Target-distractor similarity predicts visual search efficiency but only for highly similar features.

A major constraining factor for attentional selection is the similarity between targets and distractors. When similarity is low, target items can be identified quickly and efficiently, whereas high similarity can incur large costs on processing speed. Models of visual search contrast a fast, efficient parallel stage with a slow serial processing stage where search times are strongly modulated by the number of distractors in the display.

Representational structures as a unifying framework for attention.

Our visual system consciously processes only a subset of the incoming information. Selective attention allows us to prioritize relevant inputs, and can be allocated to features, locations, and objects. Recent advances in feature-based attention suggest that several selection principles are shared across these domains and that many differences between the effects of attention on perceptual processing can be explained by differences in the underlying representational structures.

Feature-based attention warps the perception of visual features.

Selective attention improves sensory processing of relevant information but can also impact the quality of perception. For example, attention increases visual discrimination performance and at the same time boosts apparent stimulus contrast of attended relative to unattended stimuli. Can attention also lead to perceptual distortions of visual representations? Optimal tuning accounts of attention suggest that processing is biased towards "off-tuned" features to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio in favor of the target, especially when targets and distractors are confusable.

Feature similarity is non-linearly related to attentional selection: Evidence from visual search and sustained attention tasks.

Although many theories of attention highlight the importance of similarity between target and distractor items for selection, few studies have directly quantified the function underlying this relationship. Across two commonly used tasks-visual search and sustained attention-we investigated how target-distractor similarity impacts feature-based attentional selection. Importantly, we found comparable patterns of performance in both visual search and sustained feature-based attention tasks, with performance (response times and d', respectively) plateauing at medium target-distractor distances (40°-50° around a luminance-matched color wheel).

Feature-based attention is not confined by object boundaries: Spatially global enhancement of irrelevant features.

Theories of visual attention differ in what they identify as the core unit of selection. Feature-based theories emphasize basic visual features (e.g.

Erratum: Dissociating the physiological components of unconscious emotional responses.

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Dissociating the physiological components of unconscious emotional responses.

Conscious emotional processing is characterized by a coordinated set of responses across multiple physiological systems. Although emotional stimuli can evoke certain physiological responses even when they are suppressed from awareness, it is not known whether unconscious emotional responses comprise a similar constellation or are confined to specific systems. To compare physiological responses to emotional stimuli with and without awareness, we measured a range of responses while participants viewed positive, negative and neutral images that were accompanied by noise bursts to elicit startle reflexes.

How robust is familiar face recognition? A repeat detection study of more than 1000 faces.

Recent theories suggest that familiar faces have a robust representation in memory because they have been encountered over a wide variety of contexts and image changes (e.g. lighting, viewpoint and expression).

Fleeting reliability in the dot-probe task.

In a dot-probe task, two cues-one emotional and one neutral-are followed by a probe in one of their locations. Faster responses to probes co-located with the emotional stimulus are taken as evidence of attentional bias. Several studies indicate that such attentional bias measures have poor reliability, even though ERP studies show that people reliably attend to the emotional stimulus.