We investigated the role of alpha in the suppression of attention capture by salient but to-be-suppressed (negative and nonpredictive) color cues, expecting a potential boosting effect of alpha-rhythmic entrainment on feature-specific cue suppression. We did so by presenting a rhythmically flickering visual bar of 10 Hz before the cue - either on the cue's side or opposite the cue -while an arrhythmically flickering visual bar was presented on the respective other side. We hypothesized that rhythmic entrainment at cue location could enhance the suppression of the cue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPast research suggests a continuity between perception and memory, as reflected in influences of orienting of spatial attention by cues presented after a visual target offset (post-target cues) on target perception. Conducting two experiments, we tested and confirmed this claim. Our study revealed an elevated reliance on post-target cues for target detection with diminishing target visibility, leading to better performance in validly versus invalidly cued trials, indicative of contrast gain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the current study, we used abrupt-onset distractors similar and dissimilar in luminance to the target of a smooth pursuit eye-movement to test if abrupt-onset distractors capture attention in a top-down or bottom-up fashion while the eyes track a moving object. Abrupt onset distractors were presented at different positions relative to the current position of a pursuit target during the closed-loop phase of smooth pursuit. Across experiments, we varied the duration of the distractors, their motion direction, and task-relevance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the current review, we argue that experimental results usually interpreted as evidence for cognitive resource limitations could also reflect functional necessities of human information processing. First, we point out that selective processing of only specific features, objects, or locations at each moment in time allows humans to monitor the success and failure of their own overt actions and covert cognitive procedures. We then proceed to show how certain instances of selectivity are at odds with commonly assumed resource limitations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLinking arbitrary shapes (e.g., circles, squares, and triangles) to personal labels (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVisual motion captures attention, but little is known about the automaticity of these effects. Here, we tested if deviant flicker frequencies, as one form of motion, automatically capture attention. Observers searched for a vertical target among tilted distractors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContinuously tracking cognitive demands via pupil dilation is a desirable goal for the monitoring and investigation of cognitive performance in applied settings where the exact time point of mental engagement in a task is often unknown. Yet, hitherto no experimentally validated algorithm exists for continuously estimating cognitive demands based on pupil size. Here, we evaluated the performance of a continuously operating algorithm that is agnostic of the onset of the stimuli and derives them by way of retrospectively modeling attentional pulses (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtten Percept Psychophys
April 2019
We report a new "now-bias" effect on simple perceptual matching between shapes and labels and examined the relation between this now-bias effect and the self-bias previously established with this task (Sui, He, & Humphreys, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105-1117, 2012). The perceptual biases favoring present-relevant and self-relevant information were correlated with each other, suggesting a common underlying mechanism. Nevertheless, temporal biases in decision making, specifically in temporal discounting, correlated with the perceptual self-bias but not with the perceptual now-bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Cogn Affect Neurosci
December 2017
Although theoretical discourse and experimental studies on the self- and reward-biases have a long tradition, currently we have only a limited understanding of how the biases are represented in the brain and, more importantly, how they relate to each other. We used multi-voxel pattern analysis to test for common representations of self and reward in perceptual matching in healthy human subjects. Voxels across an anterior-posterior axis in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) distinguished (i) self-others and (ii) high-low reward, but cross-generalization between these dimensions decreased from anterior to posterior vmPFC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeparate neural systems have been implicated in the recognition of facial identity and emotional expression. A growing number of studies now provide evidence against this modular view by demonstrating that integration of identity and emotion information enhances face processing. Yet, the neural mechanisms that shape this integration remain largely unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined whether self-biases in perceptual matching reflect the positive valence of self-related stimuli. Participants associated geometric shapes with either personal labels (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDue to its limited capacity, visual perception depends on the allocation of attention. The resultant phenomena of inattentional blindness, accompanied by reduced sensory visual cortex response to unattended stimuli in conditions of high perceptual load in the attended task, are now well established (Lavie, 2005; Lavie, 2010, for reviews). However, the underlying mechanisms for these effects remain to be elucidated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe influence of selective attention on visual processing is widespread. Recent studies have demonstrated that spatial attention can affect processing of invisible stimuli. However, it has been suggested that this effect is limited to low-level features, such as line orientations.
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