Does cognitive reflection predict attentional control in visual tasks?

The cognitive reflection test (CRT) measures the ability to suppress an intuitive, but incorrect, answer that easily comes to mind. The relationship between the CRT and different cognitive biases has been widely studied. However, whether cognitive reflection is related to attentional control is less well studied. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the inhibitory component of the CRT, measured by the number of non-intuitive answers of the CRT (Inhibitory Control Score), is related to the control of visual attention in visual tasks that involve overriding a bias in what to attend: an anti-saccade task and a visual search task. To test this possibility, we analyzed whether the CRT-Inhibitory Control Score (CRT-ICS) predicted attention allocation in each task. We compared the relationship between the CRT-ICS to two other potential predictors of attentional control: numeracy and visual working memory (VWM). Participants who scored lower on the CRT-ICS made more errors in the "look-away" trials in the anti-saccade task. Participants who scored higher on the CRT-ICS looked more often towards more informative color subsets in the visual search task. However, when controlling for numeracy and visual working memory, CRT-ICS scores were only related to the control of visual attention in the anti-saccade task.

When do response-related episodic retrieval effects co-occur with inhibition of return?

At some point, spatial priming effects more faithfully reflect response selection processes than they do attentional orienting or sensory processes. Findings from the spatial cueing literature suggest that two factors may be critical: (1) the amount of identity processing that is required in order to respond correctly (feature-based response hypothesis), and (2) the amount of spatial processing that is required in order to respond correctly (space-based response hypothesis). To test the first hypothesis, we manipulated whether observers made single keypress detection or two-choice localization responses to serially presented stimuli in peripheral vision and whether stimulus identity information processing was necessary before responding. Responses were always slowest when the target location repeated, consistent with an attentional orienting bias independent of keypress responding (i.e., inhibition of return; IOR). The localization procedure revealed a subtle additional cost for changing the target location and repeating a response, consistent with a response-related episodic retrieval effect predicted by the Theory of Event Coding (TEC). Neither effect was modulated by the need to discriminate features. To test the second hypothesis, we made spatial processing indispensable to response selection by requiring a decision between a detection and localization response, depending on where the target appeared. IOR was eliminated for detection, but not localization, responses, consistent with the TEC. Collectively, the findings suggest that the amount of space-based, but not feature-based, processing that is required to determine a response is responsible for the response retrieval effects that can co-occur with IOR.

What not to look for: Electrophysiological evidence that searchers prefer positive templates.

To-be-attended information can be specified either with positive cues (I'll be wearing a blue shirt) or with negative cues (I won't be wearing a red shirt). Numerous experiments have found that positive cues help search more than negative cues. Given that negative cues produce smaller benefits compared to positive cues, it stands to reason that searchers may choose to use positive templates instead of negative templates if given the opportunity. Here, we evaluate this possibility with behavioral measures as well as by directly measuring the formation of positive and negative templates with event-related potentials. Analysis of the contralateral delay activity (CDA) elicited by cues revealed that positive and negative templates relied on working memory to the same extent, even when negative working memory templates could have been circumvented by relying on long-term memories of target colors. Whereas the CDA did not discriminate positive and negative templates, a CNV-like potential did, suggesting cognitive differences between positive and negative templates beyond visual working memory. However, when both positive and negative information were presented in each cue, participants preferred to make use of the positive cues, as indicated by a CDA contralateral to the positive color in negative cue blocks, and a lack of search benefits for positive- and negative-color cues relative to positive-color cues alone. Our results show that searchers elect to selectively encode only positive information into visual working memory when both positive and negative information are available.

Do we remember templates better so that we can reject distractors better?

Feature Integration Theory proposed that attention shifted between target-like representations in our visual field. However, the nature of the representations that determined what was target like received less specification than the nature of the attention shifts. In recent years, visual search research has focused on the nature of the memory representations that we use to guide our shifts of attention. Sensitive measures of memory quality indicate that the template representations are remembered better than other, merely maintained, memories. Here we tested the hypothesis that we prepare for difficult search tasks by storing a higher fidelity target representation in working memory than we do when preparing for an easy search task. To test this hypothesis, we explicitly tested participants' memory of the target color they searched for (i.e., the attentional template) versus another memory that was not used to guide attention (i.e., an accessory representation) following blocks of searches with easy-to-find targets (i.e., distractors were homogeneously colored) to blocks of searches with hard-to-find targets (i.e., distractors were heterogeneously colored). Although homogeneous-distractor searches required minimal precision for distractor rejection, we found that templates were still remembered better than accessories, just like we found in a heterogeneous-distractor search. As a consequence, we suggest that stronger memories for templates likely reflects the need to decide whether new perceptual inputs match the template, and not an attempt to create a better template representation in anticipation of difficult searches.

Visual working memory load does not eliminate visuomotor repetition effects.

When we respond to a stimulus, our ability to quickly execute this response depends on how combinations of stimulus and response features match to previous combinations of stimulus and response features. Some kind of memory representations must be underlying these visuomotor repetition effects. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that visual working memory stores the stimulus information that gives rise to these effects. Participants discriminated the colors of successive stimuli while holding either three locations or colors in visual working memory. If visual working memory maintains the information about a previous event that leads to visuomotor repetition effects, then occupying working memory with colors or locations should selectively disrupt color-response and location-response repetition effects. The results of two experiments showed that neither color nor spatial memory load eliminated visuomotor repetition effects. Since working memory load did not disrupt repetition effects, it is unlikely that visual working memory resources are used to store the information that underlies visuomotor repetitions effects. Instead, these results are consistent with the view that visuomotor repetition effects stem from automatic long-term memory retrieval, but can also be accommodated by supposing separate buffers for visual working memory and response selection.

The Contralateral Delay Activity Tracks the Sequential Loading of Objects into Visual Working Memory, Unlike Lateralized Alpha Oscillations.

Visual working memory temporarily represents a continuous stream of task-relevant objects as we move through our environment performing tasks. Previous work has identified candidate neural mechanisms of visual working memory storage; however, we do not know which of these mechanisms enable the storage of objects as we sequentially encounter them in our environment. Here, we measured the contralateral delay activity (CDA) and lateralized alpha oscillations as human subjects were shown a series of objects that they needed to remember. The amplitude of CDA increased following the presentation of each to-be-remembered object, reaching asymptote at about three to four objects. In contrast, the concurrently measured lateralized alpha power remained constant with each additional object. Our results suggest that the CDA indexes the storage of objects in visual working memory, whereas lateralized alpha suppression indexes the focusing of attention on the to-be-remembered objects.

It is not in the details: Self-related shapes are rapidly classified but their features are not better remembered.

Self-prioritization is a robust phenomenon whereby judgments concerning self-representational stimuli are faster than judgments toward other stimuli. The present paper examines if and how self-prioritization causes more vivid short-term memories for self-related objects by giving geometric shapes arbitrary identities (self, mother, stranger). In Experiment 1 participants were presented with an array of the three shapes and required to retain the location and color of each in memory. Participants were then probed regarding the identity of one of the shapes and subsequently asked to indicate the color of the probed shape or an unprobed shape on a color wheel. Results indicated no benefit for self-stimuli in either response time for the identification probe or for color fidelity in memory. Yet, a cuing benefit was observed such that the cued stimulus in the identity probe did have higher fidelity within memory. Experiments 2 and 3 reduced the cognitive load by only requiring that participants process the identity and color of one shape at a time. For Experiment 2, the identity probe was memory-based, whereas the stimulus was presented alongside the identity probe for Experiment 3. Results demonstrated a robust self-prioritization effect: self-related shapes were classified faster than non-self-shapes, but this self-advantage did not lead to an increase in the fidelity of memory for self-related shapes' colors. Overall, these results suggest that self-prioritization effects may be restricted to an improvement in the ability to recognize that the self-representational stimulus is present without devoting more perceptual and short-term memory resources to such stimuli.

Ironic capture: top-down expectations exacerbate distraction in visual search.

Ironic processing refers to the phenomenon where attempting to resist doing something results in a person doing that very thing. Here, we report three experiments investigating the role of ironic processing in visual search. In Experiment 1, we informed observers that they could predict the location of a salient color singleton in a visual search task and found that response times were slower in that condition than in a condition where the singleton's location was random. Experiment 2 used the same experimental design but did not inform participants of the color singleton's behavior. Experiment 3 showed that the cost in the predictable condition was not due to dual task costs or block order effects and participants attempting to use the strategy showed a larger cost in the predictable condition than those who abandoned using that location foreknowledge. In this case, responses in the predictable color singleton condition were equivalent with the random color singleton condition. This suggests that having more knowledge about an upcoming, salient distractor ironically increases its interfering influence on performance.

Contralateral delay activity tracks the storage of visually presented letters and words.

Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that the maintenance of items in visual working memory (VWM) is indexed by the contralateral delay activity (CDA), which increases in amplitude as the number of objects to remember increases, plateauing at VWM capacity. Previous work has primarily utilized simple visual items, such as colored squares or picture stimuli. Despite the frequent use of verbal stimuli in seminal investigations of visual attention and memory, it is unknown whether temporary storage of letters and words also elicit a typical load-sensitive CDA. Given their close associations with language and phonological codes, it is possible that participants store these stimuli phonologically, and not visually. Participants completed a standard visual change-detection task while their ERPs were recorded. Experiment 1 compared the CDA elicited by colored squares compared to uppercase consonants, and Experiment 2 compared the CDA elicited by words compared to colored bars. Behavioral accuracy of change detection decreased with increasing set size for colored squares, letters, and words. We found that a capacity-limited CDA was present for colored squares, letters, and word arrays, suggesting that the visual codes for letters and words were maintained in VWM, despite the potential for transfer to verbal working memory. These results suggest that, despite their verbal associations, letters and words elicit the electrophysiological marker of VWM encoding and storage.

Discriminating scene categories from brain activity within 100 milliseconds.

Humans have the ability to make sense of the world around them in only a single glance. This astonishing feat requires the visual system to extract information from our environment with remarkable speed. How quickly does this process unfold across time, and what visual information contributes to our understanding of the visual world? We address these questions by directly measuring the temporal dynamics of the perception of colour photographs and line drawings of scenes with electroencephalography (EEG) during a scene-memorization task. Within a fraction of a second, event-related potentials (ERPs) show dissociable response patterns for global scene properties of content (natural versus manmade) and layout (open versus closed). Subsequent detailed analyses of within-category versus between-category discriminations found significant dissociations of basic-level scene categories (e.g., forest; city) within the first 100 msec of perception. The similarity of this neural activity with feature-based discriminations suggests low-level image statistics may be foundational for this rapid categorization. Interestingly, our results also suggest that the structure preserved in line drawings may form a primary and necessary basis for visual processing, whereas surface information may further enhance category selectivity in later-stage processing. Critically, these findings provide evidence that the distinction of both basic-level categories and global properties of scenes from neural signals occurs within 100 msec.

Dissociating Orienting Biases From Integration Effects With Eye Movements.

Despite decades of research, the conditions under which shifts of attention to prior target locations are facilitated or inhibited remain unknown. This ambiguity is a product of the popular feature discrimination task, in which attentional bias is commonly inferred from the efficiency by which a stimulus feature is discriminated after its location has been repeated or changed. Problematically, these tasks lead to integration effects; effects of target-location repetition appear to depend entirely on whether the target feature or response also repeats, allowing for several possible inferences about orienting bias. To parcel out integration effects and orienting biases, we designed the present experiments to require localized eye movements and manual discrimination responses to serially presented targets with randomly repeating locations. Eye movements revealed consistent biases away from prior target locations. Manual discrimination responses revealed integration effects. These data collectively revealed inhibited reorienting and integration effects, which resolve the ambiguity and reconcile episodic integration and attentional orienting accounts.

The price of information: Increased inspection costs reduce the confirmation bias in visual search.

In visual search, there is a confirmation bias such that attention is biased towards stimuli that match a target template, which has been attributed to covert costs of updating the templates that guide search [Rajsic, Wilson, & Pratt, 2015. Confirmation bias in visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/xhp0000090]. In order to provide direct evidence for this speculation, the present study increased the cost of inspections in search by using gaze- and mouse-contingent searches, which restrict the manner in which information in search displays can be accrued, and incur additional motor costs (in the case of mouse-contingent searches). In a fourth experiment, we rhythmically mask elements in the search display to induce temporal inspection costs. Our results indicated that confirmation bias is indeed attenuated when inspection costs are increased. We conclude that confirmation bias results from the low-cost strategy of matching information to a single, concrete visual template, and that more sophisticated guidance strategies will be used when sufficiently beneficial. This demonstrates that search guidance itself comes at a cost, and that the form of guidance adopted in a given search depends on a comparison between guidance costs and the expected benefits of their implementation.

More than a memory: Confirmatory visual search is not caused by remembering a visual feature.

Previous research has demonstrated a preference for positive over negative information in visual search; asking whether a target object is green biases search towards green objects, even when this entails more perceptual processing than searching non-green objects. The present study investigated whether this confirmatory search bias is due to the presence of one particular (e.g., green) color in memory during search. Across two experiments, we show that this is not the critical factor in generating a confirmation bias in search. Search slowed proportionally to the number of stimuli whose color matched the color held in memory only when the color was remembered as part of the search instructions. These results suggest that biased search for information is due to a particular attentional selection strategy, and not to memory-driven attentional biases.

Temporal trimming: Evidence that common-onset masking shortens perceptual sampling of conscious object representations.

Common-onset masking (COM) refers to a methodology where a mask can impair awareness of an object if the mask's offset is delayed relative to the offset of the object. This method has classically been used to understand how discontinuities in visual input lead to the discrete removal of object representations before they reach conscious awareness. However, COM has recently been shown to reduce the precision of conscious object representations (Harrison, Rajsic, & Wilson, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(1), 180-186, 2016). As a result, Harrison et al. proposed that COM shortens the temporal window for perceptual sampling of an object's representation, an account consistent with interruption-based theories of masking. In the present study we modified the standard COM methodology to assess the impact of a delayed mask offset on the temporal perception of an object's representation. Across two experiments we provide novel evidence that a delayed mask offset can impair temporal perception of a conscious percept, such that it reduces the percept's perceived duration (Experiment 1), and prematurely terminates updating of the percept's dynamic orientation (Experiment 2). We refer to these results as temporal trimming, and suggest that the mechanism responsible for COM operates during the sustained perception of an object.

Neural representation of geometry and surface properties in object and scene perception.

Multiple cortical regions are crucial for perceiving the visual world, yet the processes shaping representations in these regions are unclear. To address this issue, we must elucidate how perceptual features shape representations of the environment. Here, we explore how the weighting of different visual features affects neural representations of objects and scenes, focusing on the scene-selective parahippocampal place area (PPA), but additionally including the retrosplenial complex (RSC), occipital place area (OPA), lateral occipital (LO) area, fusiform face area (FFA) and occipital face area (OFA). Across three experiments, we examined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity while human observers viewed scenes and objects that varied in geometry (shape/layout) and surface properties (texture/material). Interestingly, we found equal sensitivity in the PPA for these properties within a scene, revealing that spatial-selectivity alone does not drive activation within this cortical region. We also observed sensitivity to object texture in PPA, but not to the same degree as scene texture, and representations in PPA varied when objects were placed within scenes. We conclude that PPA may process surface properties in a domain-specific manner, and that the processing of scene texture and geometry is equally-weighted in PPA and may be mediated by similar underlying neuronal mechanisms.

Looking sharp: Becoming a search template boosts precision and stability in visual working memory.

Visual working memory (VWM) plays a central role in visual cognition, and current work suggests that there is a special state in VWM for items that are the goal of visual searches. However, whether the quality of memory for target templates differs from memory for other items in VWM is currently unknown. In this study, we measured the precision and stability of memory for search templates and accessory items to determine whether search templates receive representational priority in VWM. Memory for search templates exhibited increased precision and probability of recall, whereas accessory items were remembered less often. Additionally, while memory for Templates showed benefits when instances of the Template appeared in search, this benefit was not consistently observed for Accessory items when they appeared in search. Our results show that becoming a search template can substantially affect the quality of a representation in VWM.

Accessibility limits recall from visual working memory.

In this article, we demonstrate limitations of accessibility of information in visual working memory (VWM). Recently, cued-recall has been used to estimate the fidelity of information in VWM, where the feature of a cued object is reproduced from memory (Bays, Catalao, & Husain, 2009; Wilken & Ma, 2004; Zhang & Luck, 2008). Response error in these tasks has been largely studied with respect to failures of encoding and maintenance; however, the retrieval operations used in these tasks remain poorly understood. By varying the number and type of object features provided as a cue in a visual delayed-estimation paradigm, we directly assess the nature of retrieval errors in delayed estimation from VWM. Our results demonstrate that providing additional object features in a single cue reliably improves recall, largely by reducing swap, or misbinding, responses. In addition, performance simulations using the binding pool model (Swan & Wyble, 2014) were able to mimic this pattern of performance across a large span of parameter combinations, demonstrating that the binding pool provides a possible mechanism underlying this pattern of results that is not merely a symptom of one particular parametrization. We conclude that accessing visual working memory is a noisy process, and can lead to errors over and above those of encoding and maintenance limitations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Intervening response events between identification targets do not always turn repetition benefits into repetition costs.

When there is a relatively long interval between two successive stimuli that must be detected or localized, there are robust processing costs when the stimuli appear at the same location. However, when two successive visual stimuli that must be identified appear at the same location, there are robust same location costs only when the two stimuli differ in their responses; otherwise same location benefits are observed. Two separate frameworks that inhibited attentional orienting and episodic integration, respectively, have been proposed to account for these patterns. Recent findings hint at a possible reconciliation between these frameworks-requiring a response to an event in between two successive visual stimuli may unmask same stimulus and same location costs that are otherwise obscured by episodic integration benefits in identification tasks. We tested this hybrid account by integrating an intervening response event with an identification task that would otherwise generate the boundary between same location benefits and costs. Our results showed that the intervening event did not alter the boundary between location repetition benefits and costs nor did it reliably or unambiguously reverse the common stimulus-response repetition benefit. The findings delimit the usefulness of an intervening event for disrupting episodic integration, suggesting that effects from intervening response events are tenuous. The divide between attention and feature integration accounts is delineated in the context of methodological and empirical considerations.

Out of sight, out of mind: Matching bias underlies confirmatory visual search.

Confirmation bias has recently been reported in visual search, where observers who were given a perceptual rule to test (e.g. "Is the p on a red circle?") search stimuli that could confirm the rule stimuli preferentially (Rajsic, Wilson, & Pratt, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(5), 1353-1364, 2015). In this study, we compared the ability of concrete and abstract visual templates to guide attention using the visual confirmation bias. Experiment 1 showed that confirmatory search tendencies do not result from simple low-level priming, as they occurred when color templates were verbally communicated. Experiment 2 showed that confirmation bias did not occur when targets needed to be reported as possessing or not possessing the absence of a feature (i.e., reporting whether a target was on a nonred circle). Experiment 3 showed that confirmatory search also did not occur when search prompts referred to a set of visually heterogenous features (i.e., reporting whether a target on a colorful circle, regardless of the color). Together, these results show that the confirmation bias likely results from a matching heuristic, such that visual codes involved in representing the search goal prioritize stimuli possessing these features.

Go-getters and procrastinators: Investigating individual differences in visual cognition across university semesters.

University-based psychological research typically relies on the participation of undergraduate students for data collection. Using this particular sample brings with it several possible issues, including the self-scheduling done by the participants. Research on performance between students who sign up early versus late in the semester has been inconsistent. Some research report benefits for early participant semesters, while others find no differences between the two groups. Anecdotally, it seems that the former holds true, as many researchers worry about the data collected late in the semester, sometimes opting for more motivated earlier participants in the next semester. The purpose of our study was to examine for the effect of time of semester across a well-known set of visual cognition tasks. To do so, participants completed canonical versions of a rapid serial visual presentation task, a flanker task, an additional singleton paradigm task, a multiple object tracking task and a visual working memory task. These tasks were chosen as typical measures of executive control, temporal selectivity, visual working memory capacity, resistance to distraction, and attentional capacity. Crucially, we correlated task performance with time of semester students chose to participate. Our results demonstrate that there were no significant differences in any of the tasks across semester timing. Furthermore, our findings support the validity of cognitive research relying on the system of recruiting undergraduate students from volunteer pools where students can self-select the time of the semester they undertake the experiments.