Conservation of Angular-Momentum in Thermomagnetic Torque Experiments

Journals published by the American Physical Society can be found at http://publish.aps.org

Sensitivity to orientation is not unique to social attention cueing

Abstract: It is well-established that faces and bodies cue observers’ visuospatial attention; for example, target items are found faster when their location is cued by the directionality of a task-irrelevant face or body. Previous results suggest that these cueing effects are greatly reduced when the orientation of the task-irrelevant stimulus is inverted. It remains unclear, however, whether sensitivity to orientation is a unique hallmark of “social” attention cueing or a more general phenomenon. In the present study, we sought to determine whether the cueing effects produced by common objects (power drills, desk lamps, desk fans, cameras, bicycles, and cars) are also attenuated by inversion. When cueing stimuli were shown upright, all six object classes produced highly significant cueing effects. When shown upside-down, however, the results were mixed. Some of the cueing effects (e.g., those induced by bicycles and cameras) behaved liked faces and bodies: they were greatly reduced by orientation inversion. However, other cueing effects (e.g., those induced by cars and power drills) were insensitive to orientation: upright and inverted exemplars produced significant cueing effects of comparable strength. We speculate that (i) cueing effects depend on the rapid identification of stimulus directionality, and (ii) some cueing effects are sensitive to orientation because upright exemplars of those categories afford faster processing of directionality, than inverted exemplars. Contrary to the view that attenuation-by-inversion is a unique hallmark of social attention, our findings indicate that some non-social cueing effects also exhibit sensitivity to orientation

Objects that direct visuospatial attention produce the search advantage for facing dyads

When hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction, pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster in visual search tasks than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back. Two rival explanations have been advanced to explain this search advantage for facing dyads. According to one account, the search advantage reflects the fact that front-to-front targets engage domain-specific social interaction processing that helps stimuli compete more effectively for limited attentional resources. Another view is that the effect is a by-product of the ability of individual heads and bodies to direct observers’ visuospatial attention. Here, we describe a two-part investigation that sought to test these accounts. First, we found that it is possible to replicate the search advantage with non-social objects. Next, we employed a cueing paradigm to investigate whether it is the ability of individual items to direct observers’ visuospatial attention that determines if an object category produces the search advantage for facing dyads. We found that the strength of the cueing effect produced by an object category correlated closely with the strength of the search advantage produced by that object category. Taken together, these results provide strong support for the directional cueing account

Searching for people: non-facing distractor pairs hinder the visual search of social scenes more than facing distractor pairs

There is growing interest in the visual and attentional processes recruited when human observers view social scenes containing multiple people. Findings from visual search paradigms have helped shape this emerging literature. Previous research has established that, when hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back. Here, we describe a second, closely-related effect with important theoretical implications. When searching for a pair of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), target dyads are found faster when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged front-to-front, than when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged back-to-back. This distractor arrangement effect was also obtained with target and distractor pairs constructed from arrows and types of common objects that cue visuospatial attention. These findings argue against the view that pairs of people arranged front-to-front capture exogenous attention due to a domain-specific orienting mechanism. Rather, it appears that salient direction cues (e.g., gaze direction, body orientation, arrows) hamper systematic search and impede efficient interpretation, when distractor pairs are arranged back-to-back

Objects that direct visuospatial attention produce the search advantage for facing dyads

When hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction, pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster in visual search tasks than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back. Two rival explanations have been advanced to explain this search advantage for facing dyads. According to one account, the search advantage reflects the fact that front-to-front targets engage domain-specific social interaction processing that helps stimuli compete more effectively for limited attentional resources. Another view is that the effect is a by-product of the ability of individual heads and bodies to direct observers’ visuospatial attention. Here, we describe a two-part investigation that sought to test these accounts. First, we found that it is possible to replicate the search advantage with non-social objects. Next, we employed a cueing paradigm to investigate whether it is the ability of individual items to direct observers’ visuospatial attention that determines if an object category produces the search advantage for facing dyads. We found that the strength of the cueing effect produced by an object category correlated closely with the strength of the search advantage produced by that object category. Taken together, these results provide strong support for the directional cueing account

Kostenguenstige Ertuechtigung bestehender einstufiger Tropfkoerper-Klaeranlagen durch eine zusaetzliche kaskadierte Belebungsstufe Gemeinsamer Abschlussbericht

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F03B365 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung, Berlin (Germany)DEGerman