Effects of stimulus integrality on visual attention in older and younger adults: a quantitative model-based analysis

Twenty-one older and 21 younger adults were administered a series of visual attention tasks. A series of quantitative models was applied to each observer's data to determine whether he or she performed optimally or suboptimally or showed a deficit-in-attentional processing. The results suggested that (a) older and younger observers were affected equally by the integrality-separability manipulation, (b) there are no age-related differences in selective attention performance for either integral or separable-dimension stimuli, (c) there are no age-related differences in dimensional integration performance with separable-dimension stimuli, and (d) older observers were more likely to be suboptimal when asked to integrate information from integral-dimension stimuli. Implications for current theories of attentional processing in normal aging are discussed.     

Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: Distraction reverses emotional biases.

Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention conditions. Replicating previous eye-tracking findings, older adults allocated less of their visual attention to negative stimuli in negative-neutral stimulus pairings in the full attention condition than younger adults did. However, as predicted by a cognitive-control-based account of the positivity effect in older adults' information processing tendencies (Mather & Knight, 2005), older adults' tendency to avoid negative stimuli was reversed in the divided attention condition. Compared with younger adults, older adults' limited attentional resources were more likely to be drawn to negative stimuli when they were distracted. These findings indicate that emotional goals can have unintended consequences when cognitive control mechanisms are not fully available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lower region: A new cue for figure-ground assignment.

Figure-ground assignment is an important visual process; humans recognize, attend to, and act on figures, not backgrounds. There are many visual cues for figure-ground assignment. A new cue to figure-ground assignment, called lower region, is presented: Regions in the lower portion of a stimulus array appear more figurelike than regions in the upper portion of the display. This phenomenon was explored, and it was demonstrated that the lower-region preference is not influenced by contrast, eye movements, or voluntary spatial attention. It was found that the lower region is defined relative to the stimulus display, linking the lower-region preference to pictorial depth perception cues. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental regularities that this new figure-ground cue may reflect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming of two-dimensional visual motion is reduced in older adults.

Previously, Y. Jiang, P. Greenwood, and R. Parasuraman (1999) reported that priming of rotating three-dimensional visual objects is age sensitive. The current study investigated whether there is also an age-related difference in priming with simple two-dimensional (2-D) moving stimuli (i.e., whether a prime stimulus moving in a particular direction causes a subsequent ambiguous target stimulus to be seen moving in the same direction as the prime). In 2 experiments, younger and older adults judged the directions of moving sine-wave gratings. Groups differed neither in determining the direction of a single 2-D movement nor in detecting motion reversals in successively moving gratings. However, the older group showed a significant reduction in the extent of 2-D motion priming. The decrement in older adults for visual motion priming may reflect age-related changes in temporal processing in human visual cortex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Latent inhibition in human affective learning.

This study presents the results of a new visual procedure designed to generate affective learning, namely the change in the affective rating of a previously. neutral stimulus by simply pairing it with a liked or disliked stimulus. Specifically, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of nonreinforced preexposures to the to-be-conditioned stimulus (a non-sense shape) on affective conditioning. This manipulation, intended to produce latent inhibition, typically results in retarded learning when the preexposed stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. The results revealed that it is possible to modify the affective value of a previously neutral non-sense shape by pairing it with a liked or disliked unconditioned stimulus, and that latent inhibition affects affective conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual Grouping by Motion Precedes the Relative Localization Between Moving and Flashed Stimuli.

A flashed stimulus is perceived as spatially lagging behind a moving stimulus when they are spatially aligned. When several elements are perceptually grouped into a unitary moving object, a flash presented at the leading edge of the moving stimulus suffers a larger spatial lag than a flash presented at the trailing edge (K. Watanabe. R. Nijhawan. B. Khurana, & S. Shimojo. 2001). By manipulation of the flash onset relative to the motion onset, the present study investigated the order of perceptual operations of visual motion grouping and relative visual localization. It was found that the asymmetric mislocalization was observed irrespective of physical and/or perceptual temporal order between the motion and flash onsets. Thus, grouping by motion must be completed to define the leading-trailing relation in a moving object before the visual system explicitly represents the relative positions of moving and flashed stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reply to Mace and Pittenger on "Directly perceiving Gibson".

A reply to Mace and Pittenger on "Directly Perceiving Gibson" (see record 2005-09162-001). W. M. Mace and J. B. Pittenger address themselves to a false issue when they argue that J. J. Gibson has both a theory of stimulus structure and a theory of attention. The point of the 1972 article by J. W. Gyr is that these two theories are not as well integrated as they might be or as integrated as Gibson intended them to be. Moreover, a point also stressed by Gyr and overlooked by Mace and Pittenger is that Gibson's findings of stimulus structure are also consistent with theories that are not theories of direct visual perception, and therefore such findings by themselves cannot be used to support Gibson's theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and perception of visual form from temporal structure.

In this study, the authors examined age-related changes in participants' ability to perceive global spatial structure defined by temporal fine structure among elements undergoing rapid, irregular change. Participants were also tested on a task involving form recognition from luminance contrast and on a task dependent on perception of 3-dimensional shape from motion. Compared with young adults, older individuals were less sensitive to spatial form defined by temporal structure. In contrast, older observers performed as well as young adults on the other two tasks that were not dependent on temporal sensitivity, ruling out nonsensory factors as the cause of the deficits on the temporal structure task. This selective deficit may reveal reduced sensitivity within the temporal impulse response of the aging visual system, a deficit that could be related to reduced effectiveness of neural inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the Perception of Biological Motion.

Two experiments examined how observers' ability to perceive biological motion changes with increasing age. The observers discriminated among kinetic figures, depicting walking, jogging, and skipping. The direction, duration, and temporal correspondence of the motions were manipulated. Quantitative differences occurred between the recognition performances of younger and older observers, but these differences were often modest. The older and younger observers' performances were comparable for most conditions at stimulus durations of 400 ms. The older observers also performed well above chance at shorter durations of 240 and 120 ms. Unlike their performance on other 2- or 3-dimensional motion tasks, older observers' ability to perceive biological motion is relatively well preserved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Ocular fixation control as a function of age and exposure duration": Correction to Kosnik et al.

Reports an error in "Ocular fixation control as a function of age and exposure duration" by William Kosnik, Donald Kline, John Fikre and Robert Sekuler (Psychology and Aging, 1987[Sep], Vol 2[3], 302-305). In the aforementioned article, the following corrections should be made: 1. The title of Table 1 should be changed to Mean Bivariate Areas (min-arc2) and Mean Horizontal and Vertical Standard Deviations (min-arc) of Fixations of Older and Younger Groups. 2. The equation on page 304 should have used the natural log rather than the log base 10. The corrected equation is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1988-01066-001.) In previous work we reported that fixation stability did not deteriorate in older adults over relatively long viewing durations. In the present study we reanalyzed the data to examine potential aging effects on fixational control for viewing durations typically used in psychological experimentation. Monocular eye movements were recorded in 12 older and 12 younger observers using a dual Purkinje image technique, while observers fixated a stationary target. The two-dimensional scatter of eye positions was measured during nine viewing durations ranging from 100 ms to 12.8 s. Fixational control of the two groups was comparable at all of the viewing durations. Both younger and older observers were able to maintain fixation within an area several times smaller than the size of the fovea. Implications for aging studies that use briefly presented visual stimuli are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the perceptual organization of 3-D scenes.

In the current study, the authors investigated whether the ground dominance effect (the use of ground surface information for the perceptual organization of scenes) varied with age. In Experiment 1, a scene containing a ground, a ceiling, and 2 vertical posts was presented. The scene was either in its normal orientation or rotated to the side. In Experiment 2, a blue dot was attached to each post, with location varied from bottom to top of the posts. In Experiment 3, a scene similar to that in Experiment 1 was presented in different locations in visual field. Observers judged which of the 2 objects (posts in Experiments 1 and 3, blue dots in Experiment 2) appeared to be closer. The results indicated that both younger (mean age = 22 years) and older observers (mean age = 73 years) responded consistently with the ground dominance effect. However, the magnitude of the effect decreased for older observers. These results suggest a decreased use of ground surface information by older observers for the perceptual organization of scene layout. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial cuing in a stereoscopic display: attention remains "depth-aware" with age

Previous research has demonstrated that spatial attention is "depth-aware": Reaction times (RT) are greater for shifts in depth and two-dimensional (2-D) space than in 2-D space alone. This experiment examined whether the ability to focus attention at a depth location is maintained with advanced age. Twelve younger and 12 older observers viewed stereoscopic displays in which one of four spatial locations was cued. Two of the locations were at a near depth location and two were at a far depth location. When the focus of visual attention was shifted to a new location in space (because of an invalid cue), the cost in RT for switching attention (measured as the difference between RT on valid cue and invalid cue trials) was greater when observers had to switch attention between different depth locations and different locations in 2-D space than for shifts in 2-D space alone. This effect was observed for both younger and older observers, suggesting that the ability to orient attention to a depth location is maintained with age.     

Effect of object onset on the distribution of visual attention.

There now exists considerable evidence to suggest that the appearance of a new object in the visual field captures visual attention. One of the consequences of this attentional capture is that the object initiates a redistribution of attentional resources across visual space. This is classically observed in the precuing paradigm in which the onset of an abrupt cue influences the processing of a subsequently presented target. The present research describes a new phenomenon that occurs as a result of a new object appearing in the visual field. A stimulus presented in a region of space adjacent to a comer of an onsetting object receives an enhancement of processing relative to a stimulus presented adjacent to one of the object's straight edges. With the use of 2 converging methods, evidence is presented that suggests that the effect is a higher order attentional phenomenon whereby greater resources become directed to the comers of objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial context learning survives interference from working memory load.

The human visual system is constantly confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, only a subset of which can be processed in complete detail. Attention and implicit learning are two important mechanisms that optimize vision. This study addressed the relationship between these two mechanisms. Specifically we asked, Is implicit learning of spatial context affected by the amount of working memory load devoted to an irrelevant task? We tested observers in visual search tasks where search displays occasionally repeated. Observers became faster when searching repeated displays than unrepeated ones, showing contextual cuing. We found that the size of contextual cuing was unaffected by whether observers learned repeated displays under unitary attention or when their attention was divided using working memory manipulations. These results held when working memory was loaded by colors, dot patterns, individual dot locations, or multiple potential targets. We conclude that spatial context learning is robust to interference from manipulations that limit the availability of attention and working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-Related Differences in Localized Attentional Interference.

Attentional selection of an object in the visual field degrades processing of neighboring stimuli in young adults. A pair of experiments examined the effects of aging on such localized attentional interference. In Experiment 1, younger and older observers made speeded same-different judgments of target shapes that varied in spatial separation. Performance declined for both age groups as the distance between targets decreased, but an Age x Distance interaction indicated that the magnitude of this effect was larger for older adults. Experiment 2 ruled out sensory masking as an explanation for these findings. Results indicate that older observers experience losses in the ability to attend to multiple spatially proximal stimuli within the visual field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effects of Auditory and Visual Linguistic Distractors on Target Localization.

In this experiment, a Stroop-like paradigm was used to investigate the ability to attend to visuospatial cues while ignoring distracting stimuli in the auditory or visual modality. In Part 1, the authors investigated whether linguistic cue words (i.e., RIGHT, LEFT, DOWN, and UP) would induce endogenous shifts of attention to visual targets. In Part 2, a relevant distractor stimulus was introduced in a different modality from the endogenous cues to investigate effects of interference. Twenty-five right-handed students served as participants. Auditory and visual linguistic cues were effective in inducing shifts of visual attention when cues were presented alone. Furthermore, introducing a distractor stimulus decreased the efficacy of these cues differently depending on modality, suggesting that language processing and visuospatial attention may share neuronal resources. Implications for unimodal and supramodal mechanisms of selective attention and relevant neuronal networks are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How aging affects the reading of words in noisy backgrounds.

Young and old adults were shown simple sentences masked by visual noise. In half of the sentences, the final word was predictable; in the other half, it was not. The older participants were able to identify the same number of final words as the younger ones only when the intensity of the visual noise was significantly diminished. However, the difference in the number of correct identifications between predictable and unpredictable conditions was higher for the older observers than for the younger observers, indicating that older observers benefit from context more. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the Perception of Depth and 3-D Shape From Motion Parallax.

The ability of younger and older observers to perceive 3-D shape and depth from motion parallax was investigated. In Experiment 1, the observers discriminated among differently curved 3-dimensional (3-D) surfaces in the presence of noise. In Experiment 2, the surfaces' shape was held constant and the amount of front-to-back depth was varied; the observers estimated the amount of depth they perceived. The effects of age were strongly task dependent. The younger observers' performance in Experiment 1 was almost 60% higher than that of the older observers. In contrast, no age effect was obtained in Experiment 2. Older observers can effectively perceive variations in depth from patterns of motion parallax, but their ability to discriminate 3-D shape is significantly compromised. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of task-directed attention in nonconscious and conscious response priming by form and color.

Prior research on visual priming suggests that during nonconscious processing attention can be directed to single stimulus dimensions such as form or color. In the current experiment, nonconscious priming was compared to conscious priming by employing masking techniques that render primes invisible (masked) or visible (unmasked) to the observers. Observers were asked to respond to the form, the color, or the combination of form and color of the mask-probe that followed either a masked or an unmasked prime. The prime varied in its form and color congruency relative to the mask-probe. The results indicate (1) that during nonconscious processing a task-irrelevant stimulus feature can be attentionally filtered out, (2) that during nonconscious processing only separated stimulus features can be attended, and (3) that during conscious processing the conjunction of stimulus features comprising an object can be attended. Furthermore, the results indicate that at the nonconscious level stimuli are processed at an individual-feature level, while at the conscious level the stimuli can additionally be processed at a whole-object level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age effects in coding tasks: Componential analysis and test of the sensory deficit hypothesis.

Multiple forms of a symbol-digit substitution task were used to provide a componential analysis of age differences in coding task performance. The results demonstrated age differences in feature encoding, memory, and visual search. A 2nd experiment was conducted with young adults to investigate a sensory deficit as a locus of age differences. The spatial contrast sensitivity deficit of older adults was simulated on forms by applying a digital filter. Persons in the age-simulated contrast condition performed worse than those in the normal contrast condition. The stimulus degradation effect was linked to visual search speed. The study illustrates the utility of componential analysis and offers direct support for the hypothesis that sensory deficits affect performance on tasks used to assess intelligence (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)