746 research outputs found

    A Q-methodology study of patients' subjective experiences of TIA

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    Background. An expanding body of research has focused on a range of consequences of TIA. However, no work has been conducted on the patient’s subjective experience of TIA. Aim. To capture patients’ first-hand experiences of TIA. Method. Using Q-methodology which employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches, 39 statements relating to the clinical, physical, affective, and psychological impact of TIA were distilled from the literature and from patient narratives. Consistent with conventional Q-methodology, a purposive sample of twentythree post-TIA patients sorted these statements into a normally-distributed 39-cell grid, according to the extent to which each represented their experience of TIA. Results. Casewise factoranalysis was conducted on the sorted statements. Eight factors emerged which were labelled: lack of knowledge/awareness of TIA; life impact; anxiety; interpersonal impact; depression; physical consequences; cognitive avoidance/denial; constructive optimism. Conclusions. Five of the eight factors confirmed existing research on the impact of TIA, but three new issues emerged: deep-seated anxiety, denial and constructive optimism. The emerging perspectives highlight areas to target in the management of TIA and could inform health education messages, patient information, individualised caremanagement, and enhancement of coping strategies. With development, the findings could be used as a basis for psychometric risk assessment of TIA patients

    Aging enhances cognitive biases to friends but not the self

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    This article is dedicated to the memory of G.W.H. (1954–2016). This work was supported by grants from a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award (Pepe: 323883) (WT 106164MA) to G.W.H., the National Science Foundation (31371017) to J.S., and to both authors from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K013424/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

    The self survives extinction:Self-association biases attention in patients with visual extinction

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    People show biases to self-related information on a range of tasks. Key but controversial questions are whether self-related information is processed without attention, and whether self-related information determines what is attended. We examined this using patients showing visual extinction. We had patients associated shapes with themselves or their best friend prior to carrying out a shape identification task. We demonstrate that extinction was modulated by whether patients associated stimuli with themselves or their best friend. Notably, patients were biased to identify their own shape relative to the shape associated with their friend, when the two shapes were placed in competition. This occurred even when the self-associated shape fell in the contralesional field. The data indicate that self-relatedness can be computed pre-attentively and can cue attention to regions of space that would otherwise be ignored by neuropsychological patients.</p

    Explicit and Implicit Task Switching between Facial Attributes

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    We examined task switching to different attributes of faces gender emotion occupation when an irrelevant aspect of the face could also change e g the facial emotion could change when participants alternated every second trial between gender and occupation decisions The change in the irrelevant attribute either coincided with a repetition or a switch in the explicit task The results indicated disruptive effects of changing the facial emotion and gender of the face when it was irrelevant to the main task but no effect of changing the occupation of the person The data are consistent with the implicit processing of facial emotion and gender but not of higher-order semantic aspects of faces the person s occupation unless those aspects are task-relevan

    Effects of broken affordance on visual extinction

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    Previous studies have shown that visual extinction can be reduced if two objects are positioned to afford an action. Here we tested if this affordance effect was disrupted by breaking the affordance – if one of the objects actively used in the action had a broken handle. We assessed the effects of broken affordance on recovery from extinction in eight patients with right hemisphere lesions and left-sided extinction. Patients viewed object pairs that were or were not commonly used together and that were positioned for left- or right-hand actions. In the unrelated pair conditions, either two tools or two objects were presented. In line with previous research (e.g., Riddoch et al., 2006), extinction was reduced when action-related object pairs and when unrelated tool pairs were presented compared to unrelated object pairs. There was no significant difference in recovery rate between action-related (object-tool) and unrelated tool-tool pairs. In addition, performance with action-related objects decreased when the tool appeared on the ipsilesional side compared to when it was on the contralesional side, but only when the tool handle was intact. There were minimal effects of breaking the handle of an object rather than a tool, and there was no effect of breaking the handle on either tools or objects on single item trials. The data suggest that breaking the handle of a tool lessens the degree to which it captures attention, with this attentional capture being strongest when the tool appears on the ipsilesional side. The capture of attention by the ipsilesional item then reduces the chance of detecting the contralesional stimulus. This attentional capture effect is mediated by the affordance to the intact tool

    The Relationship between Anxiety and Task Switching Ability

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    This study examined task switching ability as a function of anxiety Participants with mild anxiety switched between emotion and age classification among faces There were few important results i Individuals with anxiety categorized facial emotion faster than facial age ii There was a larger switch cost for age than the emotion categorization iii Anxiety was a significant predictor of task switch costs We discussed why anxious individuals showed a deficit in cognitive control of facial attribute

    A psychophysical investigation into the preview benefit in visual search

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    In preview search, half of the distracters are presented ahead of the remaining distracters and the target. Search under these conditions is more efficient than when all the items appear together (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). We investigated the mechanisms contributing to this preview benefit using an orientation discrimination task. In a display of vertical Gabors (all equidistant from fixation) one Gabor (chosen at random) was tilted (left or right). When half the non-tilted Gabors were previewed, thresholds increased less with the number of Gabors. In a further experiment, orientation noise was added to some of the Gabors. When all Gabors were presented simultaneously, orientation thresholds for the target increased. The effects of noise on thresholds was reduced, however, when the noisy Gabors were presented as a preview. Furthermore, there was less effect of noise in the preview condition than when observers were cued to a subset of Gabors (with a cue presented prior to the Gabors, adjacent to their positions). Visual information can be effectively excluded from the previewed locations to a greater degree than when attention is directed to a subset of display items. The implications for understanding the mechanisms involved in preview search are discussed

    The left intraparietal sulcus modulates the selection of low salient stimuli

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    Neuropsychological and functional imaging studies have suggested a general right hemisphere advantage for processing global visual information and a left hemisphere advantage for processing local information. In contrast, a recent transcranial magnetic stimulation study [Mevorach, C., Humphreys, G. W., & Shalev, L. Opposite biases in salience-based selection for the left and right posterior parietal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 9, 740-742, 2006b] demonstrated that functional lateralization of selection in the parietal cortices on the basis of the relative salience of stimuli might provide an alternative explanation for previous results. In the present study, we applied a whole-brain analysis of the functional magnetic resonance signal when participants responded to either the local or the global levels of hierarchical figures. The task (respond to local or global) was crossed with the saliency of the target level (local salient, global salient) to provide, for the first time, a direct contrast between brain activation related to the stimulus level and that related to relative saliency. We found evidence for lateralization of salience-based selection but not for selection based on the level of processing. Activation along the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) was found when a low saliency stimulus had to be selected irrespective of its level. A control task showed that this was not simply an effect of task difficulty. The data suggest a specific role for regions along the left IPS in salience-based selection, supporting the argument that previous reports of lateralized responses to local and global stimuli were contaminated by effects of saliency

    Expanding and retracting from the self : Gains and costs in switching self-associations

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    This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China Project 31371017 and by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J001597/1, U.K.) and the European Research Council (Pepe Grant 323883).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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