Emotional capture by fearful expressions varies with psychopathic traits.

Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of "emotional capture" varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits (and co-occurring trait anxiety) in a community sample. Participants (N = 85) searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show that normative variation in high-level individual differences in psychopathic traits influence automatic bias to emotional stimuli.

Auditory attentional capture: implicit and explicit approaches.

The extent to which distracting items capture attention despite being irrelevant to the task at hand can be measured either implicitly or explicitly (e.g., Simons, Trends Cogn Sci 4:147-155, 2000). Implicit approaches include the standard attentional capture paradigm in which distraction is measured in terms of reaction time and/or accuracy costs within a focal task in the presence (vs. absence) of a task-irrelevant distractor. Explicit measures include the inattention paradigm in which people are asked directly about their noticing of an unexpected task-irrelevant item. Although the processes of attentional capture have been studied extensively using both approaches in the visual domain, there is much less research on similar processes as they may operate within audition, and the research that does exist in the auditory domain has tended to focus exclusively on either an explicit or an implicit approach. This paper provides an overview of recent research on auditory attentional capture, integrating the key conclusions that may be drawn from both methodological approaches.

Losing your touch? Sustained inattentional numbness for dynamic tactile events.

It is now well-known that a lack of attention can leave people unaware of clearly-noticeable, long-lasting and dynamic stimuli, such as a visible person dressed as a gorilla or an audible person claiming to be a gorilla. However, the question of whether touch can ever be susceptible to such extreme inattentional effects remains open. Here, we present evidence across two experiments that the absence of attention can leave people "numb" to the presence of a tactile stimulus that lasts for 3.5 s and moves across six different skin locations, establishing the new phenomenon of "sustained inattentional numbness." The effect is particularly surprising in light of claims that tactile information processing is more direct than auditory or visual processing, which would suggest that tactile awareness might not be open to attentional modulation of the type that we observe here. The findings also have important applied implications given the increasing prevalence of tactile warnings in everyday information delivery systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Lineup identification in young and older witnesses: does describing the criminal help or hinder?

The world population is getting older and, as a result, the number of older victims of crime is expected to increase. It is therefore essential to understand how ageing affects eyewitness identification, so procedures can be developed that enable victims of crime of all ages to provide evidence as accurately and reliably as possible. In criminal investigations, witnesses often provide a description of the perpetrator of the crime before later making an identification. While describing the perpetrator prior to making a lineup identification can have a detrimental effect on identification in younger adults, referred to as verbal overshadowing, it is unclear whether older adults are affected in the same way. Our study compared lineup identification of a group of young adults and a group of older adults using the procedure that has consistently revealed verbal overshadowing in young adults. Participants watched a video of a mock crime. Following a 20-min filled delay, they either described the perpetrator or completed a control task. Immediately afterwards, they identified the perpetrator from a lineup, or indicated that the perpetrator was not present, and rated their confidence. We found that describing the perpetrator decreased subsequent correct identification of the perpetrator in both young and older adults. This effect of verbal overshadowing was not explained by a change in discrimination but was consistent with participants adopting a more conservative criterion. Confidence and response time were both found to predict identification accuracy for young and older groups, particularly in the control condition.

Situation Awareness in Remote Operators of Autonomous Vehicles: Developing a Taxonomy of Situation Awareness in Video-Relays of Driving Scenes.

Even entirely driverless vehicles will sometimes require remote human intervention. Existing SA frameworks do not acknowledge the significant human factors challenges unique to a driver in charge of a vehicle that they are not physically occupying. Remote operators will have to build up a mental model of the remote environment facilitated by monitor view and video feed. We took a novel approach to "freeze and probe" techniques to measure SA, employing a qualitative verbal elicitation task to uncover what people "see" in a remote scene when they are not constrained by rigid questioning. Participants (n = 10) watched eight videos of driving scenes randomized and counterbalanced across four road types (motorway, rural, residential and A road). Participants recorded spoken descriptions when each video stopped, detailing what was happening (SA Comprehension) and what could happen next (SA Prediction). Participant transcripts provided a rich catalog of verbal data reflecting clear interactions between different SA levels. This suggests that acquiring SA in remote scenes is a flexible and fluctuating process of combining comprehension and prediction globally rather than serially, in contrast to what has sometimes been implied by previous SA methodologies (Jones and Endsley, 1996; Endsley, 2000, 2017b). Inductive thematic analysis was used to categorize participants' responses into a taxonomy aimed at capturing the key elements of people's reported SA for videos of driving situations. We suggest that existing theories of SA need to be more sensitively applied to remote driving contexts such as remote operators of autonomous vehicles.

Updating our understanding of situation awareness in relation to remote operators of autonomous vehicles.

The introduction of autonomous vehicles (AVs) could prevent many accidents attributable to human driver error. However, even entirely driverless vehicles will sometimes require remote human intervention. Current taxonomies of automated driving do not acknowledge the possibility of remote control of AVs or the challenges that are unique to such a driver in charge of a vehicle that they are not physically occupying. Yet there are significant differences between situation awareness (SA) in normal driving contexts and SA in these remote driving operations. We argue that the established understanding of automated driving requires updating to include the context of remote operation that is likely to come in to play at higher levels of automation. It is imperative to integrate the role of the remote operator within industry standard taxonomies, so that regulatory frameworks can be established with regards to the training required for remote operation, the necessary equipment and technology, and a comprehensive inventory of the use cases under which we could expect remote operation to be carried out. We emphasise the importance of designing control interfaces in a way that will maximise remote operator (RO) SA and we identify some principles for designing systems aimed at increasing an RO's sense of embodiment in the AV that requires temporary control.

Response requirements modulate tactile spatial congruency effects.

Several recent studies have provided support for the view that tactile stimuli/events are remapped into an abstract spatial frame of reference beyond the initial somatotopic representation present in the primary somatosensory cortex. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that the extent to which this remapping of tactile stimuli takes place is dependent upon the particular demands imposed by the task that participants have to perform. Participants in the present study responded to either the elevation (up vs. down) or to the anatomical location (finger vs. thumb) of vibrotactile targets presented to one hand, while trying to ignore distractors presented simultaneously to the other hand. The magnitude and direction of the target-distractor congruency effect was measured as participants adopted one of two different postures with each hand (palm-up or palm-down). When the participants used footpedal responses (toe vs. heel; Experiment 1), congruency effects were determined by the relative elevation of the stimuli in external coordinates (same vs. different elevation), regardless of whether the relevant response feature was defined externally or anatomically. Even when participants responded verbally (Experiment 2), the influence of the relative elevation of the stimuli in external space, albeit attenuated, was still observed. However, when the task involved responding with the stimulated finger (four-alternative forced choice; Experiment 3), congruency effects were virtually eliminated. These findings support the view that tactile events can be remapped according to an abstract frame of reference resulting from multisensory integration, but that the frame of reference that is used while performing a particular task may depend to a large extent on the nature of the task demands.

Inattentional numbness and the influence of task difficulty.

Research suggests that clearly detectable stimuli can be missed when attention is focused elsewhere, particularly when the observer is engaged in a complex task. Although this phenomenon has been demonstrated in vision and audition, much less is known about the possibility of a similar phenomenon within touch. Across two experiments, we investigated reported awareness of an unexpected tactile event as a function of the difficulty of a concurrent tactile task. Participants were presented with sequences of tactile stimuli to one hand and performed either an easy or a difficult counting task. On the final trial, an additional tactile stimulus was concurrently presented to the unattended hand. Retrospective reports revealed that more participants in the difficult (vs. easy) condition remained unaware of this unexpected stimulus, even though it was clearly detectable under full attention conditions. These experiments are the first demonstrating the phenomenon of inattentional numbness modulated by concurrent tactile task difficulty.

Auditory perceptual load: A review.

Selective attention is a crucial mechanism in everyday life, allowing us to focus on a portion of incoming sensory information at the expense of other less relevant stimuli. The circumstances under which irrelevant stimuli are successfully ignored have been a topic of scientific interest for several decades now. Over the last 20 years, the perceptual load theory (e.g. Lavie, 1995) has provided one robust framework for understanding these effects within the visual modality. The suggestion is that successful selection depends on the perceptual demands imposed by the task-relevant information. However, less research has addressed the question of whether the same principles hold in audition and, to date, the existing literature provides a mixed picture. Here, we review the evidence for and against the applicability of perceptual load theory in hearing, concluding that this question still awaits resolution.

Temporal attentional capture: effects of irrelevant singletons on rapid serial visual search.

The presence of a unique yet irrelevant singleton in visual search or spatial-cuing tasks is typically associated with performance costs, suggesting that singletons tend to capture attention. However, since singletons have always been spatially separated from targets in previous experiments, it remains unclear whether an irrelevant visual singleton that occurs at the same spatial location as the target but at a different point in time can produce temporal capture of attention. Here, we asked participants to search visual sequences at fixation for targets defined by size (larger or smaller than the nontargets). The presence (vs. absence) of a color singleton lengthened response times on the size discrimination task, suggesting that irrelevant singletons can lead to a temporal attentional capture.

Out of touch? Visual load induces inattentional numbness.

It is now well known that the absence of attention can leave people unaware of both visual and auditory stimuli (e.g., Dalton & Fraenkel, 2012; Mack & Rock, 1998). However, the possibility of similar effects within the tactile domain has received much less research. Here, we introduce a new tactile inattention paradigm and use it to test whether tactile awareness depends on the level of perceptual load in a concurrent visual task. Participants performed a visual search task of either low or high perceptual load, as well as responding to the presence or absence of a brief vibration delivered simultaneously to either the left or the right hand (50% of trials). Detection sensitivity to the clearly noticeable tactile stimulus was reduced under high (vs. low) visual perceptual load. These findings provide the first robust demonstration of "inattentional numbness," as well as demonstrating that this phenomenon can be induced by concurrent visual perceptual load. (PsycINFO Database Record

Auditory attentional capture: effects of singleton distractor sounds.

The phenomenon of attentional capture by a unique yet irrelevant singleton distractor has typically been studied in visual search. In this article, the authors examine whether a similar phenomenon occurs in the auditory domain. Participants searched sequences of sounds for targets defined by frequency, intensity, or duration. The presence of a singleton distractor that was unique on an irrelevant dimension (e.g., a low-frequency singleton in search for a target of high intensity) was associated with search costs in both detection and discrimination tasks. However, if the singleton feature coincided with the target item, search was facilitated. These results establish the phenomenon of auditory attentional capture.

Ear-catching? Real-world distractibility scores predict susceptibility to auditory attentional capture.

Although many of the everyday distractions that we encounter are auditory, most research on distractor processing to date has focused on the visual domain. A common measure of everyday distractibility is the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes British Journal of Clinical Psychology 21: 1-16, 1982), which has previously been successfully linked with performance on controlled visual-attention tasks (e.g., Forster & Lavie Psychological Science 18: 377-381, 2007; Kanai, Dong, Bahrami, & Rees Journal of Neuroscience 31: 6620-6626, 2011; Tipper & Baylis Personality and Individual Differences 8: 667-675, 1987), such that high scorers tend to display greater distractor interference than do low scorers. We examined whether the same relationship would hold in hearing. Participants performed an auditory attentional-capture task, by responding to a target sound while ignoring an irrelevant singleton distractor (presented on half of the trials). We found that CFQ score successfully predicted distractor interference, since participants who reported being more distractible in everyday life produced more errors in the presence of the irrelevant singleton than did low scorers on the CFQ. This finding is the first to demonstrate a relationship between auditory distractor interference and everyday distractibility, and it confirms that performance on this type of laboratory-based attentional-capture task can successfully be related to behavior outside the laboratory.

Perceptual load does not modulate auditory distractor processing.

In vision, it is well established that the perceptual load of a relevant task determines the extent to which irrelevant distractors are processed. Much less research has addressed the effects of perceptual load within hearing. Here, we provide an extensive test using two different perceptual load manipulations, measuring distractor processing through response competition and awareness report. Across four experiments, we consistently failed to find support for the role of perceptual load in auditory selective attention. We therefore propose that the auditory system - although able to selectively focus processing on a relevant stream of sounds - is likely to have surplus capacity to process auditory information from other streams, regardless of the perceptual load in the attended stream. This accords well with the notion of the auditory modality acting as an 'early-warning' system as detection of changes in the auditory scene is crucial even when the perceptual demands of the relevant task are high.

Gorillas we have missed: sustained inattentional deafness for dynamic events.

It is now well-known that the absence of attention can leave us 'blind' to visual stimuli that are very obvious under normal viewing conditions (e.g. a person dressed as a gorilla; Simons & Chabris, 1999). However, the question of whether hearing can ever be susceptible to such effects remains open. Here, we present evidence that the absence of attention can leave people 'deaf' to the presence of an 'auditory gorilla' which is audible for 19s and clearly noticeable under full attention. These findings provide the first ever demonstration of sustained inattentional deafness. The effect is all the more surprising because it occurs within a lifelike, three-dimensional auditory scene in which the unnoticed stimulus moves through the middle of several other dynamic auditory stimuli.

The role of working memory in auditory selective attention.

A growing body of research now demonstrates that working memory plays an important role in controlling the extent to which irrelevant visual distractors are processed during visual selective attention tasks (e.g., Lavie, Hirst, De Fockert, & Viding, 2004). Recently, it has been shown that the successful selection of tactile information also depends on the availability of working memory (Dalton, Lavie, & Spence, 2009). Here, we investigate whether working memory plays a role in auditory selective attention. Participants focused their attention on short continuous bursts of white noise (targets) while attempting to ignore pulsed bursts of noise (distractors). Distractor interference in this auditory task, as measured in terms of the difference in performance between congruent and incongruent distractor trials, increased significantly under high (vs. low) load in a concurrent working-memory task. These results provide the first evidence demonstrating a causal role for working memory in reducing interference by irrelevant auditory distractors.

The role of working memory in tactile selective attention.

Load theory suggests that working memory controls the extent to which irrelevant distractors are processed (e.g., Lavie, Hirst, De Fockert, & Viding, 2004). However, so far this proposal has only been tested in vision. Here, we examine the extent to which tactile selective attention also depends on working memory. In Experiment 1, participants focused their attention on continuous target vibrations while attempting to ignore pulsed distractor vibrations. In Experiment 2, targets were always presented to a particular hand, with distractors being presented to the other hand. In both experiments, a high (vs. low) load in a concurrent working memory task led to greater interference by the tactile distractors. These results establish the role of working memory in the control of tactile selective attention, demonstrating for the first time that the principles of load theory also apply to the tactile modality.

Attentional capture in serial audiovisual search tasks.

The phenomenon of attentional capture has typically been studied in spatial search tasks. Dalton and Lavie recently demonstrated that auditory attention can also be captured by a singleton item in a rapidly presented tone sequence. In the experiments reported here, we investigated whether these findings extend cross-modally to sequential search tasks using audiovisual stimuli. Participants searched a stream of centrally presented audiovisual stimuli for targets defined on a particular dimension (e.g., duration) in a particular modality. Task performance was compared in the presence versus absence of a unique singleton distractor. Irrelevant auditory singletons captured attention during visual search tasks, leading to interference when they coincided with distractors but to facilitation when they coincided with targets. These results demonstrate attentional capture by auditory singletons during nonspatial visual search.

Overriding auditory attentional capture.

Attentional capture by color singletons during shape search can be eliminated when the target is not a feature singleton (Bacon & Egeth, 1994). This suggests that a "singleton detection" search strategy must be adopted for attentional capture to occur. Here we find similar effects on auditory attentional capture. Irrelevant high-intensity singletons interfered with an auditory search task when the target itself was also a feature singleton. However, singleton interference was eliminated when the target was not a singleton (i.e., when nontargets were made heterogeneous, or when more than one target sound was presented). These results suggest that auditory attentional capture depends on the observer's attentional set, as does visual attentional capture. The suggestion that hearing might act as an early warning system that would always be tuned to unexpected unique stimuli must therefore be modified to accommodate these strategy-dependent capture effects.

Brain mechanisms mediating auditory attentional capture in humans.

The ability to detect and preferentially process salient auditory stimuli, even when irrelevant to a current task, is often critical for adaptive behavior. This stimulus-driven allocation of processing resources is known as "attentional capture." Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans to investigate brain activity and behavioral effects related to such auditory attentional capture. Participants searched a sequence of tones for a target tone that was shorter or longer than the nontarget tones. An irrelevant singleton feature in the tone sequence resulted in behavioral interference (attentional capture) and activation of parietal and prefrontal cortices only when the singleton was associated with a nontarget tone (nontarget singleton) and not when associated with a target tone (target singleton). In contrast, the presence (vs. absence) of a singleton feature in the sequence was associated with activation of frontal and temporal loci previously associated with auditory change detection. These results suggest that a ventral network involving superior temporal and inferior frontal cortices responds to acoustic variability, regardless of attentional significance, but a dorsal frontoparietal network responds only when a feature singleton captures attention.