Does changing distractor environments eliminate spatiomotor biases?

This research explored how sensitive spatiomotor biases, or location-response integration effects, are to differences between visual environments. According to feature integration and episodic retrieval theories, a target’s location and response are integrated to form an event representation in memory. A repetition of the prior location or target response retrieves the previously associated response or location, respectively. This leads to interference or slower responding when the retrieved event information mismatches the current event. In the four experiments here, to generate these spatiomotor biases, participants discriminated serially presented target stimuli that randomly repeated or changed location. Crucially, the visual environment of the target changed from moment-to-moment by either adding or removing distractors and placeholders. Spatiomotor biases were strong and robust across all environmental changes, with minimal to no effect of the environment on them. Thus, the spatiomotor biases generalize very well beyond the environments in which they are generated, showing that the representation of a target location and response event is not necessarily integrated with the representation of the global visual environment

Embodied Seeing: The Space Near the Hands

Recent research has revealed a special roleof the hands inguiding vision. Weprocess differently elements in the space around our hands and objects that are near the targetof a hand movement. In this chapterwe reviewseveral different but interrelated domains of research that have approached questions about the role of the hands fromsomewhat distinct perspectives. We organize our discussion by considering changes in vision during three different phases of a hand movement: (1) when a hand movement is not being contemplated yet is possible in the future, (2) when a handmovement is being planned or produced, and (3) after a hand movement has been completed. Consideration of these phases together reveals important connections between the different areas of research and may lead to enhanced understanding of the underlying processes. © 2015 Elsevier Inc.11Nssciscopu

Associations Among Attentional State, Retrieval Quality, and Mnemonic Discrimination

Memory specificity is shown when participants reject lures that are similar to studied objects. Lure rejections may reflect hippocampal pattern separation that encodes objects distinctively. However, lure features shared with studied objects may evoke pattern completion of varying quality. This was shown when self-reported attention during study promoted lure rejections and false alarms. We used an experimental and individual differences approach to examine the roles of attentive encoding and retrieval quality in lure classifications. An object-based mnemonic discrimination task included thought probes during study and subjective retrieval reports after recognition responses. On-task reports reflecting attentive encoding were associated with lure rejections and false alarms within-and between-subjects. Additionally, accurate lure and target classifications were more strongly associated with subjective recollection following on- than off-task reports. Collectively, these results suggest that attention during study was associated with recollection of criterial features that differentiated existing memories from perceptual inputs

Action history influences eye movements

Recent research has revealed that simple actions can have a profound effect on subsequent perception–people are faster to find a target that shares features with a previously acted on object even when those features are irrelevant to their task (the action effect). However, the majority of the evidence for this interaction between action and perception has come from manual response data. Therefore, it is unknown whether action affects early visual search processes, if it modulates post-attentional-selection processes, or both. To investigate this, we tracked participants’ spontaneous eye movements as they performed an action effect task. In two experiments we found that participants looked more quickly to the colour of an object they had previously acted on, compared to if they had viewed but not acted on the object, showing that action influenced early visual search processes. Additionally, there was evidence for post-selection effects as well. The results suggest that prior action affects both pre-selection and post-selection processes–spontaneously guiding attention to, and maintaining it on, objects that were previously important to the observer.11Nssciscopu

Self-Reported Attention During Changes is Associated with Episodic Memory Updating

Everyday changes require updating episodic memories to remember recent information. Attending to changes can promote updating but can also lead to interference. The present study used an experimental and individual differences approach to characterize associations between attention to original and changed features, and memory updating. Participants studied pairs with responses that changed from the first (A-B) to second (A-D) presentation and reported their attention after each pair. Participants then completed a test of both responses and if responses changed. Attention varied across participants and decreased over time. On-task reports after A-D pairs, signaling attention, were associated with recall of D responses when participants were on task during B responses in between- and within-subject analyses, and off task during B responses only in within-subject analysis. These and other associations herein are compatible with views proposing that recent memories benefit from integrating or differentiating the past and present

Individual Differences in Mnemonic Discrimination: The Roles of Self-Reported Encoding and Retrieval Quality

Memory specificity is shown in mnemonic discrimination tasks when participants reject lures that are similar to studied objects. Lure rejections may reflect hippocampal pattern separation that encodes objects distinctively, but lure features may also evoke pattern completion that undermines distinctive encoding. This was shown when self-reported encoding promoted both lure rejections and false alarms. Here, we used an experimental and individual differences approach to examine the roles of encoding and retrieval quality interactions in lure classifications. An object recognition task included thought probes during study and retrieval reports after object classifications. On-task reports were associated with lure rejections and false alarms within-subjects as well as bias-corrected lure discrimination and traditional recognition scores between-subjects. Accurate lure and target classifications were more strongly associated with recollection-based retrievals following on- than off-task reports. These results suggest that deeper encoding promoted recollection of criterial features that supported lure classifications by differentiating memories from perceptions

Eliminating the Low Prevalence Effect in Visual Search with a Remarkably Simple Strategy

The low prevalence effect in visual search occurs when rare targets are missed at a disproportionately high rate. This effect has enormous significance in health and public safety and has proven resistant to intervention. In three experiments (Ns = 41, 40, 44), we document a dramatic reduction of the effect using a simple cognitive strategy requiring no training. Instead of asking participants to search for the presence or absence of a target, as is typically done in visual search tasks, we asked participants to engage in “similarity search” – to identify the display element most similar to a target on every trial, regardless of whether a target is present. Under normal search instructions, we observed strong low prevalence effects. Using similarity search, we failed to detect the low prevalence effect under identical visual conditions across three experiments