Memorability: Reconceptualizing Memory as a Visual Attribute

In the world of visual memory, we often focus our study on the process of memory, but equally important are the inputs to the process—the images we are remembering. A growing body of work has shown that images have a strong power over what we will remember or forget; images have an intrinsic memorability that causes them to be remembered or forgotten across people. In this chapter, I describe our current understanding of memorability as a stimulus property, and its relationship to various aspects of vision and memory. The memorability of an image remains consistent across people, tasks, images, and timing, and shows specific stereotyped patterns in the brain that are separate from those of perception and memory. Recent evidence has proposed that memorability could represent how perceived inputs are prioritized for memory encoding. Although there is currently no comprehensive model of what makes something memorable, deep learning has shown strides in being able to predict and manipulate the memorability of an image. Armed with the memorability scores of an image, one can then create high-powered memory experiments, or develop tests that can more efficiently identify cognitive decline. There are still many open questions about memorability, but a deeper understanding will promise to give us agency over our memories and the images that create them.

What Blindsight Means for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness

Do perceptual experiences always inherit the content of their neural correlates? Most scientists and philosophers working on perception say 'yes'. They hold the view that an experience's content just is (i.e.is identical to) the content of its neural correlate. This paper presses back against this view, while trying to retain as much of its spirit as possible. The paper argues that type-2 blindsight experiences are plausible cases of experiences which lack the content of their neural correlates. They are not experiences of the stimuli or stimulus properties prompting them, but their neural correlates represent these stimulus properties. The argument doesn't depend on any special view of what it is for an experience to be of a stimulus or stimulus property. The upshot is that, even assuming there is a deep relationship between experiential content and neural content, that relationship is more complex than simple identity.

Does reading words differing in arousal load influence local vs. global scope of perception?

This article examines how the arousing properties of words influence the local vs. global scope of perception in the Kimchi–Palmer task. It was assumed that arousal is a stimulus property that influences a person’s mental state. Suboptimal arousal (low or high) was expected to narrow the visual scope in comparison to optimal (moderate) arousal. Words varying in arousal (three levels) and matched for valence, concreteness, frequency of appearance, and length were read by 20 young adults (8 women and 12 men, Mage = 21.85, SD = 1.69). The participants were then asked about their scope of perception using the Kimchi–Palmer task, allowing for differentiation between the priority of processing on local versus global features of compound geometrical figures. The relationship between the arousal level of the words read and the subsequent cognitive scope followed the Yerkes-Dodson law in that stimuli inducing an intermediate arousal level (versus low or high level of arousal inducements) were associated with a broader, more global cognitive scope.

Not Looking for Any Trouble? Purely Affective Attentional Settings Do Not Induce Goal-Driven Attentional Capture

It is well established that directing goal-driven attention to a particular stimulus property (e.g. red), or a conceptual category (e.g. toys) can induce powerful involuntary capture by goal-matching stimuli. Here we tested whether broad affective search goals (e.g. for anything threat-related) could similarly induce a generalised capture to an entire matching affective category. Across four experiments, participants were instructed to search for threat-related images in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) stream, while ignoring threat-related distractors presented in task-irrelevant locations. Across these experiments we found no evidence of goal-driven attentional capture by threat distractors when participants adopted a general ‘threat detection’ goal encompassing multiple sub-categories of threat (Experiments 1a, 1b). This was true even when there was partial overlap between the threat distractors and the search goal (i.e. subset of the targets matched the distractor; Experiment 2). However, when participants adopted a more specific goal for a single sub-category of threat (e.g. fearful faces), robust goal-driven capture occurred by distractors matching this sub-category (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that while affective criteria can be used in the guidance of attention, attentional settings based on affective properties alone may not induce goal-driven attentional capture. We discuss implications for recent goal-driven accounts of affective attentional biases.

Interference Between Number Magnitude and Parity

Interference between number magnitude and other properties can be explained by either an analogue magnitude system interfering with a continuous representation of the other properties or by discrete, categorical representations in which the corresponding number and property categories interfere. In this study, we investigated whether parity, a discrete property which supposedly cannot be stored on an analogue representation, could interfere with number magnitude. We found that in a parity decision task the magnitude interfered with the parity, highlighting the role of discrete representations in numerical interference. Additionally, some participants associated evenness with large values, while others associated evenness with small values, therefore, a new interference index, the dual index was introduced to detect this heterogeneous interference. The dual index can be used to reveal any heterogeneous interference that were missed in previous studies. Finally, the magnitude-parity interference did not correlate with the magnitude-response side interference (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes [SNARC] effect) or with the parity-response side interference (Markedness Association of Response Codes [MARC] effect), suggesting that at least some of the interference effects are not the result of the stimulus property markedness.

Effects of Temporal Distribution on Utility of Temporal Factors in Competitive Audio-Visual Perceived Synchrony

The perception of audio-visual synchrony is affected by both temporal coincidence and stimulus congruency factors. In situations when temporal and stimulus information are not in agreement, the perceiver must rely on the relative informative value of both factors in deciding which of multiple potential binding candidates are most likely to be of a common source to a target. Previous research has shown that, all being equal, participants tend to rely primarily on temporal information, and only take stimulus information into consideration when temporal information is ambiguous. The current research seeks to examine the reliance on temporal vs. stimulus information by altering the degree of useful information available in temporal aspects. By varying the temporal distribution of stimuli, it was possible to either increase or decrease the number of trials on which temporal information is conclusive. Data indicate that when temporal information is less informative (i.e., when more asynchronous stimuli are presented), we become less reliant on using prior knowledge about timing relationships when making synchrony judgements. However, when temporal information is more informative (i.e., when more synchronous stimuli are presented) there is no increase in reliance on this type of information. These findings increase what is known about competitive audiovisual processing, and the fact that temporal information serves as a kind of default stimulus property, which can be decreased by reducing the utility of that information.

Stimulus Characteristics of Rorschach Space Responses

The contention that stimulus brightness rather than figure-ground reversal operates as the critical perceptual stimulus property in determining space responses was investigated. In the protocols of 329 students the occurrence of responses to two non-white, yet bright grey blot areas (Dll of Figure VI and Dll of Figure VII) was comparable to that of completely white blot regions. Results suggested stimulus properties to study.

Control Stimuli in Investigations of the Acute-Angled and Obtuse-Angled Müller-Lyer Illusions

Over the past decade, attention has been drawn to the importance of intertip distance (the distance between the tips of the arrowheads or featherheads) as a possible determinant of the Müller-Lyer illusion. Investigation of this stimulus property for the arrowhead and featherhead components of the Müller-Lyer figure has indicated that the two components exhibit a lack of symmetry, a conclusion supported by other studies using rather different approaches to the investigation of symmetry. This article argues that the control stimuli used in previous investigations are inadequate. It is proposed that in addition to the conventional straight-line control stimulus, in which the standard shaft is stripped of the oblique inducing lines, H-shaped figures in which the inducing lines are vertical should be included. Results are reported of an experiment in which both types of control stimuli are used to investigate the effects of intertip distance, and the spatial separation of that distance from the standard shaft, upon the arrowhead and featherhead figures.