The effect of temporal context on memory for art.

Although considerable research has been done on memory for temporal information, as well as on the relationship between context and cognition, not much is known about the influence of temporal context on memory formation and retention. In this study, given that our sample comes from a largely Roman Catholic population, we used religious practices that occur throughout the calendar year to operationalize temporal context into two religious seasons (Lent and Ordinary Time). In addition, we used religious art to assess experience and memory as a function of whether there was temporal congruity or incongruity. This allowed us to explore different levels of memory representation; namely, memory for perceptual details of the art, memory for more inferential understanding of the art, and autobiographical memory for the initial experience of the art. Participants viewed 22 representational and abstract artworks during either Lent or Ordinary Time. After viewing, memory was tested at immediate, 1-day, and 7-day delays. We expected that the congruent temporal context (i.e., Lent) would lead to more activated semantic knowledge, which would then aid memory encoding and retention. This was the case only for perceptual details of the art. In addition, during Lent, forgetting followed a more linear pattern. These results suggest that priming semantic knowledge through temporal context leads encoding to focus on low-level information, as opposed to the processing of more complex information. Overall, these findings suggest that temporal context can influence cognition, but to a limited extent.

A computational modeling approach to investigating mind wandering-related adjustments to gaze behavior during scene viewing.

Research on gaze control has long shown that increased visual-cognitive processing demands in scene viewing are associated with longer fixation durations. More recently, though, longer durations have also been linked to mind wandering, a perceptually decoupled state of attention marked by decreased visual-cognitive processing. Toward better understanding the relationship between fixation durations and visual-cognitive processing, we ran simulations using an established random-walk model for saccade timing and programming and assessed which model parameters best predicted modulations in fixation durations associated with mind wandering compared to attentive viewing. Mind wandering-related fixation durations were best described as an increase in the variability of the fixation-generating process, leading to more variable-sometimes very long-durations. In contrast, past research showed that increased processing demands increased the mean duration of the fixation-generating process. The findings thus illustrate that mind wandering and processing demands modulate fixation durations through different mechanisms in scene viewing. This suggests that processing demands cannot be inferred from changes in fixation durations without understanding the underlying mechanism by which these changes were generated.

Interactions among endogenous, exogenous, and agency-driven attentional selection mechanisms in interactive displays.

Attentional selection is driven, in part, by a complex interplay between endogenous and exogenous cues. Recently, one's interactions with the physical world have also been shown to bias attention. Specifically, the sense of agency that arises when our actions cause predictable outcomes biases our attention toward those things which we control. We investigated how this agency-driven attentional bias interacts with simultaneously presented endogenous (words) and exogenous (color singletons) environmental cues. Participants controlled the movement of one object while others moved independently. In a subsequent search task, targets were either the previously controlled objects or not. Targets were also validly or invalidly cued. Both cue types influenced attention allocation. Endogenous cues and agency-driven attentional selection were independent and additive, indicating they are separable mechanisms of selection. In contrast, exogenous cues eliminated the effects of agency, indicating that perceptually salient environmental cues can override internally derived effects of agency. This is the first demonstration of a boundary condition on agency-driven selection.

Does task-irrelevant music affect gaze allocation during real-world scene viewing?

Gaze control manifests from a dynamic integration of visual and auditory information, with sound providing important cues for how a viewer should behave. Some past research suggests that music, even if entirely irrelevant to the current task demands, may also sway the timing and frequency of fixations. The current work sought to further assess this idea as well as investigate whether task-irrelevant music could also impact how gaze is spatially allocated. In preparation for a later memory test, participants studied pictures of urban scenes in silence or while simultaneously listening to one of two types of music. Eye tracking was recorded, and nine gaze behaviors were measured to characterize the temporal and spatial aspects of gaze control. Findings showed that while these gaze behaviors changed over the course of viewing, music had no impact. Participants in the music conditions, however, did show better memory performance than those who studied in silence. These findings are discussed within theories of multimodal gaze control.

Where the eyes wander: The relationship between mind wandering and fixation allocation to visually salient and semantically informative static scene content.

Vision is crucial for many everyday activities, but the mind is not always focused on what the eyes see. Mind wandering occurs frequently and is associated with attenuated visual and cognitive processing of external information. Corresponding changes in gaze behavior-namely, fewer, longer, and more dispersed fixations-suggest a shift in how the visual system samples external information. Using three computational models of visual salience and two innovative approaches for measuring semantic informativeness, the current work assessed whether these changes reflect how the visual system prioritizes visually salient and semantically informative scene content, two major determinants in most theoretical frameworks and computational models of gaze control. Findings showed that, in a static scene viewing task, fixations were allocated to scene content that was more visually salient 10 seconds prior to probe-caught, self-reported mind wandering compared to self-reported attentive viewing. The relationship between mind wandering and semantic content was more equivocal, with weaker evidence that fixations are more likely to fall on locally informative scene regions. This indicates that the visual system is still able to discriminate visually salient and semantically informative scene content during mind wandering and may fixate on such information more frequently than during attentive viewing. Theoretical implications are discussed in light of these findings.

The eye-mind wandering link: Identifying gaze indices of mind wandering across tasks.

During mind wandering, visual processing of external information is attenuated. Accordingly, mind wandering is associated with changes in gaze behaviors, albeit findings are inconsistent in the literature. This heterogeneity obfuscates a complete view of the moment-to-moment processing priorities of the visual system during mind wandering. We hypothesize that this observed heterogeneity is an effect of idiosyncrasy across tasks with varying spatial allocation demands, visual processing demands, and discourse processing demands and reflects a strategic, compensatory shift in how the visual system operates during mind wandering. We recorded eye movements and mind wandering (via thought-probes) as 132 college-aged adults completed a battery of 7 short (6 min) tasks with different visual demands. We found that for tasks requiring extensive sampling of the visual field, there were fewer fixations, and, depending on the specific task, fixations were longer and/or more dispersed. This suggests that visual sampling is sparser and potentially slower and more dispersed to compensate for the decreased sampling rate during mind wandering. For tasks that demand centrally focused gaze, mind wandering was accompanied by more exploratory eye movements, such as shorter and more dispersed fixations as well as larger saccades. Gaze behaviors were not reliably associated with mind wandering during a film comprehension task. These findings provide insight into how the visual system prioritizes external information when attention is focused inward and indicates the importance of task demands when assessing the relationship between eye movements, visual processing, and mind wandering. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Updating perception and action across real-world viewpoint changes.

A growing body of research suggests that performing actions can distort the perception of size, distance, and other visual information. These distortions have been observed under a variety of circumstances, and appear to persist in both perception and memory. However, it is unclear whether these distortions persist as observers move to new viewpoints. To address this issue, the present study assessed whether action-specific distortions persist across changes in viewpoint. Participants viewed an object that was projected onto a table, then reached for it with their index finger or a reach-extending tool. After reaching for the object, participants remained stationary or moved to a new viewpoint, then estimated the object's distance from their current viewpoint. When participants remained stationary, using a reach-extending tool led them to report shorter distance estimates. However, when participants moved to a new viewpoint, these distortions were eliminated. Similar effects were observed when participants produced different types of movement, including when participants rotated in place, moved to a new location, or simply walked in place. Together, these findings suggest that action-specific distortions are eliminated when observers move and perform other actions.

Attentional selection is biased towards controllable stimuli.

While the factors that contribute to individuals feeling a sense agency over a stimulus have been extensively studied, the cognitive effects of a sense of agency over a stimulus are little known. Here, we conducted three experiments examining whether attentional selection is biased towards controllable stimuli. In all three experiments, participants moved four circle stimuli, one of which was under their control. A search target then appeared on one of the stimuli. In Experiment 1, the target was always on the controlled stimulus, but we manipulated the degree of control the participant had. In Experiment 2, the controlled stimulus was the target on 50% of the trials. In Experiment 3, we used a central arrow cue to tell participants which arrow key to press (rather than using a free choice task) and made the controlled stimulus the target on 25% of the trials, making it nonpredictive of the target's location. Across the three experiments we found that visual selection was biased towards controllable stimuli. This attentional bias was larger when participants had full, rather than partial, control over the stimulus, indicating that sense of agency leads one to prioritize objects under their control. The fact that agency influenced attention when the controlled object contained the target in 100%, 50%, and 25% of trials, and occurred even when participants needed to monitor the center of the display in order to know which arrow key to press, suggests that its influence does not depend on task relevance or volitional decision-making.

"Satisfaction" in search: Individuals' own search expectations predict their errors in multiple-target search.

When people search for multiple targets in a display, finding one target hinders their ability to find additional targets. These errors were originally proposed to stem from a "satisfaction" with finding a first target that leads people to prematurely stop searching. However, empirical evidence for this premise has been elusive, prompting consideration of other theories. We returned to the satisfaction proposal and assessed whether people generate expectations regarding the likelihood of multiple targets that lead to search biases that, in turn, predict the rates at which additional targets are missed. Participants searched for one or two targets among distractors. To measure accuracy, most trials allowed search to progress to completion. The remaining trials terminated when participants had found their first target. In these cases, participants guessed whether an additional (unfound) target was present. The time needed to find a first target was inversely related to the searchers' expectations that a second target would be present. These expectations underestimated objective reality, and the strength of an individual's one-target bias was directly related to his or her likelihood of missing subsequent targets. Thus, people's expectations-based on their own behavior-likely impacted search performance, providing a novel mechanistic explanation for the previously posited "satisfaction-of-search" errors.

The functional arrangement of objects biases gaze direction.

A growing number of studies suggest that semantic knowledge can influence the control of gaze in scenes. For example, observers are more likely to look toward objects that are semantically related to the currently fixated object. Recent evidence also suggests that an object's functional orientation can bias gaze direction. However, it is unknown whether these semantic and functional relationships can interact to determine gaze control. To address this issue, the present study assessed whether the functional arrangement of multiple objects can influence gaze control. Participants fixated a central object (e.g., a key) flanked by two peripheral objects. After a brief delay, participants were free to shift their gaze toward the peripheral object of their choice. One of the peripheral objects was semantically related to the central object (e.g., a lock), and the objects were arranged to depict a functional or non-functional interaction (e.g., a key pointing toward or away from a lock). When the orientation of the central object was manipulated, participants were more likely to look in the direction this object was pointing. Moreover, the functional arrangement of objects modulated this central orienting bias. However, when the orientation of the peripheral objects was manipulated, only the peripheral objects' semantic relationships influenced gaze control. Together, these findings suggest that functional relationships play an important role in the allocation of gaze, and can interact with semantic relationships to determine gaze control.

Semantic associations do not modulate the visual awareness of objects.

When observers adopt a category-level attentional set, objects that belong to the same category as this attentional set are more likely to enter awareness. For example, a driver who is monitoring the road for cars may be more likely to notice an oncoming car than a pedestrian who is crossing the road. Semantic associations between categories are also known to influence the deployment of attention, but it is unclear whether these associative relationships can influence the visual awareness of objects. To address this issue, we conducted four experiments using an inattentional blindness task. Participants tracked moving images of animals (e.g., monkeys or rabbits). On the last trial, an unexpected object that could belong to the same category as the tracked objects (i.e., a monkey or rabbit) or a semantically associated category (i.e., a banana or carrot) moved across the display. Participants were more likely to notice this object when it was visually salient or belonged to the same category as the tracked objects. However, they were no more likely to notice objects that shared a semantic association with the tracked objects. Thus, although categorical relationships play an important role in the visual awareness of objects, this effect does not extend to associative relationships among objects.

Gaze-based signatures of mind wandering during real-world scene processing.

Physiological limitations on the visual system require gaze to move from location to location to extract the most relevant information within a scene. Therefore, gaze provides a real-time index of the information-processing priorities of the visual system. We investigated gaze allocation during mind wandering (MW), a state where cognitive priorities shift from processing task-relevant external stimuli (i.e., the visual world) to task-irrelevant internal thoughts. In both a main study and a replication, we recorded the eye movements of college-aged adults who studied images of urban scenes and responded to pseudorandom thought probes on whether they were mind wandering or attentively viewing at the time of the probe. Probe-caught MW was associated with fewer and longer fixations, greater fixation dispersion, and more frequent eyeblinks (only observed in the main study) relative to periods of attentive scene viewing. These findings demonstrate that gaze indices typically considered to represent greater engagement with scene processing (e.g., longer fixations) can also indicate MW. In this way, the current work exhibits a need for empirical investigations and computational models of gaze control to account for MW for a more accurate representation of the moment-to-moment information-processing priorities of the visual system. (PsycINFO Database Record

Semantic and functional relationships among objects increase the capacity of visual working memory.

Visual working memory (VWM) has a limited capacity of approximately 3-4 visual objects. Current theories of VWM propose that a limited pool of resources can be flexibly allocated to objects, allowing them to be represented at varying levels of precision. Factors that influence the allocation of these resources, such as the complexity and perceptual grouping of objects, can thus affect the capacity of VWM. We sought to identify whether semantic and functional relationships between objects could influence the grouping of objects, thereby increasing the functional capacity of VWM. Observers viewed arrays of 8 to-be-remembered objects arranged into 4 pairs. We manipulated both the semantic association and functional interaction between the objects, then probed participants' memory for the arrays. When objects were semantically related, participants' memory for the arrays improved. Participants' memory further improved when semantically related objects were positioned to interact with each other. However, when we increased the spacing between the objects in each pair, the benefits of functional but not semantic relatedness were eliminated. These findings suggest that action-relevant properties of objects can increase the functional capacity of VWM, but only when objects are positioned to directly interact with each other. (PsycINFO Database Record

Satisfaction in motion: Subsequent search misses are more likely in moving search displays.

People often conduct visual searches in which multiple targets are possible (e.g., medical X-rays can contain multiple abnormalities). In this type of search, observers are more likely to miss a second target after having found a first one (a subsequent search miss). Recent evidence has suggested that this effect may be due to a depletion of cognitive resources from tracking the identities and locations of found targets. Given that tracking moving objects is resource-demanding, would finding a moving target further increase the chances of missing a subsequent one? To address this question, we had participants search for one or more targets hidden among distractors. Subsequent search misses were more likely when the targets and distractors moved throughout the display than when they remained stationary. However, when the found targets were highlighted in a unique color, subsequent search misses were no more likely in moving displays. Together, these results suggest that the effect of movement is likely due to the increased cognitive demands of tracking moving targets. Overall, our findings reveal that activities that involve searching for moving targets (e.g., driving) are more susceptible to subsequent search misses than are those that involve searching for stationary targets (e.g., baggage screening).

Compression of environmental representations following interactions with objects.

Previous work reveals that interacting with all objects in an environment can compress spatial memory for the entire group of objects. To assess the scope and magnitude of this effect, we tested whether interacting with a subset of objects compresses spatial memory for all objects in an environment. Participants inspected objects in one or two unmarked regions of space, then recalled the distances between pairs of objects from memory. One group of participants picked up objects in both regions, a second group picked up objects in one region and passively viewed objects in the other region, and a third group passively viewed objects in both regions. When participants manually interacted with objects, they recalled shorter object-pair distances throughout the environment. The magnitude of this effect was the same, regardless of whether participants interacted with all objects in the environment or just a subset of them. Together, these findings suggest that interacting with objects can compress environmental representations in memory, even when observers interact with a relatively small subset of objects.

LATEST: A model of saccadic decisions in space and time.

Many of our actions require visual information, and for this it is important to direct the eyes to the right place at the right time. Two or three times every second, we must decide both when and where to direct our gaze. Understanding these decisions can reveal the moment-to-moment information priorities of the visual system and the strategies for information sampling employed by the brain to serve ongoing behavior. Most theoretical frameworks and models of gaze control assume that the spatial and temporal aspects of fixation point selection depend on different mechanisms. We present a single model that can simultaneously account for both when and where we look. Underpinning this model is the theoretical assertion that each decision to move the eyes is an evaluation of the relative benefit expected from moving the eyes to a new location compared with that expected by continuing to fixate the current target. The eyes move when the evidence that favors moving to a new location outweighs that favoring staying at the present location. Our model provides not only an account of when the eyes move, but also what will be fixated. That is, an analysis of saccade timing alone enables us to predict where people look in a scene. Indeed our model accounts for fixation selection as well as (and often better than) current computational models of fixation selection in scene viewing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Evaluating the influence of a fixated object's spatio-temporal properties on gaze control.

Despite recent progress in understanding the factors that determine where an observer will eventually look in a scene, we know very little about what determines how an observer decides where he or she will look next. We investigated the potential roles of object-level representations in the direction of subsequent shifts of gaze. In five experiments, we considered whether a fixated object's spatial orientation, implied motion, and perceived animacy affect gaze direction when shifting overt attention to another object. Eye movements directed away from a fixated object were biased in the direction it faced. This effect was not modified by implying a particular direction of inanimate or animate motion. Together, these results suggest that decisions regarding where one should look next are in part determined by the spatial, but not by the implied temporal, properties of the object at the current locus of fixation.

Spatial representations in older adults are not modified by action: Evidence from tool use.

Theories of embodied perception hold that the visual system is calibrated by both the body schema and the action system, allowing for adaptive action-perception responses. One example of embodied perception involves the effects of tool use on distance perception, in which wielding a tool with the intention to act upon a target appears to bring that object closer. This tool-based spatial compression (i.e., tool-use effect) has been studied exclusively with younger adults, but it is unknown whether the phenomenon exists with older adults. In this study, we examined the effects of tool use on distance perception in younger and older adults in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults estimated the distances of targets just beyond peripersonal space while either wielding a tool or pointing with the hand. Younger adults, but not older adults, estimated targets to be closer after reaching with a tool. In Experiment 2, younger and older adults estimated the distance to remote targets while using either a baton or a laser pointer. Younger adults displayed spatial compression with the laser pointer compared to the baton, although older adults did not. Taken together, these findings indicate a generalized absence of the tool-use effect in older adults during distance estimation, suggesting that the visuomotor system of older adults does not remap from peripersonal to extrapersonal spatial representations during tool use.

Functional fixedness: The functional significance of delayed disengagement based on attention set.

During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.