The phenomenology of attentional control: a first-person approach to contemplative science and the issue of free will.

There are two basic aspects of attentional control. The ability to toward different objects is typically experienced as a fundamental indicator of attentional freedom. One can control what one attends to and directing attention is a relatively simple task.

Training naive subjects in using micro-phenomenological self-inquiry to investigate pain and suffering during headaches.

Micro-phenomenology is a method that generates rich and reliable reports of singular experiences in their pre-reflective dimension. Usually it is employed using a second-person interviewer. In this study we attempted to train naïve subjects in using self-inquiry version of the method.

First-person access to decision-making using micro-phenomenological self-inquiry.

Micro-phenomenology is a method for improving first-person reports of experience. Usually, micro-phenomenology is conducted using a second-person interviewer who guides someone investigating an experience. This has the advantage that the interviews can be done with untrained subjects.

The True Self. Critique, Nature, and Method.

The history of philosophy gives us many different accounts of a true self, connecting it to the essence of what a person is, the notion of conscience, and the ideal human being. Some proponents of the true self can also be found within psychology, but its existence is mostly rejected. Many psychological studies, however, have shown that people commonly believe in the existence of a true self.

Avoiding "False Alarms" and "Misses" in Psychological Theory Building: Complementing the Principle of Parsimony With the Principle of Tentative Affirmation.

Scientific parsimony is a reliable safeguard against speculative or ideological theorizing. But it can also hamper the advent of novel ideas and advanced paradigms if misapplied within the context of a conservative thinking style. We illustrate how the principle of parsimony is ideally suited to reduce a particular type of errors-namely the premature acceptance of speculative theories.

Virtually compliant: Immersive video gaming increases conformity to false computer judgments.

Real-life encounters with face-to-face contact are on the decline in a world in which many routine tasks are delegated to virtual characters-a development that bears both opportunities and risks. Interacting with such virtual-reality beings is particularly common during role-playing videogames, in which we incarnate into the virtual reality of an avatar. Video gaming is known to lead to the training and development of real-life skills and behaviors; hence, in the present study we sought to explore whether role-playing video gaming primes individuals' identification with a computer enough to increase computer-related social conformity.

Virtually numbed: immersive video gaming alters real-life experience.

As actors in a highly mechanized environment, we are citizens of a world populated not only by fellow humans, but also by virtual characters (avatars). Does immersive video gaming, during which the player takes on the mantle of an avatar, prompt people to adopt the coldness and rigidity associated with robotic behavior and desensitize them to real-life experience? In one study, we correlated participants' reported video-gaming behavior with their emotional rigidity (as indicated by the number of paperclips that they removed from ice-cold water). In a second experiment, we manipulated immersive and nonimmersive gaming behavior and then likewise measured the extent of the participants' emotional rigidity.

The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception.

Research has increasingly focussed on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception.

Mobilizing unused resources: using the placebo concept to enhance cognitive performance.

People have significant psychological resources to improve their well-being and performance, but these resources often go unused and could be better harnessed. In the medical domain, it is well established that these resources can be mobilized under certain conditions, for example in the context of the placebo effect. Here we explored whether the placebo principle can be used to enhance cognitive performance.

The function of regressions in reading: backward eye movements allow rereading.

Standard text reading involves frequent eye movements that go against normal reading order. The function of these "regressions" is still largely unknown. The most obvious explanation is that regressions allow for the rereading of previously fixated words.

The time-course of recovery from interruption during reading: eye movement evidence for the role of interruption lag and spatial memory.

Two experiments examined how interruptions impact reading and how interruption lags and the reader's spatial memory affect the recovery from such interruptions. Participants read paragraphs of text and were interrupted unpredictably by a spoken news story while their eye movements were monitored. Time made available for consolidation prior to responding to the interruption did not aid reading resumption.

Mindful maths: reducing the impact of stereotype threat through a mindfulness exercise.

Individuals who experience stereotype threat - the pressure resulting from social comparisons that are perceived as unfavourable - show performance decrements across a wide range of tasks. One account of this effect is that the cognitive pressure triggered by such threat drains the same cognitive (or working-memory) resources that are implicated in the respective task. The present study investigates whether mindfulness can be used to moderate stereotype threat, as mindfulness has previously been shown to alleviate working-memory load.

The right time and the left time: Spatial associations of temporal cues affect target detection in right brain-damaged patients.

Humans map timewords such as "yesterday" or "future" onto a mental timeline that holds temporally earlier events on the left side of space and temporally later events on the right side. The perception of time and spatial mapping both are partially subserved by right temporo-parietal brain regions. We tested stroke patients with right-hemisphere lesions on a spatio-temporal cueing task to see whether spatial associations of noninformative temporal cues would elicit the same cognitive deficits as do typical stimulus-driven exogenous cues.

Testing whether gaze cues and arrow cues produce reflexive or volitional shifts of attention.

It has been suggested that two types of uninformative central cues produce reflexive orienting: gaze and arrow cues. Using the criterion that voluntary shifts of attention facilitate both response speed and perceptual accuracy, whereas reflexive shifts of attention facilitate only response speed (Prinzmetal, McCool, & Park, 2005), we tested whether these cues produce reflexive or volitional shifts of attention. A cued letter discrimination task was used with both gaze (Experiments 1A and 1B) and arrow (Experiments 2A and 2B) cues, in which participants responded to the identity of the target letter.

Time flies like an arrow: space-time compatibility effects suggest the use of a mental timeline.

The concept of time is elusive to direct observation, yet it pervades almost every aspect of our daily lives. How is time represented, given that it cannot be perceived directly? Metaphoric mapping theory assumes that abstract concepts such as time are represented in terms of concrete, readily available dimensions. Consistent with this, many languages employ spatial metaphors to describe temporal relations.

Long-range regressions to previously read words are guided by spatial and verbal memory.

To examine the nature of the information that guides eye movements to previously read text during reading (regressions), we used a relatively novel technique to request a regression to a particular target word when the eyes reached a predefined location during sentence reading. A regression was to be directed to a close or a distant target when either the first or the second line of a complex two-line sentence was read. In addition, conditions were created that pitted effects of spatial and linguistic distance against each other.

Things are sounding up: affective influences on auditory tone perception.

Recent studies have documented robust and intriguing associations between affect and performance in cognitive tasks. The present two experiments sought to extend this line of work with reference to potential cross-modal effects. Specifically, the present studies examined whether word evaluations would bias subsequent judgments of low- and high-pitch tones.

Objects do not aid inhibition of return in crossing the vertical meridian.

Location-based cuing experiments have shown that inhibition of return (IOR) spreads beyond a cued location but appears to be confined to the cued hemifield by the vertical meridian. Previous studies have also shown that IOR can spread across objects and here we investigate whether an object can be used to mediate the spreading of IOR into the opposite hemifield. Two experiments used a rectangular object that surrounded four target locations, two to the left and right of a central fixation point.

The impact of letter detection on eye movement patterns during reading: Reconsidering lexical analysis in connected text as a function of task.

A comparison was made between reading tasks performed with and without the additional requirement of detecting target letters. At issue was whether eye movement measures are affected by the additional requirement of detection. Global comparisons showed robust effects of task type with longer fixations and fewer word skippings when letter detection was required.

Semantic inhibition of return is the exception rather than the rule.

Inhibition of return (IOR) has recently been reported for lexical/semantic categories (see, e.g., Fuentes, Vivas, & Humphreys, 1999).

Attention and eye movements in reading: inhibition of return predicts the size of regressive saccades.

A spatial cuing task was used to identify two types of readers, those with a relatively fast and those with a relatively slow buildup of inhibition of return (IOR). Backward-directed eye movements (regressions) during sentence reading were then examined as a function of the two IOR types. The results revealed that readers with fast IOR executed larger regressions than readers with slow IOR, as they directed the eyes away from the most recently attended area of text.

Memory for word location during reading: eye movements to previously read words are spatially selective but not precise.

In two experiments, readers' use of spatial memory was examined by asking them to determine whether an individually shown probe word had appeared in a previously read sentence (Experiment 1) or had occupied a right or left sentence location (Experiment 2). Under these conditions, eye movements during the classification task were generally directed toward the right, irrespective of the location of the relevant target in the previously read sentence. In two additional experiments, readers' knowledge of prior sentence content was examined either without (Experiment 3) or with (Experiment 4) an explicit instruction to move the eyes to a target word in that sentence.