Emotion has no impact on attention in a change detection flicker task

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate attentional biases for food-related stimuli in individuals with overweight and normal weight using a flicker paradigm. Specifically, it was tested whether attention allocation processes differ between individuals with overweight and normal weight using transient changes of food-related and neutral pictures. Change detection latencies in objects of central interest (CI) or objects of marginal interest (MI) were measured as an index of attention allocation in a sample of fifty-three students with overweight/obesity and sixty students with normal weight during a flicker paradigm with neutral, hypercaloric and hypocaloric food pictures. Both groups of participants showed an attentional bias for food-related pictures as compared to neutral pictures. However, the bias was larger in individuals with overweight than in individuals with normal weight when changes were of marginal interest, suggesting a stronger avoidance of the food-related picture. This study showed that food-related stimuli influence attention allocation processes in both participants with overweight and normal weight. In particular, as compared to individuals with normal weight, those with overweight seem to be characterised by a stronger attentional avoidance of (or smaller attention maintenance on) food-related stimuli that could be considered as a voluntary strategy to resist food consumption.

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Vivid Imagers Are Better at Detecting Salient Changes

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001.27.4.218 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 27 (4) ◽

pp. 218-228 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Paul Rodway ◽

Karen Gillies ◽

Astrid Schepman

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Change Detection ◽

Visual Imagery ◽

Detection Task ◽

Level Of Detail ◽

Detection Accuracy ◽

Change Detection Task ◽

Term Change ◽

High Level

This study examined whether individual differences in the vividness of visual imagery influenced performance on a novel long-term change detection task. Participants were presented with a sequence of pictures, with each picture and its title displayed for 17 s, and then presented with changed or unchanged versions of those pictures and asked to detect whether the picture had been changed. Cuing the retrieval of the picture's image, by presenting the picture's title before the arrival of the changed picture, facilitated change detection accuracy. This suggests that the retrieval of the picture's representation immunizes it against overwriting by the arrival of the changed picture. The high and low vividness participants did not differ in overall levels of change detection accuracy. However, in replication of Gur and Hilgard (1975) , high vividness participants were significantly more accurate at detecting salient changes to pictures compared to low vividness participants. The results suggest that vivid images are not characterised by a high level of detail and that vivid imagery enhances memory for the salient aspects of a scene but not all of the details of a scene. Possible causes of this difference, and how they may lead to an understanding of individual differences in change detection, are considered.

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