Frames and images: Sequential effects in mental rotation.

Recent studies have shown that response time in mental rotation increases with the angular deviation between the current and preceding stimuli, suggesting a frame rotation process in which the intrinsic frame of the previous stimulus is brought into congruence with the coordinates of the current stimulus. In contrast, we show that this process involves image rotation in which the present stimulus is brought into alignment with the orientation of the previous stimulus. Such "backward alignment" succeeds only for shape-preserving sequences (i.e., identical stimuli at different orientations). Four experiments show that the backward alignment process (a) competes with the uprighting process typically found in mental rotation, and the response is determined by the process requiring the shortest rotational path; (b) is related to the tendency to repeat the previous response; (c) is insensitive to the position of the vertical; (d) is indifferent to the representation of the stimulus in long term memory; and (e) is different from the process underlying preparation for a stimulus in a specified orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response-effect compatibility in manual choice reaction tasks.

This study investigated whether compatibility between responses and their consistent sensorial effects influences performance in manual choice reaction tasks. In Experiment 1 responses to the nonspatial stimulus attribute of color were affected by the correspondence between the location of responses and the location of their visual effects. In Experiment 2, a comparable influence was found with nonspatial responses of varying force and nonspatial response effects of varying auditory intensity. Experiment 3 ruled out the hypothesis that acquired stimulus-effect associations may account for this influence of response-effect compatibility. In sum the results show that forthcoming response effects influence response selection as if these effects were already sensorially present, suggesting that in line with the classical ideomotor theory, anticipated response effects play a substantial role in response selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Balancing cognitive demands: Control adjustments in the stop-signal paradigm.

Cognitive control enables flexible interaction with a dynamic environment. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated control adjustments in the stop-signal paradigm, a procedure that requires balancing speed (going) and caution (stopping) in a dual-task environment. Focusing on the slowing of go reaction times after stop signals, the authors tested 5 competing hypotheses for post-stop-signal adjustments: goal priority, error detection, conflict monitoring, surprise, and memory. Reaction times increased after both successful and failed inhibition, consistent with the goal priority hypothesis and inconsistent with the error detection and conflict hypotheses. Post-stop-signal slowing was greater if the go task stimulus repeated on consecutive trials, suggesting a contribution of memory. We also found evidence for slowing based on more than the immediately preceding stop signal. Post-stop-signal slowing was greater when stop signals occurred more frequently (Experiment 1), inconsistent with the surprise hypothesis, and when inhibition failed more frequently (Experiment 2). This suggests that more global manipulations encompassing many trials affect post-stop-signal adjustments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice and status: Status salience as antecedent of procedural fairness effects.

The current article explores status as an antecedent of procedural fairness effects (the findings that perceived procedural fairness affects people's reactions, e.g., their relational judgments). On the basis of the literature, the authors proposed that salience of the general concept of status leads people to be more attentive to procedural fairness information and that, as a consequence, stronger procedural fairness effects should be found. In correspondence with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed stronger procedural fairness effects on people's relational treatment evaluations in a status salient condition compared with a control condition. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and, in further correspondence with the hypothesis, showed that status salience led to increased cognitive accessibility of fairness concerns. Implications for the psychology of procedural justice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spontaneous Recovery From Forward and Backward Blocking.

This article demonstrates and analyzes spontaneous recovery of stimulus control following both forward and backward blocking in a conditioned suppression preparation with rats. Experiment 1 found, in first-order conditioning, robust forward blocking and an attenuation of it following a retention interval. Experiment 2 showed, in sensory preconditioning, recovery of responding following both forward and backward blocking. Also, the results of this experiment indicated that response recovery to the blocked stimulus cannot be explained by an impaired status of the blocking stimulus after a retention interval. Experiment 3, also in sensory preconditioning, suggested that spontaneous recovery following both forward and backward blocking in Experiment 2 was due to impaired associative activation of the blocking stimulus' representation during testing with the blocked stimulus. Although no contemporary model of associative learning can explain these results, a modification of R. R. Miller and L. D. Matzel's (1988) comparator hypothesis is proposed to do so. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inhibition of Return and Repetition Priming Effects in Localization and Discrimination Tasks.

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responding to a stimulus that is presented at the same, rather than a different location as a preceding, spatially nonpredictive, stimulus. Repetition priming refers to speeded responding to a stimulus that duplicates the visual characteristics of a stimulus that precedes it. IOR and repetition priming effects interact in nonspatial discrimination tasks but not in localization tasks; three experiments examined whether this is due to processing differences or due to response differences between tasks. Two stimuli, S1 and S2, occurred on each trial. In Experiment 1, S1 and S2 were both peripheral arrows; in Experiment 2, S1 was a central arrow and S2 was a peripheral nondirectional rectangle; in Experiment 3, S1 was a peripheral nondirectional rectangle and S2 was a peripheral arrow. S1 never required a response; S2 required a localization or a discrimination response. Despite evidence that form information was likely extracted from the arrow stimuli, the localization task revealed no repetition priming: IOR occurred regardless of shared visual identity of the S1 and S2 arrows. The discrimination task revealed IOR only when the visual identity changed from S1 to S2; otherwise, facilitation occurred. These results suggest that IOR is masked by repetition priming only when the response depends on the explicit processing of form information; repetition priming does not occur when such information is extracted automatically but is task (and response) irrelevant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Re-examination of amphetamine-induced conditioned suppression of tastant intake in rats: The task-dependent drug effects hypothesis.

This study reexamined Grigson's reward comparison hypothesis (1997), which claimed to have resolved the paradox of addictive, rewarding drugs manifesting an aversive effect in the conditioned taste aversion (CTA) paradigm. Here, the authors compared the conditioned suppression effects of lithium chloride (LiCl) and amphetamine in a series of three experiments. In Experiment 1, the concentrations of saccharin solution (conditioned stimulus [CS]) and the doses of amphetamine or LiCl (unconditioned stimulus [US]) were manipulated. In Experiment 2, the effects of employing backward versus forward pairings of the CS and US were compared. Finally, in Experiment 3, the additivity of amphetamine's reward property and LiCl's aversive property was examined. The results of these experiments, respectively, indicated that: (1) manipulating saccharin solution concentrations does not distinguish the suppression effect caused by rewarding or aversive effects when amphetamine or LiCl served as the US; (2) both backward and forward pairings produced suppression of saccharin solution intake regardless of whether amphetamine or LiCl was used as the US; and (3) combining amphetamine and LiCl did not diminish the suppression effect, as would be expected if they had opposing mechanisms for the effects; instead, an additive effect occurred. Taken together, these results suggest that the drug of abuse amphetamine and the emetic drug LiCl both possess aversive properties in the CTA paradigm. No rewarding effects of amphetamine were detected in our experimental data. In all, our results do not support the Grigson's reward comparison hypothesis (1997) and a new "task-dependent drug effects hypothesis" is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Independent dimension-weighting mechanisms for visual selection and stimulus identification.

Observers respond faster when the task-relevant perceptual dimension (e.g., color) repeats across consecutive trials relative to when it changes. Such dimension repetition benefits (DRBs) occur in different tasks, from singleton feature search to feature discrimination of a stimulus presented on its own. Here, we argue that the DRBs observed in different tasks originate from distinct mechanisms: preselective weighting of dimension-specific feature contrast signals and, respectively, postselective stimulus processing. The multiple-weighting-systems hypothesis predicts significant DRBs across trials of different tasks that share the same weighting mechanism, but not across tasks involving different mechanisms. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 examined DRBs across localization and detection tasks (both involving feature contrast computations); across detection and identification tasks (which presumably involved different weighting systems); and across identification and discrimination tasks (both involving stimulus identification). As expected, significant DRBs were observed across different tasks in Experiments 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2. These findings support the multiple-weighting-systems hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forward and backward repetition blindness in speed and accuracy.

Repetition blindness (RB) was investigated in a new paradigm in which effects could stem from items preceding or following a target. Speeded-response tasks were used in which 3 critical items (C1, C2, and C3) were sequentially presented on each trial. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to judge whether C2 (the target) was present on each trial. Forward RB was examined in Experiment 1 via manipulation of whether C1 and C2 were repeated and backward RB was probed in Experiment 2 via manipulation of whether C2 and C3 were repeated. RB was successfully demonstrated in both experiments: Target presence judgments were slower and less accurate with repeated conditions than with unrepeated conditions. Experiment 3 involved a semantic categorization task in which participants had to judge whether C2 was a letter or a digit. Manipulating forward and backward repetition produced reliable effects on both reaction times and accuracy. The results are consistent with the idea that RB is due to failure in token individualization rather than type refractory problems or failure in memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changing internal constraints on action: The role of backward inhibition.

Flexible control of action requires the ability to disengage from previous goals or task sets. The authors tested the hypothesis that disengagement during intentional shifts between task sets is accompanied by inhibition of the previous task set ("backward inhibition"). As an expression of backward inhibition the authors predicted increased response times when shifting to a task set that had to be abandoned recently and, thus, suffers residual inhibition. The critical backward inhibition effect on the level of abstractly defined perceptual task sets was obtained across 6 different experiments. In addition, it was shown that backward inhibition can be differentiated from negative priming (Experiment 2), that it is tied to top-down sequential control (Experiment 3), that it can account at least partially for "residual shift costs" in set-shifting experiments (Experiment 4), and that it occurs even in the context of preplanned sequences of task sets (Experiment 5). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Global and local processing in humans (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Use of a visual search task with compound stimuli.

This research assessed the visual processing of the global and local stimulus features in humans and chimpanzees. In Experiment 1, participants were tested with compound stimuli presented in a visual search task. There was an advantage to process the global stimulus level in humans but not in chimpanzees. The global size and the density of the local elements were manipulated in Experiment 2. Humans showed an overall advantage for processing the global shape. Chimpanzees showed an advantage for processing the local shape in the low-density condition but showed no advantage in the dense conditions. In Experiment 3, chimpanzees showed a global advantage when line segments connected the local elements and a local one when the lines were removed. Together, these results suggest a phylogenetic trend in the way compound stimuli are processed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response selection and response execution in task switching: Evidence from a go-signal paradigm.

The present study used a go/no-go signal delay (GSD) to explore the role of response-related processes in task switching. A go/no-go signal was presented at either 100 ms or 1,500 ms after the stimulus. Participants were encouraged to use the GSD for response selection and preparation. The data indicate that the opportunity to select and prepare a response (i.e., long GSD) resulted in a substantial reduction of task-shift costs (Experiment 1) and n-2 task-repetition costs (i.e., backward inhibition; Experiment 2) in the current trial. These results suggest that interference from the preceding trial can be resolved during response selection and preparation. Furthermore, the shift costs and the n-2 repetition costs after no-go trials with long GSD (i.e., response selection but no execution) were markedly smaller than after go trials. These findings suggest that the interference that gives rise to shift costs and n-2 repetition costs is related not solely to response selection but also to response execution. Thus, the present study demonstrates dissociable contributions of response selection and response execution to interference effects in task switching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple spatial correspondence effects on dual-task performance.

Three dual-task experiments were conducted to examine whether the underadditive interaction of the Simon effect and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) on Task 2 performance is due to decay. The experiments tested whether the reverse Simon effect obtained with an incompatible stimulus–response (S-R) mapping would show an overadditive interaction with SOA, as predicted by R. De Jong, C.-C. Liang, and E. Lauber's (1994) dual-process model. Tone or letter identification tasks with vocal or keypress responses were used as Task 1. Task 2 was keypresses to arrow direction (or letter identity in Experiment 1). For all experiments, the normal Simon effect showed an underadditive interaction with SOA, but the reverse Simon effect did not show an overadditive interaction. The results imply that the dual-process model is not applicable to the dual-task context. Multiple correspondence effects across tasks implicate an explanation in terms of automatic S-R translation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of structural and naming factors of letters upon the recognition of tachistoscopic letters (author''s transl)

To determine the nature of effects of a preceding letter stimulus upon the recognition of a following letter stimulus, 20 subjects were sequentially and tachistoscopically presented pairs of letters of pairs of random patterns, which consist of the same number of elements, and asked to judge whether they were "same" or "different" in form. Four variable interstimulus intervals (ISI) between the 1st stimuli and the 2nd stimuli were employed as parameters. Results obtained were as follows: (a) percentages of correct responses for the letters were not significantly different from those for the random patterns, and (b) percentages of correct responses for the "same" matching tasks were significantly higher than those for the "different" matching tasks, but, differences in number of correct responses between the two tasks diminished as ISI increased. These results reveal structural, rather than naming, effects of preceding letters in the information processing of matching single letters.     

Exploring the Identification-Production Hypothesis of Repetition Priming in Young and Older Adults.

The identification-production hypothesis of age-related differences in repetition priming predicts reduced priming in older adults on indirect memory measures that require stimulus production (production priming) together with age constancy on indirect measures that require stimulus identification, verification, or classification processes (identification priming). Although some evidence is consistent with this hypothesis, comparisons of identification and production priming in young and older adults often confound stimulus, subject, and dependent measure factors across tasks. Consequently, repetition priming has yet to be assessed in healthy young and healthy older adults using identification and production tasks that control for these factors. The identification-production hypothesis was tested using verb generation as a measure of production priming (Experiments 1-3) and semantic classification (Experiment 1) or semantic verification (Experiments 2 and 3) as the measure of identification priming. Contrary to the identification-production hypothesis, no age-related diminutions in identification or production forms of priming were found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of response selection for inhibition of task sets in task shifting.

Response selection in task shifting was explored using a go/no-go methodology. The no-go signal occurred unpredictably with stimulus onset so that all trials required task preparation but only go trials required response selection. Experiment 1 showed that shift costs were absent after no-go trials, indicating that response processes are crucial for shift costs. In Experiment 2, backward inhibition was absent after no-go trials. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that response selection, rather than execution, causes backward inhibition. All 4 experiments showed effects of preparation time in go trials, suggesting that advance preparation must have also occurred in no-go trials. The authors concluded that inhibition of irrelevant task sets arises only at response selection and that residual shift costs reflect such persisting inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring search efficiency in complex visual search tasks: Global and local clutter.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 17(2) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (see record 2011-11863-002). The copyright for the article was incorrectly listed. The copyright is in the correction.] Set size and crowding affect search efficiency by limiting attention for recognition and attention against competition; however, these factors can be difficult to quantify in complex search tasks. The current experiments use a quantitative measure of the amount and variability of visual information (i.e., clutter) in highly complex stimuli (i.e., digital aeronautical charts) to examine limits of attention in visual search. Undergraduates at a large southern university searched for a target among 4, 8, or 16 distractors in charts with high, medium, or low global clutter. The target was in a high or low local-clutter region of the chart. In Experiment 1, reaction time increased as global clutter increased, particularly when the target was in a high local-clutter region. However, there was no effect of distractor set size, supporting the notion that global clutter is a better measure of attention against competition in complex visual search tasks. As a control, Experiment 2 demonstrated that increasing the number of distractors leads to a typical set size effect when there is no additional clutter (i.e., no chart). In Experiment 3, the effects of global and local clutter were minimized when the target was highly salient. When the target was nonsalient, more fixations were observed in high global clutter charts, indicating that the number of elements competing with the target for attention was also high. The results suggest design techniques that could improve pilots' search performance in aeronautical charts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual primacy of dimensions: Support for a model of dimensional interaction.

Do Ss always process multidimensional stimuli according to psychologically primary dimensions? Our hypothesis is that they do: Primary dimensions provide one component of a new model of dimensional interaction, a model that distinguishes information processed at the level of attributes from information processed at the level of the stimulus. By using sound stimuli created from the dimensions pitch–loudness (Experiments 1 and 2), pitch–timbre (Experiment 3), and loudness–timbre (Experiment 4), we tested performance in selective- and divided-attention tasks at each of three orientations of axes: 0°, 22.5°, and 45°. Each experiment revealed strong evidence of primacy: As axes rotated from 0° to 45°, selective attention deteriorated, but divided attention improved, producing a distinct pattern of convergence. Each experiment also revealed effects of congruity: Attributes from corresponding poles of a dimension (e.g., high pitch and loud) were classified faster than those from noncorresponding poles. The results fit well with our new conception but are inconsistent with other current models of dimensional interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tests of a translational model of Stroop interference: Translation or attention?

Examined the hypothesis that Stroop interference would increase in both the position and word tasks when the 2 task were mixed. In Exp 1, 34 Ss reported the position of a word by a manual response or read the word aloud. Results show that substantial interference occurs when Ss must be prepared to respond to either dimension, suggesting that translation is an obligatory process when attention is divided between the 2 dimensions. Exp 2 (40 Ss) showed that this interference is reduced if a cue that indicates the relevant dimension is presented 300 or 1,000 ms prior to the stimulus. Results are discussed in terms of a strength of processing model in which the degree of Stroop interference is attributed to the degree of attention to the irrelevant dimension of the Stroop stimulus. This model assumes that the degree of attention to a stimulus dimension is subject to both top-down and bottom-up influences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluating innovation in general practice: a pragmatic framework using programme budgeting and marginal analysis

We investigated the spatio-temporal characteristics of visual attention. In rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tasks using Kanji characters, we found temporal migration of characters (Experiment 1) and radicals (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, the migration was more frequent for the word condition than for the pseudoword condition. Migration with the distractor preceding the target was more frequent than that with the distractor following the target in both experiments. Temporal character and radical migration suggests that characters in words and radicals of characters are separately integrated in RSVP situations where attention is overloaded. However, the hypothesis of independent feature integration is rejected. This dependency means that the attentional units of words and characters might exist.