Facilitation and disruption of lateralized syllable processing by unattended stimuli in the opposite visual field

The influence of lateralized unattended stimuli on the processing of attended stimuli in the opposite visual field can shed light on the nature of information that is transferred between hemispheres. On a cued bilateral task, participants tried to identify a syllable in the attended visual field, which elicits a left hemisphere (LH) advantage and different processing strategies by the two hemispheres. The same or a different syllable or a neutral stimulus appeared in the unattended field. Transmission of unattended syllable codes between hemispheres is symmetric, as revealed by equal interference for the two visual fields. The LH is more accurate than the RH in encoding unattended syllables, as indicated by facilitation in the left but not right visual field and a greater frequency of identifiable intrusions into the left than right field. However, asymmetric encoding strategies are different for attended and unattended syllables.     

Rapid object category adaptation during unlabelled classification

Recent reports from electrophysiological and psychophysical experiments provide evidence that repeated exposure to an ordered sequence of morphed stimuli may over time adapt a prelearned object category such that the category may generalise the entire sequence as belonging to the same object. Here, a new protocol that includes a single exposure to a morphing sequence is presented. Subjects exposed to the new protocol replaced a prelearned face with an entirely different face within just 3 days, significantly faster than in previous reports.     

The role of attentional biases in PTSD: is it interference or facilitation?

Although attentional biases have been demonstrated in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the cognitive methodologies used have not allowed for disambiguation of two types of attentional biases. It remains unclear if PTSD involves difficulty disengaging attention from threatening stimuli (interference) or facilitated detection. To differentiate between attentional interference and facilitation, 57 male Vietnam-era veterans (30 High PTSD and 27 Low PTSD) completed a visual search task with a lexical decision component. High PTSD veterans who engaged in the interference task first showed increased interference to threat-relevant words relative to Low PTSD veterans. However, no evidence was found for facilitated detection of threatening stimuli in PTSD.     

Hemispheric asymmetries for global and local visual perception: effects of stimulus and task factors.

Although neurotogical and physiological studies indicate a right hemisphere superiority in global processing and a left hemisphere superiority in local processing of Navon-type hierarchical letters (D. Navon, 1977), most investigations of lateralized perception in healthy participants report neither asymmetry. In 6 experiments the authors examined the influence of attentional demands, stimulus properties, and mode of response on perceptual asymmetries for global and local perception. Consistent with their theoretical predictions, asymmetries were more robust on divided- than focused-attention tasks and in response to stimuli in which local and global levels were equally salient compared with those with greater global than local saliency. Contrary to their prediction, perceptual asymmetries were not influenced by the complexity of the motor response.     

The social-encoding benefit in face recognition is generalized to other-race faces

Faces are visual stimuli that convey rich social information. Previous experiments found better recognition for faces that were evaluated based on their social traits than on their perceptual features during encoding. Here, we ask whether this social-encoding benefit in face recognition is also found for categories of faces that we have no previous social experience with, such as other-race faces. To answer this question, we first explored whether social and perceptual evaluations for other-race faces are consistent and valid. We then asked whether social evaluations during encoding improve recognition for other-race faces. Results show that social and perceptual evaluations of own- and other-race faces were valid. We also found high agreement in social and perceptual evaluations across individuals from different races. This indicates that evaluations of other-race faces are not random but meaningful. Furthermore, we found that social evaluations facilitated face recognition regardless of race, demonstrating a social-encoding benefit for both own- and other-race faces. Our findings highlight the role of social information in face recognition and show how it can be used to improve recognition of categories of faces that are hard to recognize due to lack of experience with them.     

Face Recognition Depends on Specialized Mechanisms Tuned to View-Invariant Facial Features: Insights from Deep Neural Networks Optimized for Face or Object Recognition

Face recognition is a computationally challenging classification task. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are brain-inspired algorithms that have recently reached human-level performance in face and object recognition. However, it is not clear to what extent DCNNs generate a human-like representation of face identity. We have recently revealed a subset of facial features that are used by humans for face recognition. This enables us now to ask whether DCNNs rely on the same facial information and whether this human-like representation depends on a system that is optimized for face identification. In the current study, we examined the representation of DCNNs of faces that differ in features that are critical or non-critical for human face recognition. Our findings show that DCNNs optimized for face identification are tuned to the same facial features used by humans for face recognition. Sensitivity to these features was highly correlated with performance of the DCNN on a benchmark face recognition task. Moreover, sensitivity to these features and a view-invariant face representation emerged at higher layers of a DCNN optimized for face recognition but not for object recognition. This finding parallels the division to a face and an object system in high-level visual cortex. Taken together, these findings validate human perceptual models of face recognition, enable us to use DCNNs to test predictions about human face and object recognition as well as contribute to the interpretability of DCNNs.     

Can massive but passive exposure to faces contribute to face recognition abilities?

Recent studies have suggested that individuation of other-race faces is more crucial for enhancing recognition performance than exposure that involves categorization of these faces to an identity-irrelevant criterion. These findings were primarily based on laboratory training protocols that dissociated exposure and individuation by using categorization tasks. However, the absence of enhanced recognition following categorization may not simulate key aspects of real-life massive exposure without individuation to other-race faces. Real-life exposure spans years of seeing a multitude of faces, under variant conditions, including expression, view, lighting and gaze, albeit with no subcategory individuation. However, in most real-life settings, massive exposure operates in concert with individuation. An exception to that are neonatology nurses, a unique population that is exposed to--but do not individuate--massive numbers of newborn faces. Our findings show that recognition of newborn faces by nurses does not differ from adults who are rarely exposed to newborn faces. A control study showed that the absence of enhanced recognition cannot be attributed to the relatively short exposure to each newborn face in the neonatology unit or to newborns' apparent homogeneous appearance. It is therefore the quality--not the quantity--of exposure that determines recognition abilities.     

Bridging the gap between explicit and implicit measurement of personality: The questionnaire-based implicit association test

This study presents the questionnaire-based implicit association test (qIAT), a method that resembles the assessment procedures of self-report scales and allows an implicit assessment of constructs measured by such instruments. The qIAT measures the speed of association between ordinary questionnaires’ items (i.e., short statements rather than single words) and true versus false self-related sentences. Participants completed self-report measures of all Big-Five domains and the qIAT that measured extraversion. The qIAT implicit extraversion score showed good levels of internal consistency and it correlated with explicit extraversion but not with other explicit scales, thus supporting the convergent and discriminant validity of this measure. It also predicted a criterion behavior, and this prediction was incremental to self-report assessment of the same set of items. The qIAT opens the door for the indirect assessment of numerous psychological phenomena measured by existing self-report scales.     

Cronbach’s α, Revelle’s β, and Mcdonald’s ω<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis></Subscript>: their relations with each other and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability

We make theoretical comparisons among five coefficients—Cronbach’s α, Revelle’s β, McDonald’s ω_h, and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability. Though many end users and psychometricians alike may not distinguish among these five coefficients, we demonstrate formally their nonequivalence. Specifically, whereas there are conditions under which α, β, and ω_h are equivalent to each other and to one of the two conceptualizations of reliability considered here, we show that equality with this conceptualization of reliability and between α and ω_h holds only under a highly restrictive set of conditions and that the conditions under which β equals ω_h are only somewhat more general. The nonequivalence of α, β, and ω_h suggests that important information about the psychometric properties of a scale may be missing when scale developers and users only report α as is almost always the casePreparation of this article was supported by the Patricia M Nielsen Research Chair of the Family Institute at Northwestern UniversityWe thank Lewis R. Goldberg, Win Hill, Dan McAdams, Tony Z. Tang and especially Roderick P. McDonald for their comments on earlier drafts of portions of this articleThis revised article was published online in August 2005 with the PDF paginated correctly.