All EyeLink Publications
All 11,000+ peer-reviewed EyeLink research publications up until 2022 (with some early 2023s) are listed below by year. You can search the publications library using keywords such as Visual Search, Smooth Pursuit, Parkinson’s, etc. You can also search for individual author names. Eye-tracking studies grouped by research area can be found on the solutions pages. If we missed any EyeLink eye-tracking papers, please email us!
2022 |
Ehud Zohary; Daniel Harari; Shimon Ullman; Itay Ben-Zion; Ravid Doron; Sara Attias; Yuval Porat; Asael Y. Sklar; Ayelet McKyton Gaze following requires early visual experience Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 20, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zohary2022,Gaze understanding-a suggested precursor for understanding others' intentions-requires recovery of gaze direction from the observed person's head and eye position. This challenging computation is naturally acquired at infancy without explicit external guidance, but can it be learned later if vision is extremely poor throughout early childhood? We addressed this question by studying gaze following in Ethiopian patients with early bilateral congenital cataracts diagnosed and treated by us only at late childhood. This sight restoration provided a unique opportunity to directly address basic issues on the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in development, as it caused a selective perturbation to the natural process, eliminating some gaze-direction cues while leaving others still available. Following surgery, the patients' visual acuity typically improved substantially, allowing discrimination of pupil position in the eye. Yet, the patients failed to show eye gaze-following effects and fixated less than controls on the eyes-two spontaneous behaviors typically seen in controls. Our model for unsupervised learning of gaze direction explains how head-based gaze following can develop under severe image blur, resembling preoperative conditions. It also suggests why, despite acquiring sufficient resolution to extract eye position, automatic eye gaze following is not established after surgery due to lack of detailed early visual experience. We suggest that visual skills acquired in infancy in an unsupervised manner will be difficult or impossible to acquire when internal guidance is no longer available, even when sufficient image resolution for the task is restored. This creates fundamental barriers to spontaneous vision recovery following prolonged deprivation in early age. |
Eckart Zimmermann Mislocalization in saccadic suppression of displacement Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 196, pp. 1–6, 2022. @article{Zimmermann2022,Visual stability across saccades requires us to discriminate self-generated motion by eye movements from motion occurring in the external world. In the laboratory visual stability is often studied by asking observers to discriminate the direction of trans-saccadic target displacements. It is a well established finding that in this paradigm performance is usually very poor. If observers are insensitive to the intra-saccadic motion and see the pre- and the post-saccadic target in one location, one of both targets should be reported as shifted when observers would localize them. Here, I asked participants to perform a saccade to a target. During saccade execution the target was displaced either in backward or forward direction. After finishing the saccade, subjects had to report the position of either the pre-or the post-saccadic target. I found that subjects mislocalized the pre-saccadic target to the physical position of the post-saccadic target. This mislocalization occurred only after backward but not after forward displacements. |
L. U. Zijia; F. U. Ying; Zhang Manman; Zang Chuanli; B. A. I. Xuejun Parafoveal processing of part-of-speech information in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Acta Psychologica Sinica, vol. 54, no. 5, pp. 441–452, 2022. @article{Zijia2022,In this study, the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to explore whether the part-of-speech information of parafoveal words can be processed in Chinese reading by manipulating the part-of-speech consistency between the preview words and the target words. The experiment adopted a single factor 3-level design with three previewing conditions: identical preview, part-of-speech non-violation preview and part-of-speech violation preview. The linear mixed model and Bayesian analysis of the experimental data showed that there was no significant difference on fixation durations and fixation probability of the target words under the condition of part-of-speech violation and part-of-speech non-violation suggesting no preview effect of part-of-speech information. The results tended to support the sequential attention shift model, and the future development of eye movement control model should pay more attention to flexibility and universality of the model. |
Qian Zhuang; Xiaoxiao Zheng; Shuxia Yao; Weihua Zhao; Benjamin Becker; Xiaolei Xu; Keith M. Kendrick Oral administration of oxytocin, like intranasal administration, decreases top-down social attention Journal Article In: International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 912–923, 2022. @article{Zhuang2022,Background: The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) modulates social cognition by increasing attention to social cues and may have therapeutic potential for impaired social attention in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder. Intranasal administration of OXT is widely used to examine the drug's functional effects in both adults and children and is assumed to enter the brain directly via this route. However, OXT can also influence brain function through increased blood concentrations, and we have recently shown that orally (lingual) administered OXT also modulates neural responses to emotional faces and may be better tolerated for therapeutic use. Here, we examine whether 24 IU OXT administered orally can facilitate social attention. Methods: In a randomized, placebo-controlled pharmacologic study, we used a validated emotional antisaccade eye-tracking paradigm to explore the effects of oral OXT on bottom-up and top-down attention processing in 80 healthy male participants. Results: Our findings showed that in terms of top-down attention, oral OXT increased errors for both social (angry, fearful, happy, sad, and neutral emotion faces) and nonsocial stimuli (oval shapes) in the antisaccade condition but increased response latencies only in the social condition. It also significantly reduced post-task state anxiety, but this reduction was not correlated with task performance. A comparison with our previous intranasal OXT study using the same task revealed that both routes have a similar effect on increasing antisaccade errors and response latencies and on reducing state anxiety. Conclusions: Overall, our findings suggest that oral administration of OXT produces similar effects on top-down social attention control and anxiety to intranasal administration and may therefore have therapeutic utility. |
Xi Zhu; Amit Lazarov; Sarah Dolan; Yair Bar-Haim; Daniel G. Dillon; Diego A. Pizzagalli; Franklin Schneier Resting state connectivity predictors of symptom change during gaze-contingent music reward therapy of social anxiety disorder Journal Article In: Psychological Medicine, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Zhu2022e,Background Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is common, first-line treatments are often only partially effective, and reliable predictors of treatment response are lacking. Here, we assessed resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) at pre-treatment and during early treatment as a potential predictor of response to a novel attention bias modification procedure, gaze-contingent music reward therapy (GC-MRT). Methods Thirty-two adults with SAD were treated with GC-MRT. rsFC was assessed with multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI at pre-treatment and after 2-3 weeks. For comparison, 20 healthy control (HC) participants without treatment were assessed twice for rsFC over the same time period. All SAD participants underwent clinical evaluation at pre-treatment, early-treatment (week 2-3), and post-treatment. Results SAD and depressive symptoms improved significantly from pre-treatment to post-treatment. After 2-3 weeks of treatment, decreased connectivity between the executive control network (ECN) and salience network (SN), and increased connectivity within the ECN predicted improvement in SAD and depressive symptoms at week 8. Increased connectivity between the ECN and default mode network (DMN) predicted greater improvement in SAD but not depressive symptoms at week 8. Connectivity within the DMN decreased significantly after 2-3 weeks of treatment in the SAD group, while no changes were found in HC over the same time interval. Conclusion We identified early changes in rsFC during a course of GC-MRT for SAD that predicted symptom change. Connectivity changes within the ECN, ECN-DMN, and ECN-SN may be related to mechanisms underlying the clinical effects of GC-MRT and warrant further study in controlled trials. |
Siyu Zhu; Yanan Qing; Yingying Zhang; Xiaolu Zhang; Fangyuan Ding; Rong Zhang; Shuxia Yao; Keith M. Kendrick; Weihua Zhao Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation increases eye-gaze on salient facial features and oxytocin release Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 59, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zhu2022d,Non-invasive, transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (taVNS) via the ear is used therapeutically in epilepsy, pain, and depression, and may also have beneficial effects on social cognition. However, the underlying mechanisms of taVNS are unclear and evidence regarding its role in social cognition improvement is limited. To investigate the impact of taVNS on social cognition we have studied its effects on gaze toward emotional faces in combination with eye-tracking and on the release of the neuropeptide oxytocin which plays a key role in influencing social cognition and motivation. A total of 54 subjects were enrolled (49 were included in the final analysis) in a sham-controlled, participant-blind, crossover experiment, consisting of two treatment sessions 1 week apart. In one session participants received 30-min taVNS (tragus), and in the other, they received 30-min sham (earlobe) stimulation with the treatment order counterbalanced. The proportion of time spent viewing the faces and facial features (eyes, nose, and mouth) was measured together with resting pupil size. Additionally, saliva samples were taken for the measurement of oxytocin concentrations by enzyme-linked immunoassay. Saliva oxytocin concentrations increased significantly after taVNS compared to sham stimulation, while resting pupil size did not. In addition, taVNS increased time spent viewing the nose region irrespective of face emotion, and this was positively correlated with increased saliva oxytocin concentrations. Our findings suggest that taVNS biases visual attention toward socially salient facial features across different emotions and this is associated with its effects on increasing endogenous oxytocin release. |
Michael Zhu; Richard Hardstone; Biyu J. He Neural oscillations promoting perceptual stability and perceptual memory during bistable perception Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Zhu2022c,Ambiguous images elicit bistable perception, wherein periods of momentary perceptual stability are interrupted by sudden perceptual switches. When intermittently presented, ambiguous images trigger a perceptual memory trace in the intervening blank periods. Understanding the neural bases of perceptual stability and perceptual memory during bistable perception may hold clues for explaining the apparent stability of visual experience in the natural world, where ambiguous and fleeting images are prevalent. Motivated by recent work showing the involvement of the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) in bistable perception, we conducted a transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) study with a double-blind, within-subject cross-over design to test a potential causal role of rIFG in these processes. Subjects viewed ambiguous images presented continuously or intermittently while under EEG recording. We did not find any significant tDCS effect on perceptual behavior. However, the fluctuations of oscillatory power in the alpha and beta bands predicted perceptual stability, with higher power corresponding to longer percept durations. In addition, higher alpha and beta power predicted enhanced perceptual memory during intermittent viewing. These results reveal a unified neurophysiological mechanism sustaining perceptual stability and perceptual memory when the visual system is faced with ambiguous input. |
Jing Zhu; Changlin Yang; Xiannian Xie; Shiqing Wei; Yizhou Li; Xiaowei Li; Bin Hu Mutual Information Based Fusion Model (MIBFM): Mild depression recognition using EEG and pupil area signals Journal Article In: Journal of LATEX Class Files, vol. 3045, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Zhu2022b,The detection of mild depression is conducive to the early intervention and treatment of depression. This study explored the fusion of electroencephalography (EEG) and pupil area signals to build an effective and convenient mild depression recognition model. We proposed Mutual Information Based Fusion Model (MIBFM), which innovatively used pupil area signals to select EEG electrodes based on mutual information. Then we extracted features from EEG and pupil area signals in different bands, and fused bimodal features using the denoising autoencoder. Experimental results showed that MIBFM could obtain the highest accuracy of 87.03%. And MIBFM exhibited better performance than other existing methods. Our findings validate the effectiveness of the use of pupil area as signals, which makes eye movement signals can be easily obtained using high resolution camera, and the EEG electrode selection scheme based on mutual information is also proved to be an applicable solution for data dimension reduction and multimodal complementary information screening. This study casts a new light for mild depression recognition using multimodal data of EEG and pupil area signals, and provides a theoretical basis for the development of portable and universal application systems. |
Jing Zhu; Shiqing Wei; Xiannian Xie; Changlin Yang; Yizhou Li; Xiaowei Li; Bin Hu Content-based multiple evidence fusion on EEG and eye movements for mild depression recognition Journal Article In: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 226, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zhu2022a,Background and objective: Depression is a serious neurological disorder that has become a major health problem worldwide. The detection of mild depression is important for the diagnosis of depression in early stages. This research seeks to find a more accurate fusion model which can be used for mild depression detection using Electroencephalography and eye movement data. Methods: This study proposes a content-based multiple evidence fusion (CBMEF) method, which fuses EEG and eye movement data at decision level. The method mainly includes two modules, the classification performance matrix module and the dual-weight fusion module. The classification performance matrices of different modalities are estimated by Bayesian rule based on confusion matrix and Mahalanobis distance, and the matrices were used to correct the classification results. Then the relative conflict degree of each modality is calculated, and different weights are assigned to the above modalities at the decision fusion layer according to this conflict degree. Results: The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other fusion methods as well as the single modality results. The highest accuracies achieved 91.12%, and sensitivity, specificity and precision were 89.20%, 93.03%, 92.76%. Conclusions: The promising results showed the potential of the proposed approach for the detection of mild depression. The idea of introducing the classification performance matrix and the dual-weight model to multimodal biosignals fusion casts a new light on the researches of depression recognition. |
Fangfang Zhu; Jiumin Yang; Zhongling Pi The interaction effects of an instructor's emotions in instructional videos and students' emotional intelligence on L2 vocabulary learning Journal Article In: Educational Technology Research and Development, vol. 70, no. 5, pp. 1695–1718, 2022. @article{Zhu2022,Language learning has long been a topic of interest, and instructional videos which allow students to learn anywhere and anytime have become an important language learning tool. However, the emotional characteristics of both instructors and students, which have the potential to influence students' second language learning from instructional videos, have yet to be fully explored. The current study investigated the interaction effects of an instructor's emotions (positive vs. negative vs. neutral) and students' emotional intelligence (low vs. high) on students' second language vocabulary learning from instructional videos with consideration of attention paid to the learning material (i.e., average fixation time, referring to the duration of each fixation on the learning material), learning experience (i.e., motivation, engagement, interaction), and learning performance (both immediate and delayed). Results showed that (1) only the interaction effect on attention was verified, and that (2) students with high emotional intelligence showed a larger average fixation time in the positive condition than in the negative condition, while (3) students with low emotional intelligence showed a smaller average fixation time in the neutral condition than in the negative condition. Furthermore, the results verified the benefits of the instructor's positive emotion on students' motivation, interaction, and immediate performance. Our findings shine a light onto the influence of an instructor's emotions and students' emotional intelligence on second language learning, and provide practical implications for the design of instructional videos and second language learning. |
Ying Zhou; Clayton E. Curtis; Kartik K. Sreenivasan; Daryl Fougnie Common neural mechanisms control attention and working memory Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 37, pp. 7110–7120, 2022. @article{Zhou2022j,Although previous studies point to qualitative similarities between working memory (WM) and attention, the degree to which these two constructs rely on shared neural mechanisms remains unknown. Focusing on one such potentially shared mechanism, we tested the hypothesis that selecting an item within WM utilizes similar neural mechanisms as selecting a visible item via a shift of attention. We used fMRI and machine learning to decode both the selection among items visually available and the selection among items stored in WM in human subjects (both sexes). Patterns of activity in visual, parietal, and to a lesser extent frontal cortex predicted the locations of the selected items. Critically, these patterns were strikingly interchangeable; classifiers trained on data during attentional selection predicted selection from WM, and classifiers trained on data during selection from memory predicted attentional selection. Using models of voxel receptive fields, we visualized topographic population activity that revealed gain enhancements at the locations of the externally and internally selected items. Our results suggest that selecting among perceived items and selecting among items in WM share a common mechanism. This common mechanism, analogous to a shift of spatial attention, controls the relative gains of neural populations that encode behaviorally relevant information. |
Yan-Bang Zhou; Qiang Li; Qiu-Yue Li; Hong-Zhi Liu Evaluation scale or output format: The attentional mechanism underpinning time preference reversal Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Zhou2022h,Time preference reversals refers to systematic inconsistencies between preferences and valuations in intertemporal choice. When faced with a pair of intertemporal options, people preferred the smaller-sooner option but assign a higher price to the larger-later one. Different hypotheses postulate that the differences in evaluation scale or output format between the choice and the bid tasks cause the preference reversal. However, these hypotheses have not been distinguished. In the present study, we conducted a hybrid task, which shares the same evaluation scale with the bid task and shares the same output format with the choice task. By comparing these three tasks, we can figure out the key reason for time preference reversal. The eye-tracking measures reflecting attention allocation, cognitive effort and information search pattern were examined. Results showed that participants' time preference and eye-tracking measures in the hybrid task were similar to those in the choice task, but different from those in the bid task. Our findings suggest that the output format is the core reason for time preference reversal and may deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie time preference reversal. |
Xing Zhou; Yuxiang Hao; Shuangxing Xu; Qi Zhang Statistical learning of target location and distractor location rely on different mechanisms during visual search Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, pp. 1–24, 2022. @article{Zhou2022g,More studies have demonstrated that people have the capacity to learn and make use of environmental regularities. This capacity is known as statistical learning (SL). Despite rich empirical findings, it is not clear how the two forms of SL (SL of target location and SL of distractor location) influence visual search and whether they rely on the shared cognitive mechanism. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, we manipulated the probability of target location and the probability of distractor location, respectively. The results suggest that attentional guidance (they referred to overt attention) may mainly contribute to the SL effect of the target location and the distractor location, which is in line with the notion of priority mapping. To a small extent, facilitation of response selection may also contribute to the SL effect of the target location but does not contribute to the SL effect of the distractor location. However, the main difference between the two kinds of SL occurred in the early stage (it involved covert attention). Together, our findings indicate that the two forms of SL reflect partly shared and partly independent cognitive mechanisms. |
Xiaomei Zhou; Shruti Vyas; Jinbiao Ning; Margaret C. Moulson Naturalistic face learning in infants and adults Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 135–151, 2022. @article{Zhou2022k,Everyday face recognition presents a difficult challenge because faces vary naturally in appearance as a result of changes in lighting, expression, viewing angle, and hairstyle. We know little about how humans develop the ability to learn faces despite natural facial variability. In the current study, we provide the first examination of attentional mechanisms underlying adults' and infants' learning of naturally varying faces. Adults (n = 48) and 6- to 12-month-old infants (n = 48) viewed videos of models reading a storybook; the facial appearance of these models was either high or low in variability. Participants then viewed the learned face paired with a novel face. Infants showed adultlike prioritization of face over nonface regions; both age groups fixated the face region more in the high- than low-variability condition. Overall, however, infants showed less ability to resist contextual distractions during learning, which potentially contributed to their lack of discrimination between the learned and novel faces. Mechanisms underlying face learning across natural variability are discussed. |
Wei Zhou; Yi Fan; Yulin Chang; Wenjuan Liu; Jiuju Wang; Yufeng Wang Pathogenesis of comorbid ADHD and Chinese developmental dyslexia: Evidence from eye-movement tracking and rapid automatized naming Journal Article In: Journal of Attention Disorders, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Zhou2022f,Background: ADHD and Chinese developmental dyslexia (DD) have a very high comorbidity rate; however, which cognitive deficits characterize the comorbidity and when they occur during cognitive processing are still under debate. Methods: Rapid automatic naming (RAN) tasks with eye-movement tracking were conducted with 75 children who were typically developing, had comorbid ADHD and DD, had only ADHD, and had only DD. Results: The clinical groups had longer first fixation durations than the control for RAN digits. Temporal eye-movement measures, such as gaze duration and total reading time, were found to vary between the comorbidity and ADHD groups. Spatial eye-movement measures, such as regression probability and incoming saccade amplitude, differed between the comorbidity and DD groups. Conclusions: These results indicate that investigation with eye-movement measures combined with RAN tasks can strengthen the understanding of the pathogenesis of comorbid ADHD and DD. |
Li Zhou; Li Zhang; Yuening Xu; Fuyi Yang; Valerie Benson Attentional engagement and disengagement differences for circumscribed interest objects in young Chinese children with autism Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Zhou2022e,The current study aimed to investigate attentional processing differences for circumscribed interest (CI) and non-CI objects in young Chinese children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) and typically developing (TD) controls. In Experiment 1, a visual preference task explored attentional allocation to cartoon CI and non-CI materials between the two groups. We found that ASC children (n = 22, 4.95 ± 0.59 years) exhibited a preference for CI-related objects compared to non-CI objects, and this effect was absent in the TD children (n = 22, 5.14 ± 0.44 years). Experiment 2 utilized the traditional gap-overlap paradigm (GOP) to investigate attentional disengagement from CI or non-CI items in both groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.92 ± 1.13 years; TD: n = 25, 5.77 ± 0.77 years). There were no group or stimulus interactions in this study. Experiment 3 adopted a modified GOP (MGOP) to further explore disengagement in the two groups (ASC: n = 20, 5.54 ± 0.95 years; TD: n = 24, 5.75 ± 0.52 years), and the results suggested that exogenous disengagement performance was preserved in the ASC group, but the children with ASC exhibited increased endogenous attentional disengagement compared to TD peers. Moreover, endogenous disengagement was influenced further in the presence of CI-related objects in the ASC children. The current results have implications for understanding how the nature of engagement and disengagement processes can contribute to differences in the development of core cognitive skills in young children with ASC. |
Junyi Zhou; Wenjie Zhuang Physically active undergraduates perform better on executive-related oculomotor control: Evidence from the antisaccade task and pupillometry Journal Article In: PsyCh Journal, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Zhou2022d,Previous studies have shown that exercise can improve executive function in young and older adults. However, it remains controversial whether a sufficient amount of physical activity leads to higher-level executive function. To examine the effect of physical activity on executive function, we used eye-tracking technology and the antisaccade task in 41 young undergraduates with various levels of physical activity. Moreover, we also investigated their differences in cognitive ability by examining their pupil size during the antisaccade task. Eye-tracking results showed that physically active individuals showed shorter saccade latency and higher accuracy in the antisaccade task than their physically inactive counterparts. Furthermore, the former showed larger pupil size during the preparatory period of antisaccade. These findings suggest that individuals with higher-level physical activity have higher-level executive function. The larger pupil sizes of physically active individuals may imply that their locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system and executive-related prefrontal cortex are more active, which contributes to their higher-level cognitive ability. |
Junyi Zhou; Lulu Wang Differences in the effects of reading and aerobic exercise interventions on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Zhou2022c,Although many previous studies have shown that short-time moderate-intensity aerobic exercise can improve one's inhibitory control, some researchers suggested that its effect on inhibitory control is small. Meanwhile, some studies have shown that reading has a positive effect on inhibitory control. Since many studies examining the effect of exercise on inhibitory control used reading as a filler task, it is important to compare their effects. The present study used the antisaccade task as a tool to examine the differences in the effects of aerobic exercise and reading on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction. Thirty healthy college students with mobile phone addiction (range: 17–20 years, mean: 19.2 years) took part in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to an aerobic exercise group and a reading group. For the aerobic exercise group, participants were asked to perform moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for 15 min. For the reading group, participants were asked to sit quietly and read articles from newspapers for 15 min. Each participant's inhibitory control was examined pre- and post-intervention using the antisaccade task. In the antisaccade task, they have to direct their gaze toward the mirror image location of the target appearing parafoveally as quickly and as accurately as possible. The results showed significant main effects of Time (pre-test vs. post-test) on antisaccade latency and error rate. More importantly, a significant interaction of Time (pre-test vs. post-test) and Group (aerobic exercise vs. reading) was found on antisaccade latency. Specifically, the antisaccade latencies in the post-test were significantly shorter than those in the pre-test for the reading group, but the antisaccade latencies in the post-test and pre-test were comparable for the aerobic exercise group. The results of the present study imply that although both exercise and reading have effects on inhibitory control of college students with mobile phone addiction, the effect of reading may be somehow superior to exercise. Moreover, the current results also imply that researchers should be cautious when using reading as a filler task in future studies regarding the effect of aerobic exercise. The limitations of the present study were discussed. |
Hong Zhou; Yunchuang Sun; Luhua Wei; Xia Wang; Yanyan Jiang; Fan Li; Jing Chen; Wei Sun; Lin Zhang; Guiping Zhao; Zhaoxia Wang Quantitative assessment of oculomotor function by videonystagmography in multiple system atrophy Journal Article In: Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 141, pp. 15–23, 2022. @article{Zhou2022b,Objective: To quantitatively assess oculomotor impairments in multiple system atrophy (MSA) and to explore their correlation with clinical characteristics. Methods: We recruited 45 patients with MSA, including 21 with dominant ataxia (MSA-C), 24 with dominant parkinsonism (MSA-P), and 40 age-matched healthy controls. Detailed oculomotor performance in the horizontal direction was measured using videonystagmography (VNG). Results: We found that the proportion of abnormal eye movements in patients with MSA was 93.3% (37.7%, 51.1%, 73.3%, 71.1%, and 37.8% on fixation and gaze-holding, without fixation, saccade, smooth pursuit, and optokinetic nystagmus tests, respectively). Patients with MSA-C showed significantly lower gains in smooth pursuit test and optokinetic nystagmus test, and a higher incidence of hypermetria in the saccade test than patients with MSA-P (all P < 0.05). No oculomotor deficits were correlated with age, age of onset, sex, disease duration, or Unified Multiple System Atrophy Rating Scale (USMARS) (all r < 0.25, P > 0.1). Conclusions: An extremely high incidence of oculomotor impairments could be observed using VNG in both the MSA-C and MSA-P subtypes, although there were some differences between them. Significance: A comprehensive oculomotor examination could serve as a valuable tool in the diagnostic workup of patients with MSA. |
Cherie Zhou; Monicque M. Lorist; Sebastiaan Mathôt Is categorization in visual working memory a way to reduce mental effort? A pupillometry study Journal Article In: Cognitive Science, vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Zhou2022a,Recent studies on visual working memory (VWM) have shown that visual information can be stored in VWM as continuous (e.g., a specific shade of red) as well as categorical representations (e.g., the general category red). It has been widely assumed, yet never directly tested, that continuous representations require more VWM mental effort than categorical representations; given limited VWM capacity, this would mean that fewer continuous, as compared to categorical, representations can be maintained simultaneously. We tested this assumption by measuring pupil size, as a proxy for mental effort, in a delayed estimation task. Participants memorized one to four ambiguous (boundaries between adjacent color categories) or prototypical colors to encourage continuous or categorical representations, respectively; after a delay, a probe indicated the location of the to-be-reported color. We found that, for memory load 1, pupil size was larger while maintaining ambiguous as compared to prototypical colors, but without any difference in memory precision; this suggests that participants relied on an effortful continuous representation to maintain a single ambiguous color, thus resulting in pupil dilation while preserving precision. Strikingly, this effect gradually inverted, such that for memory load 4, pupil size was smaller while maintaining ambiguous and prototypical colors, but memory precision was now substantially reduced for ambiguous colors; this suggests that with increased memory load participants increasingly relied on categorical representations for ambiguous colors (which are by definition a poor fit to any category). Taken together, our results suggest that continuous representations are more effortful than categorical representations and that very few continuous representations (perhaps only one) can be maintained simultaneously. |
Aibao Zhou; Pei Xie; Md Zahir Ahmed; Mary C. Jobe; Oli Ahmed Body mass index and attention bias of food cues in women: A mediation model of body weight dissatisfaction Journal Article In: PeerJ, vol. 10, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Zhou2022,Food attention bias could be used to indicate diet-related diseases in individuals with obesity. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and food attention bias, and the mediating role of body weight dissatisfaction (BWD) on this relationship in women. Seventy-five participants were recruited to complete a visual dot task with eye tracking. The results showed that BMI would positively predict response latency and duration bias on high-calorie foods; the relationship between BMI and response latency of high-calorie food was a complete mediation of BWD; the relationship between BMI and duration bias of high-calorie food was a complete mediation of BWD; and BWD positively predicts response latency and duration bias on high-calorie foods. These findings suggest a positive relationship between BMI and food attention bias, and the effect of a complete mediation of BWD in women. |
Yueyuan Zheng; Xinchen Ye; Janet H. Hsiao Does adding video and subtitles to an audio lesson facilitate its comprehension? Journal Article In: Learning and Instruction, vol. 77, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Zheng2022,We examined whether adding video and subtitles to an audio lesson facilitates its comprehension and whether the comprehension depends on participants' cognitive abilities, including working memory and executive functions, and where they looked during video viewing. Participants received lessons consisting of statements of facts under four conditions: audio-only, audio with verbatim subtitles, audio with relevant video, and audio with both subtitles and video. Comprehension was assessed as the accuracy in answering multiple-choice questions for content memory. We found that subtitles facilitated comprehension whereas video did not. In addition, comprehension of audio lessons with video depended on participants' cognitive abilities and eye movement pattern: a more centralized (looking mainly at the screen center) eye movement pattern predicted better comprehension as opposed to a distributed pattern (with distributed regions of interest). Thus, whether video facilitates comprehension of audio lessons depends on both learners' cognitive abilities and where they look during video viewing. |
Yueyuan Zheng; Janet H. Hsiao Differential audiovisual information processing in emotion recognition: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Emotion, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zheng2022d,Recent research has suggested that dynamic emotion recognition involves strong audiovisual association; that is, facial or vocal information alone automatically induces perceptual processes in the other modality. We hypothesized that different emotions may differ in the automaticity of audiovisual association, resulting in differential audiovisual information processing. Participants judged the emotion of a talking-head video under audiovisual, video-only (with no sound), and audio-only (with a static neutral face) conditions. Among the six basic emotions, disgust had the largest audiovisual advantage over the unimodal conditions in recognition accuracy. In addition, in the recognition of all the emotions except for disgust, participants' eye-movement patterns did not change significantly across the three conditions, suggesting mandatory audiovisual information processing. In contrast, in disgust recognition, participants' eye movements in the audiovisual condition were less eyes-focused than the video-only condition and more eyes-focused than the audio-only condition, suggesting that audio information in the audiovisual condition interfered with eye-movement planning for important features (eyes) for disgust. In addition, those whose eye-movement pattern was affected less by concurrent disgusted voice information benefited more in recognition accuracy. Disgust recognition is learned later in life and thus may involve a reduced amount of audiovisual associative learning. Consequently, audiovisual association in disgust recognition is less automatic and demands more attentional resources than other emotions. Thus, audiovisual information processing in emotion recognition depends on the automaticity of audiovisual association of the emotion resulting from associative learning. This finding has important implications for real-life emotion recognition and multimodal learning. |
Yingcan Zheng; Zilun Xiao; Xin Zhou; Zhuoya Yang The hierarchical relationship between the relational-self and the collective-self during attention processing Journal Article In: Psychology Research and Behavior Management, vol. 15, pp. 557–567, 2022. @article{Zheng2022c,Background: Under the Chinese collectivist cultural system, people emphasize social connections with close others and members of in-groups. Collectivism can be divided into the following two forms: relational collectivism (privileges relational self [RS]) and group collectivism (emphasizes collective self [CS]). Previous researchers have found a hierarchy between the RS and CS, resulting in different degrees of recognition advantages. However, the hierarchy between the RS and CS is unclear and may depend on the specific processing stage. Therefore, this research compared the hierarchy between these two selves during different processing stages using an eye-movement method. Methods: The sample consisted of thirty-eight young adults aged between 18 and 24 years old (M = 20.45 |
Wei Zheng; Xiaolu Wang Contextual support for less salient homophones and pun humor appreciation: Evidence from eye movements in reading Chinese homophone puns Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Zheng2022b,Punning is an important means of creating humorous effects by intentionally exploiting semantic ambiguity. Previous psycholinguistic research on puns has mainly focused on the process of meaning retrieval in homograph puns, while it is still not entirely clear how readers dynamically utilize contextual information to understand homophone puns. In the current investigation, 68 native Chinese participants were recruited to read three types of experimental sentences while their eye movements were recorded: (1) the homophone-pun sentences where the less salient homophone was visually presented, (2) the homophone-salient sentences where the salient homophone was used, and (3) the homophone-error sentences where the critical context noun in the homophone puns was replaced with an unrelated word. Humor rating results of the homophone puns and the homophone-salient sentences demonstrated that the less salient homophones rather than the salient ones elicited much larger humor responses when presented visually in the same potential pun context. In addition, the reverse fixation pattern in the homophone area and the spill-over region also suggested that meanings of the salient homophones were more recoverable even when not presented visually. Statistical analyses of the homophone puns and the homophone-error sentences showed that the semantic relatedness between the critical context noun and the less salient homophone could significantly predict the humor rating scores of Chinese readers. Taken together, less salient homophones need to receive more contextual support to balance out the advantages of salient homophones before generating a humorous pun interpretation. |
Junming Zheng; Yanzhen Huang; Yashan Chen; Lei Guan; Qunyue Liu Subjective preference and visual attention to the attributes of ornamental plants in urban green space: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Forests, vol. 13, no. 11, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Zheng2022a,Visual attributes of greenery strongly affect the attention and preferences of people. We invited 90 volunteers to participate in a study on the subjective rating and eye tracking on the landscape attributes of greenery to determine the relationship between subjective preference and visual attention to the visual attributes of greenery. The results showed that the subjective ratings of Tree + shrub + grass (IV-A), blue flower (II-A), red flower (II-B), pink flower (II-C), broad-leaved tree (I-C), and bamboo (I-E) were relatively high, belonging to the high rating group. The random forest model showed that the fixation count could indicate a subjective preference. People generate visual attention by fixating on attractive visual attributes with high subjective ratings. |
Ziyao Zhang; Renee Sahatdjian; Nancy B. Carlisle Benefits from negative templates in easy and difficult search depend on rapid distractor rejection and enhanced guidance Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 197, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Zhang2022r,While most research on attentional templates focuses on how attention can be guided toward targets, a growing body of research has been examining our ability to guide attention away from distractors using negative templates. A recent report showed larger reaction time benefits from negative templates during a difficult search task compared to an easy search task. However, it remains unclear what shifts in attentional processing led to these differences in reaction time benefits. In the current study, we tested the predictions of enhanced guidance and rapid rejection as potential explanations for the differential impact of negative templates based on search difficulty. In Experiment 1, we replicated the larger benefits from negative templates in a within-subjects design. In Experiment 2, we use eye tracking to measure the proportion of fixations directed towards target-colored distractors as an index of enhanced guidance and the dwell time on distractors as a measure of rapid rejection. We found more attentional guidance from negative templates in the difficult search condition. In addition, we found larger benefits of rapid rejection from negative templates in the difficult search condition. While we typically focus on templates as a way of guiding attention, these results highlight another key role played by attentional templates: rapid distractor rejection. |
Ziyao Zhang; Nancy B. Carlisle Assessing recoding accounts of negative attentional templates using behavior and eye tracking Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–24, 2022. @article{Zhang2022q,Can we use attentional control to ignore known distractor features? Providing cues before a visual search trial about an upcoming distractor color (negative cue) can lead to reaction time benefits compared with no cue trials. This suggests top-down control may use negative templates to actively suppress distractor features, a notion that challenges the mechanisms of top-down control provided in many theories of attention. However, there is currently mixed support for this mechanism in the literature. Alternative explanations have been proposed, which do not require suppression within top-down control but instead involve recoding the negative cue into a positive template based on color or spatial layouts. In three experiments, we contrasted the predictions of active suppression and the recoding strategies. Across experiments, we found consistent evidence against a color recoding account. We also found evidence of accuracy, reaction time, and eye movement benefits when location recoding was not possible. These results suggest that prior benefits from negative cues cannot be explained exclusively by spatial or color recoding. The results indicate that active suppression likely plays a role in the attentional benefits following negative cues. |
Zhewei Zhang; Chaoqun Yin; Tianming Yang Evidence accumulation occurs locally in the parietal cortex Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zhang2022p,Decision making often entails evidence accumulation, a process that is represented by neural activities in a network of multiple brain areas. Yet, it has not been identified where exactly the accumulation originates. We reason that a candidate brain area should both represent evidence accumulation and information that is used to compute evidence. Therefore, we designed a two-stage probabilistic reasoning task in which the evidence for accumulation had to be first determined from sensory signals orthogonal to decisions. With a linear encoding model, we decomposed the responses of posterior parietal neurons to each stimulus into an early and a late component that represented two dissociable stages of decision making. The former reflected the transformation from sensory inputs to accumulable evidence, and the latter reflected the accumulation of evidence and the formation of decisions. The presence of both computational stages indicates that evidence accumulation signal in the parietal cortex is computed locally. |
Yuyang Zhang; Jing Yang Exploring gender differences in the instructor presence effect in video lectures: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Zhang2022o,The instructor's presence on the screen has become a popular feature in the video lectures of online learning and has drawn increasing research interest. Studies on the instructor presence effect of video lectures mainly focused on the features of the instructor, and few have taken learners' differences, such as gender, into consideration. The current study examined whether male and female learners differed in their learning performance and eye movement features when learning video lectures with and without the instructor's presence. All participants (N = 64) were asked to watch three different types of video lectures: audio-video without instructor presence (AV), picture-video with instructor presence (PV), and video-video with instructor presence (VV). They watched nine videos, three of each condition, and completed a reading comprehension test after each video. Their eye movement data were simultaneously collected when they watched these videos. Results showed that learners gained better outcomes after watching the videos with a talking instructor (VV) than those with the instructor's picture (PV) or without the instructor (AV). This finding suggests that the dynamic presence of the instructor in video lectures could enhance learning through increased social presence and agency. Gender differences were found in their attention allocation, but not behavioral learning performance. When watching the videos with a talking instructor (VV), female learners dwelt longer on the instructor, while males transited more between the instructor and the text. Our results highlight the value of instructor presence in video lectures and call for more comprehensive explorations of gender differences in online learning outcomes and attention distribution. |
Yang-Yang Zhang; Lei Zhou; Shu Li; Zhu-Yuan Liang Computation of subjective value does not always elicit alternative-based information searching in intertemporal choice Journal Article In: Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Zhang2022n,The “subjective value” computation assumption holds that intertemporal choice is performed by computing subjective value by eliciting information searching within alternatives. Although widely accepted, this assumption has not been well tested. In the current eye tracking study, we developed a new paradigm using forward inference to examine this hypothesis. Participants were instructed to finish two types of intertemporal choice tasks. The free task resembled a standard task, in which participants were free to follow their own preference. The instructed task, on the other hand, provided a baseline whereby participants were given explicit instructions to calculate the subjective value of options according to a classic discounting model. The results of behavioral, fixation and scanpath demonstrated that participants performed the instructed task in a manner that was consistent with a discounting computation process. However, by comparing performances across the two tasks, we found that participants made more attribute-based saccades when they made instructed choices, compared to when they made free choices. These findings provide no support for the “subjective value” assumption in intertemporal choice. That is, that the computation of subjective value is associated with alternative-based information searching, further demonstrating the effectiveness of the forward inference paradigm in testing intertemporal choices models. This study also highlights the need for careful reexamination of the assumed relationship between eye movement patterns and corresponding underlying cognitive processes in intertemporal choice. |
Yancui Zhang; Min Chang; Jingxin Wang Increasing intercharacter spacing reduces the transposed-character effect in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Visual Cognition, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 371–377, 2022. @article{Zhang2022m,Spacing is a very important visual cue in alphabetic languages as well as other languages, such as Chinese, which has no special interword spacing but has equal intercharacter spacing. Studies have shown that spacing has a significant effect on letter/character identity or position processing. However, whether spacing modulates the transposed-letter/-character effect remains unknown. This study conducted an eye-movement experiment using the boundary paradigm to explore whether increasing intercharacter spacing affected the transposed-character effect in Chinese reading. The results indicate that Chinese readers have flexible adjustment strategies for intercharacter spacing and that there is an obvious transposed-character effect. Crucially, increasing intercharacter spacing by three points resulted in stricter character position processing as compared with identity processing, thus reducing the transposed-character effect. Our findings are consistent with models in which visual elements comprise an important factor in the transposed-letter/-character effect, while the existence of the transposed-character effect suggests that the orthographic abstract component is also relevant. |
Xiaoying Zhang; Ruosong Chang; Xue Sui; Yutong Li Influences of emotion on driving decisions at different risk levels: An eye movement study Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zhang2022l,To explore the influences of traffic-related negative emotions on driving decisions, we induced drivers' three emotions (neutral emotion, traffic-related negative emotion, and traffic-unrelated negative emotion) by videos, then the drivers were shown traffic pictures at different risk levels and made decisions about whether to slow down, while their eye movements were recorded. We found that traffic-related negative emotion influenced driving decisions. Compared with neutral emotion, traffic-related negative emotion led to an increase in the number of decelerations, and the higher the risk, the more the number of decelerations. The visual processing time of the risk area was shorter in the traffic-related negative emotional state than that in the neutral emotional state. The less time drivers spend looking at the risk area, the faster they make their driving decisions. The results suggest that traffic-related negative emotions lead drivers to make more conservative decisions. This study supports the rationality of using traffic accident materials to conduct safety education for drivers. This article also discussed the significance of traffic-related negative emotions to social security. |
Wenyi Zhang; Yang Xie; Tianming Yang Reward salience but not spatial attention dominates the value representation in the orbitofrontal cortex Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Zhang2022k,The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encodes value and plays a key role in value-based decision-making. However, the attentional modulation of the OFC's value encoding is poorly understood. We trained two monkeys to detect a luminance change at a cued location between a pair of visual stimuli, which were over-trained pictures associated with different amounts of juice reward and, thus, different reward salience. Both the monkeys' behavior and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex neuronal activities indicated that the monkeys actively directed their spatial attention toward the cued stimulus during the task. However, the OFC's neuronal responses were dominated by the stimulus with higher reward salience and encoded its value. The value of the less salient stimulus was only weakly represented regardless of spatial attention. The results demonstrate that reward and spatial attention are distinctly represented in the prefrontal cortex and the OFC maintains a stable representation of reward salience minimally affected by attention. |
TianHong Zhang; YingYu Yang; LiHua Hua Xu; XiaoChen Tang; YeGang Hu; Xin Xiong; YanYan Wei; HuiRu Ru Cui; YingYing Tang; HaiChun Liu; Tao Chen; Zhi Liu; Li Hui; ChunBo Li; XiaoLi Guo; JiJun Wang Inefficient integration during multiple facial processing in pre-morbid and early phases of psychosis Journal Article In: The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Zhang2022s,Objectives: We used eye-tracking to evaluate multiple facial context processing and event-related potential (ERP) to evaluate multiple facial recognition in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Methods: In total, 173 subjects (83 CHRs and 90 healthy controls [HCs]) were included and their emotion perception performances were accessed. A total of 40 CHRs and 40 well-matched HCs completed an eye-tracking task where they viewed pictures depicting a person in the foreground, presented as context-free, context-compatible, and context-incompatible. During the two-year follow-up, 26 CHRs developed psychosis, including 17 individuals who developed first-episode schizophrenia (FES). Eighteen well-matched HCs were made to complete the face number detection ERP task with image stimuli of one, two, or three faces. Results: Compared to the HC group, the CHR group showed reduced visual attention to contextual processing when viewing multiple faces. With the increasing complexity of contextual faces, the differences in eye-tracking characteristics also increased. In the ERP task, the N170 amplitude decreased with a higher face number in FES patients, while it increased with a higher face number in HCs. Conclusions: Individuals in the very early phase of psychosis showed facial processing deficits with supporting evidence of different scan paths during context processing and disruption of N170 during multiple facial recognition. |
Mengmi Zhang; Marcelo Armendariz; Will Xiao; Olivia Rose; Katarina Bendtz; Margaret Livingstone; Carlos Ponce; Gabriel Kreiman Look twice: A generalist computational model predicts return fixations across tasks and species Book 2022. @book{Zhang2022j,Primates constantly explore their surroundings via saccadic eye movements that bring different parts of an image into high resolution. In addition to exploring new regions in the visual field, primates also make frequent return fixations, revisiting previously foveated locations. We systematically studied a total of 44,328 return fixations out of 217,440 fixations. Return fixations were ubiquitous across different behavioral tasks, in monkeys and humans, both when subjects viewed static images and when subjects performed natural behaviors. Return fixations locations were consistent across subjects, tended to occur within short temporal offsets, and typically followed a 180-degree turn in saccadic direction. To understand the origin of return fixations, we propose a proof-of-principle, biologically-inspired and image-computable neural network model. The model combines five key modules: an image feature extractor, bottom-up saliency cues, task-relevant visual features, finite inhibition-of-return, and saccade size constraints. Even though there are no free parameters that are fine-tuned for each specific task, species, or condition, the model produces fixation sequences resembling the universal properties of return fixations. These results provide initial steps towards a mechanistic understanding of the trade-off between rapid foveal recognition and the need to scrutinize previous fixation locations. |
Kaining Zhang; Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin; Fatih Sogukpinar; Kim Kocher; Ilya E. Monosov Surprise and recency in novelty detection in the primate brain Journal Article In: Current Biology, vol. 32, no. 10, pp. 2160–2173, 2022. @article{Zhang2022i,Primates and other animals must detect novel objects. However, the neuronal mechanisms of novelty detection remain unclear. Prominent theories propose that visual object novelty is either derived from the computation of recency (how long ago a stimulus was experienced) or is a form of sensory surprise (stimulus unpredictability). Here, we use high-channel electrophysiology in primates to show that in many primate prefrontal, temporal, and subcortical brain areas, object novelty detection is intertwined with the computations of recency and sensory surprise. Also, distinct circuits could be engaged by expected versus unexpected sensory surprise. Finally, we studied neuronal novelty-to-familiarity transformations during learning across many days. We found a diversity of timescales in neurons' learning rates and between-session forgetting rates, both within and across brain areas, that are well suited to support flexible behavior and learning in response to novelty. Our findings show that novelty sensitivity arises on multiple timescales across single neurons due to diverse but related computations of sensory surprise and recency and shed light on the computational underpinnings of novelty detection in the primate brain. |
Kaihong Zhang; Zaiqing Chen; Jianbing Chen; Xiaoqiao Huang; Lijun Yun; Yonghang Tai Pupil diameter variation related to visual comfort of hue-asymmetric stereoscopic images Journal Article In: Journal of the Society for Information Display, vol. 30, no. 11, pp. 808–817, 2022. @article{Zhang2022h,Color asymmetry of the left and right views is a common phenomenon in the stereoscopic three-dimensional (S3D) display, which can lead to visual discomfort. Due to visual discomfort is a subjective sensation, we hypothesize that variations of pupil diameter while viewing S3D images are related to experienced visual comfort. To test this hypothesis, we conducted eye-tracking experiments on humans viewing hue-asymmetric stereoscopic images while simultaneously collecting their judgment scores of experienced visual discomfort. From the collected eye-tracking data, pupil diameter variations were extracted by a normalization formula. Results show that change in hue asymmetry levels causes a significant change in pupil diameter variations. There was a strong negative correlation between the pupil diameter variation and the visual comfort assessment (VCA) score, and the Pearson's r = −0.8936. We conclude that as the hue asymmetric level of stereoscopic image increases, the pupil diameter of the participant becomes smaller and the visual comfort decreases. A visual comfort predication model was fitted well using pupil diameter variation. It predicts that when the pupil diameter variation exceeds 20.57%, the brain feels visual discomfort. |
Huiyuan Zhang; Jing Samantha Pan Visual search as an embodied process: The effects of perspective change and external reference on search performance Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 1–23, 2022. @article{Zhang2022g,Traditional visual search tasks in the laboratories typically involve looking for targets in 2D displays with exemplar views of objects. In real life, visual search commonly entails 3D objects in 3D spaces with nonperpendicular viewing and relative motions between observers and search array items, both of which lead to transformations of objects' projected images in lawful but unpredicted ways. Furthermore, observers often do not have to memorize a target before searching, but may refer to it while searching, for example, holding a picture of someone while looking for them from a crowd. Extending the traditional visual search task, in this study, we investigated the effects of image transformation as a result of perspective change yielded by discrete viewing angle change (Experiment 1) or continuous rotation of the search array (Experiment 2) and of having external references on visual search performance. Results showed that when searching from 3D objects with a non-zero viewing angle, performance was similar to searching from 2D exemplar views of objects; when searching for 3D targets from rotating arrays in virtual reality, performance was similar to searching from stationary arrays. In general, discrete or continuous perspective change did not affect the search outcomes in terms of accuracy, response time, and self-rated confidence, or the search process in terms of eye movement patterns. Therefore, visual search does not require the exact match of retinal images. Additionally, being able to see the target during the search improved search accuracy and observers' confidence. It increased search time because, as revealed by the eye movements, observers actively checked back on the reference target. Thus, visual search is an embodied process that involves real-time information exchange between the observers and the environment. |
Han Zhang; Nicola C. Anderson; Kevin F. Miller Scene meaningfulness guides eye movements even during mind-wandering Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. 1130–1150, 2022. @article{Zhang2022f,During scene viewing, semantic information in the scene has been shown to play a dominant role in guiding fixations compared to visual salience (e.g., Henderson & Hayes, 2017). However, scene viewing is sometimes disrupted by cognitive processes unrelated to the scene. For example, viewers sometimes engage in mind-wandering, or having thoughts unrelated to the current task. How do meaning and visual salience account for fixation allocation when the viewer is mind-wandering, and does it differ from when the viewer is on-task? We asked participants to study a series of real-world scenes in preparation for a later memory test. Thought probes occasionally occurred after a subset of scenes to assess whether participants were on-task or mind-wandering. We used salience maps (Graph-Based Visual Saliency; Harel, Koch, & Perona, 2007) and meaning maps (Henderson & Hayes, 2017) to represent the distribution of visual salience and semantic richness in the scene, respectively. Because visual salience and meaning were represented similarly, we could directly compare how well they predicted fixation allocation. Our results indicate that fixations prioritized meaningful over visually salient regions in the scene during mind-wandering just as during attentive viewing. These results held across the entire viewing time. A re-analysis of an independent study (Krasich, Huffman, Faber, & Brockmole Journal of Vision, 20(9), 10, 2020) showed similar results. Therefore, viewers appear to prioritize meaningful regions over visually salient regions in real-world scenes even during mind-wandering. |
Guangyao Zhang; Panpan Yao; Guojie Ma; Jingwen Wang; Junyi Zhou; Linjieqiong Huang; Pingping Xu; Lijing Chen; Songlin Chen; Junjuan Gu; Wei Wei; Xi Cheng; Huimin Hua; Pingping Liu; Ya Lou; Wei Shen; Yaqian Bao; Jiayu Liu; Nan Lin; Xingshan Li The database of eye-movement measures on words in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Scientific Data, vol. 9, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Zhang2022e,Eye movements are one of the most fundamental behaviors during reading. A growing number of Chinese reading studies have used eye-tracking techniques in the last two decades. The accumulated data provide a rich resource that can reflect the complex cognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese reading. This article reports a database of eye-movement measures of words during Chinese sentence reading. The database contains nine eye-movement measures of 8,551 Chinese words obtained from 1,718 participants across 57 Chinese sentence reading experiments. All data were collected in the same experimental environment and from homogenous participants, using the same protocols and parameters. This database enables researchers to test their theoretical or computational hypotheses concerning Chinese reading efficiently using a large number of words. The database can also indicate the processing difficulty of Chinese words during text reading, thus providing a way to control or manipulate the difficulty level of Chinese texts. |
Dan Zhang; Lihua Xu; Yuou Xie; Xiaochen Tang; Yegang Hu; Xu Liu; Guisen Wu; Zhenying Qian; Yingying Tang; Zhi Liu; Tao Chen; HaiChun Liu; Tianhong Zhang; Jijun Wang Eye movement indices as predictors of conversion to psychosis in individuals at clinical high risk Journal Article In: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zhang2022d,Eye movement abnormalities have been established as an “endophenotype” of schizophrenia. However, less is known about the possibility of these abnormalities as biomarkers for psychosis conversion among clinical high risk (CHR) populations. In the present study, 108 CHR individuals and 70 healthy controls (HC) underwent clinical assessments and eye-tracking tests, comprising fixation stability and free-viewing tasks. According to three-year follow-up outcomes, CHR participants were further stratified into CHR-converter (CHR-C; n = 21) and CHR-nonconverter (CHR-NC; n = 87) subgroups. Prediction models were constructed using Cox regression and logistic regression. The CHR-C group showed more saccades of the fixation stability test (no distractor) and a reduced saccade amplitude of the free-viewing test than HC. Moreover, the CHR-NC group exhibited excessive saccades and an increased saccade amplitude of the fixation stability test (no distractor; with distractor) compared with HC. Furthermore, two indices could effectively discriminate CHR-C from CHR-NC with an area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.80, including the saccade number of the fixation stability test (no distractor) and the saccade amplitude of the free-viewing test. Combined with negative symptom scores of the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms, the area was 0.81. These findings support that eye movement alterations might emerge before the onset of clinically overt psychosis and could assist in predicting psychosis transition among CHR populations. |
Dan Zhang; Xu Liu; Lihua Xu; Yu Li; Yangyang Xu; Mengqing Xia; Zhenying Qian; Yingying Tang; Zhi Liu; Tao Chen; HaiChun Liu; TianHong Zhang; Jijun Wang Effective differentiation between depressed patients and controls using discriminative eye movement features Journal Article In: Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 307, pp. 237–243, 2022. @article{Zhang2022c,Background: Depression is a common debilitating mental disorder caused by various factors. Identifying and diagnosing depression are challenging because the clinical evaluation of depression is mainly subjective, lacking objective and quantitative indicators. The present study investigated the value and significance of eye movement measurements in distinguishing depressed patients from controls. Methods: Ninety-five depressed patients and sixty-nine healthy controls performed three eye movement tests, including fixation stability, free-viewing, and anti-saccade tests, and eleven eye movement indexes were obtained from these tests. The independent t-test was adopted for group comparisons, and multiple logistic regression analysis was employed to identify diagnostic biomarkers. Support vector machine (SVM), quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), and Bayesian (BYS) algorithms were applied to build the classification models. Results: Depressed patients exhibited eye movement anomalies, characterized by increased saccade amplitude in the fixation stability test; diminished saccade velocity in the anti-saccade test; and reduced saccade amplitude, shorter scan path length, lower saccade velocity, decreased dynamic range of pupil size, and lower pupil size ratio in the free-viewing test. Four features mentioned above entered the logistic regression equation. The classification accuracies of SVM, QDA, and BYS models reached 86.0%, 81.1%, and 83.5%, respectively. Conclusions: Depressed patients exhibited abnormalities across multiple tests of eye movements, assisting in differentiating depressed patients from healthy controls in a cost-effective and non-invasive manner. |
Dan Zhang; Qian Guo; Lihua Xu; Xu Liu; Tian Hong Zhang; Xiaohua Liu; Haiying Chen; Guanjun Li; Jijun Wang The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis: Evidence from eye-tracking measures Journal Article In: Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, vol. 118, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Zhang2022b,Emerging evidence suggested that people with severe mental disorders were more vulnerable to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, few researches investigated the influence of global pandemics on people at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. This study aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical symptoms, psychological distress, and eye-tracking characteristics in CHR individuals and healthy participants. Forty-nine CHR individuals and 50 healthy controls (HC) were assessed by PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), Perceived Stress Scale, 10-item version (PSS-10), and Coronavirus Impact Scale (CIS). Eye movement performances were measured by the tests of fixation stability, free-viewing, and anti-saccade. According to the mean score of CIS, participants were stratified into high-impact (n = 35) and low-impact (n = 64) subgroups. Compared with the HC group, CHR participants reported significantly higher levels of post-traumatic symptoms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and showed abnormalities in most of the eye movement indexes. Among the altered indexes, the saccade amplitude of fixation stability test (far distractor), the scan path length of free-viewing test, and the accuracy of anti-saccade test were negatively affected by the severity of impact level in the CHR group. Moreover, the altered eye movement indexes were significantly associated with the total scores of CIS, PCL-5, and subscales of the Scale of Prodromal Syndromes (SOPS) among CHR individuals. Overall, our findings suggested the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the eye movement characteristics of CHR individuals. The present study provides valuable information on physiological distress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and sensitive neuropsychological biomarkers that interacted with social and environment stress in the CHR population. |
Bo Zhang; Yuji Naya A dataset of human fMRI/MEG experiments with eye tracking for spatial memory research using virtual reality Journal Article In: Data in Brief, vol. 43, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Zhang2022a,A dataset consisting of whole-brain fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)/MEG (magnetoencephalography) images, eye tracking files, and behavioral records from healthy adult human participants when they performed a spatial-memory paradigm in a virtual environment was collected to investigate the neural representation of the cognitive map defined by unique spatial relationship of three objects, as well as the neural dynamics of the cognitive map following the task demand from localizing self-location to remembering the target location relative to the self-body. The dataset, including both fMRI and MEG, was also used to investigate the neural networks involved in representing a target within and outside the visual field. The dataset included 19 and 12 university students at Peking University for fMRI and MEG experiments, respectively (fMRI: 12 women, 7 men; MEG: 4 women, 8 men). The average ages of those participants were 24.9 years (MRI: 18–30 years) and 22.5 years (MEG: 19–25 years), respectively. fMRI BOLD and T1-weighted images were acquired using a 3T Siemens Prisma scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) equipped with a 20-channel receiver head coil. MEG neuromagnetic data were acquired using a 275-channel MEG system (CTF MEG, Canada). The dataset could be further used to investigate a range of neural mechanisms involved in human spatial cognition or to develop a bioinspired deep neural network to enhance machines' abilities in spatial processing. |
Bei Zhang; Ralph Weidner; Fredrik Allenmark; Sabine Bertleff; Gereon R. Fink; Zhuanghua Shi; Hermann J. Müller Statistical learning of frequent distractor locations in visual search involves regional signal suppression in early visual cortex Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, no. 13, pp. 2729–2744, 2022. @article{Zhang2022,Observers can learn locations where salient distractors appear frequently to reduce potential interference - an effect attributed to better suppression of distractors at frequent locations. But how distractor suppression is implemented in the visual cortex and within the frontoparietal attention networks remains unclear. We used fMRI and a regional distractor-location learning paradigm with two types of distractors defined in either the same (orientation) or a different (color) dimension to the target to investigate this issue. fMRI results showed that BOLD signals in early visual cortex were significantly reduced for distractors (as well as targets) occurring at the frequent versus rare locations, mirroring behavioral patterns. This reduction was more robust with same-dimension distractors. Crucially, behavioral interference was correlated with distractor-evoked visual activity only for same- (but not different-) dimension distractors. Moreover, with different- (but not same-) dimension distractors, a color-processing area within the fusiform gyrus was activated more when a distractor was present in the rare region versus being absent and more with a distractor in the rare versus frequent locations. These results support statistical learning of frequent distractor locations involving regional suppression in early visual cortex and point to differential neural mechanisms of distractor handling with different- versus same-dimension distractors. |
Viktoria Zemliak; W. Joseph MacInnes The spatial leaky competing accumulator model Journal Article In: Frontiers in Computer Science, vol. 4, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Zemliak2022,The Leaky Competing Accumulator model (LCA) of Usher and McClelland is able to simulate the time course of perceptual decision making between an arbitrary number of stimuli. Reaction times, such as saccadic latencies, produce a typical distribution that is skewed toward longer latencies and accumulator models have shown excellent fit to these distributions. We propose a new implementation called the Spatial Leaky Competing Accumulator (SLCA), which can be used to predict the timing of subsequent fixation durations during a visual task. SLCA uses a pre-existing saliency map as input and represents accumulation neurons as a two-dimensional grid to generate predictions in visual space. The SLCA builds on several biologically motivated parameters: leakage, recurrent self-excitation, randomness and non-linearity, and we also test two implementations of lateral inhibition. A global lateral inhibition, as implemented in the original model of Usher and McClelland, is applied to all competing neurons, while a local implementation allows only inhibition of immediate neighbors. We trained and compared versions of the SLCA with both global and local lateral inhibition with use of a genetic algorithm, and compared their performance in simulating human fixation latency distribution in a foraging task. Although both implementations were able to produce a positively skewed latency distribution, only the local SLCA was able to match the human data distribution from the foraging task. Our model is discussed for its potential in models of salience and priority, and its benefits as compared to other models like the Leaky integrate and fire network. |
Marie Zelenina; MacIej Kosilo; Janir Da Cruz; Marília Antunes; Patrícia Figueiredo; Mitul A. Mehta; Diana Prata Temporal dynamics of intranasal oxytocin in human brain electrophysiology Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, no. 14, pp. 3110–3126, 2022. @article{Zelenina2022,Oxytocin (OT) is a key modulator of human social cognition, popular in behavioral neuroscience. To adequately design and interpret intranasal OT (IN-OT) research, it is crucial to know for how long it affects human brain function once administered. However, this has been mostly deduced from peripheral body f luids studies, or uncommonly used dosages. We aimed to characterize IN-OT's effects on human brain function using resting-state EEG microstates across a typical experimental session duration. Nineteen healthy males participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, cross-over design of 24 IU of IN-OT in 12-min windows 15 min-to1 h 42min after administration. We observed IN-OT effects on all microstates, across the observation span. During eyes-closed, IN-OT increased duration and contribution of A and contribution and occurrence of D, decreased duration and contribution of B and C; and increased transition probability C-to-B and C-to-D. In eyes-open, it increased A-to-C and A-to-D. As microstates A and D have been related to phonological auditory and attentional networks, respectively, we posit IN-OT may tune the brain for reception of external stimuli, particularly of social nature - tentatively supporting current neurocognitive hypotheses of OT. Moreover, we contrast our overall results against a comprehensive literature review of IN-OT time-course effects in the brain, highlighting comparability issues. |
Andrea M. Zawoyski; Scott P. Ardoin; Katherine S. Binder The impact of test-taking strategies on eye movements of elementary students during reading comprehension assessment Journal Article In: School Psychology, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Zawoyski2022,Teachers often encourage students to use test-taking strategies during reading comprehension assessments, but these strategies are not always evidence-based. One common strategy involves teaching students to read the questions before reading an associated passage. Research findings comparing the passage-first (PF) and questions-first (QF) strategies are mixed. The present study employed eye-tracking technology to record 84 third and fourth-grade participants' eye movements (EMs) as they read a passage and responded to multiple-choice (MC) questions using PF and QF strategies in a within-subject design. Although there were no significant differences between groups in accuracy on MC questions, EM measures revealed that the PF condition was superior to the QF condition for elementary readers in terms of efficiency in reading and responding to questions. These findings suggest that the PF strategy supports a more comprehensive understanding of the text. Ultimately, within the PF condition, students required less time to obtain the same accuracy outcomes they attained when reading in the QF condition. School psychologists can improve reading comprehension instruction by encouraging the importance of teaching children to gain meaning from the text rather than search the passage for answers to MC questions. |
Farnaz Zamani Esfahlani; Lisa Byrge; Jacob Tanner; Olaf Sporns; Daniel P. Kennedy; Richard F. Betzel Edge-centric analysis of time-varying functional brain networks with applications in autism spectrum disorder Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 263, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{ZamaniEsfahlani2022,The interaction between brain regions changes over time, which can be characterized using time-varying functional connectivity (tvFC). The common approach to estimate tvFC uses sliding windows and offers limited temporal resolution. An alternative method is to use the recently proposed edge-centric approach, which enables the tracking of moment-to-moment changes in co-fluctuation patterns between pairs of brain regions. Here, we first examined the dynamic features of edge time series and compared them to those in the sliding window tvFC (sw-tvFC). Then, we used edge time series to compare subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and healthy controls (CN). Our results indicate that relative to sw-tvFC, edge time series captured rapid and bursty network-level fluctuations that synchronize across subjects during movie-watching. The results from the second part of the study suggested that the magnitude of peak amplitude in the collective co-fluctuations of brain regions (estimated as root sum square (RSS) of edge time series) is similar in CN and ASD. However, the trough-to-trough duration in RSS signal is greater in ASD, compared to CN. Furthermore, an edge-wise comparison of high-amplitude co-fluctuations showed that the within-network edges exhibited greater magnitude fluctuations in CN. Our findings suggest that high-amplitude co-fluctuations captured by edge time series provide details about the disruption of functional brain dynamics that could potentially be used in developing new biomarkers of mental disorders. |
Xinger Yu; Timothy D. Hanks; Joy J. Geng Attentional guidance and match decisions rely on different template information during visual search Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 105–120, 2022. @article{Yu2022c,When searching for a target object, we engage in a continuous “look-identify” cycle in which we use known features of the target to guide attention toward potential targets and then to decide whether the selected object is indeed the target. Target information in memory (the target template or attentional template) is typically characterized as having a single, fixed source. However, debate has recently emerged over whether flexibility in the target template is relational or optimal. On the basis of evidence from two experiments using college students (Ns = 30 and 70, respectively), we propose that initial guidance of attention uses a coarse relational code, but subsequent decisions use an optimal code. Our results offer a novel perspective that the precision of template information differs when guiding sensory selection and when making identity decisions during visual search. |
Wenyuan Yu; Wenhui Sun; Nai Ding Asymmetrical cross-modal influence on neural encoding of auditory and visual features in natural scenes Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 255, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Yu2022b,Natural scenes contain multi-modal information, which is integrated to form a coherent perception. Previous studies have demonstrated that cross-modal information can modulate neural encoding of low-level sensory features. These studies, however, mostly focus on the processing of single sensory events or rhythmic sensory sequences. Here, we investigate how the neural encoding of basic auditory and visual features is modulated by cross-modal information when the participants watch movie clips primarily composed of non-rhythmic events. We presented audiovisual congruent and audiovisual incongruent movie clips, and since attention can modulate cross-modal interactions, we separately analyzed high- and low-arousal movie clips. We recorded neural responses using electroencephalography (EEG), and employed the temporal response function (TRF) to quantify the neural encoding of auditory and visual features. The neural encoding of sound envelope is enhanced in the audiovisual congruent condition than the incongruent condition, but this effect is only significant for high-arousal movie clips. In contrast, audiovisual congruency does not significantly modulate the neural encoding of visual features, e.g., luminance or visual motion. In summary, our findings demonstrate asymmetrical cross-modal interactions during the processing of natural scenes that lack rhythmicity: Congruent visual information enhances low-level auditory processing, while congruent auditory information does not significantly modulate low-level visual processing. |
Haojue Yu; Foroogh Shamsi; MiYoung Kwon Altered eye movements during reading under degraded viewing conditions: Background luminance, text blur, and text contrast Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 1–20, 2022. @article{Yu2022a,Degraded viewing conditions caused by either natural environments or visual disorders lead to slow reading. Here, we systematically investigated how eye movement patterns during reading are affected by degraded viewing conditions in terms of spatial resolution, contrast, and background luminance. Using a high-speed eye tracker, binocular eye movements were obtained from 14 young normally sighted adults. Images of text passages were manipulated with varying degrees of background luminance (1.3–265 cd/m2), text blur (severe blur to no blur), or text contrast (2.6%–100%). We analyzed changes in key eye movement features, such as saccades, microsaccades, regressive saccades, fixations, and return-sweeps across different viewing conditions. No significant changes were observed for the range of tested background luminance values. However, with increasing text blur and decreasing text contrast, we observed a significant decrease in saccade amplitude and velocity, as well as a significant increase in fixation duration, number of fixations, proportion of regressive saccades, microsaccade rate, and duration of return-sweeps. Among all, saccade amplitude, fixation duration, and proportion of regressive saccades turned out to be the most significant contributors to reading speed, together accounting for 90% of variance in reading speed. Our results together showed that, when presented with degraded viewing conditions, the patterns of eye movements during reading were altered accordingly. These findings may suggest that the seemingly deviated eye movements observed in individuals with visual impairments may be in part resulting from active and optimal information acquisition strategies operated when visual sensory input becomes substantially deprived. |
Gongchen Yu; James P. Herman; Leor N. Katz; Richard J. Krauzlis Microsaccades as a marker not a cause for attention-related modulation Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Yu2022,Recent evidence suggests that microsaccades are causally linked to the attentionrelated modulation of neurons—specifically, that microsaccades toward the attended location are required for the subsequent changes in firing rate. These findings have raised questions about whether attention-related modulation is due to different states of attention as traditionally assumed or might instead be a secondary effect of microsaccades. Here, in two rhesus macaques, we tested the relationship between microsaccades and attention-related modulation in the superior colliculus (SC), a brain structure crucial for allocating attention. We found that attention-related modulation emerged even in the absence of microsaccades, was already present prior to microsaccades toward the cued stimulus, and persisted through the suppression of activity that accompanied all microsaccades. Nonetheless, consistent with previous findings, we also found significant attention-related modulation when microsaccades were directed toward, rather than away from, the cued location. Thus, despite the clear links between microsaccades and attention, microsaccades are not necessary for attention-related modulation, at least not in the SC. They do, however, provide an additional marker for the state of attention, especially at times when attention is shifting from one location to another. |
Mansoureh Seyed Yousefi; Farnoush Reisi; Mohammad Reza Daliri; Vahid Shalchyan Stress detection using eye tracking data: An evaluation of full parameters Journal Article In: IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Yousefi2022,Stress has been a common disorder in human societies and numerous studies have been conducted on the early diagnosis of stress. Previous studies have shown that it is possible to diagnose stress using eye tracking data. This study aimed to obtain a new and significant method for detecting parameters of the eye tracker and electrodermal activity signal by discrimination of ‘‘stress'' vs. ‘‘relaxation'' and to achieve higher accuracy than previous research. We used a Stroop task and a mathematical stressor task in which stress elements were placed in a novel design to separate stress from relaxation in the Stroop task and evaluate three levels of stress in the mathematical task. In the present study, we recorded the eye tracking data of fifteen participants and thoroughly investigated the pupil diameter (PD) and electrodermal activity (EDA) features to discriminate different stress states. After preprocessing, several features were extracted and selected. Then, the features were used for classification by applying support vector machine, linear discriminant analysis, and k-nearest neighbor classifiers. The linear discriminant analysis classifier, for which the accuracy was 88.43% in the Stroop and 91.10% in the mathematical, showed higher accuracy than the other classifiers when using PD and EDA features. Also, PD features demonstrated more reliability and ability to differentiate stress from relaxation compared to traditional EDA. |
Harun Yörük; Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau Simultaneously and sequentially presented arrays evoke similar visual working memory crowding Journal Article In: Visual Cognition, vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 490–505, 2022. @article{Yoeruek2022,In visual crowding, an item representation is degraded by adjacent flanker items. Recently, the related phenomenon of visual working memory (VWM) crowding has been used to evaluate shared mechanisms between memory and perception. However, some previous studies that investigated VWM crowding suggested that it stemmed from encoding, rather than memory maintenance. In the current study, we evaluated two measures in simultaneously-presented arrays: anisotropy for radially vs. tangentially configured arrays, and effect of target to array proximity (array middle vs. edge targets). Simultaneously presented arrays evoked effects in both measures. We then compared the data from the current study to that from our previous study that used sequential presentation, and thus avoided encoding-based explanations for crowding. We predicted that we would observe greater crowding for simultaneous than sequential presentation because simultaneous arrays allow for two opportunities for crowding—encoding and maintenance—while sequential arrays only allow for maintenance-based crowding. Surprisingly, we observed that both measures were similar across simultaneous and sequential arrays. These results indicate that VWM crowding does not have an additive error mechanism across encoding and maintenance. Moreover, the anisotropy result suggests that both simultaneous and sequential array VWM crowding is influenced by retinotopy in the early visual cortex. |
Sang-Ah Yoo; Julio C. Martinez-Trujillo; Stefan Treue; John K. Tsotsos; Mazyar Fallah Attention to visual motion suppresses neuronal and behavioral sensitivity in nearby feature space Journal Article In: BMC Biology, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Yoo2022a,Background: Feature-based attention prioritizes the processing of the attended feature while strongly suppressing the processing of nearby ones. This creates a non-linearity or “attentional suppressive surround” predicted by the Selective Tuning model of visual attention. However, previously reported effects of feature-based attention on neuronal responses are linear, e.g., feature-similarity gain. Here, we investigated this apparent contradiction by neurophysiological and psychophysical approaches. Results: Responses of motion direction-selective neurons in area MT/MST of monkeys were recorded during a motion task. When attention was allocated to a stimulus moving in the neurons' preferred direction, response tuning curves showed its minimum for directions 60–90° away from the preferred direction, an attentional suppressive surround. This effect was modeled via the interaction of two Gaussian fields representing excitatory narrowly tuned and inhibitory widely tuned inputs into a neuron, with feature-based attention predominantly increasing the gain of inhibitory inputs. We further showed using a motion repulsion paradigm in humans that feature-based attention produces a similar non-linearity on motion discrimination performance. Conclusions: Our results link the gain modulation of neuronal inputs and tuning curves examined through the feature-similarity gain lens to the attentional impact on neural population responses predicted by the Selective Tuning model, providing a unified framework for the documented effects of feature-based attention on neuronal responses and behavior. |
Aspen H. Yoo; Alfredo Bolaños; Grace E. Hallenbeck; Masih Rahmati; Thomas C. Sprague; Clayton E. Curtis Behavioral prioritization enhances working memory precision and neural population gain Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 365–379, 2022. @article{Yoo2022,Humans allocate visual working memory (WM) resource according to behavioral relevance, resulting in more precise memories for more important items. Theoretically, items may be maintained by feature-tuned neural populations, where the relative gain of the populations encoding each item determines precision. To test this hypothesis, we compared the amplitudes of delay period activity in the different parts of retinotopic maps representing each of several WM items, predicting the amplitudes would track behavioral priority. Using fMRI, we scanned participants while they remembered the location of multiple items over a WM delay and then reported the location of one probed item using a memory-guided saccade. Importantly, items were not equally probable to be probed (0.6, 0.3, 0.1, 0.0), which was indicated with a precue. We analyzed fMRI activity in 10 visual field maps in occipital, parietal, and frontal cortex known to be important for visual WM. In early visual cortex, but not association cortex, the amplitude of BOLD activation within voxels corresponding to the retinotopic location of visual WM items increased with the priority of the item. Interestingly, these results were contrasted with a common finding that higher-level brain regions had greater delay period activity, demonstrating a dissociation between the absolute amount of activity in a brain area and the activity of different spatially selective populations within it. These results suggest that the distribution of WM resources according to priority sculpts the relative gains of neural populations that encode items, offering a neural mechanism for how prioritization impacts memory precision. |
Atsushi Yokoi; Jeffrey Weiler Pupil diameter tracked during motor adaptation in humans Journal Article In: Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 128, no. 5, pp. 1224–1243, 2022. @article{Yokoi2022,Pupil diameter is known as a noninvasive window into individuals' internal states. Despite the growing use of pupillometry in cognitive learning studies, it receives little attention in motor learning studies. Here, we characterized the pupil responses in a short-term reach adaptation paradigm by measuring pupil diameter of human participants while they adapted to abrupt, gradual, or switching force field conditions. Our results demonstrate how surprise and uncertainty reflected in pupil diameter develop during motor adaptation.Pupil diameter, under constant illumination, is known to reflect individuals' internal states, such as surprise about observation and environmental uncertainty. Despite the growing use of pupillometry in cognitive learning studies as an additional measure for examining internal states, few studies have used pupillometry in human motor learning studies. Here, we provide the first detailed characterization of pupil diameter changes in a short-term reach adaptation paradigm. We measured pupil changes in 121 human participants while they adapted to abrupt, gradual, or switching force field conditions. Sudden increases in movement error caused by the introduction/reversal of the force field resulted in strong phasic pupil dilation during movement accompanied by a transient increase in tonic premovement baseline pupil diameter in subsequent trials. In contrast, pupil responses were reduced when the force field was gradually introduced, indicating that large, unexpected errors drove the changes in pupil responses. Interestingly, however, error-induced pupil responses gradually became insensitive after experiencing multiple force field reversals. We also found an association between baseline pupil diameter and incidental knowledge of the gradually introduced perturbation. Finally, in all experiments, we found a strong co-occurrence of larger baseline pupil diameter with slower reaction and movement times after each rest break. Collectively, these results suggest that tonic baseline pupil diameter reflects one's belief about environmental uncertainty, whereas phasic pupil dilation during movement reflects surprise about a sensory outcome (i.e., movement error), and both effects are modulated by novelty. Our results provide a new approach for nonverbally assessing participants' internal states during motor learning. |
Jinghui Yin; Jiande Sun; Jing Li; Ke Liu An effective gaze-based authentication method with the spatiotemporal feature of eye movement Journal Article In: Sensors, vol. 22, no. 3002, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Yin2022,Eye movement has become a new behavioral feature for biometric authentication. In the eye movement-based authentication methods that use temporal features and artificial design features, the required duration of eye movement recordings are too long to be applied. Therefore, this study aims at using eye movement recordings with shorter duration to realize authentication. And we give out a reasonable eye movement recording duration that should be less than 12 s, referring to the changing pattern of the deviation degree between the gaze point and the stimulus point on the screen. In this study, the temporal motion features of the gaze points and the spatial distribution features of the saccade are using to represent the personal identity. Two datasets are constructed for the experiments, including 5 s and 12 s of eye movement recordings. On the datasets constructed in this paper, the open-set authentication results show that the Equal Error Rate of our proposed methods can reach 10.62% when recording duration is 12 s and 12.48% when recording duration is 5 s. The closed-set authentication results show that the Equal Error Rate of our proposed methods can reach 5.25% when recording duration is 12 s and 7.82% when recording duration is 5 s. It demonstrates that the proposed method provides a reference for the eye movements data-based identity authentication. |
Wei Yi; Shiyi Lu; Robert Dekeyser Orthographic, semantic, and contextual influences on initial processing and learning of novel words during reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 194–219, 2022. @article{Yi2022a,This study investigates how orthographic, semantic and contextual variables - including word length, concreteness, and contextual support - impact on the processing and learning of new words in a second language (L2) when first encountered during reading. Students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) were recruited to read sentences for comprehension, embedded with unfamiliar L2 words that occurred once. Immediately after this, they received a form recognition test, a meaning recall test, and a meaning recognition test. Eye-movement data showed significant effects of word length on both early and late processing of novel words, along with effects of concreteness only on late-processing eye-tracking measures. Informative contexts were read slower than neutral contexts, yet contextual support did not show any direct influence on the processing of novel words. Interestingly, initial learning of abstract words was better than concrete words in terms of form and meaning recognition. Attentional processing of novel L2 words, operationalized by total reading time, positively predicted L2 learners' recognition of new orthographic forms. Taken together, these results suggest: 1) orthographic, semantic and contextual factors play distinct roles for initial processing and learning of novel words; 2) online processing of novel words contributes to L2 learners' initial knowledge of unfamiliar lexical items acquired from reading. |
Wei Yi Processing of novel L2 compounds across repeated exposures during reading: A growth curve analysis Journal Article In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 551–579, 2022. @article{Yi2022,Using eye tracking, this study examined L2 learners' real-time processing of novel compounds across repeated exposures during reading. Sixty-one L2 speakers of Chinese read 12 stories over two days. Unbeknown to them, 12 novel compounds were embedded, each occurring six times. Growth curve analyses showed that semantic transparency, working memory capacity, and morphological awareness had no impact on fixation durations for the novel compounds. However, participants with a larger L2 vocabulary size processed novel opaque compounds significantly faster than those with a smaller L2 vocabulary size. For both transparent and opaque compounds, first fixation durations did not change across exposures, yet similar curvilinear decreasing patterns were found in gaze duration and total reading time, with the rates of decrease moderated by L2 vocabulary size and working memory capacity, respectively. Taken together, such findings provide converging evidence supporting the incidental nature of vocabulary learning through natural reading. |
Emanuela Yeung; Dimitrios Askitis; Velisar Manea; Victoria Southgate Emerging self-representation presents a challenge when perspectives conflict Journal Article In: Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science, vol. 6, pp. 232–249, 2022. @article{Yeung2022,The capacity to take another's perspective appears to be present from early in life, with young infants ostensibly able to predict others' behaviour even when the self and other perspective are at odds. Yet, infants' abilities are difficult to reconcile with the well-known problems that older children have with ignoring their own perspective. Here we show that it is the development of the self-perspective, at around 18 months, that creates a perspective conflict between self and other during a non-verbal perspective-tracking scenario. Using mirror self-recognition as a measure of self-awareness and pupil dilation to index conflict processing, our results show that mirror recognisers perceive greater conflict during action anticipation, specifically in a high inhibitory demand condition, in which conflict between self and other should be particularly salient. |
Rachel Yep; Matthew L. Smorenburg; Heidi C. Riek; Olivia G. Calancie; Ryan H. Kirkpatrick; Julia E. Perkins; Jeff Huang; Brian C. Coe; Donald C. Brien; Douglas P. Munoz Interleaved pro/anti-saccade behavior across the lifespan Journal Article In: Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, vol. 14, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Yep2022,The capacity for inhibitory control is an important cognitive process that undergoes dynamic changes over the course of the lifespan. Robust characterization of this trajectory, considering age continuously and using flexible modeling techniques, is critical to advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms that differ in healthy aging and neurological disease. The interleaved pro/anti-saccade task (IPAST), in which pro- and anti-saccade trials are randomly interleaved within a block, provides a simple and sensitive means of assessing the neural circuitry underlying inhibitory control. We utilized IPAST data collected from a large cross-sectional cohort of normative participants (n = 604, 5–93 years of age), standardized pre-processing protocols, generalized additive modeling, and change point analysis to investigate the effect of age on saccade behavior and identify significant periods of change throughout the lifespan. Maturation of IPAST measures occurred throughout adolescence, while subsequent decline began as early as the mid-20s and continued into old age. Considering pro-saccade correct responses and anti-saccade direction errors made at express (short) and regular (long) latencies was crucial in differentiating developmental and aging processes. We additionally characterized the effect of age on voluntary override time, a novel measure describing the time at which voluntary processes begin to overcome automated processes on anti-saccade trials. Drawing on converging animal neurophysiology, human neuroimaging, and computational modeling literature, we propose potential frontal-parietal and frontal-striatal mechanisms that may mediate the behavioral changes revealed in our analysis. We liken the models presented here to “cognitive growth curves” which have important implications for improved detection of neurological disease states that emerge during vulnerable windows of developing and aging. |
Panpan Yao; Linnaea Stockall; David Hall; Hagit Borer Processing evidence for the grammatical encoding of the mass/count distinction in Mandarin Chinese Journal Article In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, vol. 51, pp. 341–371, 2022. @article{Yao2022,Using the Visual World Paradigm, the current study aimed to explore whether the mass/count distinction is determined by syntax in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on classified nouns in nominal phrases. By using dual-role classifiers, ontological count and mass nouns, and phrase structures with and without biased syntactic cues we found that the mass/count distinction is initially computed using phrase structure but can be overridden in cases where the syntax is incompatible with nouns' ontological meanings. The results indicate that in Mandarin Chinese, syntactic cues can be rapidly used to make predictions about upcoming information in real time processing. |
Panpan Yao; Adrian Staub; Xingshan Li Predictability eliminates neighborhood effects during Chinese sentence reading Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 243–252, 2022. @article{Yao2022b,Previous research has demonstrated effects of both orthographic neighborhood size and neighbor frequency in word recognition in Chinese. A large neighborhood—where neighborhood size is defined by the number of words that differ from a target word by a single character—appears to facilitate word recognition, while the presence of a higher-frequency neighbor has an inhibitory effect. The present study investigated modulation of these effects by a word's predictability in context. In two eye-movement experiments, the predictability of a target word in each sentence was manipulated. Target words differed in their neighborhood size (Experiment 1) and in whether they had a higher-frequency neighbor (Experiment 2). The study replicated the previously observed effects of neighborhood size and neighbor frequency when the target word was unpredictable, but in both experiments neighborhood effects were absent when the target was predictable. These results suggest that when a word is preactivated by context, the activation of its neighbors may be diminished to such an extent that these neighbors do not effectively compete for selection. |
Panpan Yao; Reem Alkhammash; Xingshan Li In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 390–408, 2022. @article{Yao2022a,We aimed to tackle the question about the time course of plausibility effect in on-line processing of Chinese nouns in temporarily ambiguous structures, and whether L2ers can immediately use the plausibility information generated from classifier-noun associations in analyzing ambiguous structures. Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to explore how native Chinese speakers (Experiment 1) and high-proficiency Dutch-Chinese learners (Experiment 2) on-line process 4-character novel noun-noun combinations in Chinese. In each pair of nominal phrases (Numeral+Classifier+Noun1+Noun2), the plausibility of Classifier-Noun1 varied (plausible vs. implausible) while the whole nominal phrases were always plausible. Results showed that the plausibility of Classifier-Noun1 associations had an immediate effect on Noun1, and a reversed effect on Noun2 for both groups of participants. These findings indicated that plausibility plays an immediate role in incremental semantic integration during on-line processing of Chinese. Similar to native Chinese speakers, high-proficiency L2ers can also use the plausibility information of classifier-noun associations in syntactic reanalysis. |
Xiaozhi Yang; Ian Krajbich A dynamic computational model of gaze and choice in multi-attribute decisions Journal Article In: Psychological Review, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Yang2022c,When making decisions, how people allocate their attention influences their choices. One empirical finding is that people are more likely to choose the option that they have looked at more. This relation has been formalized with the attentional drift-diffusion model (aDDM; Krajbich et al., 2010). However, options often have multiple attributes, and attention is also thought to govern the relative weighting of those attributes (Roe et al., 2001). Little is known about how these two distinct features of the choice process interact; we still lack a model (and tests of that model) that incorporate both option- and attribute-wise attention. Here, we propose a multi-attribute attentional drift-diffusion model (maaDDM) to account for attentional discount factors on both options and attributes. We then use five eye-tracking datasets (two-alternative, two-attribute preferential tasks) from different choice domains to test the model. We find very stable option-level and attribute-level attentional discount factors across datasets, though nonfixated options are consistently discounted more than nonfixated attributes. Additionally, we find that people generally discount the nonfixated attribute of the nonfixated option in a multiplicative way, and so that feature is consistently discounted the most. Finally, we also find that gaze allocation reflects attribute weights, with more gaze to higher-weighted attributes. In summary, our work uncovers an intricate interplay between attribute weights, gaze processes, and preferential choice. |
Qing Yang; Yiya Chen Phonological competition in Mandarin spoken word recognition Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 820–843, 2022. @article{Yang2022b,Most of the world's languages use both segment and lexical tone to distinguish word meanings. However, the few studies on spoken word recognition in tone languages show conflicting results concerning the relative contribution of (sub-)syllabic constituents, and the time course of how segmental and tonal information is utilised. In Experiments 1 & 2, participants listened to monosyllabic Mandarin words with the presence of a phonological competitor, which overlaps in either segmental syllable, onset and tone, rhyme and tone, or just tone. Eye movement results only confirmed the segmental syllable competition effect. Experiment 3 investigated the time course of segmental vs. tonal cue utilisation by manipulating their point of divergence (POD) and found that POD modulates the look trajectories of both segmental and tonal phonological competitors. While listeners can use both segmental and tonal information incrementally to constrain lexical activation, segmental syllable plays an advantageous role in Mandarin spoken word recognition. |
Qianli Yang; Zhongqiao Lin; Wenyi Zhang; Jianshu Li; Xiyuan Chen; Jiaqi Zhang; Tianming Yang Monkey plays Pac-Man with compositional strategies and hierarchical decision-making Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–39, 2022. @article{Yang2022a,Humans can often handle daunting tasks with ease by developing a set of strategies to reduce decision-making into simpler problems. The ability to use heuristic strategies demands an advanced level of intelligence and has not been demonstrated in animals. Here, we trained macaque monkeys to play the classic video game Pac-Man. The monkeys' decision-making may be described with a strategy-based hierarchical decision-making model with over 90% accuracy. The model reveals that the monkeys adopted the take-the-best heuristic by using one dominating strategy for their decision-making at a time and formed compound strategies by assembling the basis strategies to handle particular game situations. With the model, the computationally complex but fully quan-tifiable Pac-Man behavior paradigm provides a new approach to understanding animals' advanced cognition. |
Jingwen Yang; Zelin Chen; Guoxin Qiu; Xiangyu Li; Caixia Li; Kexin Yang; Zhuanggui Chen; Leyan Gao; Shuo Lu In: Computer Speech and Language, vol. 76, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Yang2022,The ability of efficient facial emotion recognition (FER) plays a significant role in successful human communication and is closely associated with multiple speech communication disorders (SCD) in children. Despite the relevance, little is known about how speech communication abilities (SCA) and FER are correlated or of their underlying mechanism. To address this, we monitored eye movements of 115 children while watching human faces with different emotions and designed a machine-learning based SCD prediction model to explore the underlying pattern of eye movements during the FER task as well as their correlation with SCA. Strong and detailed correlations were found between different dimensions of SCA and various eye-movement features. A group of FER gazing patterns was found to be highly sensitive to the possibility of children's SCD. The SCD prediction model reached an accuracy as high as 88.9%, which offers a possible technique to fast screen SCD for children. |
Victoria Yaneva; Brian E. Clauser; Amy Morales; Miguel Paniagua Assessing the validity of test scores using response process data from an eye-tracking study: A new approach Journal Article In: Advances in Health Sciences Education, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 1401–1422, 2022. @article{Yaneva2022,Understanding the response process used by test takers when responding to multiple-choice questions (MCQs) is particularly important in evaluating the validity of score interpretations. Previous authors have recommended eye-tracking technology as a useful approach for collecting data on the processes test taker's use to respond to test questions. This study proposes a new method for evaluating alternative score interpretations by using eye-tracking data and machine learning. We collect eye-tracking data from 26 students responding to clinical MCQs. Analysis is performed by providing 119 eye-tracking features as input for a machine-learning model aiming to classify correct and incorrect responses. The predictive power of various combinations of features within the model is evaluated to understand how different feature interactions contribute to the predictions. The emerging eye-movement patterns indicate that incorrect responses are associated with working from the options to the stem. By contrast, correct responses are associated with working from the stem to the options, spending more time on reading the problem carefully, and a more decisive selection of a response option. The results suggest that the behaviours associated with correct responses are aligned with the real-world model used for score interpretation, while those associated with incorrect responses are not. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to perform data-driven, machine-learning experiments with eye-tracking data for the purpose of evaluating score interpretation validity. |
Jumpei Yamashita; Hiroki Terashima; Makoto Yoneya; Kazushi Maruya; Haruo Oishi; Takatsune Kumada In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 10, pp. 1–23, 2022. @article{Yamashita2022,Understanding temporally attention fluctuations can benefit scientific knowledge and real-life applications. Temporal attention studies have typically used the reaction time (RT), which can be measured only after a target presentation, as an index of attention level. We have proposed the Micro-Pupillary Unrest Index (M-PUI) based on pupillary fluctuation amplitude to estimate RT before the target presentation. However, the kind of temporal attention effects that the M-PUI reflects remains unclear. We examined if the M-PUI shows two types of temporal attention effects initially reported for RTs in the variable foreperiod tasks: the variable foreperiod effect (FP effect) and the sequential effect (SE effect). The FP effect refers to a decrease in the RT due to an increase in the foreperiod of the current trial, whereas the SE effect refers to an increase in the RT in the early part of the foreperiod of the current trial due to an increase in the foreperiod of the previous trial. We used a simple reaction task with the medium-term variable foreperiods (Psychomotor Vigilance Task) and found that the M-PUI primarily reflects the FP effect. Inter-individual analyses showed that the FP effect on the M-PUI, unlike other eye movement indices, is correlated with the FP effect on RT. These results suggest that the M-PUI is a potentially powerful tool for investigating temporal attention fluctuations for a partly unpredictable target. |
Cheng Xue; Lily E. Kramer; Marlene R. Cohen Dynamic task-belief is an integral part of decision-making Journal Article In: Neuron, vol. 110, no. 15, pp. 2503–2511, 2022. @article{Xue2022,Natural decisions involve two seemingly separable processes: inferring the relevant task (task-belief) and performing the believed-relevant task. The assumed separability has led to the traditional practice of studying task-switching and perceptual decision-making individually. Here, we used a novel paradigm to manipulate and measure macaque monkeys' task-belief and demonstrated inextricable neuronal links between flexible task-belief and perceptual decision-making. We showed that in animals, but not in artificial networks that performed as well or better than the animals, stronger task-belief is associated with better perception. Correspondingly, recordings from neuronal populations in cortical areas 7a and V1 revealed that stronger task-belief is associated with better discriminability of the believed-relevant, but not the believed-irrelevant, feature. Perception also impacts belief updating; noise fluctuations in V1 help explain how task-belief is updated. Our results demonstrate that complex tasks and multi-area recordings can reveal fundamentally new principles of how biology affects behavior in health and disease. |
Ying Xu; Jia-Qiong Xie; Fu-Xing Wang; Rebecca L Monk; James Gaskin; Jin-Liang Wang The impact of Weibo features on user's information comprehension: The mediating role of cognitive load Journal Article In: Social Science Computer Review, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Xu2022a,Social media, such as Microblogs, have become an important source for people to obtain information. However, we know little about how this would influence our comprehension over online information. Based on the cognitive load theory, this research explores whether and how two important features of Weibo, which are the feedback function and information fragmentation, would increase cognitive load and may in turn hinder users' information comprehension in Weibo. A 2 (feedback or non-feedback) × 2 (strong-interference or weak-interference information) between-participants experimental design was conducted. Our results revealed that the Weibo feedback function and interference information exerted a negative impact over information comprehension via inducing increased cognitive load. Specifically, these results deepened our understanding regarding the impact of Weibo features on online information comprehension and suggest the mechanism by which this occurs. This finding has implications for how to minimize the potential cost of using Weibo and maximize the adaptive development of social media. |
Liling Xu; Sui Liu; Suiping Wang; Dongxia Sun; Nan Li Word's predictability can modulate semantic preview effect in high-constraint sentences Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–8, 2022. @article{Xu2022,The processing of words in sentence reading is influenced by both information from sentential context (the effect of predictability) and information from previewing upcoming words (the preview effect), but how both effects interact during online reading is not clear. In this study, we tested the interaction of predictability effect and the preview effect in predicting reading processing. In the experiment, sentence constraint was controlled using all high-constraint sentences as materials. We manipulated both the predictability of the target word in the sentence and the semantic relationship between the preview word and the target word as predictors of the semantic preview effect. The results showed that the semantic preview effect was present only when the target word had low-predictability in the sentence but was not observed when the target word had high-predictability in the sentence. The results suggest that contextual information in reading can modulate the pre-activation of words and thus influence whether the preview word has a priming effect. The results of this study provide further evidence that reading comprehension involves an interactive system of processing multiple sources of information at multiple levels. |
Chen Xing; Yajuan Zhang; Hongliang Lu; Xia Zhu; Danmin Miao Trait anxiety affects attentional bias to emotional stimuli across time: A growth curve analysis Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Xing2022,Many studies have illustrated the close relationship between anxiety disorders and attentional functioning, but the relationship between trait anxiety and attentional bias remains controversial. This study examines the effect of trait anxiety on the time course of attention to emotional stimuli using materials from the International Affective Picture System. Participants with high vs. low trait anxiety (HTA vs. LTA) viewed four categories of pictures simultaneously: dysphoric, threatening, positive, and neutral. Their eye-movements for each emotional stimulus were recorded for static and dynamic analysis. Data were analyzed using a mixed linear model and growth curve analysis. Specifically, the HTA group showed a greater tendency to avoid threatening stimuli and more pupil diameter variation in the early period of stimulus presentation (0–7.9 s). The HTA group also showed a stronger attentional bias toward positive and dysphoric stimuli in the middle and late period of stimulus presentation (7.9–30 s). These results suggest that trait anxiety has a significant temporal effect on attention to emotional stimuli, and that this effect mainly manifests after 7 s. In finding stronger attentional avoidance of threatening stimuli and more changes in neural activity, as well as a stronger attentional bias toward positive stimuli, this study provides novel insights on the relationship between trait anxiety and selective attention. |
Zedong Xie; Meng Zhang; Zunping Ma The impact of mental simulation on subsequent tourist experience–dual evidence from eye tracking and self-reported measurement Journal Article In: Current Issues in Tourism, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Xie2022b,Tourism research has always sought to find ways to improve tourists' experience evaluation and create added value for them. However, the academic community has focused on the on-site and post-travel stages of tourists, and neglected the pre-travel stage. This study examines the influence of guided mental simulation of an upcoming tourist experience on subsequent on-site tourist experience and experience evaluation. The research simulated real-world experience with tour videos shot from the first-person perspective, and measured the variables using both eye movements and self-reporting. Multivariate ANOVA and multigroup analysis were then performed on the data. The results showed that a process simulation of tourists having an engagement experience and an outcome simulation of tourists having a sight-seeing experience resulted in a higher engagement level and higher emotional response during the on-site experience, higher evaluation of the experience, and a greater impact of engagement level on their evaluation. This study expands the research on tourists' psychological experience in the pre-travel stage. Results indicate that the period from the moment consumers book or purchase the tourist product to the moment they actually embark on the tourist experience is a valuable marketing window. |
Weizhen Xie; JC Lynne Lu Sing; Ana Martinez-Flores; Weiwei Zhang Induced negative arousal modulates the speed of visual working memory consolidation Journal Article In: Emotion, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 179–197, 2022. @article{Xie2022a,This study examines how induced negative arousal influences the consolidation of fragile sensory inputs into durable working memory (WM) representations. Participants performed a visual WM change detection task with different amounts of encoding time manipulated by random pattern masks inserted at different levels of memory-and-mask Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA). Prior to the WM task, negative or neutral emotion was induced using audio clips from the International Affective Digital Sounds (IADS). Pupillometry was simultaneously recorded to provide an objective measure of induced arousal. Self-report measures of early-life stress (i.e., adverse childhood experiences) and current mood states (i.e., depressed mood and anxious feeling) were also collected as covariates. We find that participants initially remember a comparable number of WM items under a short memory-and-mask SOA of 100 ms across emotion conditions, but then encode more items into WM at a longer memory-and-mask SOA of 333 ms under induced negative arousal. These findings suggest that induced negative arousal speeds up WM consolidation. Yet, induced negative arousal does not seem to significantly affect participants' WM storage capacity estimated from a separate no mask condition. Furthermore, this emotional effect on WM consolidation speed is moderated by key affect-related individual differences. Participants who have greater pupil responses to negative IADS sounds or have more early-life stress show faster WM consolidation under induced negative arousal. Collectively, our findings reveal a critical role of phasic adrenergic responses in the rapid consolidation of visual WM content and identify potential moderators of this association. |
Jin Xie; Ting Yan; Jie Zhang; Zhengyu Ma; Huihui Zhou Modulation of neuronal activity and saccades at theta rhythm during visual search in non-human primates Journal Article In: Neuroscience Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 10, pp. 1183–1198, 2022. @article{Xie2022,Active exploratory behaviors have often been associated with theta oscillations in rodents, while theta oscillations during active exploration in non-human primates are still not well understood. We recorded neural activities in the frontal eye field (FEF) and V4 simultaneously when monkeys performed a free-gaze visual search task. Saccades were strongly phase-locked to theta oscillations of V4 and FEF local field potentials, and the phase-locking was dependent on saccade direction. The spiking probability of V4 and FEF units was significantly modulated by the theta phase in addition to the time-locked modulation associated with the evoked response. V4 and FEF units showed significantly stronger responses following saccades initiated at their preferred phases. Granger causality and ridge regression analysis showed modulatory effects of theta oscillations on saccade timing. Together, our study suggests phase-locking of saccades to the theta modulation of neural activity in visual and oculomotor cortical areas, in addition to the theta phase locking caused by saccade-triggered responses. |
Xinyi Xia; Yanping Liu; Lili Yu; Erik D. Reichle Are there preferred viewing locations in Chinese reading? Evidence from eye-tracking and computer simulations Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Xia2022,The Chinese writing system is different from English in that individual words both comprise one to four characters and are not separated by clear word boundaries (e.g., interword spaces). These differences raise the question of how readers of Chinese know where to move their eyes to support efficient lexical processing? The widely accepted default-targeting hypothesis suggests that Chinese readers direct their eyes to a small number of preferred-viewing locations (PVLs), such as the beginning or middle of upcoming words. In this article, we report two eye-movement experiments testing this hypothesis. In both experiments, participants read sentences comprising entirely two-character words, but either without (Experiment 1) or with (Experiment 2) explicit knowledge of this structure prior to their participation. The results of both experiments indicate the absence of PVLs. Simulations using implemented versions of a simple oculomotor-based hypothesis, two variants of the default-targeting hypothesis, and the hypothesis that saccade lengths are modulated as a function of estimated parafoveal-processing difficulty (i.e., dynamic-adjustment hypothesis) suggest that the latter provides the best account of saccadictargeting during Chinese reading. These results are discussed in relation to broader issues of eye-movement control during reading and how models of such must be modified to provide more accurate accounts of the reading of Chinese and other languages. |
Jordana S. Wynn; Ruben D. I. Van Genugten; Signy Sheldon; Daniel L. Schacter Schema-related eye movements support episodic simulation Journal Article In: Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 100, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Wynn2022a,Recent work indicates that eye movements support the retrieval of episodic memories by reactivating the spatiotemporal context in which they were encoded. Although similar mechanisms have been thought to support simulation of future episodes, there is currently no evidence favoring this proposal. In the present study, we investigated the role of eye movements in episodic simulation by comparing the gaze patterns of individual participants imagining future scene and event scenarios to across-participant gaze templates for those same scenarios, reflecting their shared features (i.e., schemas). Our results provide novel evidence that eye movements during episodic simulation in the face of distracting visual noise are (1) schema-specific and (2) predictive of simulation success. Together, these findings suggest that eye movements support episodic simulation via reinstatement of scene and event schemas, and more broadly, that interactions between the memory and oculomotor effector systems may underlie critical cognitive processes including constructive episodic simulation. |
Xiuyun Wu; Miriam Spering Tracking and perceiving diverse motion signals: Directional biases in human smooth pursuit and perception Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Wu2022a,Human smooth pursuit eye movements and motion perception behave similarly when observers track and judge the motion of simple objects, such as dots. But moving objects in our natural environment are complex and contain internal motion. We ask how pursuit and perception integrate the motion of objects with motion that is internal to the object. Observers (n = 20) tracked a moving random-dot kinematogram with their eyes and reported the object's perceived direction. Objects moved horizontally with vertical shifts of 0, ±3, ±6, or ±9° and contained internal dots that were static or moved ±90° up/down. Results show that whereas pursuit direction was consistently biased in the direction of the internal dot motion, perceptual biases differed between observers. Interestingly, the perceptual bias was related to the magnitude of the pursuit bias (r = 0.75): perceptual and pursuit biases were directionally aligned in observers that showed a large pursuit bias, but went in opposite directions in observers with a smaller pursuit bias. Dissociations between perception and pursuit might reflect different functional demands of the two systems. Pursuit integrates all available motion signals in order to maximize the ability to monitor and collect information from the whole scene. Perception needs to recognize and classify visual information, thus segregating the target from its context. Ambiguity in whether internal motion is part of the scene or contributes to object motion might have resulted in individual differences in perception. The perception-pursuit correlation suggests shared early-stage motion processing or perception- pursuit interactions. |
Shengyi Wu; Tommy Blanchard; Emily Meschke; Richard N. Aslin; Benjamin Y. Hayden; Celeste Kidd Macaques preferentially attend to intermediately surprising information Journal Article In: Biology Letters, vol. 18, pp. 1–5, 2022. @article{Wu2022,Normative learning theories dictate that we should preferentially attend to informative sources, but only up to the point that our limited learning systems can process their content. Humans, including infants, show this predicted strategic deployment of attention. Here, we demonstrate that rhesus monkeys, much like humans, attend to events of moderate surprisingness over both more and less surprising events. They do this in the absence of any specific goal or contingent reward, indicating that the behavioural pattern is spontaneous. We suggest this U-shaped attentional preference represents an evolutionarily preserved strategy for guiding intelligent organisms toward material that is maximally useful for learning. |
Anna M. Wright; Jorge A. Salas; Kelly E. Carter; Daniel T. Levin Eye Movement Modeling Examples guide viewer eye movements but do not improve learning Journal Article In: Learning and Instruction, vol. 79, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Wright2022,Recent research has tested whether Eye Movement Modeling Examples (EMMEs) can effectively cue attention and improve learning. However, the effects of EMMEs are variable, and the degree to which viewers follow these cues remains unclear. In the current paper, we compared screen-captured instructional videos that included an EMME in the form of a transparent circular overlay depicting the instructor's gaze location with identical videos that lacked this cue. We observed that EMMEs drove viewer saccades to cued locations and resulted in shorter distances between viewer gaze and the EMME, but learning performance and video preference were unaffected by the presence of an EMME. We argue that EMMEs can effectively guide attention, but the range of circumstances under which they improve learning may be limited. |
Jae Hyung Woo; Habiba Azab; Andrew Jahn; Benjamin Hayden; Joshua W. Brown The PRO model accounts for the anterior cingulate cortex role in risky decision-making and monitoring Journal Article In: Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 952–968, 2022. @article{Woo2022,The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been implicated in a number of functions, including performance monitoring and decision-making involving effort. The prediction of responses and outcomes (PRO) model has provided a unified account of much human and monkey ACC data involving anatomy, neurophysiology, EEG, fMRI, and behavior. We explored the computational nature of ACC with the PRO model, extending it to account specifically for both human and macaque monkey decision-making under risk, including both behavioral and neural data. We show that the PRO model can account for a number of additional effects related to outcome prediction, decision-making under risk, gambling behavior. In particular, we show that the ACC represents the variance of uncertain outcomes, suggesting a link between ACC function and mean-variance theories of decision making. The PRO model provides a unified account of a large set of data regarding the ACC. |
Roslyn Wong; Aaron Veldre; Sally Andrews Are there independent effects of constraint and predictability on eye movements during reading? Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Wong2022,Evidence of processing costs for unexpected words presented in place of a more expected completion remains elusive in the eye-movement literature. The current study investigated whether such prediction error costs depend on the source of constraint violation provided by the prior context. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read predictable words and unpredictable alternatives that were either semantically related or unrelated in three-sentence passages. The passages differed in whether the source of constraint originated solely from the global context provided by the first two semantically rich senten- ces of the passage, from the local context provided by the final sentence of the passage, from both the global and local context, or from none of the three sentences of the passage. The results revealed the expected processing advantage for predictable completions in any constraining context, although the rela- tive contributions of the different sources of constraint varied across the time course of word processing. Unpredictable completions, however, did not yield any processing costs when the context constrained to- ward a different word, instead producing immediate processing benefits in the presence of any constrain- ing context. Moreover, the initial processing of related unpredictable completions was enhanced further by the provision of a supportive global context. Predictability effects therefore do not appear to be deter- mined by cloze probability alone but also by the nature of the prior contextual constraint especially when they encourage the construction of higher-level discourse representations. The implications of these find- ings for understanding existing theoretical models of predictive processing are discussed. |
Brent Wolter; Chi Yui Leung; Shaoxin Wang; Shifa Chen; Junko Yamashita Comparing linguistic and cultural explanations for visual search strategies Journal Article In: Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 623–657, 2022. @article{Wolter2022,Visual search studies have shown that East Asians rely more on information gathered through their extrafoveal (i.e., peripheral) vision than do Western Caucasians, who tend to rely more on information gathered using their foveal (i.e., central) vision. However, the reasons for this remain unclear. Cognitive linguists suggest that the difference is attributable linguistic variation, while cultural psychologists contend it is due to cultural factors. The current study used eye-tracking data collected during a visual search task to compare these explanations by leveraging a semantic difference against a cultural difference to determine which view best explained strategies used on the task. The task was administered to Chinese, American, and Japanese participants with a primary focus on the Chinese participants' behaviors since the semantic difference aligned the Chinese participants with the Americans, while their cultural affiliation aligned them with the Japanese participants. The results indicated that the Chinese group aligned more closely with the American group on most measures, suggesting that semantic differences were more important than cultural affiliation on this particular task. However, there were some results that could not be accounted for by the semantic differences, suggesting that linguistic and cultural factors might affect visual search strategies concurrently. |
Agata Wolna; Joanna Durlik; Zofia Wodniecka Pronominal anaphora resolution in Polish: Investigating online sentence interpretation using eye-tracking Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 1–28, 2022. @article{Wolna2022,The mechanism of anaphora resolution is subject to large cross-linguistic differences. The most likely reason for this is the different sensitivity of pronouns to the range of factors that determine their reference. In the current study, we explored the mechanism of anaphora resolution in Polish. First, we explored preferences in the interpretation of null and overt pronouns in ambiguous sentences. More specifically, we investigated whether Polish speakers prefer to relate overt pronouns to subject or object antecedents. Subsequently, we tested the consequences of violating this bias when tracing the online sentence-interpretation process using eye-tracking. Our results show that Polish speakers have a strong preference for interpreting null pronouns as referring to subject antecedents and interpreting overt pronouns as referring to object antecedents. However, in online sentence interpretation, only overt pronouns showed sensitivity to a violation of the speaker's preference for a pronoun-antecedent match. This suggests that null pronoun resolution is more flexible than overt pronoun resolution. Our results indicate that it is much easier for Polish speakers to shift the reference of a null pronoun than an overt one whenever a pronoun is forced to refer to a less-preferred antecedent. These results are supported by naturalness ratings, which showed that null pronouns are considered equally natural regardless of their reference, while overt pronouns referring to subject antecedents are rated as considerably less natural than those referring to object antecedents. To explain this effect, we propose that the interpretation of null and overt pronouns is sensitive to different factors which determine their reference. |
Maren-Isabel Wolf; Maximilian Bruchmann; Gilles Pourtois; Sebastian Schindler; Thomas Straube In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 32, no. 10, pp. 2112–2128, 2022. @article{Wolf2022b,Until today, there is an ongoing discussion if attention processes interact with the information processing stream already at the level of the C1, the earliest visual electrophysiological response of the cortex. We used two highly powered experiments (each N = 52) and examined the effects of task relevance, spatial attention, and attentional load on individual C1 amplitudes for the upper or lower visual hemifield. Bayesian models revealed evidence for the absence of load effects but substantial modulations by task-relevance and spatial attention. When the C1-eliciting stimulus was a task-irrelevant, interfering distracter, we observed increased C1 amplitudes for spatially unattended stimuli. For spatially attended stimuli, different effects of task-relevance for the two experiments were found. Follow-up exploratory single-trial analyses revealed that subtle but systematic deviations from the eye-gaze position at stimulus onset between conditions substantially influenced the effects of attention and task relevance on C1 amplitudes, especially for the upper visual field. For the subsequent P1 component, attentional modulations were clearly expressed and remained unaffected by these deviations. Collectively, these results suggest that spatial attention, unlike load or task relevance, can exert dissociable top-down modulatory effects at the C1 and P1 levels. |
Christian Wolf; Markus Lappe Motivation by reward jointly improves speed and accuracy, whereas task-relevance and meaningful images do not Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Wolf2022a,Visual selection is characterized by a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Speed or accuracy of the selection process can be affected by higher level factors—for example, expecting a reward, obtaining task-relevant information, or seeing an intrinsically relevant target. Recently, motivation by reward has been shown to simultaneously increase speed and accuracy, thus going beyond the speed–accuracy-trade-off. Here, we compared the motivating abilities of monetary reward, task-relevance, and image content to simultaneously increase speed and accuracy. We used a saccadic distraction task that required suppressing a distractor and selecting a target. Across different blocks successful target selection was followed either by (i) a monetary reward, (ii) obtaining task-relevant information, or (iii) seeing the face of a famous person. Each block additionally contained the same number of irrelevant trials lacking these consequences, and participants were informed about the upcoming trial type. We found that postsaccadic vision of a face affected neither speed nor accuracy, suggesting that image content does not affect visual selection via motivational mechanisms. Task relevance increased speed but decreased selection accuracy, an observation compatible with a classical speed–accuracy trade-off. Motivation by reward, however, simultaneously increased response speed and accuracy. Saccades in all conditions deviated away from the distractor, suggesting that the distractor was suppressed, and this deviation was strongest in the reward block. Drift-diffusion modelling revealed that task-relevance affected behavior by affecting decision thresholds, whereas motivation by reward additionally increased the rate of information uptake. The present findings thus show that the three consequences differ in their motivational abilities. |
Christian Wolf; Artem V. Belopolsky; Markus Lappe Current foveal inspection and previous peripheral preview influence subsequent eye movement decisions Journal Article In: iScience, vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Wolf2022,Humans visually inspect the world with their fovea and select new parts of the scene using saccadic eye movements. Foveal inspection and the decision of where and when to look next proceed simultaneously, but there is mixed evidence concerning their independence. Here, we tested their interdependence using drift-diffusion modeling. Participants first made a saccade to a predetermined inspection target and subsequently decided between two selection targets. We found that the inspected target's meaningfulness and the opportunity to preview it peripherally affects fixation durations and the upcoming saccadic selection. Drift-diffusion modeling showed that meaningfulness and the absence of peripheral preview can both delay the subsequent saccadic decision process and affect the rate at which peripheral information is accumulated. Our results thus show that foveal inspection and peripheral selection are dependent on each other and that peripheral information can be maintained across the saccade to influence subsequent eye movement decisions. |
Seth B. Winward; James Siklos-Whillans; Roxane J. Itier In: Neuroimage: Reports, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Winward2022,Recent ERP research using a gaze-contingent paradigm suggests the face-sensitive N170 component is modulated by the presence of a face outline, the number of parafoveal facial features, and the type of feature in parafovea (Parkington and Itier, 2019). The present study re-analyzed these data using robust mass univariate statistics available through the LIMO toolbox, allowing the examination of the ERP signal across all electrodes and time points. We replicated the finding that the presence of a face outline significantly reduced ERP latencies and amplitudes, suggesting it is an important cue to the prototypical face template. However, we found that this effect began around 114 ms, and was maximal during the P1-N170 and N170-P2 intervals. The number of features present in parafovea also impacted the entire waveform, with systematic reductions in amplitude and latency as the number of features increased. This effect was maximal around 120 ms during the P1-N170 interval and around 170 ms between the N170 and P2. The ERP response was also modulated by feature type; contrary to previous findings this effect was maximal around 200 ms and the P2 peak. Although we provide partial repli- cation of the previous results on the N170, the effects were more temporally distributed in the present analysis. These effects were generally maximal before and after the N170 and were the weakest at the N170 peak itself. This re-analysis demonstrates that classical ERP analysis can obscure important aspects of face processing beyond the N170 peak, and that tools like mass univariate statistics are needed to shed light on the whole time-course of face processing. |
Matthew B. Winn; Katherine H. Teece Effortful listening despite correct responses: The cost of mental repair in sentence recognition by listeners with cochlear implants Journal Article In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 65, pp. 3966–3980, 2022. @article{Winn2022,Purpose: Speech recognition percent correct scores fail to capture the effort of mentally repairing the perception of speech that was initially misheard. This study measured the effort of listening to stimuli specifically designed to elicit mental repair in adults who use cochlear implants (CIs). Method: CI listeners heard and repeated sentences in which specific words were distorted or masked by noise but recovered based on later context: a signature of mental repair. Changes in pupil dilation were tracked as an index of effort and time-locked with specific landmarks during perception. Results: Effort significantly increases when a listener needs to repair a misperceived word, even if the verbal response is ultimately correct. Mental repair of words in a sentence was accompanied by greater prevalence of errors elsewhere in the same sentence, suggesting that effort spreads to consume resources across time. The cost of mental repair in CI listeners was essentially the same as that observed in listeners with normal hearing in previous work. Conclusions: Listening effort as tracked by pupil dilation is better explained by the mental repair and reconstruction of words rather than the appearance of correct or incorrect perception. Linguistic coherence drives effort more heavily than the mere presence of mistakes, highlighting the importance of testing materials that do not constrain coherence by design. |
Thomas Wilschut; Sebastiaan Mathôt Interactions between visual working memory, attention, and color categories: A pupillometry study Journal Article In: Journal of Cognition, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Wilschut2022,Recent studies have found that visual working memory (VWM) for color shows a categorical bias: Observers typically remember colors as more prototypical to the category they belong to than they actually are. Here, we further examine color-category effects on VWM using pupillometry. Participants remembered a color for later reproduction on a color wheel. During the retention interval, a colored probe was presented, and we measured the pupil constriction in response to this probe, assuming that the strength of constriction reflects the visual saliency of the probe. We found that the pupil initially constricted most strongly for non-matching colors that were maximally different from the memorized color; this likely reflects a lack of visual adaptation for these colors, which renders them more salient than memory-matching colors (which were shown before). Strikingly, this effect reversed later in time, such that pupil constriction was more prolonged for memory-matching colors as compared to non-matching colors; this likely reflects that memory-matching colors capture attention more strongly, and perhaps for a longer time, than non-matching colors do. We found no effects of color categories on pupil constriction: After controlling for color distance, (non-matching) colors from the same category as the memory color did not result in a different pupil response as compared to colors from a different category; however, we did find that behavioral responses were biased by color categories. In summary, we found that pupil constriction to colored probes reflects both visual adaptation and VWM content, but, unlike behavioral measures, is not notably affected by color categories. |
James P. Wilmott; Mukesh Makwana; Joo-Hyun Song Target detection and discrimination in pop-out visual search with two targets Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 5, pp. 1538–1552, 2022. @article{Wilmott2022,To successfully interact with objects in complex and crowded environments, we often perform visual search to detect or identify a relevant target (or targets) among distractors. Previous studies have reported a redundancy gain when two targets instead of one are presented in a simple target detection task. However, research is scant about the role of multiple targets in target discrimination tasks, especially in the context of visual search. Here, we address this question and investigate its underlying mechanisms in a pop-out search paradigm. In Experiment 1, we directly compared visual search performance for one or two targets for detection or discrimination tasks. We found that two targets led to a redundancy gain for detection, whereas it led to a redundancy cost for discrimination. To understand the basis for the redundancy cost observed in discrimination tasks for multiple targets, we further investigated the role of perceptual grouping (Experiment 2) and stimulus–response feature compatibility (Experiment 3). We determined that the strength of perceptual grouping among homogenous distractors was attenuated when two targets were present compared with one. We also found that response compatibility between two targets contributed more to the redundancy cost compared with perceptual compatibility. Taken together, our results show how pop-out search involving two targets is modulated by the level of feature processing, perceptual grouping, and compatibility of perceptual and response features. |
Konstantin F. Willeke; Araceli R. Cardenas; Joachim Bellet; Ziad M. Hafed Severe distortion in the representation of foveal visual image locations in short-term memory Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 24, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Willeke2022,The foveal visual image region provides the human visual system with the highest acuity. However, it is unclear whether such a high fidelity representational advantage is maintained when foveal image locations are committed to short-term memory. Here, we describe a paradoxically large distortion in foveal target location recall by humans. We briefly presented small, but high contrast, points of light at eccentricities ranging from 0.1 to 12°, while subjects maintained their line of sight on a stable target. After a brief memory period, the subjects indicated the remembered target locations via computer controlled cursors. The biggest localization errors, in terms of both directional deviations and amplitude percentage overshoots or undershoots, occurred for the most foveal targets, and such distortions were still present, albeit with qualitatively different patterns, when subjects shifted their gaze to indicate the remembered target locations. Foveal visual images are severely distorted in short-term memory. |
Jaimie C. Wilkie; Nathan A. Ryckman; Lynette J. Tippett; Anthony J. Lambert A test of the unified model of vision and attention: Effects of parietal-occipital damage on visual orienting Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 168, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Wilkie2022,Visual orienting was studied in a patient (FM) with parietal-occipital damage due to oligodendroglioma and associated surgery, and in eighteen control participants. The ability of FM and control participants to shift attention in response to spatial landmark cues, and in response to cues that recruit endogenous orienting via encoding of cue identity, were assessed. According to the unified model of vision and attention (Lambert, A. et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 44, 412–432) FM should find it difficult to orient attention in response to spatial landmarks due to impaired functioning of the dorsal visual stream; but shifting attention in response to cue identity, encoded via the ventral visual stream, should be spared. Consistent with these predictions, FM was unable to shift attention in the landmark cueing task, but shifted attention effectively in response to identity cues; and her visual orienting performance differed reliably from controls. These findings complement our earlier observation of preserved orienting towards landmark cues in a patient with bilateral damage to the ventral visual stream, and add to a growing body of evidence in support of the unified model of vision and attention. |
Marilena Wilding; Christof Körner; Anja Ischebeck; Natalia Zaretskaya Increased insula activity precedes the formation of subjective illusory Gestalt Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 257, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Wilding2022,The constructive nature of human perception sometimes leads us to perceiving rather complex impressions from simple sensory input: for example, recognizing animal contours in cloud formations or seeing living creatures in shadows of objects. A special type of bistable stimuli gives us a rare opportunity to study the neural mechanisms behind this process. Such stimuli can be visually interpreted either as simple or as more complex illusory content on the basis of the same sensory input. Previous studies demonstrated increased activity in the superior parietal cortex during the perception of an illusory Gestalt impression compared to a simpler interpretation. Here, we examined the role of slow fluctuations of resting-state fMRI activity in shaping the subsequent illusory interpretation by investigating activity related to the illusory Gestalt not only during, but also prior to its perception. We presented 31 participants with a bistable motion stimulus, which can be perceived either as four moving dot pairs (local) or two moving illusory squares (global). fMRI was used to measure brain activity in a slow event-related design. We observed stronger IPS and putamen responses to the stimulus when participants perceived the global interpretation compared to the local, confirming the findings of previous studies. Most importantly, we also observed that the global stimulus interpretation was preceded by an increased activity of the bilateral dorsal insula, which is known to process saliency and gate information for conscious access. Our data suggest an important role of the dorsal insula in shaping complex illusory interpretations of the sensory input. |
Benedict Wild; Amr Maamoun; Yifan Mayr; Ralf Brockhausen; Stefan Treue Electrophysiological dataset from macaque visual cortical area MST in response to a novel motion stimulus Journal Article In: Scientific Data, vol. 9, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Wild2022,Establishing the cortical neural representation of visual stimuli is a central challenge of systems neuroscience. Publicly available data would allow a broad range of scientific analyses and hypothesis testing, but are rare and largely focused on the early visual system. To address the shortage of open data from higher visual areas, we provide a comprehensive dataset from a neurophysiology study in macaque monkey visual cortex that includes a complete record of extracellular action potential recordings from the extrastriate medial superior temporal (MST) area, behavioral data, and detailed stimulus records. It includes spiking activity of 172 single neurons recorded in 139 sessions from 4 hemispheres of 3 rhesus macaque monkeys. The data was collected across 3 experiments, designed to characterize the response properties of MST neurons to complex motion stimuli. This data can be used to elucidate visual information processing at the level of single neurons in a high-level area of primate visual cortex. Providing open access to this dataset also promotes the 3R-principle of responsible animal research. |