Timing of reflexive visuospatial orienting in young, young-old, and old-old adults.

This study examined adult age differences in reflexive orienting to two types of uninformative spatial cues: central arrows and peripheral onsets. In two experiments using a Posner cuing task, young adults (ages 18-28 years), young-old adults (60-74 years), and old-old adults (75-92 years) responded to targets that were preceded 100-1,000 ms earlier by a central arrow or a peripheral abrupt onset. In Experiment 1, the cue remained present upon target onset.

Emotionally meaningful targets enhance orienting triggered by a fearful gazing face.

Studies investigating the effect of emotional expression on spatial orienting to a gazed-at location have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the role of affective context in the integration of emotion processing and gaze-triggered orienting. In three experiments, a face gazed nonpredictively to the left or right, and then its expression became fearful or happy.

Gaze-triggered orienting as a tool of the belongingness self-regulation system.

Social-psychological theories of belongingness self-regulation suggest that when one's need for interpersonal relationships is not being met, one begins to monitor the social environment more closely. Presumably, this serves to increase awareness of the likelihood of social acceptance versus rejection and to inform later social decision- making processes. The current investigation tested whether low belongingness increases a particular form of social monitoring that has recently been documented in the cognitive literature: gaze-triggered orienting.

Sex differences in auditory processing in peripersonal space: an event-related potential study.

Further processing of auditory stimuli in the free field is attenuated when participants are in contact with speakers versus not touching them. Studies in the visual domain have found that men and women use different strategies for processing spatial information. In this study, we examined sex-related differences in event-related potentials while men and women performed an auditory discrimination task in peripersonal space when either holding speakers or resting their hands in their laps.

What's "up" with God? Vertical space as a representation of the divine.

"God" and "Devil" are abstract concepts often linked to vertical metaphors (e.g., "glory to God in the highest," "the Devil lives down in hell").

FMRI of ventral and dorsal processing streams in basic reading processes: insular sensitivity to phonology.

Most current models of the neurophysiology of basic reading processes agree on a system involving two cortical streams: a ventral stream (occipital-temporal) used when accessing familiar words encoded in lexical memory, and a dorsal stream (occipital-parietal-frontal) used when phonetically decoding words (i.e., mapping sublexical spelling onto sounds).

Neuroimaging of language processes: fMRI of silent and overt lexical processing and the promise of multiple process imaging in single brain studies.

Objective: To implement and evaluate a multiple-process functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm designed to effectively and efficiently activate several language-related regions for use with neurosurgical patients. Both overt and covert response conditions were examined.

Methods: The fMRI experiments compared the traditional silent word-generation condition versus an overt one as they engage frontal language regions (Experiment 1) and silent versus overt semantic association conditions as they engage multiple language processing regions (Experiment 2).

Modularity and intersection of "what", "where" and "how" processing of visual stimuli: a new method of FMRI localization.

Research on the modularity of perceptual and cognitive processes has often pointed to a ventral-dorsal distinction in cortical pathways that depend upon the nature of the stimuli and the task. However, it is not clear whether the dorsal, occipital-parietal stream specializes in locating visual objects (i.e.

Eyes are special but not for everyone: the case of autism.

Current research indicates that human gaze direction is a special cue for shifting attention for one of two reasons: (1) it reflects social desires and intentions and (2) its basic perceptual features usually correspond to important events in the environment. This study, conducted with individuals with autism and with age- and IQ-matched typically developing individuals, dissociates these two often-confounded explanations and demonstrates that eyes appear to be special for typically developing individuals because of their social power, whereas gaze effects are mediated by feature correspondence among persons with autism.

Does gaze direction really trigger a reflexive shift of spatial attention?

Previous studies have found that the gaze direction of a centrally presented face facilitates response time (RT) to a lone peripheral target. The widely accepted interpretation of this finding is that gaze direction triggers a cortically mediated reflexive shift of spatial attention. In the present study we tested an alternative explanation, that a target appearing abruptly on its own in the visual field triggers a subcortically mediated reflexive shift of spatial attention, which is modulated by compatibility with gaze direction.

Attentional effects of counterpredictive gaze and arrow cues.

The authors used counterpredictive cues to examine reflexive and volitional orienting to eyes and arrows. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of eyes with a novel design that allowed for a comparison of gazed-at (cued) target locations and likely (predicted) target locations against baseline locations that were not cued and not predicted. Attention shifted reflexively to the cued location and volitionally to the predicted location, and these 2 forms of orienting overlapped in time.

Covert and overt orienting to gaze direction cues and the effects of fixation offset.

We examined covert and overt orienting in response to non-predictive gaze direction cues and investigated whether the subcortical superior colliculus (SC) plays a role in this type of orienting. Participants viewed a centrally presented gazing schematic face and responded to targets appearing at gazed-at or non-gazed-at locations either by making a keypress response while maintaining central fixation or by making an eye movement to the target. For both response conditions, the fixation stimulus (the gazing face) either remained on the screen or was extinguished at the time of target presentation, a manipulation known to engage and disengage the SC.

Abrupt onsets and gaze direction cues trigger independent reflexive attentional effects.

The present study investigated whether the direction of visual signals is influenced independently by two automatic visual orienting phenomena: orienting to a gazed-at location and inhibition of return (IOR) to the location of an abrupt onset. A schematic face served as both a nonpredictive gaze direction cue and an abrupt onset cue. Results indicated that target detection was facilitated at the gazed-at location, and that it was inhibited at the abrupt onset location.

Are eyes special? It depends on how you look at it.

Recent behavioral data have shown that central nonpredictive gaze direction triggers reflexive shifts of attention toward the gazed-at location (e.g., Friesen & Kingstone, 1998).