Hearing fearful prosody impairs visual working memory maintenance.

Interference by distractors has been associated multiple times with diminished visual and auditory working memory (WM) performance. Negative emotional distractors in particular lead to detrimental effects on WM. However, these associations have only been seen when distractors and items to maintain in WM are from the same sensory modality.

Disruption of working memory and contralateral delay activity by nociceptive stimuli is modulated by task demands.

Top-down processes allow the selection and prioritization of information by limiting attentional capture by distractors, and these mechanisms depend on task demands such as working memory (WM) load. However, bottom-up processes give salient stimuli a stronger neuronal representation and provoke attentional capture. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of salient nociceptive stimuli on WM while manipulating task demands.

Feminist identification, social dominance orientation, and weight bias in men.

Weight bias has deleterious consequences on individuals considered overweight and has similarities with forms of prejudice linked to social dominance orientation (SDO). Feminism can counter oppression that women are subject to notably through weight bias and SDO, but no studies have focused directly on these variables among men, as feminist identity is linked to less endorsement of certain beliefs in SDO and weight bias. The purpose of the present study is to explore the associations between feminist identification and beliefs, SDO, and weight bias among men from Quebec.

Sensitivity to social norm violation is related to political orientation.

Human behavior is framed by several social structures. In the present study, we focus on two of the most important determinants of social structures: social norms and political orientation. Social norms are implicit models of shared expectations about how people should behave in different social contexts.

Dual task interference on early perceptual processing.

When two tasks, Task 1 and Task 2, are conducted in close temporal proximity and a separate speeded response is required for each target (T1 and T2), T2 report performance decreases as a function of its temporal proximity to T1. This so-called psychological refractory period (PRP) effect on T2 processing is largely assumed to reflect interference from T1 response selection on T2 response selection. However, interference on early perceptual processing of T2 has been observed in a modified paradigm, which required changes in visual-spatial attention, sensory modality, task modality, and response modality across targets.

Dual-Task Interference on Early and Late Stages of Facial Emotion Detection Is Revealed by Human Electrophysiology.

Rapid and accurate processing of potential social threats is paramount to social thriving, and provides a clear evolutionary advantage. Though automatic processing of facial expressions has been assumed for some time, some researchers now question the extent to which this is the case. Here, we provide electrophysiological data from a psychological refractory period (PRP) dual-task paradigm in which participants had to decide whether a target face exhibited a neutral or fearful expression, as overlap with a concurrent auditory tone categorization task was experimentally manipulated.

Dual-task interference on left eye utilization during facial emotion perception.

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about whether facial emotion perception is carried automatically-that is, without effort or attentional resources. While it is generally accepted that spatial attention is necessary for the perception of emotional facial expressions, the picture is less clear for central attention. Using the bubbles method, we provide results that were obtained by measuring the effect of the psychological refractory period on diagnostic information for the basic facial expressions.

Effects of Repeated Concussions and Sex on Early Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions as Revealed by Electrophysiology.

Objectives: Concussions affect the processing of emotional stimuli. This study aimed to investigate how sex interacts with concussion effects on early event-related brain potentials (ERP) measures (P1, N1) of emotional facial expressions (EFE) processing in asymptomatic, multi-concussion athletes during an EFE identification task.

Methods: Forty control athletes (20 females and 20 males) and 43 multi-concussed athletes (22 females and 21 males), recruited more than 3 months after their last concussion, were tested.

Sexual Abuse Exposure Alters Early Processing of Emotional Words: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

This study aimed to compare the time course of emotional information processing between trauma-exposed and control participants, using electrophysiological measures. We conceived an emotional Stroop task with two types of words: trauma-related emotional words and neutral words. We assessed the evoked cerebral responses of sexual abuse victims without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and no abuse participants.

Failure of temporal selectivity: Electrophysiological evidence for (mis)selection of distractors during the attentional blink.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the impairment in accurate report of a second target (T2) when presented shortly after a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation of distractors. The goal of the present study was to determine whether the AB is caused by a failure in early selection processes, which leads to the selection and consolidation of the wrong item in working memory, by measuring the frequency-related P3 to T2 and to T2 + 1. During the AB, an attenuation of the P3 to T2 was observed, as well as an increase in the amplitude of the P3 to T2 + 1.

Task switching mediates direct interference of intertarget distractors in the attentional blink: An event-related potential study.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the difficulty in reporting a second target (T2) presented shortly after a first target (T1) in a stream of distractors. The goal of the present study was to investigate distractor-based interference in the AB by recording the P3 component of the event-related potential to both targets. An intertarget distractor was presented at lag 1 (T1+1), at lag 2 (T1+2), or at neither of these two lags (no distractor).

The tree to the left, the forest to the right: political attitude and perceptual bias.

A prominent model suggests that individuals to the right of the political spectrum are more cognitively rigid and less tolerant of ambiguity than individuals to the left. On the basis of this model, we predicted that a psychological mechanism linked to the resolution of visual ambiguity--perceptual bias--would be linked to political attitude. Perceptual bias causes western individuals to favour a global interpretation when scrutinizing ambiguous hierarchical displays (e.

Electrophysiological correlates of motor sequence learning.

Background: The Error-related negativity (ERN) is a component of the event-related brain potentials elicited by error commission. The ERN is thought to reflect cognitive control processes aiming to improve performance. As previous studies showed a modulation of the ERN amplitude throughout the execution of a learning task, this study aims to follow the ERN amplitude changes from early to late learning blocks in relation with concomitant motor sequence learning using a serial reaction time (SRT) task.

Masking of a first target in the attentional blink attenuates the P3 to the first target and delays the P3 to the second target.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in report accuracy of a second target (T2) when presented shortly after a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of distractors. It is known that masking T1 increases the magnitude of the AB, and masking a single target (equivalent to T1) in a RSVP stream attenuates the P3 to the target in correct trials. The major purpose of the present study was to clarify how these two effects may be integrated.

A critical evaluation of c as a measure of mnemonic resolution.

It is known that visual working memory capacity is limited, but the nature of this limit remains a subject of controversy. Increasingly, two factors are thought to limit visual memory: an object-based limit associated with so-called "slots" models, and an information-based limit associated with resource models. Recently, Barton, Ester, and Awh (2009) introduced a measure of mnemonic resolution, which they dubbed c.

Concurrency benefits in the attentional blink: attentional flexibility and shifts of decision criteria.

Fundamental limitations in performing multiple tasks concurrently are well illustrated by the attentional blink (AB) deficit, which refers to the difficulty in reporting a second target (T2) when it is presented shortly after a first target (T1). Surprisingly, recent studies have shown that the AB, which is often thought of as a manifestation of capacity limitations in central processing, can be reduced when the AB task is performed simultaneously with concurrent distracting activities. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether such concurrency benefits would also be observed when the AB task was performed concurrently with a central demanding timing task.

On the role of intervening distractors in the attentional blink.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in accurate report for a second target (T2) when presented within about 500 ms of a first target (T1) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of distractors. It is debated whether the distractors presented shortly after T1 cause the AB directly, as is proposed by distractor-based models, or can modulate its amplitude only indirectly by increasing T1 difficulty, as is proposed by capacity-based models. To investigate this issue, an intervening distractor was presented at lag 1 (T1 + 1), at lag 2 (T1 + 2), or at neither of these two lags (no distractor).

Backward masking during rapid serial visual presentation affects the amplitude but not the latency of the P3 event-related potential.

Masking of the first target in the attentional blink (AB) paradigm increases the magnitude of the AB relative to when the first target is not masked. We examined the underlying causes of this effect in an experiment in which a single target was presented in a rapid visual serial presentation stream. The P3 to the target was isolated by subtracting infrequent target category trials from frequent target category trials.

The attentional blink within and across the hemispheres: Evidence from a patient with a complete section of the corpus callosum.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to an impairment in the report of a second target (T2) if it closely follows the presentation of a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), when both targets must be reported. In the present study, a modified AB paradigm was used in which targets could appear in any of four simultaneous RSVP streams, one in each quadrant of the visual field. In half of the trials, T1 and T2 were displayed in the same visual hemifield (either left or right) and, in the other half, T1 and T2 were displayed in different visual hemifields.

Attentional and anatomical considerations for the representation of simple stimuli in visual short-term memory: evidence from human electrophysiology.

Observers encoded the spatial arrangement of two or three horizontal line segments relative to a square frame presented for 150 ms either in left or right visual field and either above or below the horizontal midline. The target pattern was selected on the basis of colour (red vs. green) from an equivalent distractor pattern in the opposite left-right visual hemifield.

Express attentional re-engagement but delayed entry into consciousness following invalid spatial cues in visual search.

Background: In predictive spatial cueing studies, reaction times (RT) are shorter for targets appearing at cued locations (valid trials) than at other locations (invalid trials). An increase in the amplitude of early P1 and/or N1 event-related potential (ERP) components is also present for items appearing at cued locations, reflecting early attentional sensory gain control mechanisms. However, it is still unknown at which stage in the processing stream these early amplitude effects are translated into latency effects.

Contingent capture of visual-spatial attention depends on capacity-limited central mechanisms: evidence from human electrophysiology and the psychological refractory period.

It has recently been demonstrated that a lateralized distractor that matches the individual's top-down control settings elicits an N2pc wave, an electrophysiological index of the focus of visual-spatial attention, indicating that contingent capture has a visual-spatial locus. Here, we investigated whether contingent capture required capacity-limited central resources by incorporating a contingent capture task as the second task of a psychological refractory period (PRP) dual-task paradigm. The N2pc was used to monitor where observers were attending while they performed concurrent central processing known to cause the PRP effect.

Dissociation of the N2pc and sustained posterior contralateral negativity in a choice response task.

The N2pc, a greater negativity at posterior electrodes on the side contralateral to an attended visual stimulus, usually between 180 and 280 ms, is thought to reflect the moment-to-moment deployment of visual-spatial attention. In tasks that require the retention of information in visual short-term memory, there is also a sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) that often begins about 300-400 ms after stimulus onset and that persists for the duration of the retention interval. A positive-going deflection at around 300 ms often separates the N2pc and the SPCN.

Measurement of ERP latency differences: a comparison of single-participant and jackknife-based scoring methods.

We used computer simulations to evaluate different procedures for measuring changes in the onset latency of a representative range of event-related components (the auditory and visual N1, P3, N2pc, and the frequency-related P3 difference wave). These procedures included several techniques to determine onset latencies combined with approaches using both single-participant average waveforms and jackknife-subsample average waveforms. In general, the jackknife-based approach combined with the relative criterion technique or combined with the fractional area technique (J.