Retinal eccentricity modulates saliency-driven but not relevance-driven visual selection.

Where we move our eyes during visual search is controlled by the relative saliency and relevance of stimuli in the visual field. However, the visual field is not homogeneous, as both sensory representations and attention change with eccentricity. Here we present an experiment investigating how eccentricity differences between competing stimuli affect saliency- and relevance-driven selection.

The effects of eccentricity on attentional capture.

Visual attention may be captured by an irrelevant yet salient distractor, thereby slowing search for a relevant target. This phenomenon has been widely studied using the additional singleton paradigm in which search items are typically all presented at one and the same eccentricity. Yet, differences in eccentricity may well bias the competition between target and distractor.

Attentional suppression is in place before display onset.

Recent studies have shown that observers can learn to suppress a location that is most likely to contain a distractor. The current study investigates whether the statistically learned suppression is already in place, before, or implemented exactly at the moment participants expect the display to appear. Participants performed a visual search task in which a distractor was presented more frequently at the high-probability location (HPL) in a search display.

The eyes prefer targets nearby fixation: Quantifying eccentricity-dependent attentional biases in oculomotor selection.

An important function of peripheral vision is to provide the target of the next eye movement. Here we investigate the extent to which the eyes are biased to select a target closer to fixation over one further away. Participants were presented with displays containing two identical singleton targets and were asked to move their eyes to either one of them.

An attentional limbo: Saccades become momentarily non-selective in between saliency-driven and relevance-driven selection.

Human vision involves selectively directing the eyes to potential objects of interest. According to most prominent theories, selection is the quantal outcome of an ongoing competition between saliency-driven signals on the one hand, and relevance-driven signals on the other, with both types of signals continuously and concurrently projecting onto a common priority map. Here, we challenge this view.

Proactive enhancement and suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

The present study investigated how attentional selection is affected by simultaneous statistical learning of target and distractor regularities. Participants performed an additional singleton task in which the target singleton was presented more often in one location while the distractor singleton was presented more often in another location. On some trials, instead of the search task, participants performed a probe task, in which they had to detect the offset of a probe dot.

A nearby distractor does not influence hand movements.

When interacting with the environment, our manual actions are often preceded by an eye movement. This suggests that the processes underlying target selection in hand and eye movements may be coupled. It is known that when a distractor is presented close to a target, the endpoint of an eye movement will be biased towards the distractor.

The dynamics of saliency-driven and goal-driven visual selection as a function of eccentricity.

Both saliency and goal information are important factors in driving visual selection. Saliency-driven selection occurs primarily in early responses, whereas goal-driven selection happens predominantly in later responses. Here, we investigated how eccentricity affects the time courses of saliency-driven and goal-driven visual selection.

Proactive distractor suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

Irrelevant salient objects may capture our attention and interfere with visual search. Recently, it was shown that distraction by a salient object is reduced when it is presented more frequently at one location than at other locations. The present study investigates whether this reduced distractor interference is the result of proactive spatial suppression, implemented prior to display onset, or reactive suppression, occurring after attention has been directed to that location.

Statistical learning affects the time courses of salience-driven and goal-driven selection.

The present study investigated how statistical regularities present in the display affected the time courses associated with salience-driven and goal-driven visual selection. In two experiments, participants were instructed to make a speeded saccade toward a prespecified target that was presented simultaneously with a distractor among multiple homogeneously oriented background lines. The distractor was presented more often at one location than at all other locations.

Visual information is required to reduce the global effect.

When a distractor appears in close proximity to a saccade target, the saccadic end point is biased towards the distractor. This so-called global effect reduces with the latency of the saccade if the saccade is visually guided. We recently reported that the global effect does not reduce with the latency of a double-step memory-guided saccade.

Attentional guidance varies with display density.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how display density affects attentional guidance in heterogeneous search displays. In Experiment 1 we presented observers with heterogeneous sparse and dense search displays which were adaptively changed over the course of the experiment using genetic algorithms. We generated random displays, and based upon fastest search times, the displays that allowed most efficient search were selected to generate new displays for the next generations, thus revealing which properties facilitated or inhibited target search across display densities.

The Limits of Predictive Remapping of Attention Across Eye Movements.

With every eye movement, visual input projected onto our retina changes drastically. The fundamental question of how we keep track of relevant objects and movement targets has puzzled scientists for more than a century. Recent advances suggested that this can be accomplished through the process of predictive remapping of visual attention to the future post-saccadic locations of relevant objects.

Sex Differences in the Performance of 7-12 Year Olds on a Mental Rotation Task and the Relation With Arithmetic Performance.

This study evaluates boy-girl differences in 3D mental rotation in schoolchildren aged 7-12 years and the relation to arithmetic performance. A dedicated new task was developed: The Mental Rotation Task - Children (MRT-C). This task was applied to a large sample of 729 children.

The patient's view on rare disease trial design - a qualitative study.

Background: Clinical trials in rare diseases are more challenging than trials in frequent diseases. Small numbers of eligible trial participants, often complicated by heterogeneity among rare disease patients, hamper the design and conduct of a 'classical' Randomized Controlled Trial. Therefore, novel designs are developed by statisticians.

[Application of new glucose lowering drugs: DPP-4 inhibitors, GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT-2 inhibitors].

A comprehensive review of the literature on DPP-4 inhibitors, GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT-2 inhibitors has resulted in small changes to the medication roadmap of the type 2 diabetes mellitus standard of the Dutch College of General Practitioners. SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists may have benefits related to cardiovascular outcomes in patients with high cardiovascular risk, especially in those who have experienced a cardiovascular event. However, ascribing effectiveness related to cardiovascular outcomes on the basis of a single cardiovascular safety trial is premature.

Target-distractor competition cannot be resolved across a saccade.

When a distractor is presented in close spatial proximity to a target, a saccade tends to land in between the two objects rather than on the target. This robust phenomenon (also referred to as the global effect) is thought to reflect unresolved competition between target and distractor. It is unclear whether this landing bias persists across saccades since a saccade displaces the retinotopic representations of target and distractor.

Conditional control in visual selection.

Attention and eye movements provide a window into the selective processing of visual information. Evidence suggests that selection is influenced by various factors and is not always under the strategic control of the observer. The aims of this tutorial review are to give a brief introduction to eye movements and attention and to outline the conditions that help determine control.

Salient object changes influence overt attentional prioritization and object-based targeting in natural scenes.

A change to an object in natural scenes attracts attention when it occurs during a fixation. However, when a change occurs during a saccade, and is masked by saccadic suppression, it typically does not capture the gaze in a bottom-up manner. In the present work, we investigated how the type and direction of salient changes to objects affect the prioritization and targeting of objects in natural scenes.

Subset selective search on the basis of color and preview.

In the preview paradigm observers are presented with one set of elements (the irrelevant set) followed by the addition of a second set among which the target is presented (the relevant set). Search efficiency in such a preview condition has been demonstrated to be higher than that in a full-baseline condition in which both sets are simultaneously presented, suggesting that a preview of the irrelevant set reduces its influence on the search process. However, numbers of irrelevant and relevant elements are typically not independently manipulated.

Insulin monotherapy compared with the addition of oral glucose-lowering agents to insulin for people with type 2 diabetes already on insulin therapy and inadequate glycaemic control.

Background: It is unclear whether people with type 2 diabetes mellitus on insulin monotherapy who do not achieve adequate glycaemic control should continue insulin as monotherapy or can benefit from adding oral glucose-lowering agents to the insulin therapy.

Objectives: To assess the effects of insulin monotherapy compared with the addition of oral glucose-lowering agents to insulin monotherapy for people with type 2 diabetes already on insulin therapy and inadequate glycaemic control.

Search Methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, Embase, ClinicalTrials.

A randomised trial of the effect and cost-effectiveness of early intensive multifactorial therapy on 5-year cardiovascular outcomes in individuals with screen-detected type 2 diabetes: the Anglo-Danish-Dutch Study of Intensive Treatment in People with Screen-Detected Diabetes in Primary Care (ADDITION-Europe) study.

Background: Intensive treatment (IT) of cardiovascular risk factors can halve mortality among people with established type 2 diabetes but the effects of treatment earlier in the disease trajectory are uncertain.

Objective: To quantify the cost-effectiveness of intensive multifactorial treatment of screen-detected diabetes.

Design: Pragmatic, multicentre, cluster-randomised, parallel-group trial.

The influence of a scene preview on eye movement behavior in natural scenes.

Rich contextual and semantic information can be extracted from only a brief presentation of a natural scene. This is presumed to be activated quickly enough to guide initial eye movements into a scene. However, early, short-latency eye movements in natural scenes have been shown to be dependent on the salience distribution across the image (Anderson, Ort, Kruijne, Meeter, & Donk, 2015).

Predictors and Moderators of Treatment Outcome in Cognitive Training for Children With ADHD.

To explore whether clinical variables and initial cognitive abilities predict or moderate (far) transfer treatment outcomes of cognitive training. A total of 98 children (aged 8-12 years) with ADHD were randomly assigned to Cogmed Working Memory Training or a new cognitive training called "Paying Attention in Class." Outcome measures included neurocognitive assessment, parent and teacher rated questionnaires of executive functioning behavior and academic performance.

The Effects of Feature-Based Priming and Visual Working Memory on Oculomotor Capture.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that objects held in working memory can influence rapid oculomotor selection. This has been taken as evidence that perceptual salience can be modified by active working memory representations. The goal of the present study was to examine whether these results could also be caused by feature-based priming.