Does Self-Associating a Geometric Shape Immediately Cause Attentional Prioritization?

Author(s):  
Gabriela Orellana-Corrales ◽  
Christina Matschke ◽  
Ann-Katrin Wesslein

Abstract. In many cognitive tasks, stimuli associated with one’s self elicit faster responses than stimuli associated with others. This is true for familiar self-representations (e.g., one’s own name), for new self-associated stimuli, and for combinations of both. The current research disentangles the potential of self- versus stranger-representations for familiar, new, and paired (familiar + new) stimuli to guide attention. In Study 1 ( N = 34), responses to familiar and new self- versus other representations were tested in a dot-probe task with a short stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms). Study 2 ( N = 31) and Study 3 ( N = 35) use a long SOA (1,000 ms) to test whether the findings are mirrored in inhibition of return (IOR). We observe significant performance differences for targets following self- versus stranger-associated stimuli (i.e., a cuing effect or IOR depending on the SOA length), yet only when familiar representations are present. This indicates that, under conditions of attentional competition between self- and stranger-representations, familiar self-representations impact the distribution of attention while new self-representations alone do not.

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (11) ◽  
pp. 1496-1523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Cherubini ◽  
Alberto Mazzocco ◽  
Stefano Minelli

In an attempt to study the orienting of attention in reasoning, we developed a set of propositional reasoning tasks structurally similar to Posner's (1980) spatial cueing paradigm, widely used to study the orienting of attention in perceptual tasks. We cued the representation in working memory of a reasoning premise, observing whether inferences drawn using that premise or a different, uncued one were facilitated, hindered, or unaffected. The results of Experiments 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d, using semantically (1a–1c) or statistically (1d) informative cues, showed a robust, long-lasting facilitation for drawing inferences from the cued rule. In Experiment 2, using uninformative cues, inferences from the cued rule were facilitated with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), whereas they were delayed when the SOA was longer, an effect that is similar to the “inhibition of return” (IOR) in perceptual tasks. Experiment 3 used uninformative cues, three different SOAs, and inferential rules with disjunctive antecedents, replicating the IOR-like effect with the long SOAs and, at the short SOA, finding evidence of a gradient-like behaviour of the facilitation effect. Our findings show qualitative similarities to some effects typically observed in the orienting of visual attention, although the tasks did not involve spatial orienting.


Author(s):  
Yujie Li ◽  
Chunlin Li ◽  
Jinglong Wu

In experiments examining inhibition of return (IOR), an attentional effect that inhibits the returning of attention to a previously attended location or object, a second cue during the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) period is typically used. This is done to control the reorienting of attention from a peripherally cued location back to the central fixation point before the target appears. Recently, there have been numerous studies which demonstrate that fixation cues are effective in revealing IOR. Plenty of factors have been shown to influence the effects of the fixation cue in IOR, including the time onset of the fixation cue, the number of potential target locations, the attentional demands of performing the task, the modality of the fixation cue, and the condition of participants. Here, the authors review previous work that has examined the effects of the fixation cue in IOR.


1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Ellis ◽  
D. A. Allport ◽  
G. W. Humphreys ◽  
J. Collis

Three experiments are described in which two pictures of isolated man-made objects were presented in succession. The subjects’ task was to decide, as rapidly as possible, whether the two pictured objects had the same name. With a stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of above 200 msec two types of facilitation were observed: (1) the response latency was reduced if the pictures showed the same object, even though seen from different viewpoints (object benefit); (2) decision time was reduced further if the pictures showed the same object from the same angle of view (viewpoint benefit). These facilitation effects were not affected by projecting the pictures to different retinal locations. Significant benefits of both types were also obtained when the projected images differed in size. However, in these circumstances there was a small but significant performance decrement in matching two similar views of a single object, but not if the views were different. Conversely, the object benefit, but not the viewpoint benefit, was reduced when the SOA was only 100 msec. The data suggest the existence of (at least) two different visual codes, one non-retinotopic but viewer-centred, the other object-centred.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Kotchoubey ◽  
Yuri G. Pavlov

AbstractFour experiments are reported in which two harmonic tones (CS+ and CS-) were paired with a participant’s own name (SON) and different names (DN), respectively. A third tone was not paired with any other stimulus and served as a standard (frequent stimulus) in a three-stimuli oddball paradigm. The larger posterior positivity (P3) to SON than DN, found in previous studies, was replicated in all experiments. Conditioning of the P3 response was albeit observed in two similar experiments (1 and 3), but the obtained effects were weak and not identical in the two experiments. Only Experiment 4, where the number of CS/UCS pairings and the Stimulus-Onset Asynchrony between CS and UCS were increased, showed clear CS+/CS- differences both in time and time-frequency domains. Surprisingly, differential responses to CS+ and CS- were also obtained in Experiment 2, although SON and DN in that experiment were masked and never consciously recognized as meaning words (recognition rate 0/63 participants). The results are discussed in the context of other ERP conditioning experiments and, particularly, the studies of non-conscious effect on ERP. Several further experiments are suggested to replicate and extend the present findings and to remove the remaining methodological limitations.


2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Nievas ◽  
Fernando Justicia

Some studies with children have shown that there is no semantic priming at short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in lexical decision and naming tasks for homographs. The predictions of spreading activation theories might explain this missing effect. There may be differences in children's and adults' memory structures. We have explored this hypothesis. The development of memory structure representations for homographs was measured by a Pathfinder algorithm. In Experiment 1, the three dependent variables were: the number of links in the network, closeness measures (C), and distances between nodes. Results revealed developmental differences in network structure representations in adults and children. In Experiment 2, results revealed that these differences were not due to the cohort effect. In Experiment 3, the relationship between associative strength, as measured by associative norms, and distances, as measured by Pathfinder algorithm, was explored. The results of these three experiments and empirical research from semantic priming experiments show that these differences in memory structure representations could be one of the sources of the missing semantic priming effect in children.


1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Abresch ◽  
Viktor Sarris

Perceptual contrast effect was studied from two points of view, as a special anchor effect and as a special figural aftereffect. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of stimulus onset asynchrony on contrast and assimilation effects, induced and measured by different psychophysical methods. Stimuli were circular beams of light projected on screens (Delboef type of illusion). When anchor and series stimuli were shown and the latter were judged by means of a rating scale, stimulus onset asychrony had no substantial influence on the contrast effect (Exp. I). When the constant method was applied, however, the asynchrony altered the shape of the contrast effect considerably (Exp. II).


1986 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette M.B. de Groot ◽  
Arnold J.W.M. Thomassen ◽  
Patrick T.W. Hudson

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