Effects of alerting signals on the spatial Stroop effect: evidence for modality differences.

Reaction times and error rates to a target's identity are impaired when the target is presented in a location that mismatches the response required, relative to situations where the location of the target and required response overlap (the Simon effect) and the same is true when the target's identity conveys spatial information (the spatial Stroop effect). Prior studies have found that visual versions of the spatial Stroop effect are magnified when alerting cues appear before the target and results are consistent with a dual-route framework where alerting cues boost automatic stimulus-response motor associations through the direct processing route. However, the influence of alerting signals on auditory versions of the spatial Stroop effect have not been tested and there are reasons to believe that the alerting-congruency interaction may differ across stimulus modality. In two experiments the effects of alerting cues on auditory (Experiment 1; N = 98) and visual (Experiment 2; N = 97) spatial Stroop effects are examined. Results show that alerting cues boost the spatial Stroop effect with visual stimuli but not auditory stimuli and a distributional analysis provides support for there being modality differences in the decay (or inhibition) of response-code activation. Implications for explanations of the alerting-congruence interaction are discussed.

Temporal and sequential negative priming generalise across visual and auditory modalities and are dependent on relative rather than absolute speed.

Prior work has found a negative priming effect for a sequence, and more purely time-based negative priming has also been identified. Although sequential effects have been reported with both visual and auditory stimuli, only visual stimuli have been used in experiments examining purely temporal negative priming. In this article, sequential and temporal negative priming are compared across modalities. Prime trials included random presentation of a target (auditory bird chirp or visual X), a non-target (auditory dog bark or visual O), and two neutral stimuli (auditory computer beeps or empty visual boxes). Probe trials included random presentation of the target and three neutral stimuli. Participants indicated the temporal location of the target. On 88% of the trials, participants (N = 119 in Experiment 1; N = 65 in Experiment 2) indicated the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial. Results showed an increase in response time when the temporal location of the probe's target was the same as the location of the non-target stimulus from the prime trial, but this only occurred when the prime was presented more slowly. Experiment 2 tested, and falsified, the hypothesis that a fixed amount of time on the prime is necessary to bind features of the non-target stimulus with temporal and sequential positions. Together, these data show that sequential and temporal negative priming effects generalise across modality and that relative rather than fixed timing is critical. Implications for theories of negative priming are discussed.

Target-mask similarity affects both object substitution masking and object recovery.

Object substitution masking (OSM) is a type of masking where target visibility plummets when surrounded by a four-dot mask with delayed offset. However, target visibility has also been shown to improve at prolonged mask durations (recovery). Here, we show that both OSM and recovery are affected by target-mask similarity. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), letters were used as the mask and target, and recovery was observed even at short mask offset delays when the target and mask were dissimilar, but masking was found when the target and mask were the same and only switched to recovery at prolonged mask durations. In Experiment 2 (N = 25), the influence of object level and retinal level similarity were investigated by using pictures of objects taken from different vantage points. Here, masking and recovery were most strongly influenced by task-relevant features. Implications of these data for theories of object substitution masking and reentrant processing are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Is the alerting-congruency interaction that is seen in experiments with stimulus-response motor associations moderated by a concurrent working-memory load?

The mechanisms underlying attention, distraction, and cognitive control have been widely studied, and results consistently show that reaction times are affected by alerting cues as well as by concurrent distraction. In addition, when distractors have pre-existing directional motor associations, alerting and distractor congruency interact in a manner where distractors have a larger effect when people are alerted to an upcoming target relative to when people are not alerted to the target's presentation. However, does a concurrent working memory load moderate this interaction in multitasking experiments, and if so, does it magnify or suppress this effect? The current study (N = 40) finds that although a memory-load significantly slows reaction times it does not moderate the alerting-congruency interaction. Discussion focuses on theoretical and applied implications of this empirical result.

Word frequency does not moderate the degree to which people can selectively attend to parts of visually presented words.

Whether attention is allocated to an entire word or can be confined to part of a word was examined in an experiment using a visual composite task. Participants saw a study word, a cue to attend to either the right or left half, and a test word, and indicated if the cued half of the words (e.g., left) was the same (e.g., TOLD-TONE) or different (e.g., TOLD-WINE). Prior research using this task reports a larger congruency effect for low-frequency words relative to high-frequency words but extraneous variables were not equated. In this study (N = 33), lexical (orthographic neighbourhood density) and sublexical (bigram frequency) variables were controlled, and word frequency was manipulated. Results indicate that word frequency does not moderate the degree to which parts of a word can be selectively attended/ignored. Response times to high-frequency words were faster than response times to low-frequency words but the congruency effect was equivalent. The data support a capacity model where attention is equally distributed across low-frequency and high-frequency words but low-frequency words require additional processing resources.

Temporal negative priming.

Negative priming provides one useful measure of attentional focus and cognitive control, requirements of most domains of life (driving, work, play, etc.). Until now, 2 types of negative priming have been identified: identity negative priming and location negative priming. These effects are of particular interest because individuals who have difficulty ignoring distraction (e.g., individuals with schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder) exhibit reduced levels of negative priming. In the present experiments (N = 187), we report an entirely new type of negative priming based on when in time a target appears (temporal negative priming) rather than its identity or spatial location. Results indicate that responses to a target's temporal position were impaired when a distractor previously appeared at that same relative temporal position. In addition, temporal positioning was teased apart from response-based mechanisms and both were found to independently contribute to temporal negative priming. This result indicates that mechanisms of cognitive control trigger both response-based and memory-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Precrastination and the cognitive-load-reduction (CLEAR) hypothesis.

Precrastination is the tendency many individuals have to complete a task as soon as possible in order to get it out of the way [Rosenbaum, D. A., Gong, L., & Potts, C. A. (2014). Pre-crastination: Hastening subgoal completion at the expense of extra physical effort. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1487-1496. doi:10.1177/0956797614532657]. The current study (N = 48) examined whether precrastination is affected by a concurrent memory load as predicted by the cognitive-load-reduction (CLEAR) hypothesis. Participants completed a bucket-carrying task under different memory-load conditions. In addition, the amount of physical effort was manipulated by changing the distance people needed to walk while carrying the weighted buckets. The tendency to precrastinate by picking up a near bucket and carrying it further than necessary was affected by the memory load. People were more likely to precrastinate when doing so resulted in the more rapid renewal of cognitive resources and were less likely to precrastinate when this required that the memory load be held for a longer period of time. These data are consistent with the position that precrastination is linked with working memory resources and occurs in an attempt to clear items from a mental to-do list.

Evaluating automatic attentional capture by self-relevant information.

Our everyday decisions and memories are inadvertently influenced by self-relevant information. For example, we are faster and more accurate at making perceptual judgments about stimuli associated with ourselves, such as our own face or name, as compared with familiar non-self-relevant stimuli. Humphreys and Sui propose a "self-attention network" to account for these effects, wherein self-relevant stimuli automatically capture our attention and subsequently enhance the perceptual processing of self-relevant information. We propose that the masked priming paradigm and continuous flash suppression represent two ways to experimentally examine these controversial claims.

Identifying words that emerge into consciousness: Effects of word valence and unconscious previewing.

Words with negative valence capture attention and this increase in attentional resources typically enhances perceptual processing. Recently, data using continuous flash suppression (CFS) appear to contradict this. In prior research when Chinese words were unconsciously presented in CFS and contrast was raised until the word was identified, RTs to identify words with negative valence were slower than RTs to words with neutral valence. This result might be limited to situations where a logographic writing system is used and could reflect a type of cognitive aftereffect where previewing the word causes habituation. Data (N=60) indicate that results generalize from a logographic (Chinese) to an orthographic writing system (English). In addition, when words were previewed in CFS RTs were slowed for words with negative valence relative to words with neutral valence and this was reversed when words were shown binocularly. Implications for theories of unconscious word processing and cognitive aftereffects are discussed.

Evidence for the automatic processing of prelexical codes in an orthographic but not a phonological task.

The automatic activation of phonological and orthographic information in auditory and visual word processing was examined using a task-set procedure. Participants engaged in a phonological task (i.e., determining whether the letter "a" in a word sounded like /e/ or /æ/) or an orthographic task (i.e., determining whether the sound /s/ in a word was spelled with an "s" or a "c"). Participants were cued regarding which task to perform simultaneously with, or 750 ms before, a clear or degraded target. The stimulus clarity effect (i.e., clear words responded to faster than degraded words) was absorbed into the time that it took participants to identify the task on the basis of the cue in a simultaneous cue-target as compared to a delayed cue-target condition, but only for the orthographic task. These data are consistent with the claim that prelexical processing occurs in a capacity-free manner upon stimulus presentation when participants are trying to extract orthographic codes from words presented in the visual and auditory modalities. Such affirmative data were not obtained when participants attempted to extract phonological codes from words, since here the effects of stimulus clarity and cue delay were additive.

Holistic processing improves change detection but impairs change identification.

It has been just over a century since Gestalt psychologists described the factors that contribute to the holistic processing of visually presented stimuli. Recent research indicates that holistic processing may come at a cost; specifically, the perception of holistic forms may reduce the visibility of constituent parts. In the present experiment, we examined change detection and change identification accuracy with Kanizsa rectangle patterns that were arranged to either form a Gestalt whole or not. Results from an experiment with 62 participants support this trade-off in processing holistic forms. Holistic processing improved the detection of change but obstructed its identification. Results are discussed in terms of both their theoretical significance and their application in areas ranging from baggage screening and the detection of changes in radiological images to the systems that are used to generate composite images of perpetrators on the basis of eyewitness reports.

Long-term memory representations influence perception before edges are assigned to objects.

One way to prioritize limited mental resources for perception is to take into account the familiarity of an object to the perceiver. But does an objects' familiarity influence perception only after an object's shape has been determined, or does it influence the decision of which edges are considered part of that object? Here we compare the influence of target familiarity on whole-object masking (object-substitution masking) with its influence on edge-based masking. Two new aspects of edge-based masking are reported. First, we demonstrate that mask and target edges do not only compete (object trimming) but that mask and target edges can also cooperate (object binding), confirming that these masking effects are indeed occurring during the process of object formation and not after object shape has been determined. Second, we find that object trimming and binding are each less likely if the target is linked with a representation already present in long-term memory. Since trimming and binding effects arise very early in visual perception, these data indicate that existing long term memory representations influence the earliest stages of object assembly, before the system has even decided which edges to include in the object.

Are visual features of a looming or receding object processed in a capacity-free manner?

Numerous experiments have examined whether moving stimuli capture spatial attention but none have sought to determine whether visual features of looming and receding objects are extracted in a capacity-free manner. The current experiment (N=28) used the task-choice procedure originated by Besner and Care (2003) to examine this possibility. Stimuli were presented in 3D space by manipulating retinal disparity. Results indicate that features of an object are extracted in a capacity-free manner for both looming and receding objects for participants who consciously perceive motion but not for participants who do not consciously perceive motion. These results suggest that the cognitive system is biased to process potentially animate objects, perhaps because of the evolutionary advantage this cognitive ability may provide.

Object trimming: When masking dots alter rather than replace target representations.

Five experiments demonstrate that when dots appear beside a briefly presented target object, and persist on view longer than the target, the flanked object is perceptually altered by the dots. Three methods are used to explore this object trimming effect. Experiments 1-3 assess participants' conscious reports of trimmed digits, Experiment 4 uses repetition priming to explore the target representation, and Experiment 5 examines the perception of apparent motion in trimmed targets. Results of all three methods indicate that object trimming is influenced by mechanisms of perceptual grouping that operate on target representations prior to conscious access. Separate contributions from visual crowding and backward masking are also identified. These results imply that common-onset masking does not always result from the target being substituted by the mask, but that target and mask can sometimes maintain separate mental representations.

The role of valence and frequency in the emotional Stroop task.

People are generally slower to name the color of emotion-laden words than they are to name that of emotionally neutral words. However, an analysis of this emotional Stroop effect (Larsen, Mercer, & Balota, 2006) indicates that the emotion-laden words used are sometimes longer, have lower frequencies, and have smaller orthographic neighborhoods than the emotionally neutral words. This difference in word characteristics raises the possibility that the emotional Stroop effect is partly caused by lexical rather than by emotional aspects of the stimuli-a conclusion supported by the finding that reaction times to name the color of low-frequency words are longer than those for high-frequency words (Burt, 2002). To examine the relative contributions of valence and frequency in color naming, we had 64 participants complete an experiment in which each of these variables was manipulated in a 3 x 2 factorial design; length, orthographic neighborhood density, and arousal were balanced. The data indicate that valence and word frequency interact in contributing to the emotional Stroop effect.

Looking at object-substitution masking in depth and motion: toward a two-object theory of object substitution.

When attention is divided, a briefly presented target surrounded by four small dots is difficult to identify when the dots persist beyond target offset, but not when these dots terminate with the target. This object-substitution masking effect likely reflects processes at both the image level and the object level. At the image level, visual contours of the mask make feature extraction difficult. Recent data (Lleras & Moore, 2003) suggest that, at the object level, an object file is created for the target-plus-mask, and this single-object token later morphs into a single-object token containing the mask alone. In the present experiments, we used stimuli presented in 3-D space and apparent motion; the results indicate that object-substitution masking also arises when the mask and the target are represented in two separate object tokens and the mask token interferes with the target token.

Associative and phonological priming effects after letter search on the prime.

Responses to target words typically are faster and more accurate after associatively related primes (e.g., "orange-juice") than after unrelated primes (e.g., "glue-juice"). This priming effect has been used as an index of semantic activation, and its elimination often is cited as evidence against semantic access. When participants are asked to perform a letter search on the prime, associative priming typically is eliminated, but repetition and morphological priming remain. It is possible that priming survives letter search when it arises from activity in codes that are represented before semantics. This experiment examined associative and phonological priming to determine whether priming from phonologically related rhymes would remain after letter search (e.g., "moose-juice"; rhyming items were orthographically dissimilar). When participants read the primes, equivalent associative and phonological priming effects were obtained; both effects were eliminated after letter search. The impact of letter search on semantic and phonological access and implications for the structural arrangement of lexical and semantic memory are discussed.

Gestalt grouping and common onset masking.

A four-dot mask that surrounds and is presented simultaneously with a briefly presented target will reduce a person's ability to identity that target if the mask persists beyond target offset and attention is divided (Enns & Di Lollo, 1997, 2000). This masking effect, referred to as common onset masking, reflects reentrant processing in the visual system and can best be explained with a theory of object substitution (Di Lollo, Enns, & Rensink, 2000). In the present experiments, we investigated whether Gestalt grouping variables would influence the strength of common onset masking. The results indicated that (1) masking was impervious to grouping by form, similarity of color, position, luminance polarity, and common region and (2) masking increased with the number of elements in the masking display.