Two experiments demonstrated letter-context effects that cannot easily be accounted for by postperceptual theories based on structural redundancy, iigural goodness, or memory advantage. In Experiment 1, subjects identified the color of a letter fragment more accurately in letter than in nonletter contexts. In Experiment 2, subjects identified the feature presented in a precued color more accurately in letters than in nonletters. We argue that these effects result from topdown perceptual processing.

This paper introduced the letter insertion and letter deletion tasks. In these tasks participants are presented with letter strings and are instructed to insert or delete a letter to create a word. Experiment 1 demonstrated facilitation priming and established these tasks as sensitive indirect measures of memory. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated interference priming effects. In Experiment 4 the process dissociation paradigm was applied to investigate the contributions of automatic and consciously controlled processes to performance on the letter insertion task. (...) In addition, performance in the exclusion condition demonstrated an interference effect caused by automatic retrieval. Potential applications for the letter insertion and letter deletion tasks are discussed. (shrink)

Reingold and MerikleÕs (1988, 1990) critique of the classic dissociation paradigm identified several issues as inherent problems that severely undermine the utility of this paradigm. Erdelyi (2004) extending his prior analysis (Erdelyi, 1985, 1986) points out several additional factors that may complicate the interpretation of empirically obtained dissociations. The goal of the present manuscript is to further discuss some of these commonly neglected interpretive difficulties. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In two experiments during the study phase participants read unrelated context-target word pairs presented below a line drawing of the context word. During test the strong cue group was presented with context words, line drawings, and stems of target words. The line drawings were not presented in the weak cue group. Stems were paired with the same context words as at study , paired with different context words , or corresponded to unstudied words . In Experiment 1 participants were instructed (...) to complete stems with the first word that came to mind . The priming effect for new associations was twice as large in the strong cue group. In Experiment 2 the process dissociation procedure was applied and participants completed stems with studied words or with unstudied words . Results indicated that consciously controlled and automatic retrieval processes mediated the associative effect in both groups. (shrink)

Whenever knowledge of the possible interpretation or conceptualization of some- thing helps in perceiving that thing, we say the processing is conceptually driven. That is, the process starts with conceptualization of what might be present and then looks for confirming evidence, biasing the processing mechanisms to give the expected result... Conceptually driven processing and data-driven processing almost always occur together, with each direction of processing contributing something to the total analysis. (Lindsay and Norman 1977, p. 13).

Salience of Peripheral 2 Abstract The three experiments reported document a slowing of peripheral target acquisition associated with the presence of a gaze-contingent window. This window effect was shown for displays using either moving video or still images. The window effect was similar across a resolutiondefined window condition and a luminance-defined window condition suggesting that peripheral image degradation is not a prerequisite of this effect. The window effect was also unaffected by the type of window boundary used (sharp or blended). (...) These results are interpreted in terms of an attentional bias resulting in a reduced saliency of peripheral targets due to increased competition from items within the window. We discuss the implications of the window effect for investigating the perceptual processes involved in natural scenes and for gaze-contingent multiresolutional displays (GCMRDs) that have been proposed to solve the processing and bandwidth bottleneck in many single-user displays, by dynamically placing high-resolution in a window at the center of gaze, with lower resolution everywhere else. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Graf and Komatsu (1994) argued that the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) is limited in its ability to separate and measure conscious and unconscious forms of memory and so should be "handIed with caution". Given that the study of unconscious influences has always posed a difficult problem for memory researchers, we agree with the general emphasis on caution. In this paper, we too advocate caution, especially as it applies to the use of indirect tests, assessing Graf (...) and Komatsu’s critique, and using the process dissociation procedure. We address the substantive issues raised by Graf and Komatsu and also point out the errors, both factual and logical, in their paper. Any method proposing to provide separate measures of conscious and unconscious influences requires judicious use and a careful examination of its underlying assumptions. The assumptions underlying the process dissociation framework are supported by a large number of experiments spanning a diverse range of.. (shrink)

The present study employed the gaze-contingent window paradigm to investigate parafoveal and peripheral cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity in a triple-conjunction visual search task. In the cueing conditions, the information shown outside the gaze-contingent window was restricted to the feature or feature pair shared between the target and a particular distractor type. In the masking conditions, no stimulus features were shown outside the window. Significant cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity were observed for saccades directed at items (...) within the window, where all features were visible across experimental conditions. Cueing a particular feature or feature pair biased saccadic selectivity towards this feature or feature pair, while masking generally reduced saccadic selectivity. These findings support the concept of visual guidance being a preattentive process that operates in parallel across the display. © 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. (shrink)

A critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without affecting the processing of the next word. We tested this prediction by monitoring participants’ eye movements while they read sentences in which a target word was presented either normally or altered. In the critical condition, the contrast between the target word (...) and the background was substantially reduced. Such a reduction in stimulus quality is typically assumed to have an impact that is largely confined to a very early stage of word recognition. Results were consistent with the E-Z Reader model: This faint presentation had a robust influence on the duration of fixations on the target word without substantially altering the processing of the next word. (shrink)

Several gaze contingent studies that used a fixed delay between physical eye movements and a display change documented a dip in the fixation duration distributions (e.g., Blanchard et al. 1984; McConkie et al. 1985; van Diepen et al. 1995). In a study by van Diepen et al. (1995), a moving mask paradigm was employed in which subjects searched line drawings of everyday scenes for non-objects. The appearance of the mask was delayed relative to the end of a saccade (beginning of (...) fixation) by 17, 46, 76 or 121 msec. All fixation duration distributions in the masking conditions exhibited a dip with longer masking delays resulting in the dip occurring at longer fixation durations. In contrast, a no-mask condition did not produce a dip. Similar effects in reading were reported by Blanchard et al. (1984), and McConkie et al. (1985). In both these studies the text was.. (shrink)

In 5 experiments, participants read text that was briefly replaced by a transient image for 33 ms at random intervals. A decrease in saccadic frequency, referred to as saccadic inhibition, occurred as early as 60 –70 ms following the onset of abrupt changes in visual input. It was demonstrated that the saccadic inhibition was influenced by the saliency of the visual event (Experiment 3) and was not produced in response to abrupt but irrelevant auditory stimuli (Experiment 1). Display changes restricted (...) to an area either inside or outside the perceptual span required for normal reading produced strong saccadic inhibition (Experiment 2). Finally, Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated higher level cognitive or attentional modulation of the saccadic inhibition effect. (shrink)

& The present study investigated saccadic inhibition in both voluntary and stimulus-elicited saccades. Two experiments examined saccadic inhibition caused by an irrelevant flash occurring subsequent to target onset. In each trial, participants were required to perform a single saccade following the presentation of a black target on a gray background, 48 to the left or to the right of screen center. In some trials (flash trials), after a variable delay, a 33-msec flash was displayed at the top and bottom third (...) of the monitor (these regions turned white). In all experimental conditions, histograms of flash-to-saccade latencies documented a decrease in saccadic frequency, forming a dip, time-locked to the flash and occurring as early as 60–70 msec following its onset. The fast latency of this effect strongly suggests a low-level, reflex-like, oculomotor effect, which was referred to as saccadic inhibition. A novel procedure was developed to allow comparisons of saccadic inhibition even across conditions, which in the absence of a flash (no-. (shrink)

It is argued here that a critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without producing any processing effect on the next word. This prediction is explained and illustrated.

There are hundreds of indications leading us to conclude that at every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions, unaccompanied by awareness or reflection; that is, of alterations in the soul itself, of which we are unaware because the impressions are either too minute or too numerous, or else too unvarying, so that they are not sufficiently distinctive on their own. But when they are combined with others they do nevertheless have their effect and make themselves felt, at (...) least confusedly, within the whole. (Leibniz, 1704/1981, p. 53). (shrink)

Three experiments introduced a recognition memory paradigm designed to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. At study, in Experiments 1A and 2, words were either generated or read , while modality of presentation was manipulated in Experiment 1B. Word pairs were presented during test trials, and participants indicated if they contained an old word by responding “remember”, “know” or “new” in Experiments 1A and 1B, and by responding “strong no”, “weak no”, “weak yes”, or “strong yes” in Experiment 2. Participants (...) were then required to decide which of the 2 words was old. We demonstrated that the proportion measures used in the Remember Know paradigm substantially underestimated the influence of generation on familiarity resulting in an artificial dissociation between indices of knowing and remembering . We also found a qualitatively different pattern of forced-choice recognition performance as a function of claimed awareness. (shrink)

A modified Remember/Know paradigm was used to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. Levels of processing was manipulated at study. Word pairs were presented during test trials, and participants were instructed to respond “remember” if they recollected one of the two words, “know” if the word was familiar in the absence of recollection, or “new” if they judged both words to be new. Participants were then required to indicate which of the 2 words was old . With the standard RK (...) proportions, deeper processing at study increased remember proportions and decreased know proportions, but this dissociation was not shown with the 2AFC proportion correct measure which instead demonstrated robust LOP effects for both remember and know trials, suggesting that the know proportion measure severely distorts the nature of LOP effects on familiarity. (shrink)

The present study used eye tracking methodology to examine rereading benefits for spatially transformed text. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either applying the same type of transformation to the word during the first and second presentations , or employing two different types of transformations across the two presentations of the word . Perceptual specificity effects were demonstrated such that fixation (...) times for the second presentation of the target word were shorter for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition. Moreover, we demonstrated an additional perceptually non-specific effect such that second reading fixation times were shorter for the incongruent condition relative to a baseline condition that employed a normal typography during the first presentation and a transformation during the second presentation. Both of these effects were similar in magnitude for high and low frequency words, and both effects persisted across a 1 week lag between the first and second readings. We discuss the present findings in the context of the distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, and the distinction between perceptually versus conceptually driven processing. (shrink)

In two experiments, participants solved anagram problems while their eye movements were monitored. Each problem consisted of a circular array of five letters: a scrambled four-letter solution word containing three consonants and one vowel, and an additional randomly-placed distractor consonant. Viewing times on the distractor consonant compared to the solution consonants provided an online measure of knowledge of the solution. Viewing times on the distractor consonant and the solution consonants were indistinguishable early in the trial. In contrast, several seconds prior (...) to the response, viewing times on the distractor consonant decreased in a gradual manner compared to viewing times on the solution consonants. Importantly, this pattern was obtained across both trials in which participants reported the subjective experience of insight and trials in which they did not. These findings are consistent with the availability of partial knowledge of the solution prior to such information being accessible to subjective phenomenal awareness. (shrink)

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

Lying is an important moral phenomenon that most people are affected by on a daily basis—be it in personal relationships, in political debates, or in the form of fake news. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what actually constitutes a lie. According to the traditional definition of lying, a person lies if they explicitly express something they believe to be false. Consequently, it is often assumed that people cannot lie by more indirectly communicating believed‐false claims, for instance by merely conversationally (...) implicating them. In this paper, we subject this claim to an empirical test. In a preregistered study of 300 participants, we investigate how people judge cases of implicit deceptions that would usually be excluded by the traditional definition of lying (i.e., conversational implicatures, presuppositions, and nonverbal actions). Our results show that people do in fact consider it possible to lie by indirect means, suggesting that people have a broader concept of lying than is usually assumed. Moreover, our findings indicate that lie judgments are closely tied to the extent to which agents are perceived as having committed themselves to the believed‐false claims they have communicated. We discuss the implications of our results for the traditional definition of lying and propose a new commitment‐based definition of lying that can account for the findings of our experiment. (shrink)

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in people’s concept of lying with regard to the question of whether lying requires an agent to _say_ something they believe to be false. While prominent philosophical views maintain that lying entails that a person explicitly expresses a believed-false claim, recent research suggests that people’s concept of lying might also include certain kinds of deception that are communicated more indirectly. An important drawback of previous empirical work on this topic is that only few studies (...) have investigated people’s concept of lying in non-Western samples. In the present study, we compare people’s intuitions about lying with indirect deceptions (i.e., presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and non-verbal actions) in a sample of _N_ = 255 participants from Russia and _N_ = 300 participants from the United Kingdom. Our findings show a strong degree of similarity between lie ratings of participants from Russia and the United Kingdom, with both samples holding it possible for agents to lie with deceptive statements and actions that do not involve the agent _saying_ something they believe to be false. (shrink)

The question of how we apply knowledge from biomedical science to medical and public health practice has been the subject of heated debates about generalizability and related concepts, such as applicability and inductive inference. In this essay, I interpret the term from the perspective of two causal models: determinism and indeterminism. I suggest that theories of generalizability can be formulated on the basis of both models and take the form of testable but unverifiable hypotheses, an attribute that is common to (...) all scientific theories. Nonetheless, there is one noteworthy difference between the two models: determinism allows one to rationalize a decision to treat a certain kind of patient but only indirectly a decision to treat any particular patient, whereas indeterminism accommodates both types of decisions. (shrink)

Judges are typically tasked to consider sentencing benefits but not costs. Previous research finds that both laypeople and prosecutors discount the costs of incarceration when forming sentencing attitudes, raising important questions about whether professional judges show the same bias during sentencing. To test this, we used a vignette-based experiment in which Minnesota state judges reviewed a case summary about an aggravated robbery and imposed a hypothetical sentence. Using random assignment, half the participants received additional information about plausible negative consequences of (...) incarceration. As predicted, our results revealed a mitigating effect of cost exposure on prison sentence term lengths. Critically, these findings support the conclusion that policies that increase transparency in sentencing costs could reduce sentence lengths, which has important economic and social ramifications. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to examine the notion of obligations to future generations, a notion that finds increasing use in discussions of social policies and programs, particularly as concerns population distribution and control and environment control. Thus, it may be claimed, the solution of problems in these areas is not merely a matter of enhancing our own good, improving our own conditions of life, but is also a matter of discharging an obligation to future generations.

Standard game theory cannot explain the selection of payoff-dominant outcomes that are best for all players in common-interest games. Theories of team reasoning can explain why such mutualistic cooperation is rational. They propose that teams can be agents and that individuals in teams can adopt a distinctive mode of reasoning that enables them to do their part in achieving Pareto-dominant outcomes. We show that it can be rational to play payoff-dominant outcomes, given that an agent group identifies. We compare team (...) reasoning to other theories that have been proposed to explain how people can achieve payoff-dominant outcomes, especially with respect to rationality. Some authors have hoped that it would be possible to develop an argument that it is rational to group identify. We identify some large—probably insuperable—problems with this project and sketch some more promising approaches, whereby the normativity of group identification rests on morality. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behavior in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

In this paper I hope to show that a conception of human rights requires a view of the social ideal and the good life, and requires a view of the nature of human community. But what I say in favor of these points hardly amounts to a demonstration. Instead I try to exhibit how we think and talk about rights in general, and what the presuppositions of such thought and talk are. Throughout, I emphasize the pragmatic side of rights-discourse and (...) I try to establish some of the contexts in which such discourse can be significantly employed. Much of what I say is motivated by the consideration that an historically important factor in the generation of various rights, their acknowledgement and implementation, and their extension to increasingly larger segments of the population, has been the claims put forward and the demands made by individuals and groups against individuals and groups. This factor constitutes a suggestive clue for the development of a theory of rights. The treatment here, however, is largely programmatic and fragmentary. The space allotted does not permit more. Moreover, I lead up to—but do not go into—the social ideal and the human community. The title of this essay indicates its limited scope. The above points are, of course, hardly novel; many older writers laid great stress upon them. But of late they have not received the attention that they in my view deserve. What does it mean for someone to maintain a conception of human rights? How is this conception given any concrete content? The answers to these questions, I believe, ultimately lead to a consideration of social ideals and the human community. What follows is meant to stimulate new thinking on these old-fashioned topics. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behaviour in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)