Pixelating Familiar People in the Media: Should Masking Be Taken at Face Value?

This study questions the effectiveness of masking faces by means of pixelation on television or in newspapers. Previous studies have shown that masking just the face leads to unacceptably high recognition levels, making it likely that participants also use other cues for recognition, such as hairstyle or clothes. In the current study we investigate this possibility by means of an identification task in which participants had to identify (partially) masked images of familiar people. To demonstrate that non-facial cues become increasingly important for recognition as faces are masked more strongly, we manipulated the size of the masked area and the degree of pixelation. Confirming our expectations, increasing the size of masked area or its level of deterioration led to lower recognition rates. More importantly, also an interaction effect between the two variables emerged, showing that additional visual information partly compensates the downswing in recognition when masking becomes stronger. Although in some conditions low recognition rates were found, masking was never a hundred percent effective, making it clear that the media should approach this issue with care. Implications of our findings and future directions are considere

The affective primacy hypothesis: Affective or cognitive processing of optimally and suboptimally presented primes?

Copyright 1996 Psychologica Belgica. Author version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.The aim of the present study was to pursue the research on the affective primacy hypothesis, which claims that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing (Zajonc, 1980). In line with Murphy and Zajonc (1993) a priming paradigm was used. The present work is basically a replication of their study in which the effects of affective priming under very brief (suboptimal - 4 ms) and longer (optimal - 1000 ms) exposure durations were compared, but using two additional exposure durations: 30 ms and 100 ms. Like Murphy and Zajonc, facial expressions were used as affective primes in addition to pictures which portrayed scenes and situations of everyday life. These were obtained in a preliminary study. Contrary to Murphy and Zajonc's results, the affective primes only produced significant shifts in subjects' preferential judgements of novel stimuli at longer exposure durations. At suboptimal exposures the novel stimuli were not judged differentially when primed with positive or negative affect. This was true for both facial expressions and pictures. Facial expressions influenced the liking ratings of the ideographs only at exposure durations of 30 ms and longer; pictures not until they were exposed for at least 100 ms. Thus, pictures depicting daily events require longer exposure durations than facial expressions in order to elicit an affective reaction. These results however do not provide any clear-cut evidence in support of the affective primacy hypothesis. Instead, they seem to suggest that affective stimuli do not evoke an affective reaction without additional cognitive processing, a conclusion that is supported by LeDoux’s theory of affective-cognitive interaction in the brain

The Role of Working Memory in a Double Span Task

Copyright 1999 Psychologica Belgica. Author version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.This paper introduces a double span task to activate all three components of A. D. Baddeley and G. J. Hitch's (1974) working memory model simultaneously. 40 Ss were presented with sequences of words or pictures which appeared one by one at a different, randomly chosen location on a 4 × 4 grid. Subsequently they were asked for the serial recall of content, location or both. A dual task paradigm was used to investigate the effects of articulatory suppression, visuo-spatial tapping and a central executive suppression task on the three types of recall. In addition to classical interference effects of verbal and visuo-spatial suppression on recall of content and location respectively, a triple dissociation between all three working memory subsystems was found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved

Do working-memory executive components mediate the effects of age on strategy selection or on strategy execution? Insights from arithmetic problem solving

International audienceYounger and older adults performed an inequality verification task (7+6 < 15, Yes/No?) in a control condition and in a dual-task condition where they simultaneously performed an executive-component task. Arithmetic-problem characteristics were manipulated in order to test strategy selection (i.e., choice of appropriate strategies in order to improve performance) and strategy execution (i.e., performance of the cognitive processes involved in each strategy). Results revealed that strategy selection changes with age: Older adults mainly selected one type of strategies in contrast to younger adults who used several types of strategies. These age-related changes were similar in the control and dual-task conditions. Strategy execution also changed with age, as shown by larger age-related differences on hardest problems. These age-related changes were larger in the dual-task condition, compared to the control condition. This impact of executive components as mediator of age-related changes depended on general age-related slowing. We discuss these findings in order to further understand the effects of age on arithmetic performance

Response selection involves executive control: evidence from the selective interference paradigm

In the present study, we investigated whether response selection involves executive control, using the selective interference paradigm within Baddeley's (1986) working memory framework. The interference from response selection was estimated by comparing the patterns of dual-task interference of simple and choice RT tasks with those of a number of established working memory tasks. In Experiment 1, we compared impairment of forward and backward verbal serial recall from the RT tasks and articulatory suppression. Experiment 2 measured the adverse effects of the RT tasks and matrix tapping on forward and backward visuospatial serial recall. Finally, in Experiment 3, we examined the impairment from the RT tasks with two measures of executive control-namely, letter and category fluency. Altogether, the three experiments demonstrated that response selection interferes with executive control and that the interference is not produced at the level of working memory's slave systems, which supports the assumption of executive involvement in response selection. Copyright 2005 Psychonomic Society, Inc

Verbal working memory is involved in associative word learning unless visual codes are available

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Visuo-spatial processing in Parkinson's disease: evidence for diminished visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive resources

A dual-task study compared the visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive components of working memory as potential cognitive mechanisms of visuo-spatial dysfunction in Parkinson's disease. Mildly to moderately affected Parkinsonian patients (n=15) and controls (n=15) performed the Corsi blocks task concurrently with tasks designed to load on the visuo-spatial sketch pad (spatial tapping) or the central executive (random interval repetition). Patients performed more poorly in both concurrent task conditions, implicating a reduction in both visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive resources. The impact of the concurrent tasks varied with disease severity, with the central executive deficit prominent at disease onset, but the visuo-spatial sketch pad deficit becoming apparent only in the moderate stages of the illness. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved