Selection history influences an attentional decision bias toward singleton targets.

Selection history effects are ubiquitous findings that show how implicitly encoding a target's feature or location on a trial can facilitate target activation on the following trial. Although the target-defining feature (e.g.

Pitch direction on the perception of major and minor modes.

One factor affecting the qualia of music perception is the major/minor mode distinction. Major modes are perceived as more arousing, happier, positive, brighter, and less awkward than minor modes. This difference in emotionality of modes is also affected by pitch direction, with ascending pitch associated with positive affect and decreasing pitch with negative affect.

Are liberals really dirty? Two failures to replicate Helzer and Pizarro's (2011) study 1, with meta-analysis.

Helzer and Pizarro (2011) reported 2 studies that showed an influence of cleanliness cues on political attitudes. Specifically, when standing near a hand-sanitizer dispenser (signal of cleanliness and purity), individuals rated their political attitudes more conservative, compared with individuals who were standing near an empty wall. The present study reports 2 failed attempts to replicate the results of Study 1 in Helzer and Pizarro (2011).

Evidence for early top-down modulation of attention to salient visual cues through probe detection.

The influence of top-down attentional control on the selection of salient visual stimuli has been examined extensively. Some accounts suggest all salient stimuli capture attention in a stimulus-driven manner, while others suggest salient stimuli capture attention contingent on top-down relevance. Evidence consistently shows target templates allow only salient stimuli sharing a target's features to capture attention, while salient stimuli not sharing a target's features do not.

Selection and response bias as determinants of priming of pop-out search: Revelations from diffusion modeling.

During visual search, both top-down factors and bottom-up properties contribute to the guidance of visual attention, but selection history can influence attention independent of bottom-up and top-down factors. For example, priming of pop-out (PoP) is the finding that search for a singleton target is faster when the target and distractor features repeat than when those features trade roles between trials. Studies have suggested that such priming (selection history) effects on pop-out search manifest either early, by biasing the selection of the preceding target feature, or later in processing, by facilitating response and target retrieval processes.

Intertrial priming of popout search on visual prior entry.

When the features of a visual target and of nontargets are repeated between successive search displays, responding to a subsequent target is faster than when the features of the target and the nontargets switch between trials. This intertrial priming effect can influence perceptual processes, postperceptual processes (e.g.

Intertrial priming of pop-out search influences the shift, skew, and dispersion of response time distributions.

Priming of pop-out (PoP), or intertrial priming, is the finding that responding to a singleton target is faster when a target's defining feature (e.g., color) and nontarget features are repeated between trials than when the target and nontarget features switch between trials.

Components of working memory and visual selective attention.

Load theory (Lavie, N., Hirst, A., De Fockert, J.

Response retrieval in a go/no-go priming-of-popout task.

Priming of popout is the finding that singleton search is faster when features of a target and of nontargets are repeated across trials than when the features switch. Theoretical accounts suggest that intertrial repetition influences perceptual and attentional selection processes, episodic retrieval processes, or both. The present study combined a popout search task with a go/no-go task.

Using response time distributions to examine top-down influences on attentional capture.

Three experiments examined contingent attentional capture, which is the finding that cuing effects are larger when cues are perceptually similar to a target than when they are dissimilar to the target. This study also analyzed response times (RTs) in terms of the underlying distributions for valid cues and invalid cues. Specifically, an ex-Gaussian analysis and a vincentile analysis examined the influence of top-down attentional control settings on the shift and skew of RT distributions and how the shift and the skew contributed to the cuing effects in the mean RTs.

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a green coffee bean extract in overweight subjects.

Background: Adult weight gain and obesity have become worldwide problems. Issues of cost and potential side effects of prescription weight loss drugs have led overweight and obese adults to try nutraceuticals that may aid weight loss. One promising nutraceutical is green coffee extract, which contains high concentrations of chlorogenic acids that are known to have health benefits and to influence glucose and fat metabolism.

The visual hemifield asymmetry in the spatial blink during singleton search and feature search.

The present study examined a visual field asymmetry in the contingent capture of attention that was previously observed by Du and Abrams (2010). In our first experiment, color singleton distractors that matched the color of a to-be-detected target produced a stronger capture of attention when they appeared in the left visual hemifield than in the right visual hemifield. This replicated Du and Abrams and also revealed a difference between hemifields in the time course of this effect.

Cognitive load modulates attentional capture by color singletons during effortful visual search.

Color singletons that are irrelevant to locating a visual target do not typically capture attention if visual search is effortful. In contrast, when search is efficient color singletons are often found to capture attention. Such distraction by a color singleton can be modulated by single-task vs.

Stimulus-driven attentional capture by a static discontinuity between perceptual groups.

After C. L. Folk, R.

A static color discontinuity can capture spatial attention when the target is an abrupt-onset singleton.

C. L. Folk, R.

Involuntary capture of visual-spatial attention occurs for intersections, both real and "imagined".

In three spatial precuing experiments, we demonstrate attentional capture by an intersection that occurs (1) between two lines that are not part of an enclosed object, and (2) between a line in the cuing array that is not physically present during target search and the invisible circumference of a perceptual circle formed by the elements in the target array. This capture effect conceptually replicates Cole, Gellatly, and Blurton's (2001) corner enhancement effect, in which responses are faster for targets presented near an object's corners rather than along its straight edges. However, it extends that effect by showing that it occurs even when the intersection is not part of an enclosed object and is not physically present during target search.

Displaywide visual features associated with a search display's appearance can mediate attentional capture.

Whether or not the capture of visual attention is driven solely by the salience of an attention-capturing stimulus or mediated by top-down control has been a point of contention since Folk, Remington, and Johnston (1992) introduced their contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis, which states that the capture of attention by a salient stimulus depends on its relevance to a feature distinguishing the target from nontargets. Gibson and Kelsey (1998) extended Folk et al.'s (1992) hypothesis by demonstrating that features associated with the appearance of the target display also mediate capture.

Priming effects on temporal order judgments about words: perceived temporal priority or response bias?

In a temporal order judgment task, in which observers select which of two words appeared first, Stolz (1999) found that observers were more likely to select the word that had been semantically primed. Using repetition priming, we replicated Stolz's finding and extended her results by demonstrating that the effect was due to both (1) repetition priming causing the primed item to be perceived as having occurred earlier and (2) a response bias to guess the repetition primed item as the correct response. We discuss our new finding that priming induces an attentional precedence effect in the context of previous research suggesting that exogenous spatial cuing induces an attentional precedence effect but identity or semantic priming may not.