The impact of joint attention on the sound-induced flash illusions

AbstractHumans coordinate their focus of attention with others, either by gaze following or prior agreement. Though the effects of joint attention on perceptual and cognitive processing tend to be examined in purely visual environments, they should also show in multisensory settings. According to a prevalent hypothesis, joint attention enhances visual information encoding and processing, over and above individual attention. If two individuals jointly attend to the visual components of an audiovisual event, this should affect the weighing of visual information during multisensory integration. We tested this prediction in this preregistered study, using the well-documented sound-induced flash illusions, where the integration of an incongruent number of visual flashes and auditory beeps results in a single flash being seen as two (fission illusion) and two flashes as one (fusion illusion). Participants were asked to count flashes either alone or together, and expected to be less prone to both fission and fusion illusions when they jointly attended to the visual targets. However, illusions were as frequent when people attended to the flashes alone or with someone else, even though they responded faster during joint attention. Our results reveal the limitations of the theory that joint attention enhances visual processing as it does not affect temporal audiovisual integration.

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Refixation Patterns of Mind-wandering during Real-world Scene Perception

10.31234/osf.io/ezaxc ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Han Zhang ◽

Nicola C Anderson ◽

Kevin Miller

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Real World ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Mind Wandering ◽

Quantification Analysis ◽

The Difference ◽

Thought Probes

Recent studies have shown that mind-wandering (MW) is associated with changes in eye movement parameters, but have not explored how MW affects the sequential pattern of eye movements involved in making sense of complex visual information. Eye movements naturally unfold over time and this process may reveal novel information about cognitive processing during MW. The current study used Recurrence Quantification Analysis (Anderson, Bischof, Laidlaw, Risko, & Kingstone, 2013) to describe the pattern of refixations (fixations directed to previously-inspected regions) during MW. Participants completed a real-world scene encoding task and responded to thought probes assessing intentional and unintentional MW. Both types of MW were associated with worse memory of the scenes. Importantly, RQA showed that scanpaths during unintentional MW were more repetitive than during on-task episodes, as indicated by a higher recurrence rate and more stereotypical fixation sequences. This increased repetitiveness suggests an adaptive response to processing failures through re-examining previous locations. Moreover, this increased repetitiveness contributed to fixations focusing on a smaller spatial scale of the stimuli. Finally, we were also able to validate several traditional measures: both intentional and unintentional MW were associated with fewer and longer fixations; Eye-blinking increased numerically during both types of MW but the difference was only significant for unintentional MW. Overall, the results advanced our understanding of how visual processing is affected during MW by highlighting the sequential aspect of eye movements.

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Continuous Flash Suppression Known and Unknowns

10.31234/osf.io/sk8mb ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Ali Pournaghdali ◽

Bennett L Schwartz

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Continuous Flash Suppression ◽

Low Level ◽

Experimental Configuration ◽

High Level ◽

The Impact ◽

Nonconscious Perception

Studies utilizing continuous flash suppression (CFS) provide valuable information regarding conscious and nonconscious perception. There are, however, crucial unanswered questions regarding the mechanisms of suppression and the level of visual processing in the absence of consciousness with CFS. Research suggests that the answers to these questions depend on the experimental configuration and how we assess consciousness in these studies. The aim of this review is to evaluate the impact of different experimental configurations and the assessment of consciousness on the results of the previous CFS studies. We review studies that evaluated the influence of different experimental configuration on the depth of suppression with CFS and discuss how different assessments of consciousness may impact the results of CFS studies. Finally, we review behavioral and brain recording studies of CFS. In conclusion, previous studies provide evidence for survival of low-level visual information and complete impairment of high-level visual information under the influence of CFS. That is, studies suggest that nonconscious perception of lower-level visual information happens with CFS but there is no evidence for nonconscious highlevel recognition with CFS.

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Negative Emotional Valence Intensity Affects Visual Target Detection in the Information Encoding Process

International Journal of Psychological Studies ◽

10.5539/ijps.v10n1p19 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 19

Author(s):

Yasuhiro Takeshima

Keyword(s):

Visual Search ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Response Times ◽

Emotional Valence ◽

Emotional Information ◽

Information Encoding ◽

Low Intensity ◽

Facial Stimuli ◽

The Relationship

Previous studies have not yet investigated sufficiently the relationship between visual processing and negative emotional valence intensity, which is the degree of a dimensional component included in emotional information. In Experiment 1, participants performed a visual search task with three valence levels: neutral (control) and high- and low-intensity negative emotional valence stimuli (both angry faces). Results indicated that response times for high-intensity negative emotional valence stimuli were shorter than low-intensity ones. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to detect a target face among successively presented faces. Facial stimuli were the same as in Experiment 1. Results revealed that accuracy was higher for angry faces than for neutral faces. However, performance did not differ as a function of negative emotional valence intensity. Overall, the task performance differences between negative emotional valence intensities were observed in visual search, but not in attentional blink. Therefore, negative emotional valence intensity likely contributes to the process of efficient visual information encoding.

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Semantic and spatial congruency mould audiovisual integration depending on perceptual awareness

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-90183-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Patrycja Delong ◽

Uta Noppeney

Keyword(s):

Information Integration ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Awareness ◽

Audiovisual Integration ◽

Backward Masking ◽

Perceptual Awareness ◽

Semantic Congruency ◽

Multisensory Interactions ◽

The Impact ◽

Ventriloquist Effect

AbstractInformation integration is considered a hallmark of human consciousness. Recent research has challenged this tenet by showing multisensory interactions in the absence of awareness. This psychophysics study assessed the impact of spatial and semantic correspondences on audiovisual binding in the presence and absence of visual awareness by combining forward–backward masking with spatial ventriloquism. Observers were presented with object pictures and synchronous sounds that were spatially and/or semantically congruent or incongruent. On each trial observers located the sound, identified the picture and rated the picture’s visibility. We observed a robust ventriloquist effect for subjectively visible and invisible pictures indicating that pictures that evade our perceptual awareness influence where we perceive sounds. Critically, semantic congruency enhanced these visual biases on perceived sound location only when the picture entered observers’ awareness. Our results demonstrate that crossmodal influences operating from vision to audition and vice versa are interactively controlled by spatial and semantic congruency in the presence of awareness. However, when visual processing is disrupted by masking procedures audiovisual interactions no longer depend on semantic correspondences.

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The Effect of Spatial Frequency on the Visual Category Representation in the Macaque Inferior Temporal Cortex

10.1101/2021.12.05.470960 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Esmaeil Farhang ◽

Ramin Toosi ◽

Behnam Karami ◽

Roxana Koushki ◽

Ehsan Rezayat ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Spatial Frequency ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Inferior Temporal Cortex ◽

Category Representation ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Shape Information ◽

Category Information ◽

The Impact

ABSTRACTTo expand our knowledge about the object recognition, it is critical to understand the role of spatial frequency (SF) in an object representation that occurs in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex at the final stage of processing the visual information across the ventral visual pathway. Object categories are being recognized hierarchically in at least three levels of abstraction: superordinate (e.g., animal), mid-level (e.g., human face), and subordinate (e.g., face identity). Psychophysical studies have shown rapid access to mid-level category information and low SF (LSF) contents. Although the hierarchical representation of categories has been shown to exist inside the IT cortex, the impact of SF on the multi-level category processing is poorly understood. To gain a deeper understanding of the neural basis of the interaction between SF and category representations at multiple levels, we examined the neural responses within the IT cortex of macaque monkeys viewing several SF-filtered objects. Each stimulus could be either intact or bandpass filtered into either the LSF (coarse shape information) or high SF (HSF) (fine shape information) bands. We found that in both High- and Low-SF contents, the advantage of mid-level representation has not been violated. This evidence suggests that mid-level category boundary maps are strongly represented in the IT cortex and remain unaffected with respect to any changes in the frequency content of stimuli. Our observations indicate the necessity of the HSF content for the superordinate category representation inside the IT cortex. In addition, our findings reveal that the representation of global category information is more dependent on the HSF than the LSF content. Furthermore, the lack of subordinate representation in both LSF and HSF filtered stimuli compared to the intact stimuli provide strong evidence that all SF contents are necessary for fine category visual processing.

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Temporal stability of stimulus representation increases along rodent visual cortical hierarchies

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-24456-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Eugenio Piasini ◽

Liviu Soltuzu ◽

Paolo Muratore ◽

Riccardo Caramellino ◽

Kasper Vinken ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Neural Coding ◽

Temporal Stability ◽

Receptive Fields ◽

Ventral Stream ◽

Dynamic Stimuli ◽

The Stability ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

The Impact

AbstractCortical representations of brief, static stimuli become more invariant to identity-preserving transformations along the ventral stream. Likewise, increased invariance along the visual hierarchy should imply greater temporal persistence of temporally structured dynamic stimuli, possibly complemented by temporal broadening of neuronal receptive fields. However, such stimuli could engage adaptive and predictive processes, whose impact on neural coding dynamics is unknown. By probing the rat analog of the ventral stream with movies, we uncovered a hierarchy of temporal scales, with deeper areas encoding visual information more persistently. Furthermore, the impact of intrinsic dynamics on the stability of stimulus representations grew gradually along the hierarchy. A database of recordings from mouse showed similar trends, additionally revealing dependencies on the behavioral state. Overall, these findings show that visual representations become progressively more stable along rodent visual processing hierarchies, with an important contribution provided by intrinsic processing.

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Laws of concatenated perception: Vision goes for novelty, Decisions for perseverance

10.1101/229187 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

D. Pascucci ◽

G. Mancuso ◽

E. Santandrea ◽

C. Della Libera ◽

G. Plomp ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Process Model ◽

Multilevel Modelling ◽

Sensory Adaptation ◽

Serial Dependence ◽

Human Visual Perception ◽

History Of ◽

High Level ◽

The Impact

AbstractEvery instant of perception depends on a cascade of brain processes calibrated to the history of sensory and decisional events. In the present work, we show that human visual perception is constantly shaped by two contrasting forces, exerted by sensory adaptation and past decisions. In a series of experiments, we used multilevel modelling and cross-validation approaches to investigate the impact of previous stimuli and responses on current errors in adjustment tasks. Our results revealed that each perceptual report is permeated by opposite biases from a hierarchy of serially dependent processes: low-level adaptation repels perception away from previous stimuli; high-level, decisional traces attract perceptual reports toward previous responses. Contrary to recent claims, we demonstrated that positive serial dependence does not result from continuity fields operating at the level of early visual processing, but arises from the inertia of decisional templates. This finding is consistent with a Two-process model of serial dependence in which the persistence of read-out weights in a decision unit compensates for sensory adaptation, leading to attractive biases in sequential responses. We propose the first unified account of serial dependence in which functionally distinct mechanisms, operating at different stages, promote the differentiation and integration of visual information over time.

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Intrinsic dynamics enhance temporal stability of stimulus representation along rodent visual cortical hierarchies

10.1101/822130 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Eugenio Piasini ◽

Liviu Soltuzu ◽

Paolo Muratore ◽

Riccardo Caramellino ◽

Kasper Vinken ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Neural Coding ◽

Temporal Stability ◽

Ventral Stream ◽

Dynamic Stimuli ◽

The Stability ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Predictive Processes ◽

The Impact

SummaryAlong the ventral stream, cortical representations of brief, static stimuli become gradually more invariant to identity-preserving transformations. In the presence of long, temporally structured dynamic stimuli, higher invariance should imply temporally persistent representations at the top of this functional hierarchy. However, such stimuli could engage adaptive and predictive processes, whose impact on neural coding dynamics is unknown. By probing the rat analogue of the ventral stream with movies, we uncovered a hierarchy of temporal scales, with deeper areas encoding visual information more persistently. Furthermore, the impact of intrinsic dynamics on the stability of stimulus representations gradually grew along the hierarchy. Analysis of a large dataset of recordings from the mouse visual hierarchy yielded similar trends, revealing also their dependence on the behavioral state of the animal. Overall, these findings show that visual representations become progressively more stable along rodent visual processing hierarchies, with an important contribution provided by intrinsic processing.

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Decoding of the other’s focus of attention by a temporal cortex module

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1911269117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 117 (5) ◽

pp. 2663-2670 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Hamidreza Ramezanpour ◽

Peter Thier

Keyword(s):

Social Context ◽

Social Interactions ◽

Joint Attention ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Neural Mechanism ◽

Focus Of Attention ◽

The Other ◽

Gaze Direction ◽

Gaze Following ◽

The Gaze

Faces attract the observer’s attention toward objects and locations of interest for the other, thereby allowing the two agents to establish joint attention. Previous work has delineated a network of cortical “patches” in the macaque cortex, processing faces, eventually also extracting information on the other’s gaze direction. Yet, the neural mechanism that links information on gaze direction, guiding the observer’s attention to the relevant object, has remained elusive. Here we present electrophysiological evidence for the existence of a distinct “gaze-following patch” (GFP) with neurons that establish this linkage in a highly flexible manner. The other’s gaze and the object, singled out by the gaze, are linked only if this linkage is pertinent within the prevailing social context. The properties of these neurons establish the GFP as a key switch in controlling social interactions based on the other’s gaze.

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The influence of posterior visual pathway damage on visual information processing speed in multiple sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis Journal ◽

10.1177/1352458516676642 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 23 (9) ◽

pp. 1276-1288 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Iñigo Gabilondo ◽

Oiane Rilo ◽

Natalia Ojeda ◽

Javier Pena ◽

Ainara Gómez-Gastiasoro ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Processing Speed ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Diffusion Tensor ◽

Visual Pathway ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Information Processing Speed ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Visual Component ◽

The Impact

Background: The injury of visual pathway and abnormalities of visual processing speed (VPS) are frequent in MS, but their association remains unexplored. Objective: To evaluate the impact of posterior visual pathway structural and functional integrity on VPS of MS patients. Methods: Cross-sectional study of 30 MS patients and 28 controls, evaluating the association of a VPS tests composite (Salthouse Perceptual Comparison test, Trail Making Test A and Symbol Digit Modalities Test) with 3T MRI visual cortex thickness, optic radiations (OR) diffusion tensor imaging indexes, and medial visual component (MVC) functional connectivity (FC) (MVC-MVC FC (iFC) and MVC-brain FC (eFC)) by linear regression, removing the effect of premorbid IQ, fatigue, and depression. Results: V2 atrophy, lower OR fractional anisotropy (FA) and MVC FC significantly influenced VPS in MS (at none or lesser extent in controls), even after removing the effect of Expanded Disability Status Scale and previous optic neuritis (V2 ( r2 = 0.210): β = +0.366, p = 0.046; OR FA ( r2 = 0.243): β = +0.378, p = 0.034; MVC iFC, for example, left cuneus ( r2 = 0.450): β = −0.613, p < 0.001; MVC eFC, for example, right precuneus-postcentral gyrus ( r2 = 0.368): β = −0.466, p = 0.002). Conclusion: Posterior visual pathway integrity, structural (V2 thickness and OR FA) and functional (MVC FC), may explain respectively up to 24% and 45% of VPS variability in MS.

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