Attentional sensitization of unconscious cognition: Task sets modulate subsequent masked semantic priming.

According to classical theories, automatic processes are autonomous and independent of higher level cognitive influence. In contrast, the authors propose that automatic processing depends on attentional sensitization of task-congruent processing pathways. In 3 experiments, the authors tested this hypothesis with a modified masked semantic priming paradigm during a lexical decision task by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs): Before masked prime presentation, participants attended an induction task either to semantic or perceptual stimulus features designed to activate a semantic or perceptual task set, respectively. Semantic priming effects on the N400 ERP component, an electrophysiological index of semantic processing, were obtained when a semantic task set was induced immediately before subliminal prime presentation, whereas a previously induced perceptual task set attenuated N400 priming. Across experiments, comparable results were obtained regardless of the difficulty level and the verbal or nonverbal nature of the induction tasks. In line with the proposed attentional sensitization model, unconscious semantic processing is enhanced by a semantic and attenuated by a perceptual task set. Hence, automatic processing of unconscious stimuli is susceptible to top-down control for optimizing goal-related information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimension-specific intertrial priming effects are task-specific: Evidence for multiple weighting systems.

Feature singleton search is faster when the target-defining dimension repeats across consecutive trials than when it changes (Found & Müller, 1996). However, this dimension repetition benefit (DRB) has also been demonstrated for the tasks with no search component (Mortier, Theeuwes, & Starreveld, 2005). If DRBs in the search and non-search tasks have the same origin, significant DRBs across trials of different tasks should rise. Two different tasks varied either in a predictable manner (Experiment 1) or randomly (Experiment 2) across trials. In detection task, search displays containing either color or orientation singletons were used. Discrimination task required identification of either color or orientation of a single presented item (non-search display). In Experiment 3, participants performed only the discrimination task, while the search and non-search displays varied randomly. There were significant DRBs for both tasks when the task repeated but not when the task changed (Experiments 1 and 2). DRBs were significant both when the display type repeated and when it changed (Experiment 3). Overall, the findings can be well explained by assuming multiple, independent dimension-weighting systems generating DRBs in different tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tight coupling between positive and reversed priming in the masked prime paradigm.

When associations between certain visual stimuli and particular actions are learned, those stimuli become capable of automatically and unconsciously activating their associated action plans. Such sensorimotor priming is assumed to be fundamental for efficient responses, and can be reliably measured in masked prime studies even when the primes are not consciously perceived. However, when the delay between prime and target is increased, reversed priming effects are often found instead (the negative compatibility effect, NCE). The main accounts of the NCE assume that it too is a sensorimotor phenomenon, predicting that it should occur only when the initial positive priming phase also occurs. Alternatively, reversed priming may reflect a perceptual process entirely independent from positive motor priming (which is simply evident at a different temporal delay), in which case no dependency is expected between the NCE and positive priming. We tested these predictions while new sensorimotor associations were learned, and found a remarkable symmetry between positive and reversed priming during all such learning phases, supporting the idea that reversed priming is a sensorimotor process that automatically follows the positive priming phase. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selecting a response in task switching: Testing a model of compound cue retrieval.

How can a task-appropriate response be selected for an ambiguous target stimulus in task-switching situations? One answer is to use compound cue retrieval, whereby stimuli serve as joint retrieval cues to select a response from long-term memory. In the present study, the authors tested how well a model of compound cue retrieval could account for a complex pattern of congruency effects arising from a procedure in which a cue, prime, and target were presented on each trial. A comparison of alternative models of prime-based effects revealed that the best model was one in which all stimuli participated directly in the process of retrieving a response, validating previous modeling efforts. Relations to current theorizing about response congruency effects and models of response selection in task switching are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The unconscious perception of the meaning of verbal stimuli.

"The hypothesis was investigated that the meaning of a verbal stimulus may be responded to without prior recognition of the stimulus. Four treatment groups were employed of 16 Ss each. The experimental procedure used… consisted essentially of obtaining the S's guesses to a series of verbal stimuli, dichotomized in affective connotation, which were presented at or slightly below the S's previously determined absolute threshold… . there was no evidence that the Ss could make better than chance matches… . It was concluded that no evidence was obtained that Ss respond to the meaning of verbal stimuli prior to recognition of the stimuli." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2HL32F. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When cross-modal spatial attention fails.

There is now convincing evidence that an involuntary shift of spatial attention to a stimulus in one modality can affect the processing of stimuli in other modalities, but inconsistent findings across different paradigms have led to controversy. Such inconsistencies have important implications for theories of cross-modal attention. The authors investigated why orienting attention to a visual event sometimes influences responses to subsequent sounds and why it sometimes fails to do so. They examined visual-cue-on-auditory-target effects in two paradigms--implicit spatial discrimination (ISD) and orthogonal cuing (OC)--that have yielded conflicting findings in the past. Consistent with previous research, visual cues facilitated responses to same-side auditory targets in the ISD paradigm but not in the OC paradigm. Furthermore, in the ISD paradigm, visual cues facilitated responses to auditory targets only when the targets were presented directly at the cued location, not when they appeared above or below the cued location. This pattern of results confirms recent claims that visual cues fail to influence responses to auditory targets in the OC paradigm because the targets fall outside the focus of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masking by object substitution: Dissociation of masking and cuing effects.

In a newly discovered form of visual masking, a target stimulus is masked by 4 flanking dots if their offset is delayed relative to the target (V. Di Lollo, J. T. Enns, & R. A. Rensink, 2000). In Di Lollo et al. (2000), the dot pattern also cued the relevant target and therefore required deliberate attention. In the present Experiments 2-6, a central arrow cued 1 of 2 letters for an E/F discrimination, with dots flanking both letters. Masking was reduced compared with the mask-cue procedure but was still robust. Delayed-offset dots flanking the nontarget also impaired performance, indicating competition for attention. Masking was unaffected by brightness of the dots relative to the target. Masking was attenuated not only by precuing attention to the target location but also by preview of an uninformative dot mask. Theories of masking by object substitution must therefore accommodate the prior context into which the target stimulus is introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic contextual cuing and visual attention.

Since M. M. Chun and Y. Jiang's (1998) original study, a large body of research based on the contextual cuing paradigm has shown that the visuocognitive system is capable of capturing certain regularities in the environment in an implicit way. The present study investigated whether regularities based on the semantic category membership of the context can be learned implicitly and whether that learning depends on attention. The contextual cuing paradigm was used with lexical displays in which the semantic category of the contextual words either did or did not predict the target location. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that implicit contextual cuing effects can be extended to semantic category regularities. Experiments 3 and 4 indicated an implicit contextual cuing effect when the predictive context appeared in an attended color but not when the predictive context appeared in an ignored color. However, when the previously ignored context suddenly became attended, it immediately facilitated performance. In contrast, when the previously attended context suddenly became ignored, no benefit was observed. Results suggest that the expression of implicit semantic knowledge depends on attention but that latent learning can nevertheless take place outside the attentional field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Demands on Attention and the Role of Response Priming in Visual Discrimination of Feature Conjunctions.

This study examined how response mapping of features within single- and multiple-feature targets affects decision-based processing and attentional capacity demands. Observers judged the presence or absence of 1 or 2 target features within an object either presented alone or with distractors. Judging the presence of 2 features relative to the less discriminable of these features alone was faster (conjunction benefits) when the task-relevant features differed in discriminability and were consistently mapped to responses. Conjunction benefits were attributed to asynchronous decision priming across attended, task-relevant dimensions. A failure to find conjunction benefits for disjunctive conjunctions was attributed to increased memory demands and variable feature-response mapping for 2- versus single-feature targets. Further, attentional demands were similar between single- and 2-feature targets when response mapping, memory demands, and discriminability of the task-relevant features were equated between targets. Implications of the findings for recent attention models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confusion and Compensation in Visual Perception: Effects of Spatiotemporal Proximity and Selective Attention.

The authors investigated spatial, temporal, and attentional manipulations in a short-term repetition priming paradigm. Brief primes produced a strong preference to choose the primed alternative, whereas long primes had the opposite effect. However, a 2nd brief presentation of a long prime produced a preference for the primed word despite the long total prime duration. These surprising results are explained by a computational model that posits the offsetting components of source confusion (prime features are confused with target features) and discounting (evidence from primed features is discounted). The authors obtained compelling evidence for these components by showing how they can cooperate or compete through different manipulations of prime salience. The model allows for dissociations between prime salience and the magnitude of priming, thereby providing a unified account of "subliminal" and "supraliminal" priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asymmetric switch cost and backward inhibition: Carryover activation and inhibition in switching between tasks of unequal difficulty.

Asymmetric switch cost, observed when switching between tasks varying in difficulty, shows that the difference between repeat and switch trials is greater when switching to the easier task. Early explanations of this effect attributed this pattern to both positive priming of the difficult task and negative priming of the easier task, but more recent models have focused only on activation processes. The role of inhibition in asymmetric switch cost was examined using backward inhibition, a more direct measure of task-set inhibition. The results indicated asymmetric backward inhibition, with greater sequential inhibition of the easier task (i.e., easy-difficult-easy sequences). Switch costs, however, showed both typical and reversed asymmetry (greater cost when switching from the easy to the difficult task), depending on the relative difficulty of task pairs. This pattern of results indicates that switch costs are attributable to both activation and inhibition processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intertrial Temporal Contextual Cuing: Association Across Successive Visual Search Trials Guides Spatial Attention.

Contextual cuing refers to the facilitation of performance in visual search due to the repetition of the same displays. Whereas previous studies have focused on contextual cuing within single-search trials, this study tested whether 1 trial facilitates visual search of the next trial. Participants searched for a T among Ls. In the training phase, the spatial layout on trial N=1 was predictive of the target location on trial N. In the testing phase, the predictive value was removed. Results revealed an intertrial temporal contextual cuing effect: Search speed became progressively shorter in the training phase, but it significantly lengthened during testing. The authors conclude that the visual system is capable of retaining spatial contextual memory established earlier to facilitate perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Top-down contingencies in peripheral cuing: The roles of color and location.

According to contingent-processing accounts, peripheral cuing effects are due to the cues' inadvertent selection for processing by control settings set up for targets (e.g., C. L. Folk, R. W. Remington, & J. C. Johnston, 1992). Consequently, cues similar to targets should have stronger effects than do dissimilar cues. In the current study, this prediction is confirmed for cue-target combinations similar or dissimilar in the static features of color (Experiments 1-3) and location (Experiment 4), even when both cues and targets share the dynamic feature of abrupt onset. Perceptual priming (Experiment 2) and reallocation of attention did not account for similar-dissimilar differences (Experiments 3 and 4). The results are best explained by top-down-contingent attentional effects of the similar cues. Implications for bottom-up accounts of peripheral cuing effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Previous research has shown how spatial attention is guided to a target location, but little is understood about how attention is allocated to an event in time. The authors introduce a paradigm to manipulate the sequential structure of visual events independent of responses. They asked whether this temporal context could be implicitly learned and used to guide attention to a relative point in time or location, or both, in space. Experiments show that sequentially structured event durations, event identities, and spatiotemporal event sequences can guide attention to a point in time as well as to a target event's identity and location. Cuing was found to rely heavily on the element immediately preceding the target, although cuing from earlier items also was evident. Learning was implicit in all cases. These results show that the sequential structure of the visual world plays an important role in guiding visual attention to target events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing switch costs: Alternating runs and explicit cuing.

The task-switching literature routinely conflates different operational definitions of switch cost, its predominant behavioral measure. This article is an attempt to draw attention to differences between the two most common definitions, alternating-runs switch cost (ARS) and explicit-cuing switch cost (ECS). ARS appears to include both the costs of switching tasks and the switch-independent costs specific to the first trial of a run, with the implication that it should generally be larger than ECS, but worse is that the alternating-runs procedure does not allow these costs to be separated. New data are presented to make these issues concrete, existing data are surveyed for evidence that ARS is larger than ECS, and implications of conflating these measures are examined for existing theoretical constructs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neutral Location Cues and Cost/Benefit Analysis of Visual Attention Shifts.

The effects of location cuing on target responses can be examined by comparing informative and neutral cuing conditions. In particular, the magnitudes of costs of invalid location cuing and of benefits of valid location cuing can be determined by comparing invalid and valid cue responses to location-nonspecific neutral cue responses. Cost/benefit analysis is based on the assumption that neutral baseline measures reflect a general warning effect about the impending target's onset but no other specific target information. The experiments we report were carried out to determine the appropriateness of two baseline measures for cost/benefit analyses of direct (nonsymbolic) location cuing effects. We found that a multiple-cue baseline attenuated the benefits of valid cuing, and that a background-flash baseline arbitrarily attenuated costs or benefits depending on flash intensity. It is proposed that a background flash is the more suitable neutral cue because it is target-location-nonspecific, but that its intensity should be adjusted to elicit a target-onset warning signal of the same magnitude as the location cues with which it will be compared. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and visual marking: Selective deficits for moving stimuli.

The selective processing of new visual information can be facilitated by the top-down inhibition of old stimuli already in the visual field, a capacity-limited process termed visual marking (D. G. Watson & G. W. Humphreys, 1997). Three experiments assessed the effects of aging on visual marking using stationary (Experiment 1) and moving (Experiments 2 and 3) items. For young participants, visual marking was observed in all experiments. For older participants, visual marking was observed only with stationary items. The results are not consistent with any simple account of general age-related decrements and provide further support for the deployment of different methods of visual marking depending on the properties of the old items and the current task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task switching versus cue switching: Using transition cuing to disentangle sequential effects in task-switching performance.

Recent methodological advances have allowed researchers to address confounds in the measurement of task-switch costs in task-switching performance by dissociating cue switching from task switching. For example, in the transition-cuing procedure, which involves presenting cues for task transitions rather than for tasks, cue transitions (cue switches and cue repetitions) and task transitions (task switches and task repetitions) can be examined in a complete factorial design. Transition cuing removes the confound between cue transitions and first-order task transitions, but it introduces a confound between cue transitions and longer task sequences. In the present study, transition cuing was studied with two cues per transition (REPEAT and AGAIN for task repetitions; SWITCH and CHANGE for task switches), enabling a partial deconfounding of cue transitions and task sequences. Two experiments revealed robust sequential effects, with higher order task transitions affecting performance when cue transitions were held constant and with cue transitions affecting performance when task sequences were held constant. Methodological and theoretical implications of these findings for research on task switching are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nesting of search contexts within natural scenes: Evidence from contextual cuing.

In a contextual cuing paradigm, we examined how memory for the spatial structure of a natural scene guides visual search. Participants searched through arrays of objects that were embedded within depictions of real-world scenes. If a repeated search array was associated with a single scene during study, then array repetition produced significant contextual cuing. However, expression of that learning was dependent on instantiating the original scene in which the learning occurred: Contextual cuing was disrupted when the repeated array was transferred to a different scene. Such scene-specific learning was not absolute, however. Under conditions of high scene variability, repeated search array were learned independently of the scene background. These data suggest that when a consistent environmental structure is available, spatial representations supporting visual search are organized hierarchically, with memory for functional subregions of an environment nested within a representation of the larger scene. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioning of attention as a source of autistic effects in perception.

An experiment and replication are presented to demonstrate the production of autistic effects in a situation creating habitual modes of responding to a problem-solving task. The task was to locate a simple figure within a complex colored figure much like the Gottschaldt Test. The simple figure could be located in 1 of 2 different colored areas within the complex figure. During an intervening training period certain colors were rewarded and other colors punished. The Gottschaldt-like figures were then presented again, and changes in responses were observed. In both experiments Ss showed a significant change toward the rewarded colors, which was explained in terms of subliminal anticipatory responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)