Spatial and feature-based attention to expressive faces.

Facial emotion is an important cue for deciding whether an individual is potentially helpful or harmful. However, facial expressions are inherently ambiguous and observers typically employ other cues to categorize emotion expressed on the face, such as race, sex, and context. Here, we explored the effect of increasing or reducing different types of uncertainty associated with a facial expression that is to be categorized. On each trial, observers responded according to the emotion and location of a peripherally presented face stimulus and were provided with either: (1) no information about the upcoming face; (2) its location; (3) its expressed emotion; or (4) both its location and emotion. While cueing emotion or location resulted in faster response times than cueing unpredictive information, cueing face emotion alone resulted in faster responses than cueing face location alone. Moreover, cueing both stimulus location and emotion resulted in a superadditive reduction of response times compared with cueing location or emotion alone, suggesting that feature-based attention to emotion and spatially selective attention interact to facilitate perception of face stimuli. While categorization of facial expressions was significantly affected by stable identity cues (sex and race) in the face, we found that these interactions were eliminated when uncertainty about facial expression, but not spatial uncertainty about stimulus location, was reduced by predictive cueing. This demonstrates that feature-based attention to facial expression greatly attenuates the need to rely on stable identity cues to interpret facial emotion.

Cognitive-behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of the affective consequences of ignoring stimulus representations in working memory.

Ignoring visual stimuli in the external environment leads to decreased liking of those items, a phenomenon attributed to the affective consequences of attentional inhibition. Here we investigated the generality of this "distractor devaluation" phenomenon by asking whether ignoring stimuli represented internally within visual working memory has the same affective consequences. In two experiments we presented participants with two or three visual stimuli and then, after the stimuli were no longer visible, provided an attentional cue indicating which item in memory was the target they would have to later recall, and which were task-irrelevant distractors. Participants subsequently judged how much they liked these stimuli. Previously-ignored distractors were consistently rated less favorably than targets, replicating prior findings of distractor devaluation. To gain converging evidence, in Experiment 2, we also examined the electrophysiological processes associated with devaluation by measuring individual differences in attention (N2pc) and working memory (CDA) event-related potentials following the attention cue. Larger amplitude of an N2pc-like component was associated with greater devaluation, suggesting that individuals displaying more effective selection of memory targets-an act aided by distractor inhibition-displayed greater levels of distractor devaluation. Individuals showing a larger post-cue CDA amplitude (but not pre-cue CDA amplitude) also showed greater distractor devaluation, supporting prior evidence that visual working-memory resources have a functional role in effecting devaluation. Together, these findings demonstrate that ignoring working-memory representations has affective consequences, and adds to the growing evidence that the contribution of selective-attention mechanisms to a wide range of human thoughts and behaviors leads to devaluation.

Neural evidence that inhibition is linked to the affective devaluation of distractors that match the contents of working memory.

Stimuli appearing as visual distractors subsequently receive more negative affective evaluations than novel items or prior targets of attention. Leading accounts question whether this distractor devaluation effect occurs through evaluative codes that become associated with distractors as a mere artefact of attention-task instructions, or through affective consequences of attentional inhibition when applied to prevent distractor interference. Here we test opposing predictions arising from the evaluative-coding and devaluation-by-inhibition hypotheses using an electrophysiological marker of attentional inhibition in a task that requires participants to avoid interference from abstract-shape distractors presented while maintaining a uniquely-colored stimulus in memory. Consistent with prior research, distractors that matched the colour of the stimulus being held in memory elicited a Pd component of the event-related potential waveform, indicating that their processing was being actively suppressed. Subsequent affective evaluations revealed that memory-matching distractors also received more negative ratings than non-matching distractors or previously-unseen shapes. Moreover, Pd magnitude was greater on trials in which the memory-matching distractors were later rated negatively than on trials preceding positive ratings. These results support the devaluation-by-inhibition hypothesis and strongly suggest that fluctuations in stimulus inhibition are closely associated with subsequent affective evaluations. In contrast, none of the evaluative-coding based predictions were confirmed.

Suppressing memories of words and familiar objects results in their affective devaluation: Evidence from Think/No-think tasks.

Potentially distracting or otherwise-inappropriate stimuli, thoughts, or actions often must be inhibited to prevent interference with goal-directed behaviour. Growing evidence suggests that the impact of inhibition is not limited to reduced neurocognitive processing, but also includes negative affective consequences for any associated stimuli. The link between inhibition and aversive response has primarily been studied using tasks involving attentional- or response-related inhibition of external sensory stimuli. Here we show that affective devaluation also occurs when inhibition is applied to fully-encoded stimulus representations in memory. We first replicated prior findings of increased forgetting of words whose memories were suppressed in a Think/No-think procedure (Experiment 1). Incorporating a stimulus-evaluation task within this procedure revealed that suppressing memories of words (Experiment 2) and visual objects (Experiment 3) also results in their affective devaluation. Given the critical role of memory for guiding thoughts and actions, these results suggest that the affective consequences of inhibition may occur across a far broader range of situations than previously understood.

Calculated volume and energy profiles for water exchange on t2g6 rhodium(III) and iridium(III) hexaaquaions: conclusive evidence for an Ia mechanism.

An I(a) mechanism was assigned for water exchange on the hexaaquaions Rh(OH(2))(6)(3+) and Ir(OH(2))(6)(3+) on the basis of negative Delta V(++) experimental values (-4.2 and -5.7 cm(3) mol(-1), respectively). The use of Delta V(++) as a mechanistic criterion was open to debate primarily because Delta V(++) could be affected by extension or compression of the nonparticipating ligand bond lengths on going to the transition state of an exchange process. In this paper, volume and energy profiles for two distinct water exchange mechanisms (D and I(a)) have been computed using quantum chemical calculations which include hydration effects. The activation energy for Ir(OH(2))(6)(3+) is 32.2 kJ mol(-1) in favor of the I(a) mechanism (127.9 kJ mol(-1)), as opposed to a D pathway; the value for the I(a) mechanism being close to Delta H(++) and Delta G(++) experimental values (130.5 kJ mol(-1) and 129.9 kJ mol(-1) at 298 K, respectively). Volumes of activation, computed using Connolly surfaces and for the I(a) pathway (DeltaV(++)(calc) = -3.9 and -3.5 cm(3) mol(-1), respectively, for Rh(3+) and Ir(3+)), are in agreement with the experimental values. Further, it is demonstrated for both mechanisms that the contribution to the volume of activation due to the changes in bond lengths between Ir(III) and the spectator water molecules is negligible: -1.8 for the D, and -0.9 cm(3) mol(-1) for I(a) mechanism. This finding clarifies the debate about the interpretation of Delta V(++) and unequivocally confirms the occurrence of an I(a) mechanism with retention of configuration and a small a character for both Rh(III) and Ir(III) hexaaquaions.