The last decade has seen great progress in the study of the nature of crossmodal links in exogenous and endogenous spatial attention . Exogenous spatial cuing studies of human crossmodal attention and multisensory integration. In C. Spence, & J. Driver , Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.], for a recent review). A growing body of research now highlights the existence of robust crossmodal links between auditory, visual, and tactile spatial attention. However, until recently, studies of (...) exogenous and endogenous attention have proceeded relatively independently. In daily life, however, these two forms of attentional orienting continuously compete for the control of our attentional resources, and ultimately, our awareness. It is therefore critical to try and understand how exogenous and endogenous attention interact in both the unimodal context of the laboratory and the multisensory contexts that are more representative of everyday life. To date, progress in understanding the interaction between these two forms of orienting has primarily come from unimodal studies of visual attention. We therefore start by summarizing what has been learned from this large body of empirical research, before going on to review more recent studies that have started to investigate the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting in a multisensory setting. We also discuss the evidence suggesting that exogenous spatial orienting is not truly automatic, at least when assessed in a crossmodal context. Several possible models describing the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting are outlined and then evaluated in terms of the extant data. (shrink)

While some studies suggest cultural differences in visual processing, others do not, possibly because the complexity of their tasks draws upon high-level factors that could obscure such effects. To control for this, we examined cultural differences in visual search for geometric figures, a relatively simple task for which the underlying mechanisms are reasonably well known. We replicated earlier results showing that North Americans had a reliable search asymmetry for line length: Search for long among short lines was faster than vice (...) versa. In contrast, Japanese participants showed no asymmetry. This difference did not appear to be affected by stimulus density. Other kinds of stimuli resulted in other patterns of asymmetry differences, suggesting that these are not due to factors such as analytic/holistic processing but are based instead on the target-detection process. In particular, our results indicate that at least some cultural differences reflect different ways of processing early-level features, possibly in response to environmental factors. (shrink)

The general problem of visual search can be shown to be computationally intractable in a formal, complexity-theoretic sense, yet visual search is extensively involved in everyday perception, and biological systems manage to perform it remarkably well. Complexity level analysis may resolve this contradiction. Visual search can be reshaped into tractability through approximations and by optimizing the resources devoted to visual processing. Architectural constraints can be derived using the minimum cost principle to rule out a large class of potential solutions. The (...) evidence speaks strongly against bottom-up approaches to vision. In particular, the constraints suggest an attentional mechanism that exploits knowledge of the specific problem being solved. This analysis of visual search performance in terms of attentional influences on visual information processing and complexity satisfaction allows a large body of neurophysiological and psychological evidence to be tied together. (shrink)

Purely parallel neural networks can model object recognition in brief displays – the same conditions under which illusory conjunctions have been demonstrated empirically. Correcting errors of illusory conjunction is the “tag-assignment” problem for a purely parallel processor: the problem of assigning a spatial tag to nonspatial features, feature combinations, and objects. This problem must be solved to model human object recognition over a longer time scale. Our model simulates both the parallel processes that may underlie illusory conjunctions and the serial (...) processes that may solve the tag-assignment problem in normal perception. One component of the model extracts pooled features and another provides attentional tags that correct illusory conjunctions. Our approach addresses two questions: How can objects be identified from simultaneously attended features in a parallel, distributed representation? How can the spatial selectional requirements of such an attentional process be met by a separation of pathways for spatial and nonspatial processing? Our analysis of these questions yields a neurally plausible simulation of tag assignment based on synchronizing feature processing activity in a spatial focus of attention. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters at (...) early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

Research on automatic attention to emotional faces offers mixed results. Therefore we examined validity effects for facial expressions of different emotions with a dot-probe paradigm in seven studies. Systematic variations of type of emotion, CTI, task, cue size, and masking allow for a differentiated assessment of attentional capture by emotions and possible moderating factors. Results indicate a general absence of emotional validity effects as well as a lack of significant interactions with either of the manipulated factors, indicating that facial expressions (...) of emotions do not capture attention in a fully automatic fashion. These findings suggest that situational and contextual factors have to be taken into account when investigating attentional capture of emotional faces. (shrink)

This paper proposes an Interface Transparency Thesis concerning how linguistic meanings are related to the cognitive systems that are used to evaluate sentences for truth/falsity: a declarative sentence S is semantically associated with a canonical procedure for determining whether S is true; while this procedure need not be used as a verification strategy, competent speakers are biased towards strategies that directly reflect canonical specifications of truth conditions. Evidence in favor of this hypothesis comes from a psycholinguistic experiment examining adult judgments (...) concerning ‘Most of the dots are blue’. This sentence is true if and only if the number of blue dots exceeds the number of nonblue dots. But this leaves unsettled, e.g., how the second cardinality is specified for purposes of understanding and/or verification: via the nonblue things, given a restriction to the dots, as in ‘|{x: Dot(x) & ~Blue(x)}|’; via the blue things, given the same restriction, and subtraction from the number of dots, as in ‘|{x: Dot(x)}| – |{x: Dot(x) & Blue(x)}|’; or in some other way. Psycholinguistic evidence and psychophysical modeling support the second hypothesis. (shrink)

In the study of natural language quantification, much recent attention has been devoted to the investigation of verification procedures associated with the proportional quantifier most. The aim of these studies is to go beyond the traditional characterization of the semantics of most, which is confined to explicating its truth-functional and presuppositional content as well as its combinatorial properties, as these aspects underdetermine the correct analysis of most. The present paper contributes to this effort by presenting new experimental evidence in support (...) of a decompositional analysis of most according to which it is a superlative construction built from a gradable predicate many or much and the superlative operator -est. Our evidence comes in the form of verification profiles for sentences like Most of the dots are blue which, we argue, reflect the existence of a superlative reading of most. This notably contrasts with Lidz et al.’s results. To reconcile the two sets of data, we argue, it is necessary to take important differences in task demands into account, which impose limits on the conclusions that can be drawn from these studies. (shrink)

We present data and argument to show that in Tetris - a real-time interactive video game - certain cognitive and perceptual problems are more quickly, easily, and reliably solved by performing actions in the world rather than by performing computational actions in the head alone. We have found that some translations and rotations are best understood as using the world to improve cognition. These actions are not used to implement a plan, or to implement a reaction; they are used to (...) change the world in order to simplify the problem-solving task. Thus, we distinguish pragmatic actions ñ actions performed to bring one physically closer to a goal - from epistemic actions - actions performed to uncover information that is hidden or hard to compute mentally. To illustrate the need for epistemic actions, we first develop a standard information-processing model of Tetris-cognition, and show that it cannot explain performance data from human players of the game - even when we relax the assumption of fully sequential processing. Standard models disregard many actions taken by players because they appear unmotivated or superfluous. However, we describe many such actions that are actually taken by players that are far from superfluous, and that play valuable roles in improving human performance. We argue that traditional accounts are limited because they regard action as having a single function: to change the world. By recognizing a second function of action - an epistemic function - we can explain many of the actions that a traditional model cannot. Although, our argument is supported by numerous examples specifically from Tetris, we outline how the one category of epistemic action can be incorporated into theories of action more generally. (shrink)

The threat-advantage hypothesis that threatening or negative faces can be discriminated preattentively has often been tested in the visual search paradigm with schematic stimuli. The results have been heterogeneous, suggesting that the choice of particular stimuli have profound effects on search efficiency. Because this conclusion is hampered by differences in experimental procedure, I selected examples from past literature and presented replicas of stimulus pairs (schematic positive and negative faces) in a within-participants design. Although there was a consistent advantage for angry-face (...) targets, search efficiency varied between 8 and 35 ms/item, yielding no clear evidence for the threat-advantage hypothesis. Furthermore, search efficiency for negative- and positive-face targets was highly correlated over stimulus pairs, which implies that whatever complicates the search for the negative face of a pair also complicates the search for the positive face. This results pattern argues against the hypothesised preattentive detector. (shrink)