The subliminal mere exposure effect does not generalize to structurally related stimuli.

R. F. Bornstein (1994) questioned whether subliminal mere exposure effects might generalize to structurally related stimuli, thereby providing evidence for the existence of implicit learning. Two experiments examined this claim using letter string stimuli constructed according to the rules of an artificial grammar. Experiment 1 demonstrated that brief, masked exposure to grammatical strings impaired recognition but failed to produce a mere exposure effect on novel structurally related strings seen at test. Experiment 2 replicated this result but also demonstrated that a reliable mere exposure effect could be obtained, provided the same grammatical strings were presented at test. The results suggest that the structural relationship between training and test items prevents the mere exposure effect when participants are unaware of the exposure status of stimuli, and therefore provide no evidence for the existence of implicit learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beta-2-agonists are still of value. Tolerance does not affect the bronchodilating effect

Use of the potent bronchodilators, beta 2-adrenoceptor agonists, has been a cornerstone of the treatment of obstructive lung disease, especially asthma, for the past 30 years. However, the occurrence of side effects and the development of tolerance have been discussed as limitations to their use. beta 2-Adrenoceptors are located on the surface of most cell types throughout the human body, and treatment with beta 2-agonists may exert effects in a wide variety of tissues. As with other pharmacological receptors, beta 2-adrenoceptors in most tissues develop tolerance as a result of continuous beta 2-stimulation. However, the bronchodilatory effect appears to be unaffected by the development of tolerance. Interestingly, most studies have yielded evidence suggesting tolerance development regarding protection against bronchoconstrictor stimuli such as methacholine, adenosine and exercise. Although the protective effect of a beta 2-agonist becomes attenuated with continuous treatment, this tolerance is partial and adequate residual protective effect remains.     

Attention misplaced: The role of diagnostic features in the face-inversion effect.

Inversion disproportionately impairs recognition of face stimuli compared to nonface stimuli arguably due to the holistic manner in which faces are processed. A qualification is put forward in which the first point fixated on is different for upright and inverted faces and this carries some of the face-inversion effect. Three experiments explored this possibility by using fixation crosses to guide attention to the eye or mouth region of the to-be-presented faces in different orientations. Recognition was better when the fixation cross appeared at the eye region than at the mouth region. The face-inversion effect was smaller when the eyes were cued than when the mouth was cued or when there was no cueing. The results suggest that the first facial feature attended to is important for accurate face recognition and this may carry some of the effects of inversion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Passive vs. active control of rhythmic ball bouncing: The role of visual information.

The simple task of bouncing a ball on a racket offers a model system for studying how human actors exploit the physics and information of the environment to control their behavior. Previous work shows that people take advantage of a passively stable solution for ball bouncing but can also use perceptual information to actively stabilize bouncing. In this article, we investigate (a) active and passive contributions to the control of bouncing, (b) the visual information in the ball's trajectory, and (c) how it modulates the parameters of racket oscillation. We used a virtual ball bouncing apparatus to manipulate the coefficient of restitution α and gravitational acceleration g during steady-state bouncing (Experiment 1) and sudden transitions (Experiment 2) to dissociate informational variables. The results support a form of mixed control, based on the half-period of the ball's trajectory, in which racket oscillation is actively regulated on every cycle in order to keep the system in or near the passively stable region. The mixed control mode may be a general strategy for integrating passive stability with active stabilization in perception–action systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why faces are and are not special: An effect of expertise.

Conducted 4 experiments to demonstrate that faces are not unique with regard to vulnerability to inversion (i.e., impairment of recognition memory with inverted presentation) and to isolate the source of the inversion effect. In Exp I, with 16 undergraduates, use of stimuli (landscapes) in which spatial relations among elements are potentially important distinguishing features was shown not to guarantee a large inversion effect. Exps II and III (with 64 undergraduates, 16 dog experts [aged 29–58 yrs], and 16 dog experts [aged 42–77 yrs]) showed that for dog experts sufficiently knowledgeable to individuate dogs of the same breed, memory for photographs of dogs of that breed was as disrupted by inversion as face recognition. Exp IV, with 19 undergraduates, indicated that the effect of orientation on memory for faces did not depend on inability to identify single features of these stimuli upside down. Findings are consistent with the view that experts represent items in memory in terms of distinguishing features of a different kind than do novices. Speculations as to the type of feature used and neuropsychological and developmental implications of this accomplishment are offered. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional momentum does not underlie the inhibition of return effect.

J. Pratt, T. M. Spalek, and F. Bradshaw (1999) recently proposed that attentional momentum is the mechanism underlying the inhibition of return (IOR) effect. They suggested that momentum associated with an attentional movement away from a peripherally cued location and toward an uncued opposite location is essential and fundamental to the finding of an IOR effect. Although it is clear from the present study and from a reanalysis of data from Pratt et al. that response time can be facilitated at an uncued opposite location, this putative effect of attentional momentum is neither robust nor reliable. First, it occurs for only a minority of participants. Second, it occurs in only a subset of the cued display positions. And finally, it is uncorrelated with the occurrence of IOR. Together the data indicate that the attentional momentum hypothesis is an overgeneralization and that it does not underlie the robust and reliable IOR effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming by numb3r5 does not involve top-down feedback.

Using the same–different task, Perea, Du?abeitia, Pollatsek, and Carreiras (2009) showed that digits resembling letters (“leet digits”; e.g., 1 = I, 4 = A) primed pseudoword strings (e.g., V35Z3D–VESZED), but letters resembling digits (“leet letters”) did not prime digit strings (e.g., 9ES7E2–935732), and suggested that this is due to top-down feedback available for letter, but not digit, strings. Here we show that (a) single letters show as much leet priming as 3-letter words (Experiment 1); (b) leet priming is equally robust for digit strings and pseudowords when the string is 4 items long but not when 6 items long (Experiment 2); and (c) with 6-item strings, orthotactically illegal letter strings (e.g., OIAUEQ) behave just like digit strings (Experiment 3). These results indicate that the asymmetry in leet priming is not due to top-down feedback available selectively for letter strings. We offer an alternative explanation based on the Bayesian reader account of masked priming proposed by Norris and Kinoshita (2008), and the role played by the orthotactic knowledge used to extend the functional capacity of visual working memory involved in performing the same–different task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revelation effect: Effort or priming does not create the sense of familiarity.

The revelation effect is the tendency to give higher proportions of positive responses to recognition test items that are distorted. Two plausible explanations of this response bias were tested. The 1st 3 experiments showed that the sense of familiarity leading to the revelation effect is not created because of the extra time or effort spent on the distorted items. The magnitude of the effect was neither correlated with the time taken to reveal the distorted items nor influenced by the Ss' efforts in revealing such items. The next 4 experiments showed that the sense of familiarity is not created because of priming of target words during the act of revealing. High-frequency words (presumed to be more highly associated to other words) and categorically or orthographically similar words did not elicit greater revelation effects than those elicited with low-frequency words and categorically or orthographically dissimilar words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lengthing the duration of response execution does not modulate blindness to action-compatible stimuli.

Action-compatible blindness refers to the finding that target stimuli are perceived less frequently if they are presented during the planning or execution of a compatible action (e.g., a left arrow presented during a left manual key press) than during an incompatible action (J. Müsseler and B. Hommel, 1997 a, b). We investigated the effect of lengthening the response execution phase in the action-compatible blindness paradigm by requiring subjects to tap a response key once or three times on the assumption that tapping three times would increase the duration of the execution phase of the response. Prior research (e.g., B. Stevanovski et al (2002); P. Wühr and J. Müsseler, [2001]) has shown that larger blindness effects are observed for targets presented during the execution phase of a response than after the response has been made. We investigated whether a larger blindness effect would be observed in the three-tap condition than in the one-tap condition, or whether lengthening the duration of the response would extend the time course of the blindness effect. Neither of these possibilities was supported by the data irrespective of whether the number of taps to be made was blocked or mixed within a block of trials. The results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functional overlap between murine Inpp5b and Ocrl1 may explain why deficiency of the murine ortholog for OCRL1 does not cause Lowe syndrome in mice

The oculocerebrorenal syndrome of Lowe (OCRL) is an X-linked human genetic disorder characterized by mental retardation, congenital cataracts, and renal tubular dysfunction. The Lowe syndrome gene, OCRL1, encodes a phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate 5-phosphatase in the Golgi complex. The pathogenesis of Lowe syndrome due to deficiency of a phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate 5-phosphatase in the Golgi complex is unknown. We have used targeted disruption in embryonic stem cells to make mice deficient in Ocrl1, the mouse homologue for OCRL1, as an animal model for the disease. Surprisingly, mice deficient in Ocrl1 do not develop the congenital cataracts, renal Fanconi syndrome, or neurological abnormalities seen in the human disorder. We hypothesized that Ocrl1 deficiency is complemented in mice by inositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase (Inpp5b), an autosomal gene that encodes a phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate 5-phosphatase highly homologous to Ocrl1. We created mice deficient in Inpp5b; the mice were viable and fertile without phenotype except for testicular degeneration in males beginning after sexual maturation. We crossed mice deficient in Ocrl1 to mice deficient in Inpp5b. No liveborn mice or embryos lacking both enzymes were found, demonstrating that Ocrl1 and Inpp5b have overlapping functions in mice and suggesting that the lack of phenotype in Ocrl1-deficient mice may be due to compensating Inpp5b function.     

Infant discrimination of faces in naturalistic events: Actions are more salient than faces.

Despite the fact that faces are typically seen in the context of dynamic events, there is little research on infants' perception of moving faces. L. E. Bahrick, L. J. Gogate, and I. Ruiz (2002) demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminate and remember repetitive actions but not the faces of the women performing the actions. The present research tested an attentional salience explanation for these findings: that dynamic faces are discriminable to infants, but more salient actions compete for attention. Results demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminated faces in the context of actions when they had longer familiarization time (Experiment 1) and following habituation to a single person performing 3 different activities (Experiment 2). Further, 7-month-old infants who have had more experience with social events also discriminated faces in the context of actions. Overall, however, discrimination of actions was more robust and occurred earlier in processing time than discrimination of dynamic faces. These findings support an attentional salience hypothesis and indicate that faces are not special in the context of actions in early infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The face in the crowd effect unconfounded: Happy faces, not angry faces, are more efficiently detected in single- and multiple-target visual search tasks.

Is it easier to detect angry or happy facial expressions in crowds of faces? The present studies used several variations of the visual search task to assess whether people selectively attend to expressive faces. Contrary to widely cited studies (e.g., ?hman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) that suggest angry faces “pop out” of crowds, our review of the literature found inconsistent evidence for the effect and suggested that low-level visual confounds could not be ruled out as the driving force behind the anger superiority effect. We then conducted 7 experiments, carefully designed to eliminate many of the confounding variables present in past demonstrations. These experiments showed no evidence that angry faces popped out of crowds or even that they were efficiently detected. These experiments instead revealed a search asymmetry favoring happy faces. Moreover, in contrast to most previous studies, the happiness superiority effect was shown to be robust even when obvious perceptual confounds—like the contrast of white exposed teeth that are typically displayed in smiling faces—were eliminated in the happy targets. Rather than attribute this effect to the existence of innate happiness detectors, we speculate that the human expression of happiness has evolved to be more visually discriminable because its communicative intent is less ambiguous than other facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Jeopardy not bonus status for African American women in the work force: why does the myth of advantage persist?

African American women in the United States have a long history of employment outside of their homes. Their experiences are unique from other groups of majority and minority men and women due to the interaction of race, gender, and class. Despite long-standing and continuing struggles against discrimination, harassment, low pay, tokenism, and stereotypes, a myth that African American women enjoy a bonus or advantaged status in the work force has developed and persisted. In this article, Black women's work force experiences are examined from a social constructionist framework, misperceptions of Black women are critiqued, explanations are developed that explain the unique status of African American women and recommendations are proposed to eradicate the discrimination and marginal status that Black women have endured in the work force.     

Diluting the burden of load: Perceptual load effects are simply dilution effects.

The substantial distractor interference obtained for small displays when the target appears alone is reduced in large displays when the target is embedded among neutral letters. This finding has been interpreted as reflecting low-load and high-load processing, respectively, thereby supporting the theory of perceptual load (Lavie & Tsal, 1994). However, a possible alternative interpretation of this effect is that the distractor is similarly processed in both displays, yet its interference in the large ones is diluted by the presence of the neutral letters. We separated the effects of load and dilution by introducing dilution displays. They contained as many letters as the high-load displays but were clearly distinguished from the target, thus allowing for a low-load processing mode. Distractor interference obtained under both the low-load and high-load conditions disappeared under the dilution condition. Hence, the display size effect traditionally misattributed to perceptual load is fully accounted for by dilution. Furthermore, when dilution is controlled for, it is high load not low load producing greater interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The medium is not the message in preattentive vision.

One of the oldest problems in visual perception is the definition of the basic elements of form, shape, and texture. In the past 20 years the question has been focused by the observation that human vision can be separated into two systems. Neisser first made popular the terms preattentive and attentive to characterize this division. The psychophysical experiments I have conducted over the past two years have probed the preattentive system to determine if it is as simple-minded as present theories suggest. One implication of this research involves rethinking theories of preattentive vision. To date this system is thought to be directly linked to what Marr called the "primal sketch" (a retinal-based image-intensity map of visual features such as blobs and blob intersections). My research suggest that it may be more closely tied to Marr's "2 1/2D sketch" (a retinally-based relief map of object-features such as surfaces slanted in depth). A second implication of this research concerns the neural implementation of detectors for slant based on shading and texture. So far we know a great deal about the tilt (two-dimensional orientation) sensitivity of single units in visual cortex, but the sensitivity of neurons to slant remains to be investigated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When wait lists are not feasible, nothing is a thing that does not need to be done.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 78(3) of Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (see record 2010-10440-011). There is an error in the computation of Equation 4 (p. 1165): z does not equal 2.44 as reported but, instead, equals 1.73. We had not divided by the denominator ( 2). This makes p(one-tailed) .042, not .007 as reported. The interpretation of this computation does not change, although the level of probability does. Rather than being confident that the two studies are from different populations with a p level of .007, we are still likely to see these studies as having obtained significantly different results but at the probability level of p .05.] Clinical psychology practices initially grew through the use of case studies, uncontrolled trials, and eventually through randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The use of a wait-list control group is standard practice in such trials of treatment regimens for psychopathological conditions. However, as knowledge advances regarding the successful treatment of such conditions, best practice guidelines are being developed. These guidelines have predominantly been based on the results of RCTs and use aggregating mechanisms, such as meta-analysis, to derive their conclusions. The authors argue here for statistical methods that allow for comparisons to existing data from wait-list controls for which the continued use of wait-list conditions has become problematic. Using posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an example, this article proposes various methods for obviating the need for a wait-list control under such circumstances. After conducting separate meta-analyses for both treatment and control conditions, the authors found that wait-list conditions do provide some benefit to participants with PTSD, but current best practice treatment conditions elicit far superior effect sizes. The various methods for evaluating a study without a wait-list control are proposed and demonstrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The team halo effect: Why teams are not blamed for their failures.

In this study, the existence of the team halo effect, the phenomenon that teams tend not to be blamed for their failures, is documented. With 2 studies using both real teams and controlled scenarios, the authors found evidence that the nature of the causal attribution processes used to diagnose failure scenarios leads to individuals being more likely to be identified as the cause of team failure than the team as a collective. Team schema development, as indexed by team experience, influences this effect, with individuals who have more team experience being less likely to show the team halo effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The one that does, leads: Action relations influence the perceived temporal order of graspable objects.

Perception and action are influenced by the “possibilities for action” in the environment. Neuropsychological studies (e.g., Riddoch, Humphreys, Edwards, Baker, & Willson, 2003) have demonstrated that objects that are perceived to be interacting (e.g., a corkscrew going toward the top of a wine bottle) are perceptually integrated into a functional unit, facilitating report of both objects. In addition, patients with parietal damage tend to report the “active” item of the pair (the corkscrew in the above example) when the objects are positioned for action, overriding their spatial bias toward the ipsilesional side. Using a temporal order judgment task we show for the first time that normal viewers judge that active objects appear earlier when they are positioned correctly for action. This effect is not dependent on a learned relationship between objects, or on the active object being integrated at a perceptual level with the object it is paired with. The data suggest that actions afforded by a correctly positioned active object permeate normal perceptual judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective Attention and the Perception of an Attended Nontarget Object.

Although many theories of attention assume that attending to an object results in the processing of all its feature dimensions, there has been no direct evidence that the irrelevant dimensions of an attended nontarget object are encoded. This article explores factors that modulate such processing. In 6 experiments, participants made a speeded response to a probe preceded by a prime that varied in 2 dimensions. Their reaction times to the probe were influenced by the response compatibility between the relevant and irrelevant dimensions of the prime. Furthermore, the effect was observed only when attention was directed to a nonlocation object feature and when participants' reaction times were relatively long. These results suggest that the effect of attention on a nontarget object is more complex than was previously understood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychophysics of the McGurk and other audiovisual speech integration effects.

When the auditory and visual components of spoken audiovisual nonsense syllables are mismatched, perceivers produce four different types of perceptual responses, auditory correct, visual correct, fusion (the so-called McGurk effect), and combination (i.e., two consonants are reported). Here, quantitative measures were developed to account for the distribution of the four types of perceptual responses to 384 different stimuli from four talkers. The measures included mutual information, correlations, and acoustic measures, all representing audiovisual stimulus relationships. In Experiment 1, open-set perceptual responses were obtained for acoustic /bɑ/ or /lɑ/ dubbed to video /bɑ, dɑ, gɑ, vɑ, zɑ, lɑ, wɑ, eɑ/. The talker, the video syllable, and the acoustic syllable significantly influenced the type of response. In Experiment 2, the best predictors of response category proportions were a subset of the physical stimulus measures, with the variance accounted for in the perceptual response category proportions between 17% and 52%. That audiovisual stimulus relationships can account for perceptual response distributions supports the possibility that internal representations are based on modality-specific stimulus relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)