Do we have Independent Visual Streams for Perception and Action? a Response.

Schenk and McIntosh (2009) present the thesis that most visual behaviours, especially those of any significant complexity, are likely to involve collaboration between both visual streams. While very likely true, this statement does not contradict the perception-action model as proposed by Milner and Goodale (1995, 2006). The two visual system hypothesis implies two functionally specialized systems, and not, as Schenk and McIntosh propose, two behaviourally independent systems

Civic values of geography

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1939. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

A self-regulatory approach to understanding boredom proneness

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cognition and Emotion on 2016-11-16, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1064363We investigated the relationship between self-regulation and two types of boredom proneness (perceived lack of internal stimulation, perceived lack of external stimulation) using a variety of measures of self-regulation. These included a general measure of self-control, measures of both regulatory focus (i.e., promotion or a sensitivity to gains/non-gains vs. prevention or a sensitivity to losses/non-losses) and regulatory mode (i.e., assessment or the tendency to compare means and goals vs. locomotion or the tendency to initiate and maintain commitment to action), and measures of cognitive flexibility (i.e., a perceived sense of control and the tendency to seek alternative solutions). Results identified a unique set of factors related to each boredom proneness component. Trait self-control and prevention focus were associated with lower boredom propensity due to a lack of external stimulation. Locomotion and the tendency to seek alternatives were associated with lower boredom propensity due to a lack of internal stimulation. These findings suggest that effective goal pursuit is associated with reduced likelihood of experiencing boredom.NSERC Discovery [grant no. 261628

The neural systems for perceptual updating

In a constantly changing environment we must adapt to both abrupt and gradual changes to incoming information. Previously, we demonstrated that a distributed network (including the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex) was active when participants updated their initial representations (e.g., it's a cat) in a gradually morphing picture task (e.g., now it's a rabbit; Stöttinger et al., 2015). To shed light on whether these activations reflect the proactive decisions to update or perceptual uncertainty, we introduced two additional conditions. By presenting picture morphs twice we controlled for uncertainty in perceptual decision making. Inducing an abrupt shift in a third condition allowed us to differentiate between a proactive decision in uncertainty-driven updating and a reactive decision in surprise-based updating. We replicated our earlier result, showing the robustness of the effect. In addition, we found activation in the anterior insula (bilaterally) and the mid frontal area/ACC in all three conditions, indicative of the importance of these areas in updating of all kinds. When participants were naïve as to the identity of the second object, we found higher activations in the mid-cingulate cortex and cuneus – areas typically associated with task difficulty, in addition to higher activations in the right TPJ most likely reflecting the shift to a new perspective. Activations associated with the proactive decision to update to a new interpretation were found in a network including the dorsal ACC known to be involved in exploration and the endogenous decision to switch to a new interpretation. These findings suggest a general network commonly engaged in all types of perceptual decision making supported by additional networks associated with perceptual uncertainty or updating provoked by either proactive or reactive decision making.FWF Austrian Science Fund, Eliese Richter Program (#V480-B27)Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Discovery Grant #261628-07)Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (#NA 6999)Canadian Institute of Health Research (#219972

The interaction between retrieval and encoding processes in memory

In memory, encoding and retrieval are often conceived of as two separate processes. However, there is substantial evidence to suggest that this view is wrong—that they are instead highly interdependent processes. One recent example is from Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes (2005a), who showed that new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been deeply encoded were themselves subsequently better recognized than were new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been shallowly encoded. This paradigm, referred to as memory-for-foils, not only demonstrates a link between encoding and retrieval, but also has led to a proposal about what form this interaction is taking in this task. Jacoby et al. (2005a) proposed that people put in place a retrieval mode that leads to a reprocessing of the original encoding state, which is incidentally applied across both old and new items within the context of a recognition memory test. Such a constrained-retrieval account suggests an intimate relation between encoding and retrieval processes that allows for memories to be highly integrated. The goal of this thesis is to provide a better understanding of the generalizability and limitations of this memory-for-foils phenomenon and, ultimately, to provide more direct evidence for the interaction of these processes. Experiments 1 and 2 began by replicating the memory-for-foils phenomenon as well as an experiment by Marsh et al. (2009b) which confirmed that the phenomenon does not result simply from strength of encoding differences. Experiment 3 then substituted a deep vs shallow imagery manipulation for the levels-of-processing manipulation, demonstrating that the effect is robust and that it generalizes, also occurring with a different type of encoding. Experiment 4 extended the generalizability of the task to factual phrases. Experiment 5 then moved on to testing the encoding/retrieval interactions by once again employing the imagery encoding manipulation with an additional quality judgment in the final recognition memory test. Using the remember/know paradigm (Gardiner, 1988; Tulving, 1985) demonstrated that more highly-detailed memories were associated with foils from the test of deep items than with foils from the test of shallow items. From there, response time was used to infer processing speed in Experiment 6a, in a test of whether foils tested among deep items incur an advantage independent of the manipulation undergone by those items. When a lexical decision test replaced the final recognition test, there was no evidence of a memory advantage for “deep” foils over “shallow” foils. Finally, Experiment 6b provided compelling evidence for context-related encoding during tests of deeply encoded words, showing enhanced priming for foils presented among deeply encoded targets when participants made the same deep encoding judgments on those items as were made on the targets during study. Taken together, these findings provide support for the source-constrained retrieval hypothesis and for the idea of a retrieval mode. New information—information that we may not even be intending to remember— is influenced by how surrounding items are encoded and retrieved, as long as the surrounding items recruit a coherent mode of processing. This demonstrates a clear need to consider encoding and retrieval as highly interactive processes and to avoid conceptualizing them as entirely separate entities. This is a crucial part of increasing our understanding of the fundamental processes in memory

Revisiting unilateral neglect

Abstract Unilateral neglect, a neurological disorder in which patients fail to detect or respond to contralesional stimuli, has long been considered a failure of attentional orienting mechanisms. This review provides a selective overview of the prominent biases in spatial orienting and exploratory motor behaviour observed in these patients before considering the impact of other factors on the presentation of the disorder and how those factors might inform current neurological models of neglect. In the latter part of the review we intend to suggest that neglect is likely to be a combination of distinct but interacting impairments including biases in attentional orienting, exploratory motor behaviours and a deficit of spatial working memory. That is, we suggest that the cardinal symptom of neglect -a loss of awareness for contralesional stimuli and events -arises as a result of a combination of these impairments rather than being associated solely with the more dramatic and immediately evident biases in spatial attention

A Failure to Launch: Regulatory Modes and Boredom Proneness

Boredom is a ubiquitous human experience characterized as a state of wanting but failing to engage with the world. Individuals prone to the experience of boredom demonstrate lower levels of self-control which may be at the heart of their failures to engage in goal-directed, meaningful behaviors. Here we develop the hypothesis that distinct self-regulatory profiles, which in turn differentially influence modes of goal pursuit, are at the heart of boredom proneness. Two specific regulatory modes are addressed: Locomotion, the desire to ‘just do it,’ an action oriented mode of goal-pursuit, and Assessment, the desire to ‘do the right thing,’ an evaluative orientation toward goal pursuit. We present data from a series of seven large samples of undergraduates showing that boredom proneness is negatively correlated with Locomotion, as though getting on with things acts as a prophylactic against boredom. This ‘failure to launch’ that we suggest is prevalent in the highly boredom prone individual, could be due to an inability to appropriately discriminate value (i.e., everything is tarred with the same gray brush), an unwillingness to put in the required effort to engage, or simply a failure to get started. In contrast, boredom proneness was consistently positively correlated with the Assessment mode of self-regulation. We suggest that this association reflects a kind of rumination that hampers satisfying goal pursuit