They might all be marauders.

Circle theory predicts most offenders will reside within the smallest circle that encloses a pattern of offense locations, which defines the offender's crime range. Those who reside within the crime range reflect a marauder decision pattern, with the remainder reflecting a commuter decision pattern. Random simulations of marauders were conducted to determine the failure rate of the smallest circle to correctly identify a marauder decision pattern.

Intention matters more than attention: Item-method directed forgetting of items at attended and unattended locations.

This study embedded attentional cues in the study phase of an item-method directed forgetting task. We used an unpredictive onset cue (Experiment 1), a predictive onset cue (Experiment 2), or a predictive central cue (Experiments 3-6) to direct attention to the left or right. In Experiments 1-5, this was followed by a pink or blue study word that required a speeded colour discrimination; in Experiment 6, it was followed by a pink or blue word or nonword that required a lexical decision.

Cancelling Flash Illusory Line Motion by Cancelling the Attentional Gradient and a Consideration of Consciousness.

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to the perception of motion in a line that is, in fact, presented in full at one time. One form of this illusion (ILM) occurs when the line is presented between two objects following a brief luminance change in one of them and ILM is thought to result from exogenous attention being captured by the flash. Exogenous attention fades with increasing delays, which predicts that ILM should show a similar temporal pattern.

Human Sensory LTP Predicts Memory Performance and Is Modulated by the ValMet Polymorphism.

: Long-term potentiation (LTP) is recognised as a core neuronal process underlying long-term memory. However, a direct relationship between LTP and human memory performance is yet to be demonstrated. The first aim of the current study was thus to assess the relationship between LTP and human long-term memory performance.

Comparisons of ILM, transformational apparent motion, and polarized gamma motion indicate these are three independent and separable illusions.

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to perceived motion in a bar when it is presented all at once. Explanations for ILM include low-level visual accounts, visual attention, and object tracking. These explanations tend to arise from studies using different protocols to induce ILM, based on the assumption that the same illusion is being generated.

Selection for encoding: No evidence of better endogenous orienting following forget than following remember instructions.

In an item-method directed forgetting task, attentional resources are withdrawn from forget item processing (e.g., Taylor & Fawcett in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 1790-1814, 2011).

A grand memory for forgetting: Directed forgetting across contextual changes.

Using an item-method directed forgetting task, we presented homographic homophonic nouns embedded in sentences. At study, each sentence was followed by an instruction to remember or forget the embedded word. On a subsequent yes-no recognition test, each word was again embedded within a sentence.

Flash-induced forward and reverse illusory line motion in offset bars.

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to perception of motion in a bar that onsets or offsets all at once. When the bar onsets or offsets between two boxes after one of the boxes flashes, the bar appears to shoot out of the flashed box (ILM). If the bar offsets during the flash, it appears to contract into the flashed box (reverse ILM; rILM).

Musical training increases functional connectivity, but does not enhance mu suppression.

Musical training provides an ideal platform for investigating action representation for sound. Learning to play an instrument requires integration of sensory and motor perception-action processes. Functional neuroimaging studies have indicated that listening to trained music can result in the activity in premotor areas, even after a short period of training.

Mental rotation: an examination of assumptions.

Since first presented by Shepard and Metzler, Science 1971, 171: 701-703, mental rotation has been described as a rotary transformation of a visual stimulus allowing it to be represented in a new orientation. For a given stimulus, the transformation is thought to occur at a constant speed, though speed may vary between stimuli; three-dimensional abstract shapes made out of blocks tend to be rotated much more slowly than alphanumeric characters or line drawings of common objects. Rotation is also presumed to be performed through the shortest angle.

The relationship between flash based illusory line motion and exogenous visual attention.

If a bar suddenly appears between 2 squares after 1 of the squares flashes the bar appears to shoot away from the flashed square toward the other. This occurs despite the bar actually having been presented all at once. This illusory motion is sufficiently strong to cancel real motion drawn in the opposite direction.

A comparison of colour, shape, and flash induced illusory line motion.

When a bar suddenly appears between two boxes, the bar will appear to shoot away from the box that matches it in colour or in shape-a phenomenon referred to as attribute priming of illusory line motion (ILM; ILM and ILM, respectively). If the two boxes are identical, ILM will still occur away from a box if it changes luminance shortly before the presentation of the bar (ILM). This flash condition has been suggested to produce the illusory motion due to the formation of an attentional gradient surrounding the flashed location.

Illusory line motion in onset and offset bars.

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to the perception of motion in a bar that is presented all at once next to an inducing stimulus. The experimental methods for producing and quantifying ILM are varied, and the resulting explanations are likewise at odds. The current study examined the explanations for ILM away from the inducing stimulus (bright or dark flash) using bars that either suddenly appear (onset bars) or suddenly disappear (offset bars).

Mu rhythm suppression demonstrates action representation in pianists during passive listening of piano melodies.

Musicians undergo extensive training which enhances established neural links between auditory and motor areas of the brain. Long-term training develops, strengthens and enables flexibility in these connections allowing proficiency in performance. Previous research has indicated that passive listening of trained music results in the recruitment of premotor areas.

Influence of Physical Activity on Human Sensory Long-Term Potentiation.

A growing body of literature has explored the influence of physical activity on brain structure and function. While the mechanisms of this relationship remain largely speculative, recent research suggests that one of the effects of physical exercise is an increase in synaptic long-term potentiation (LTP). This has not yet been explored directly in humans due to the difficulty of measuring LTP non-invasively.

Selection for encoding: No evidence of greater attentional capture following forget than remember instructions.

We measured attentional orienting in an item-method-directed forgetting task. Words appeared singly, followed by an instruction to remember or forget. In Experiment 1, study words appeared at center; in Experiments 2 and 3, they appeared to the left and right.

Behavioural and electrophysiological effects related to semantic violations during braille reading.

This study investigated the potential to detect event related potentials (ERPs) occurring in response to a specific task in braille reading. This would expand current methodologies for studying the cognitive processes underlying braille reading. An N400 effect paradigm was utilised, whereby proficient blind braille readers read congruent- and incongruent-ending braille sentences.

Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it.

When deciding if a rotated object would face to the left or to the right, if imagined at the upright, mental rotation is typically assumed to be carried out through the shortest angular distance to the upright prior to determining the direction of facing. However, the response time functions for left- and right-facing objects are oppositely asymmetric, which is not consistent with the standard explanation. Using Searle and Hamm's individual differences adaption of Kung and Hamm's Mixture Model, the current study compares the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated through the shortest route to the upright with the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated in the direction they face.

Neural correlates of illusory line motion.

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to a motion illusion in which a flash at one end of a bar prior to the bar's instantaneous presentation or removal results in the percept of motion. While some theories attribute the origin of ILM to attention or early perceptual mechanisms, others have proposed that ILM results from impletion mechanisms that reinterpret the static bar as one in motion. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined participants while they made decisions about the direction of motion in which a bar appeared to be removed.

Effects of memory instruction on attention and information processing: Further investigation of inhibition of return in item-method directed forgetting.

In the item-method directed-forgetting paradigm, the magnitude of inhibition of return (IOR) is larger after an instruction to forget (F) than after an instruction to remember (R). In the present experiments, we further investigated this increased magnitude of IOR after F as compared to R memory instructions (dubbed the F > R IOR difference), in order to understand both the consequences for information processing and the purpose of the differential withdrawal of attention that results in this difference. Words were presented in one of four peripheral locations, followed by either an F or an R memory instruction.

Difficulties with pitch discrimination influences pitch memory performance: evidence from congenital amusia.

Music processing is influenced by pitch perception and memory. Additionally these features interact, with pitch memory performance decreasing as the perceived distance between two pitches decreases. This study examined whether or not the difficulty of pitch discrimination influences pitch retention by testing individuals with congenital amusia.

Effects of band-pass spatial frequency filtering of face and object images on the amplitude of N170.

Previous studies have suggested that physiological responses are greatest and face recognition performance is best when a band of middle relative spatial frequencies (SFs) is included in stimuli. Conversely, behavioural data suggest that object recognition performance shows comparatively little effect of SF variations. Here, we examine the effects of SF filtering on the amplitude of the N170 ERP component when participants are shown images of faces and objects.

Exploring the modulation of attentional capture by spatial attentional control settings: converging evidence from event-related potentials.

Automatic attentional capture by a salient distractor can be prevented by spatial attentional control settings (ACSs) (e.g., Yantis and Jonides in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 16:121-134, 1990).

Amusia results in abnormal brain activity following inappropriate intonation during speech comprehension.

Pitch processing is a critical ability on which humans' tonal musical experience depends, and which is also of paramount importance for decoding prosody in speech. Congenital amusia refers to deficits in the ability to properly process musical pitch, and recent evidence has suggested that this musical pitch disorder may impact upon the processing of speech sounds. Here we present the first electrophysiological evidence demonstrating that individuals with amusia who speak Mandarin Chinese are impaired in classifying prosody as appropriate or inappropriate during a speech comprehension task.

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics.

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks.