Pre-stimulus alpha predicts inattentional blindness

Pre- and post-stimulus oscillatory activity between 8 and 12 hertz, referred to as the alpha-band, correlates with conscious visual awareness of stimuli across a variety of psychophysical tasks. Within an EEG-adapted inattentional blindness task, the current study sought to examine whether this relationship holds for conscious awareness of stimuli under conditions of inattentional blindness. Noticing rates of the task-irrelevant unexpected stimulus were correlated with a significant decrease in alpha power over bilateral parietal-occipital areas during the pre-stimulus interval, and a significant decrease in alpha power over parietal-occipital regions in the right hemisphere during the post-stimulus interval. Findings are taken to imply alpha-band neural activity represents a valid correlate of consciousness that is not confounded by task relevancy or the need for report.     

Preschoolers’ Thoughts on the Concept of Time

Abstract

This study aimed to examine preschool children’s epistemological views in the context of the concept of time via their drawings of the time machine. The study was conducted with 30 five-year-old children (17 girls and 13 boys) attending state and private preschools in the academic year 2018/2019. The data collection tools used in the study were the Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production TCT-DP, Children’s Thoughts on Time Questionnaire (CTTQ) and Children’s Epistemological Views Questionnaire (CEVQ). Of the mixed methods typologies, the fully mixed sequential dominant status-qualitative design was employed. The results obtained from the study indicated that the time machine drawings of almost half the participating children included creative elements and logical thinking products. In addition, 40% of the children’s responses reflected sophisticated epistemological views such as scientific, imaginative/science fiction-based, divergent and eccentric approaches and non-authority figures regarding the concept of time. In conclusion: contrary to Piegatian interpretation, our results show that five-year old children can demonstrate abstract scientific understanding regarding the concept of time and preschoolers’ epistemic approach has a critical role in determining their development of abstract cognitive concepts.     

Comparative Religious Ethics Among the Ruins

This is a response to the recent essay by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker on “Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study.” I clarify my earlier positions on method and virtue in comparative religious ethics and try to respond to some of the issues that Bucar and Stalnaker raise in regard to my arguments specifically and the field more generally. I argue that while we need not measure the practical impact of scholarly work in comparative religious ethics purely in terms of political or social action, I nevertheless worry that defining the goals of comparative inquiry in terms of the production of bewilderment, intellectual vertigo, or skeptical questions can lead to impressionistic or therapeutic methodological norms. In a similar vein, I refine my earlier position on externalism that acknowledges the impossibility of a purely externalist approach but also notes the desirability of coming to understand others “in their own terms” prior to engaging in the process of transmutation. I also question Bucar and Stalnaker's pessimism about the potential of producing “rigorously convincing ethical theory from the lived experience of regular folk,” suggesting that perhaps we are working with different conceptions of the sociology of knowledge. Finally, I consider whether we are currently in the midst of an epistemological crisis and conclude with some reflections on the rationality of the craft of comparative religious ethics.     

Clarifying the effect of facial emotional expression on inattentional blindness

Conscious perception often fails when an object appears unexpectedly and our attention is focused elsewhere (inattentional blindness). While various factors have been identified as determinants of inattentional blindness, the influence of an unexpected object́s semantic value remains ambiguous. This is also true for the supposedly evolutionary meaning of faces; some studies found higher detection rates for faces while others did not or used control conditions that differed in physical aspects of the stimulus as well. In the proposed studies we aim to replicate and clarify the effect of the semantic value of faces on inattentional blindness in a controlled and systematic manner.     

Individual differences in the tendency to see the expected

Prior knowledge has been shown to facilitate the incorporation of visual stimuli into awareness. We adopted an individual differences approach to explore whether a tendency to ‘see the expected’ is general or method-specific. We administered a binocular rivalry task and manipulated selective attention, as well as induced expectations via predictive context, self-generated imagery, expectancy cues, and perceptual priming. Most prior manipulations led to a facilitated awareness of the biased percept in binocular rivalry, whereas strong signal primes led to a suppressed awareness, i.e., adaptation. Correlations and factor analysis revealed that the facilitatory effect of priors on visual awareness is closely related to attentional control. We also investigated whether expectation-based biases predict perceptual abilities. Adaptation to strong primes predicted improved naturalistic change detection and the facilitatory effect of weak primes predicted the experience of perceptual anomalies. Taken together, our results indicate that the facilitatory effect of priors may be underpinned by an attentional mechanism but the tendency to ‘see the expected’ is method-specific.     

The conscious experience of color constancy and neural responses to subliminal deviations – A behavioral and EEG/ERP oddball study

IntroductionColor constancy, a property of conscious color experience, maintains object color appearance across illuminant changes. We investigated the neural correlates of subliminal vs. conscious stimulus deviations of color constancy manipulations.MethodsBehavioral and Oddball EEG/ERP experiments were conducted (n = 20). Psychophysical illuminant variation discrimination thresholds were first estimated, to establish individual perceptual awareness ranges, allowing for simulation of natural daylight spectral and spatial variations on colored surfaces, at different ambiguity levels.ResultsBehavioral results validated illuminant choice. ERPs showed a significant modulation of posterior P1 component specifically for the subliminal global uniform deviation condition, respecting color constancy. Neural correlates of conscious percepts were identified at posterior N2-P3 latencies, parietal (P3b) and frontal regions.ConclusionsWe identified an early subliminal correlate of low-level illuminant change, which reflects automatic unconscious detection of global color constancy deviations. Its suppression under conscious perception is probably due to top-down suppression according to prediction error models.     

The relationships between quantity‐number competencies,working memory,and phonological awareness in 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds

In this study, the interdependencies among phonological awareness, verbal working memory components, and early numerical skills in children 1 year before school entry are addressed. Early numerical skills were conceptualized as quantity‐number competencies (QNC) at both basic (QNC Level 1) and advanced (QNC Level 2) levels. In a sample of 1,343 children aged 5 and 6, structural equation modelling provided support for the isolated number words hypothesis (Krajewski & Schneider, 2009, J. Exp. Child Psychol., 103, 516–531). This hypothesis claims that phonological awareness contributes to the acquisition of QNC Level 1, such as learning the number word sequence, but not of QNC Level 2, which requires the linkage of number words to quantities. In addition, phonological awareness relied on verbal working memory, especially with regard to the phonological loop, central executive, and episodic buffer. The results were congruent with the idea that phonological awareness mediates the impact of verbal working memory on QNCs. The relationships between verbal working memory, phonological awareness, and QNCs were comparable in monolingual and bilingual children.     

When All Is Revealed: A Dissociation between Evaluative Learning and Contingency Awareness

Three experiments are reported that address the issue of awareness in evaluative learning in two different sensory modalities: visual and haptic. Attempts were made to manipulate the degree of awareness through a reduction technique (by use of a distractor task in Experiments 1 and 2 and by subliminally presenting affective stimuli in Experiment 3) and an induction technique (by unveiling the evaluative learning effect and requiring participants to try to discount the influence of the affective stimuli). The results indicate overall that evaluative learning was successful in the awareness-reduction groups but not in the awareness-induction groups. Moreover, an effect in the opposite direction to that normally observed in evaluative learning emerged in participants aware of the stimulus contingencies. In addition, individual differences in psychological reactance were found to be implicated in the strength and direction of the effect. It is argued that these results pose serious problems for the contention that awareness is necessary for evaluative learning.