a graphesthesia task, indicating different cognitive mechanisms. We discuss these findings in the frame of the current literature on spatial attention and perspective taking.     

Visual discrimination of delayed self-generated movement reveals the temporal limit of proprioceptive–visual intermodal integration

This study examined the intermodal integration of visual–proprioceptive feedback via a novel visual discrimination task of delayed self-generated movement. Participants performed a goal-oriented task in which visual feedback was available only via delayed videos displayed on two monitors—each with different delay durations. During task performance, delay duration was varied for one of the videos in the pair relative to a standard delay, which was held constant. Participants were required to identify and use the video with the lesser delay to perform the task. Visual discrimination of the lesser-delayed video was examined under four conditions in which the standard delay was increased for each condition. A temporal limit for proprioceptive–visual intermodal integration of 3–5 s was revealed by subjects’ inability to reliably discriminate video pairs.     

Attentional orienting and executive control are affected by different types of meditation practice

Several studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of meditation on attention. The present study investigated the relationship between focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) meditation skills and the various functions of attention. In Experiment 1, we executed the attention network test and compared the performance of experts on dandao meditation with that of ordinary people on this test. The results indicated that the experts specializing in OM meditation demonstrated greater attentional orienting ability compared with those specializing in FA meditation and the control group. In addition, both expert groups registered improvements in their executive control abilities compared with the control group. In Experiment 2, we trained beginners in FA meditation for 3 months. The results showed that the experimental group exhibited significantly enhanced executive control ability. We infer that FA meditation skills promote executive control function and OM meditation skills promote both executive control and attentional orienting functions.     

The Word Superiority Effect in central and peripheral vision

The Word Superiority Effect (WSE) is a well-known phenomenon in reading research, where words are reported more accurately than single letters or non-words. We report two experiments that investigate the WSE in the central and peripheral visual field, as well as laterality differences in the perception of words and letters, using methods based on the Theory of Visual Attention. The results show a WSE in the central visual field, reflected in mean scores, perception thresholds, and processing speed, whereas the effect is eliminated or reversed in the periphery. This may be caused by crowding, which prevents lexical analysis of a word in the periphery. We conclude that perception of words and letters differs according to location in the visual field. Linking our results to previous studies of crowding effects in patients with reading impairments, we hypothesize that similar mechanisms may limit normal word peripheral processing.     

Altering attentional control settings causes persistent biases of visual attention

Attentional control settings have an important role in guiding visual behaviour. Previous work within cognitive psychology has found that the deployment of general attentional control settings can be modulated by training. However, research has not yet established whether long-term modifications of one particular type of attentional control setting can be induced. To address this, we investigated persistent alterations to feature search mode, also known as an attentional bias, towards an arbitrary stimulus in healthy participants. Subjects were biased towards the colour green by an information sheet. Attentional bias was assessed using a change detection task. After an interval of either 1 or 2 weeks, participants were then retested on the same change detection task, tested on a different change detection task where colour was irrelevant, or were biased towards an alternative colour. One experiment included trials in which the distractor stimuli (but never the target stimuli) were green. The key finding was that green stimuli in the second task attracted attention, despite this impairing task performance. Furthermore, inducing a second attentional bias did not override the initial bias toward green objects. The attentional bias also persisted for at least two weeks. It is argued that this persistent attentional bias is mediated by a chronic change to participants’ attentional control settings, which is aided by long-term representations involving contextual cueing. We speculate that similar changes to attentional control settings and continuous cueing may relate to attentional biases observed in psychopathologies. Targeting these biases may be a productive approach to treatment.     

Meaning above the head: combinatorial constraints on the visual vocabulary of comics

“Upfixes” are “visual morphemes” originating in comics where an element floats above a character’s head (ex. lightbulbs or gears). We posited that, similar to constructional lexical schemas in language, upfixes use an abstract schema stored in memory, which constrains upfixes to locations above the head and requires them to “agree” with their accompanying facial expressions. We asked participants to rate and interpret both conventional and unconventional upfixes that either matched or mismatched their facial expression (Experiment 1) and/or were placed either above or beside the head (Experiment 2). Interpretations and ratings of conventionality and face–upfix matching (Experiment 1) along with overall comprehensibility (Experiment 2) suggested that both constraints operated on upfix understanding. Because these constraints modulated both conventional and unconventional upfixes, these findings support that an abstract schema stored in long-term memory allows for generalisations beyond memorised individual items.     

Spatial anticipatory attentional bias for threat: Reliable individual differences with RT-based online measurement

Cues that predict the future location of emotional stimuli may evoke an anticipatory form of automatic attentional bias. The reliability of this bias towards threat is uncertain: experimental design may need to be optimized or individual differences may simply be relatively noisy in the general population. The current study therefore aimed to determine the split-half reliability of the bias, in a design with fewer factors and more trials than in previous work. A sample of 63 participants was used for analysis, who performed the cued Visual Probe Task online, which aims to measure an anticipatory attentional bias. The overall bias towards threat was tested and split-half reliability was calculated over even and odd blocks. Results showed a significant bias towards threat and a reliability of around 0.7. The results support systematic individual differences in anticipatory attentional bias and demonstrate that RT-based bias scores, with online data collection, can be reliable.     

How visually impaired cyclists ride regular and pedal electric bicycles

The present study investigates whether visually impaired cyclists compensate for their vision limitations by maintaining a lower speed or a larger distance to the kerb than normally sighted cyclists when riding a regular bicycle or pedal electric bicycle (pedelec). A normally sighted control group (n = 10), a peripheral visual field loss group (n = 9), and a low visual acuity group (n = 12) rode a fixed route (7.5 km) in the Netherlands on a regular bicycle and on a pedelec. Speed and lateral position were measured when participants cycled a (I) one-way cycle path, (II) two-way cycle path, (III) residential area, and (IV) shared space zone. With regard to both the regular bicycle and the pedelec, no significant speed or lateral position differences were found between the three groups. In conclusion, for some people with severe and permanent visual impairments, and under certain circumstances, regular bicycle and pedelec riding may be possible without noticeable speed reduction or adapted lane position to compensate for their functional impairment. The present findings may further optimise the cycling advice provided by mobility trainers of vision rehabilitation centres and the independent mobility of visually impaired people.     

The impact of leaving a voicemail,environment familiarity,and pedestrian predictability on driving behavior

Talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance, but the dynamics of this effect are not fully understood. We examined the effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving when there are critical driving targets to attend to (crosswalks and pedestrians). Participants engaged in an ecologically-valid “voicemail” task while navigating a virtual environment using a driving simulator. We also examined the potential weakening or strengthening of effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving as the familiarity and predictability of critical targets changed. Participants completed four experimental runs through the same driving environment in a driving simulator. There were two crosswalks, one with a pedestrian entering the roadway and one without a pedestrian and the location of the pedestrian was predictable (the same pedestrian consistently used the same crosswalk) for the first three runs and then unpredictable for the fourth. Half of the participants left voicemail messages using a hands-free headset, while the other half drove in silence. Leaving a voicemail message increased steering deviation and velocity. Drivers who were leaving a voicemail message decelerated for pedestrians in the roadway to a similar speed as drivers who were not leaving a voicemail message, but they were delayed in braking. Drivers who were leaving a voicemail message also had worse memory for roadway landmarks. These effects were relatively stable across runs through the same driving environment, suggesting that familiarity and predictability did not impact the effects of leaving a voicemail message while driving. Therefore, leaving a voicemail message leads to poorer driving behavior; faster speed, variable steering, and worse memory for roadway landmarks. Interestingly, although drivers who were leaving a voicemail message were slower to react to local targets, they slowed as much as drivers who were not leaving a voicemail message and familiarity with the driving environment did not impact the effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving.