Nonblurred regions show priority for gaze direction over spatial blur

The human eye continuously forms images of our 3D environment using a finite and dynamically changing depth of focus. Since different objects in our environment reside at different depth planes, the resulting retinal images consist of both focused and spatially blurred objects concurrently. Here, we wanted to measure what effect such a mixed visual diet may have on the pattern of eye movements. For that, we have constructed composite stimuli, each containing an intact photograph and several progressively blurred versions of it, all arranged in a 3?×?3 square array and presented simultaneously as a single image. We have measured eye movements for 7 such composite stimuli as well as for their corresponding root mean square (RMS) contrast-equated versions to control for any potential contrast variations as a result of the blurring. We have found that when observers are presented with such arrays of blurred and nonblurred images they fixate significantly more frequently on the stimulus regions that had little or no blur at all (p?<?.001). A similar pattern of fixations was found for the RMS contrast-equated versions of the stimuli indicating that the observed distributions of fixations is not simply the result of variations in image contrasts due to spatial blurring. Further analysis revealed that, during each 5 second presentation, the image regions containing little or no spatial blur were fixated first while other regions with larger amounts of blur were fixated later, if fixated at all. The results contribute to the increasing list of stimulus parameters that affect patterns of eye movements during scene perception.     

Emotion recognition: The role of featural and configural face information

Several studies investigated the role of featural and configural information when processing facial identity. A lot less is known about their contribution to emotion recognition. In this study, we addressed this issue by inducing either a featural or a configural processing strategy (Experiment 1) and by investigating the attentional strategies in response to emotional expressions (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants identified emotional expressions in faces that were presented in three different versions (intact, blurred, and scrambled) and in two orientations (upright and inverted). Blurred faces contain mainly configural information, and scrambled faces contain mainly featural information. Inversion is known to selectively hinder configural processing. Analyses of the discriminability measure (A′) and response times (RTs) revealed that configural processing plays a more prominent role in expression recognition than featural processing, but their relative contribution varies depending on the emotion. In Experiment 2, we qualified these differences between emotions by investigating the relative importance of specific features by means of eye movements. Participants had to match intact expressions with the emotional cues that preceded the stimulus. The analysis of eye movements confirmed that the recognition of different emotions rely on different types of information. While the mouth is important for the detection of happiness and fear, the eyes are more relevant for anger, fear, and sadness.     

Attention modulates saccadic inhibition magnitude

Visual transient events during ongoing eye movement tasks inhibit saccades within a precise temporal window, spanning from around 60–120 ms after the event, having maximum effect at around 90 ms. It is not yet clear to what extent this saccadic inhibition phenomenon can be modulated by attention. We studied the saccadic inhibition induced by a bright flash above or below fixation, during the preparation of a saccade to a lateralized target, under two attentional manipulations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that exogenous precueing of a distractor's location reduced saccadic inhibition, consistent with inhibition of return. Experiment 2 manipulated the relative likelihood that a distractor would be presented above or below fixation. Saccadic inhibition magnitude was relatively reduced for distractors at the more likely location, implying that observers can endogenously suppress interference from specific locations within an oculomotor map. We discuss the implications of these results for models of saccade target selection in the superior colliculus.     

Deconstructing Frith and Snowling's homograph-reading task: Implications for autism spectrum disorders

The poor performance of autistic individuals on a test of homograph reading is widely interpreted as evidence for a reduction in sensitivity to context termed “weak central coherence”. To better understand the cognitive processes involved in completing the homograph-reading task, we monitored the eye movements of nonautistic adults as they completed the task. Using single trial analysis, we determined that the time between fixating and producing the homograph (eye-to-voice span) increased significantly across the experiment and predicted accuracy of homograph pronunciation, suggesting that participants adapted their reading strategy to minimize pronunciation errors. Additionally, we found evidence for interference from previous trials involving the same homograph. This progressively reduced the initial advantage for dominant homograph pronunciations as the experiment progressed. Our results identify several additional factors that contribute to performance on the homograph reading task and may help to reconcile the findings of poor performance on the test with contradictory findings from other studies using different measures of context sensitivity in autism. The results also undermine some of the broader theoretical inferences that have been drawn from studies of autism using the homograph task. Finally, we suggest that this approach to task deconstruction might have wider applications in experimental psychology.     

Naming fluency in dyslexic and nondyslexic readers: Differential effects of visual crowding in foveal,parafoveal, and peripheral vision

Reading fluency is often indexed by performance on rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks, which are known to reflect speed of access to lexical codes. We used eye tracking to investigate visual influences on naming fluency. Specifically, we examined how visual crowding affects fluency in a RAN-letters task on an item-by-item basis, by systematically manipulating the interletter spacing of items, such that upcoming letters in the array were viewed in the fovea, parafovea, or periphery relative to a given fixated letter. All lexical information was kept constant. Nondyslexic readers’ gaze durations were longer in foveal than in parafoveal and peripheral trials, indicating that visual crowding slows processing even for fluent readers. Dyslexics’ gaze durations were longer in foveal and parafoveal trials than in peripheral trials. Our results suggest that for dyslexic readers, influences of crowding on naming speed extend to a broader visual span (to parafoveal vision) than that for nondyslexic readers, but do not extend as far as peripheral vision. The findings extend previous research by elucidating the different visual spans within which crowding operates for dyslexic and nondyslexic readers in an online fluency task.     

Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese

In alphabetic languages, prior exposure to a target word's orthographic neighbour influences word recognition in masked priming experiments and the process of word identification that occurs during normal reading. We investigated whether similar neighbour priming effects are observed in Chinese in 4 masked priming experiments (employing a forward mask and 33-ms, 50-ms, and 67-ms prime durations) and in an experiment that measured eye movements while reading. In these experiments, the stroke neighbour of a Chinese character was defined as any character that differed by the addition, deletion, or substitution of one or two strokes. Prime characters were either stroke neighbours or stroke non-neighbours of the target character, and each prime character had either a higher or a lower frequency of occurrence in the language than its corresponding target character. Frequency effects were observed in all experiments, demonstrating that the manipulation of character frequency was successful. In addition, a robust inhibitory priming effect was observed in response times for target characters in the masked priming experiments and in eye fixation durations for target characters in the reading experiment. This stroke neighbour priming was not modulated by the relative frequency of the prime and target characters. The present findings therefore provide a novel demonstration that inhibitory neighbour priming shown previously for alphabetic languages is also observed for nonalphabetic languages, and that neighbour priming (based on stroke overlap) occurs at the level of the character in Chinese.     

Human Nature: What We Need to Know about Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century

The Western worldview that now dominates the planet embodies beliefs about human nature that are inconsistent with our evolutionarily evolved natures. Its "logic" at best ignores and at worst creates the symptoms of the modern world, which if uncorrected predict severe crises in coming centuries: population growth, environmental destruction, economic collapse, and increasing social violence. In contrast, there are numerous communities today creating alternative solutions based on different understandings of human nature and human needs: cooperation rather than competition; meaningful social identity; and respect for and trust in the autonomous behavior of all persons. There exist optimistic future models.     

The Religion of the Educated Classes Revisited: New Religions,the Nonreligious,and Educational Levels

A number of different studies carried out in the late 20th century indicated that new religious movements (NRMs) tended to recruit individuals who were highly educated. In the present study, we confirm this pattern utilizing data from the national censuses of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, and Wales. Additionally, we found that educational patterns for NRMs in the censuses tended to fall into at least two subgroups, one of which had educational levels comparable to mainline denominations and the other of which had significantly higher educational achievements. Furthermore, census respondents who expressed some variety of nonbelief were comparable to this latter group in terms of educational accomplishments. We discuss this latter finding in terms of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell's analysis of secularization.     

“Baba Has Come to Civilize Us”: Developmental Idealism and Framing the Strict Demands of the Brahma Kumaris

This article extends and complicates the theory that “strict churches are strong” based on the strict demands that were followed and not followed by the Brahma Kumaris in Nepal. To be successful, strict religious groups must not only be strict, but also frame their strictness in ways that resonate with the everyday experiences and commonly held beliefs of their members. Nepali women involved with the Brahma Kumaris tend to accept and follow the group's demands when those demands have been framed as modern, and that framing is resonant with the prevailing definitions of modernity offered by Western development agencies. When the modern framing is not resonant, as with the case of framing celibacy as “spiritual birth control,” the strict demand is not followed, and the frame itself is rejected in favor of the practice being defined in different terms.     

Shoppers in the Spiritual Supermarket: A Quantitative Study of Visitors to Scandinavia’s Largest Alternative Fair

Presenting data from a quantitative survey (N=362) at ‘The Great Alternative Fair’ in Lillestrøm, Norway, this article explores the demographic and religious profiles of the ‘customers’ in the ‘spiritual marketplace’. Many adhere to ideas that are historically associated with different religious traditions. At the same time, there are strong positive statistical correlations between belief in alternative ideas, such as healing, reincarnation, channelling, and clairvoyance. This indicates that such ideas constitute a clustered and shared set of beliefs. Against this background, the article questions the widely held assumption that people who are oriented towards alternative spiritualities are independent of institutions and authorities and it argues that they are informed to a large extent by a set of collective resources. It is suggested that the marketplace, which constitutes a common framework of interaction, plays a key role in connecting various ideas and actors and in creating a common ideological profile.