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 |
Christoph Strauch; Christophe Romein; Marnix Naber; Stefan Van der Stigchel; Antonia F. Ten Brink The orienting response drives pseudoneglect—Evidence from an objective pupillometric method Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 151, pp. 259–271, 2022. @article{Strauch2022,Spatial attention is generally slightly biased leftward (“pseudoneglect”), a phenomenon typically assessed with paper-and-pencil tasks, limited by the requirement of explicit responses and the inability to assess on a subsecond timescale. Pseudoneglect is often stable within experiments, but differs vastly between investigations and is sometimes directed to the left, sometimes to the right. To date, no exhaustive explanation to this phenomenon has been provided. Here, we objectively assessed lateralized attention over time, exploiting the phenomenon that changes in the pupil reflect the allocation of attention in space. Pupil sizes of 41 healthy participants fixating the center were influenced stronger by the differential background luminance of the left side compared to the right side of the visual display. These differences were mainly driven by visual information in the periphery. Differences in pupil sizes positively related with greyscales scores. Time-based analyses within trials show strongest effects early on. With increasing trial number (not time), the initial leftward bias shifted central in pupillometry-based and greyscales measures. This suggests that the orienting response determines the degree of attention bias. In our amplification hypothesis we pose that the quality of pseudoneglect (i.e., the direction) is determined by higher order factors such as hemispheric imbalances, whereas the quantity (i.e., the degree) is determined by the orienting network. This account might explain numerous—previously thought opposing—findings. We here show how pupil light responses reveal pseudoneglect, in a next step, this might allow clinical diagnosis of hemispatial neglect. |
Brad T. Stilwell; Shaun P. Vecera Testing the underlying processes leading to learned distractor rejection: Learned oculomotor avoidance Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 6, pp. 1964–1981, 2022. @article{Stilwell2022,Target templates stored in visual memory guide visual attention toward behaviorally relevant target objects. Visual attention also is guided away from nontarget distractors by xlonger-term learning, a phenomenon termed “learned distractor rejection.” Template guidance and learned distractor rejection can occur simultaneously to further increase search efficiency. However, the underlying processes guiding learned distractor rejection are unknown. In two visual search experiments employing eye-tracking, we tested between two plausible processes: proactive versus reactive attentional control. Participants searched through two-color, spatially unsegregated displays. Participants could guide attention by both target templates and consistent nontarget distractors. We observed fewer distractor fixations (including the first eye movement) and shorter distractor dwell times. The data supported a single mechanism of learned distractor rejection, whereby observers adopted a learned, proactive attentional control setting to avoid distraction whenever possible. Further, when distraction occurred, observers rapidly recovered. We term this proactive mechanism “learned oculomotor avoidance.” The current study informs theories of visual attention by demonstrating the underlying processes leading to learned distractor suppression during strong target guidance. |
Biljana Stevanovski; Raymond M. Klein Where do people look when they look at money? Journal Article In: International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, vol. 88, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Stevanovski2022,The design of many items (e.g., web pages, banknotes) is influenced by the features to which designers expect users will attend. However, there is a dearth of research regarding which features individuals do attend to on banknotes and whether these are consistent with the expected focus of attention. The present study investigated where people look when they are looking at banknotes. We recorded the eye movements of laypersons to determine which banknote features draw the attention of observers. Images of banknotes from seven countries and in a variety of denominations were viewed (and eye movements were recorded) for 7 s in each of three viewing contexts: Art, Counterfeit, and Spatial Layout. Interest areas (e.g., features of interest) were outlined and then the duration of fixations within those areas were analyzed to examine which features were attended within the different contexts. Results suggested that the portraits that are commonly used on banknotes were not generally examined in the Counterfeit condition (irrespective of whether the entire portrait, the face, or even only the eyes were considered), but these features were examined more within an Art or a Spatial Layout context. Further, results suggested that signatures and text on banknotes tended to be examined in a Counterfeit and a Spatial Layout context as compared to an Art context. Although images were viewed more in the Art context as compared to a Counterfeit or a Spatial Layout context, security features were viewed more in the Counterfeit context than in the Art and the Spatial Layout contexts. Denominations were viewed similarly in the Counterfeit and the Spatial Layout contexts but more than in the Art context. Finally, areas with highly salient but low-level features (e.g., intensity, colour) that were expected to draw attention were not viewed in any of the contexts. The results have implications for how individuals view banknotes, generally, and also which regions tend to draw attention. |
Marianna Stella; Paul E. Engelhardt Use of parsing heuristics in the comprehension of passive sentences: Evidence from dyslexia and individual differences Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Stella2022,This study examined the comprehension of passive sentences in order to investigate whether individuals with dyslexia rely on parsing heuristics in language comprehension to a greater extent than non‐dyslexic readers. One hundred adults (50 dyslexics and 50 controls) read active and passive sentences, and we also manipulated semantic plausibility. Eye movements were monitored, while participants read each sentence, and afterwards, participants answered a comprehension question. We also assessed verbal intelligence and working memory in all participants. Results showed dyslexia status interacted with sentence structure and plausibility, such that participants with dyslexia showed significantly more comprehension errors with passive and implausible sentence. With respect to verbal intelligence and working memory, we found that individuals with lower verbal intelligence were overall more likely to make comprehension errors, and individuals with lower working memory showed particular difficulties with passive and implausible sentences. For reading times, we found that individuals with dyslexia were overall slower readers. These findings suggest that (1) individuals with dyslexia do rely on heuristics to a greater extent than do nondyslexic individuals, and (2) individual differences variables (e.g., verbal intelligence and working memory) are also related to the use of parsing heuristics. For the latter, lower ability individuals tended to be more consistent with heuristic processing (i.e., good‐enough representations). |
Noah J. Steinberg; Zvi N. Roth; Elisha P. Merriam Spatiotopic and retinotopic memory in the context of natural images Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Steinberg2022,Neural responses throughout the visual cortex encode stimulus location in a retinotopic (i.e., eye-centered) reference frame, and memory for stimulus position is most precise in retinal coordinates. Yet visual perception is spatiotopic: objects are perceived as stationary, even though eye movements cause frequent displacement of their location on the retina. Previous studies found that, after a single saccade, memory of retinotopic locations is more accurate than memory of spatiotopic locations. However, it is not known whether various aspects of natural viewing affect the retinotopic reference frame advantage. We found that the retinotopic advantage may in part depend on a retinal afterimage, which can be effectively nullified through backwards masking. Moreover, in the presence of natural scenes, spatiotopic memory is more accurate than retinotopic memory, but only when subjects are provided sufficient time to process the scene before the eye movement. Our results demonstrate that retinotopic memory is not always more accurate than spatiotopic memory and that the fidelity of memory traces in both reference frames are sensitive to the presence of contextual cues. |
Tobias Staudigl; Juri Minxha; Adam N. Mamelak; Katalin M. Gothard; Ueli Rutishauser Saccade-related neural communication in the human medial temporal lobe is modulated by the social relevance of stimuli Journal Article In: Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Staudigl2022,Humans predominantly explore their environment by moving their eyes. To optimally communicate and process visual information, neural activity needs to be coordinated with the execution of eye movements. We investigated the coordination between visual exploration and interareal neural communication by analyzing local field potentials and single neuron activity in patients with epilepsy. We demonstrated that during the free viewing of images, neural communication between the human amygdala and hippocampus is coordinated with the execution of eye movements. The strength and direction of neural communication and hippocampal saccade-related phase alignment were strongest for fixations that landed on human faces. Our results argue that the state of the human medial temporal lobe network is selectively coordinated with motor behavior. Interareal neural communication was facilitated for social stimuli as indexed by the category of the attended information. |
Benjamin J. Stauch; Alina Peter; Isabelle Ehrlich; Zora Nolte; Pascal Fries Human visual gamma for color stimuli Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Stauch2022,Strong gamma-band oscillations in primate early visual cortex can be induced by homogeneous color surfaces (Peter et al., 2019; Shirhatti and Ray, 2018). Compared to other hues, particularly strong gamma oscillations have been reported for red stimuli. However, precortical color processing and the resultant strength of input to V1 have often not been fully controlled for. Therefore, stronger responses to red might be due to differences in V1 input strength. We presented stimuli that had equal luminance and cone contrast levels in a color coordinate system based on responses of the lateral geniculate nucleus, the main input source for area V1. With these stimuli, we recorded magnetoencephalography in 30 human participants. We found gamma oscillations in early visual cortex which, contrary to previous reports, did not differ between red and green stimuli of equal L-M cone contrast. Notably, blue stimuli with contrast exclusively on the S-cone axis induced very weak gamma responses, as well as smaller event-related fields and poorer change-detection performance. The strength of human color gamma responses for stimuli on the L-M axis could be well explained by L-M cone contrast and did not show a clear red bias when L-M cone contrast was properly equalized. |
Zoey Stark; Léon Franzen; Aaron P. Johnson Insights from a dyslexia simulation font: Can we simulate reading struggles of individuals with dyslexia? Journal Article In: Dyslexia, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 228–243, 2022. @article{Stark2022,Individuals with dyslexia struggle at explaining what it is like to have dyslexia and how they perceive letters and words differently. This led the designer Daniel Britton to create a font that aims to simulate the perceptual experience of how effortful reading can be for individuals with dyslexia (http://danielbritton.info/dyslexia). This font removes forty percent of each character stroke with the aim of increasing reading effort, and in turn empathy and understanding for individuals with dyslexia. However, its efficacy has not yet been empirically tested. In the present study, we compared participants without dyslexia reading texts in the dyslexia simulation font to a group of individuals with dyslexia reading the same texts in Times New Roman font. Results suggest that the simulation font amplifies the struggle of reading, surpassing that experienced by adults with dyslexia—as reflected in increased reading time and overall number of eye movements in the majority of typical readers reading in the simulation font. Future research could compare the performance of the Daniel Britton simulation font against a sample of beginning readers with dyslexia as well as seek to design and empirically test an adapted simulation font with an increased preserved percentage of letter strokes. |
Thomas St. Pierre; Jean Pierre Koenig When one speaker's broccoli is another speaker's cauliflower: The real-time processing of multiple speaker vocabularies Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 9, pp. 1131–1152, 2022. @article{St.Pierre2022,Once interlocutors settle on a specific label in conversation, they tend to maintain the linguistic precedent and reuse the same label (i.e. they become lexically entrained). This helps to facilitate comprehension, with listeners identifying referents more quickly when repeated labels are used compared to new labels. In the current study, we looked at whether listeners are additionally sensitive to repeated infelicitous labels (Experiment 1), as when non-native speakers, for example, overgeneralise a term (e.g. identifying a chair as the chair with tires). In addition, we investigated the extent to which listeners' expectations of incorrect labels are influenced by knowledge of community speaking patterns, testing whether listeners could disregard recently encountered lexical errors from a non-native speaker as possible labels when processing a native speaker, who should not be expected to produce such errors (Experiment 2). Our results provide no evidence that listeners were able to take into account speaker information. |
Jatheesh Srikantharajah; Colin Ellard How central and peripheral vision influence focal and ambient processing during scene viewing Journal Article In: Journal of Vision, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Srikantharajah2022,Central and peripheral vision carry out different functions during scene processing. The ambient mode of visual processing is more likely to involve peripheral visual processes, whereas the focal mode of visual processing is more likely to involve central visual processes. Although the ambient mode is responsible for navigating space and comprehending scene layout, the focal mode gathers detailed information as central vision is oriented to salient areas of the visual field. Previous work suggests that during the time course of scene viewing, there is a transition from ambient processing during the first few seconds to focal processing during later time intervals, characterized by longer fixations and shorter saccades. In this study, we identify the influence of central and peripheral vision on changes in eye movements and the transition from ambient to focal processing during the time course of scene processing. Using a gaze-contingent protocol, we restricted the visual field to central or peripheral vision while participants freely viewed scenes for 20 seconds. Results indicated that fixation durations are shorter when vision is restricted to central vision compared to normal vision. During late visual processing, fixations in peripheral vision were longer than those in central vision. We show that a transition from more ambient to more focal processing during scene viewing will occur even when vision is restricted to only central vision or peripheral vision. |
Michael J. Spilka; William R. Keller; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss; Robert W. Buchanan; James M. Gold; James I. Koenig; Gregory P. Strauss Endogenous oxytocin levels are associated with facial emotion recognition accuracy but not gaze behavior in individuals with schizophrenia Journal Article In: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol. 145, pp. 494–506, 2022. @article{Spilka2022,Abstract Objective: Difficulties in social cognition are common in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and are not ameliorated by antipsychotic treatment. Intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration has been explored as a potential intervention to improve social cognition; however, results are inconsistent, suggesting potential individual difference variables that may influence treatment response. Less is known about the relationship between endogenous OT and social cognition in SZ, knowledge of which may improve the development of OT-focused therapies. We examined plasma OT in relationship to facial emotion recognition and visual attention to salient facial features in SZ and controls. Methods: Forty-two individuals with SZ and 23 healthy controls viewed photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensity and identified the emotional expression displayed. Participants' gaze behavior during the task was recorded via eye tracking. Plasma oxytocin concentrations were determined by radioimmunoassay. Results: SZ were less accurate than controls at identifying high-intensity fear-ful facial expressions and low-intensity sad expressions. Lower overall and high- ntensity facial emotion recognition accuracy was associated with lower plasma OT levels in SZ but not controls. OT was not associated with visual attention to salient facial features; however, SZ had reduced visual attention to the nose re- gion compared to controls. Conclusion: Individual differences in endogenous OT predict facial emotion recognition ability in SZ but are not associated with visual attention to salient facial features. Increased understanding of the association between endogenous OT and social cognitive abilities in SZ may help improve the design and interpretation of OT- ocused clinical trials in SZ. |
Blanca T. M. Spee; Matthew Pelowski; Jozsef Arato; Jan Mikuni; Ulrich S. Tran; Christoph Eisenegger; Helmut Leder In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1–30, 2022. @article{Spee2022,Art, as a prestigious cultural commodity, concerns aesthetic and monetary values, personal tastes, and social reputation in various social contexts—all of which are reflected in choices concerning our liking, or in other contexts, our actual willingness-to-pay for artworks. But, how do these different aspects interact in regard to the concept of social reputation and our private versus social selves, which appear to be essentially intervening, and potentially conflicting, factors driving choice? In our study, we investigated liking and willingness-to-pay choices using—in art research—a novel, forced-choice paradigm. Participants (N = 123) made choices from artwork-triplets presented with opposing artistic quality and monetary value-labeling, thereby creating ambiguous choice situations. Choices were made in either private or in social/public contexts, in which participants were made to believe that either art-pricing or art-making experts were watching their selections. A multi-method design with eye-tracking, neuroendocrinology (testosterone, cortisol), and motivational factors complemented the behavioral choice analysis. Results showed that artworks, of which participants were told were of high artistic value were more often liked and those of high monetary-value received more willingness-to-pay choices. However, while willingness-to-pay was significantly affected by the presumed observation of art-pricing experts, liking selections did not differ between private/public contexts. Liking choices, compared to willingness-to-pay, were also better predicted by eye movement patterns. Whereas, hormone levels had a stronger relation with monetary aspects (willingness-to-pay/art-pricing expert). This was further confirmed by motivational factors representative for reputation seeking behavior. Our study points to an unexplored terrain highlighting the linkage of social reputation mechanisms and its impact on choice behavior with a ubiquitous commodity, art. |
Kaiyan Song; Hui Chang; Yuxia Wang Processing of Chinese base‑generated‑topic sentences by L1‑Korean speakers: An eye‑tracking study Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Song2022,According to the shallow structure hypothesis (SSH), adult L2 learners rely more on lexical‑semantic and pragmatic information but less so on syntactic information in online language processing, ending up with shallower syntactic representation. To test the SSH, we conducted an eye‑tracking experiment on L1‑Korean L2‑Chinese learners with native Chinese speakers as the baseline, investigating their processing of Chinese base‑generated‑topic sentences (BGT). The results show that both the intermediate and advanced Korean learners of Chinese are sensitive to and can make use of syntactic information, but only the advanced learners are sensitive to the semantic constraint when processing Chinese BGT sentences, providing evidence against the SSH. |
Suhad Sonbul; Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs; Kathy Conklin; Gareth Carrol “Bread and butter” or “butter and bread”? Nonnatives' processing of novel lexical patterns in context Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 1–23, 2022. @article{Sonbul2022,Little is known about how nonnative speakers process novel language patterns in the input they encounter. The present study examines whether nonnatives develop a sensitivity to novel binomials and their ordering preference from context. Thirty-nine nonnative speakers of English (L1 Arabic) read three short stories seeded with existing binomials ( black and white ) and novel ones ( bags and coats ) while their eye movements were monitored. The existing binomials appeared once in their forward (conventional) form and once in their reversed form. The novel binomials appeared in their experimentally defined forward form in different frequency conditions (two vs. four encounters) and once in the reversed form. Results showed no advantage for existing binomials over their reversed forms. For the novel binomials, the nonnative speakers read subsequent encounters significantly faster than initial ones for both frequency conditions. More importantly, the final reversed form also led to faster reading, suggesting that L2 speakers process the reversed form of a novel binomial as another encounter, ignoring the established order. |
Myeongeun Son; Jongbong Lee; Aline Godfroid Attention to form and meaning revisited Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 1–30, 2022. @article{Son2022,Motivated by a series of interconnected studies on simultaneous attention to form and meaning, we revisit L2 learners' real-time processing of text by using eye-tracking as an unobtrusive method to provide concurrent data on attention allocation. Seventy-five L2 Spanish learners were instructed to attend to an assigned form in a reading passage and to press a button when they noticed it. After reading the passage, the learners answered 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions. The participants' responses to the comprehension questions and their reading behaviors reflected in eye-movement data suggest that attention to grammatical form may hinder L2 learners' simultaneous attention to form and meaning. However, individual differences in global text processing contributed to the differences in the participants' text-comprehension scores over and above the task instruction to attend to form: Slower L2 readers who read the passage more carefully showed better text comprehension. |
Sabine Soltani; Dimitri M. L. Ryckeghem; Tine Vervoort; Lauren C. Heathcote; Keith O. Yeates; Christopher Sears; Melanie Noel Clinical relevance of attentional biases in pediatric chronic pain: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Pain, vol. 163, no. 2, pp. E261–E273, 2022. @article{Soltani2022,Attentional biases have been posited as one of the key mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of chronic pain and co-occurring internalizing mental health symptoms. Despite this theoretical prominence, a comprehensive understanding of the nature of biased attentional processing in chronic pain and its relationship to theorized antecedents and clinical outcomes is lacking, particularly in youth. This study used eye-tracking to assess attentional bias for painful facial expressions and its relationship to theorized antecedents of chronic pain and clinical outcomes. Youth with chronic pain (n = 125) and without chronic pain (n = 52) viewed face images of varying levels of pain expressiveness while their eye gaze was tracked and recorded. At baseline, youth completed questionnaires to assess pain characteristics, theorized antecedents (pain catastrophizing, fear of pain, and anxiety sensitivity), and clinical outcomes (pain intensity, interference, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress). For youth with chronic pain, clinical outcomes were reassessed at 3 months to assess for relationships with attentional bias while controlling for baseline symptoms. In both groups, youth exhibited an attentional bias for painful facial expressions. For youth with chronic pain, attentional bias was not significantly associated with theorized antecedents or clinical outcomes at baseline or 3-month follow-up. These findings call into question the posited relationships between attentional bias and clinical outcomes. Additional studies using more comprehensive and contextual paradigms for the assessment of attentional bias are required to clarify the ways in which such biases may manifest and relate to clinical outcomes. |
Joshua Snell; Tom Kempen; Christian N. L. Olivers Multi-res: An interface for improving reading without central vision Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 201, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Snell2022,Loss of sharp foveal vision, as is inherent to Macular Degeneration (MD), severely impacts reading. One strategy for preserving patients' reading ability involves a one-by-one serial visual presentation (SVP) of words, whereby words are viewed extrafoveally. However, the method is limited as patients often retain the natural tendency to foveate words, thus bringing those words in the scotomal region. Additionally, SVP offers no compensation for the fact that orthographic input is degraded outside the fovea. Addressing these issues, here we tested a novel interface wherein texts are presented word-by-word, but with multiple repetitions (Multi-Res) of each word being displayed simultaneously around the fovea. We hypothesized that the Multi-Res setup would lead readers to make fewer detrimental eye movements, and to recognize words faster as a consequence of multiplied orthographic input. We used eye-tracking to simulate a gaze-contingent foveal scotoma in normally-sighted participants, who read words either in classic SVP or in Multi-Res mode. In line with our hypotheses, reading was drastically better in the Multi-Res condition, with faster recognition, fewer saccades and increased oculomotor stability. We surmise that the Multi-Res method has good potential for improving reading in central vision loss, over and above classic SVP techniques. |
Francis X. Smith; Bob McMurray Lexical access changes based on listener needs: Real-time word recognition in continuous speech in cochlear implant users Journal Article In: Ear and Hearing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1487–1501, 2022. @article{Smith2022,Objectives: A key challenge in word recognition is the temporary ambiguity created by the fact that speech unfolds over time. In normal hearing (NH) listeners, this temporary ambiguity is resolved through incremental processing and competition among lexical candidates. Post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users show similar incremental processing and competition but with slight delays. However, even brief delays could lead to drastic changes when compounded across multiple words in a phrase. This study asks whether words presented in non-informative continuous speech (a carrier phrase) are processed differently than in isolation and whether NH listeners and CI users exhibit different effects of a carrier phrase. Design: In a Visual World Paradigm experiment, listeners heard words either in isolation or in non-informative carrier phrases (e.g., "click on the."). Listeners selected the picture corresponding to the target word from among four items including the target word (e.g., mustard), a cohort competitor (e.g., mustache), a rhyme competitor (e.g., custard), and an unrelated item (e.g., penguin). Eye movements were tracked as an index of the relative activation of each lexical candidate as competition unfolds over the course of word recognition. Participants included 21 post-lingually deafened cochlear implant users and 21 NH controls. A replication experiment presented in the Supplemental Digital Content, http://links.lww.com/EANDH/A999 included an additional 22 post-lingually deafened CI users and 18 NH controls. Results: Both CI users and the NH controls were accurate at recognizing the words both in continuous speech and in isolation. The time course of lexical activation (indexed by the fixations) differed substantially between groups. CI users were delayed in fixating the target relative to NH controls. Additionally, CI users showed less competition from cohorts than NH controls (even as previous studies have often report increased competition). However, CI users took longer to suppress the cohort and suppressed it less fully than the NH controls. For both CI users and NH controls, embedding words in carrier phrases led to more immediacy in lexical access as observed by increases in cohort competition relative to when words were presented in isolation. However, CI users were not differentially affected by the carriers. Conclusions: Unlike prior work, CI users appeared to exhibit "wait-and-see" profile, in which lexical access is delayed minimizing early competition. However, CI users simultaneously sustained competitor activation late in the trial, possibly to preserve flexibility. This hybrid profile has not been observed previously. When target words are heard in continuous speech, both CI users and NH controls more heavily weight early information. However, CI users (but not NH listeners) also commit less fully to the target, potentially keeping options open if they need to recover from a misperception. This mix of patterns reflects a lexical system that is extremely flexible and adapts to fit the needs of a listener. |
Simona Skripkauskaite; Ioana Mihai; Kami Koldewyn Attentional bias towards social interactions during viewing of naturalistic scenes Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Skripkauskaite2022,Human visual attention is readily captured by the social information in scenes. Multiple studies have shown that social areas of interest (AOIs) such as faces and bodies attract more attention than non-social AOIs (e.g., objects or background). However, whether this attentional bias is moderated by the presence (or absence) of a social interaction remains unclear. Here, the gaze of 70 young adults was tracked during the free viewing of 60 naturalistic scenes. All photographs depicted two people, who were either interacting or not. Analyses of dwell time revealed that more attention was spent on human than background AOIs in the interactive pictures. In non-interactive pictures, however, dwell time did not differ between AOI type. In the time-to-first-fixation analysis, humans always captured attention before other elements of the scene, although this difference was slightly larger in interactive than non-interactive scenes. These findings confirm the existence of a bias towards social information in attentional capture and suggest our attention values social interactions beyond the presence of two people. |
Tarkeshwar Singh; John R. Rizzo; Cédrick Bonnet; Jennifer Semrau; Troy M. Herter Enhanced cognitive interference during visuomotor tasks may cause eye-hand dyscoordination Journal Article In: Experimental Brain Research, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Singh2022,In complex visuomotor tasks, such as cooking, people make many saccades to continuously search for items before and during reaching movements. These tasks require use of short-term memory and task-switching (e.g., switching search between vegetables and spices). Cognitive load may affect visuomotor performance by increasing the demands on mental processes mediated by the prefrontal cortex, but mechanisms remain unclear. It is also unclear how patients with neurological injuries, e.g., stroke survivors, manage greater cognitive loads during visuomotor tasks. Using the Trail-Making Test, we have previously shown that stroke survivors make many more saccades, which are associated limb movements that are less smooth and slower. In this test, participants search for and make reaching movements towards twenty-five numbers and letters. It has a simple variant (Trails-A), and a cognitively challenging variant (Trails-B) that requires alphanumeric switching. The switching makes the task gradually harder as the Trails-B trial progresses (greater cognitive load). Here, we show that stroke survivors and healthy controls made many more saccades and had longer fixations as the Trails-B trial progressed. In addition, reaching speed slowed down for controls in Trails-B. We propose a mechanism where enhanced cognitive load may reduce inhibition from the prefrontal cortex and disinhibit the ocular motor system into making more saccades. These additional saccades may subsequently slow down motor function by disrupting the visual feedback loops used to control limb movements. These findings augment our understanding of the mechanisms that underpin cognitive interference dynamics when visual, ocular, and limb motor systems interact in visuocognitive motor tasks. |
Carlos Sillero‐Rejon; Osama Mahmoud; Ricardo M. Tamayo; Alvaro Arturo Clavijo‐Alvarez; Sally Adams; Olivia M. Maynard Standardised packs and larger health warnings: Visual attention and perceptions among Colombian smokers and non-smokers Journal Article In: Addiction, vol. 117, pp. 1737–1747, 2022. @article{Sillero‐Rejon2022,Aims: To measure how cigarette packaging (standardised packaging and branded packag- ing) and health warning size affect visual attention and pack preferences among Colombian smokers and non-smokers. Desig n: To explore visual attention, we used an eye-tracking experiment where non- smokers, weekly smokers and daily smokers were shown cigarette packs varying in warning size (30%-pictorial on top of the text, 30%-pictorial and text side-by-side, 50%, 70%) and packaging (standardised packaging, branded packaging). We used a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to examine the impact of warning size, packaging and brand name on preferences to try, taste perceptions and perceptions of harm. Setting: Eye-tracking laboratory, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia. Participants: Participants (n = 175) were 18 to 40 years old. Measurements: For the eye-tracking experiment, our primary outcome measure was the number of fixations toward the health warning compared with the branding. For the DCE, outcome measures were preferences to try, taste perceptions and harm perceptions. Findings: We observed greater visual attention to warning labels on standardised versus branded packages (F[3,167] = 22.87, P < 0.001) and when warnings were larger (F[9,161] = 147.17, P < 0.001); as warning size increased, the difference in visual attention to warnings between standardised and branded packaging decreased (F[9,161] = 4.44, P < 0.001). Non-smokers visually attended toward the warnings more than smokers, but as warning size increased these differences decreased (F[6,334] = 2.92 |
Noam Siegelman; Sascha Schroeder; Cengiz Acartürk; Hee Don Ahn; Svetlana Alexeeva; Simona Amenta; Raymond Bertram; Rolando Bonandrini; Marc Brysbaert; Daria Chernova; Sara Maria Da Fonseca; Nicolas Dirix; Wouter Duyck; Argyro Fella; Ram Frost; Carolina A. Gattei; Areti Kalaitzi; Nayoung Kwon; Kaidi Lõo; Marco Marelli; Timothy C. Papadopoulos; Athanassios Protopapas; Satu Savo; Diego E. Shalom; Natalia Slioussar; Roni Stein; Longjiao Sui; Analí Taboh; Veronica Tønnesen; Kerem Alp Usal; Victor Kuperman Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO) Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 54, pp. 2843–2863, 2022. @article{Siegelman2022,Scientific studies of language behavior need to grapple with a large diversity of languages in the world and, for reading, a further variability in writing systems. Yet, the ability to form meaningful theories of reading is contingent on the availability of cross-linguistic behavioral data. This paper offers new insights into aspects of reading behavior that are shared and those that vary systematically across languages through an investigation of eye-tracking data from 13 languages recorded during text reading. We begin with reporting a bibliometric analysis of eye-tracking studies showing that the current empirical base is insufficient for cross-linguistic comparisons. We respond to this empirical lacuna by presenting the Multilingual Eye-Movement Corpus (MECO), the product of an international multi-lab collaboration. We examine which behavioral indices differentiate between reading in written languages, and which measures are stable across languages. One of the findings is that readers of different languages vary considerably in their skipping rate (i.e., the likelihood of not fixating on a word even once) and that this variability is explained by cross-linguistic differences in word length distributions. In contrast, if readers do not skip a word, they tend to spend a similar average time viewing it. We outline the implications of these findings for theories of reading. We also describe prospective uses of the publicly available MECO data, and its further development plans. |
Diksha Shukla; Matthew Heath A single bout of exercise provides a persistent benefit to cognitive flexibility Journal Article In: Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, vol. 93, no. 3, pp. 516–527, 2022. @article{Shukla2022,Purpose: A single bout of exercise enhances activity within the cortical networks that support executive function. It is, however, unclear whether exercise improves each core component of executive function and for how long a putative benefit might persist. Method: In Experiment 1, participants completed 20-min of aerobic exercise (via cycle ergometer) and cognitive flexibility—a core component of executive function—was examined pre-exercise, and at immediate, 30- and 60-min post-exercise assessments. Experiment 2 entailed a non-exercise control (i.e., participants sat on the ergometer without exercising) involving the same timeline of cognitive flexibility assessment. Cognitive flexibility was measured via stimulus-driven (SD) and minimally delayed (MD) saccades arranged in an AABB paradigm. SD and MD saccades require a response at target onset and after target offset, respectively, with the latter requiring executive control. Work has shown that reaction times for a SD saccade preceded by a MD saccade are longer than when a SD saccade is preceded by its same task-type, whereas the converse switch does not influence performance (i.e., the unidirectional switch-cost). Results: Experiment 1 showed a unidirectional switch-cost at each assessment; however, the switch-cost magnitude was decreased at immediate and 30-min assessments compared to the pre- and 60-min assessments. In contrast, Experiment 2 did not elicit a change in switch-cost magnitude across the different assessments. Discussion/Conclusion: Thus, a single-bout of exercise benefitted the cognitive flexibility component of executive function in the immediate and 30-min post-exercise assessments. |
Mustafa Shirzad; Benjamin Tari; Connor Dalton; James Van Riesen; Michael J. Marsala; Matthew Heath Passive exercise increases cerebral blood flow velocity and supports a postexercise executive function benefit Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Shirzad2022,Executive function entails high-level cognitive control supporting activities of daily living. Literature has shown that a single-bout of exercise involving volitional muscle activation (i.e., active exercise) improves executive function and that an increase in cerebral blood flow (CBF) may contribute to this benefit. It is, however, unknown whether non-volitional exercise (i.e., passive exercise) wherein an individual's limbs are moved via an external force elicits a similar executive function benefit. This is a salient question given that proprioceptive and feedforward drive from passive exercise increases CBF independent of the metabolic demands of active exercise. Here, in a procedural validation participants (n = 2) used a cycle ergometer to complete separate 20-min active and passive (via mechanically driven flywheel) exercise conditions and a non-exercise control condition. Electromyography showed that passive exercise did not increase agonist muscle activation or increase ventilation or gas exchange variables (i.e., V̇O2 and V̇CO2). In a main experiment participants (n = 28) completed the same exercise and control conditions and transcranial Doppler ultrasound showed that active and passive exercise (but not the control condition) increased CBF through the middle cerebral artery (ps <.001); albeit the magnitude was less during passive exercise. Notably, antisaccade reaction times prior to and immediately after each condition showed that active (p <.001) and passive (p =.034) exercise improved an oculomotor-based measure of executive function, whereas no benefit was observed in the control condition (p =.85). Accordingly, results evince that passive exercise ‘boosts' an oculomotor-based measure of executive function and supports convergent evidence that increased CBF mediates this benefit. |
Frederick Shic; Adam J. Naples; Erin C. Barney; Shou An Chang; Beibin Li; Takumi McAllister; Minah Kim; Kelsey J. Dommer; Simone Hasselmo; Adham Atyabi; Quan Wang; Gerhard Helleman; April R. Levin; Helen Seow; Raphael Bernier; Katarzyna Charwaska; Geraldine Dawson; James Dziura; Susan Faja; Shafali Spurling Jeste; Scott P. Johnson; Michael Murias; Charles A. Nelson; Maura Sabatos-DeVito; Damla Senturk; Catherine A. Sugar; Sara J. Webb; James C. McPartland In: Molecular Autism, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Shic2022,Background: Eye tracking (ET) is a powerful methodology for studying attentional processes through quantification of eye movements. The precision, usability, and cost-effectiveness of ET render it a promising platform for developing biomarkers for use in clinical trials for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: The autism biomarkers consortium for clinical trials conducted a multisite, observational study of 6–11-year-old children with ASD (n = 280) and typical development (TD |
Weikang Shi; Sébastien Ballesta; Camillo Padoa-Schioppa Economic choices under simultaneous or sequential offers rely on the same neural circuit Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 33–43, 2022. @article{Shi2022,A series of studies in which monkeys chose between two juices offered in variable amounts identified in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) different groups of neurons encoding the value of individual options ( offer value ), the binary choice outcome ( chosen juice ) and the chosen value . These variables capture both the input and the output of the choice process, suggesting that the cell groups identified in OFC constitute the building blocks of a decision circuit. Several lines of evidence support this hypothesis. However, in previous experiments offers were presented simultaneously, raising the question of whether current notions generalize to when goods are presented or are examined in sequence. Recently, [Ballesta and Padoa-Schioppa (2019)][1] examined OFC activity under sequential offers. An analysis of neuronal responses across time windows revealed that a small number of cell groups encoded specific sequences of variables. These sequences appeared analogous to the variables identified under simultaneous offers, but the correspondence remained tentative. Thus in the present study we examined the relation between cell groups found under sequential versus simultaneous offers. We recorded from the OFC while monkeys chose between different juices. Trials with simultaneous and sequential offers were randomly interleaved in each session. We classified cells in each choice modality and we examined the relation between the two classifications. We found a strong correspondence – in other words, the cell groups measured under simultaneous offers and under sequential offers were one and the same. This result indicates that economic choices under simultaneous or sequential offers rely on the same neural circuit. Significance Statement Research in the past 20 years has shed light on the neuronal underpinnings of economic choices. A large number of results indicates that decisions between goods are formed in a neural circuit within the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). In most previous studies, subjects chose between two goods offered simultaneously. Yet, in daily situations, goods available for choice are often presented or examined in sequence. Here we recorded neuronal activity in the primate OFC alternating trials under simultaneous and under sequential offers. Our analyses demonstrate that the same neural circuit supports choices in the two modalities. Hence current notions on the neuronal mechanisms underlying economic decisions generalize to choices under sequential offers. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. |
Weikang Shi; Sebastien Ballesta; Camillo Padoa-Schioppa Neuronal origins of reduced accuracy and biases in economic choices under sequential offers Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–26, 2022. @article{Shi2022a,Economic choices are characterized by a variety of biases. Understanding their origins is a long-term goal for neuroeconomics, but progress on this front has been limited. Here, we examined choice biases observed when two goods are offered sequentially. In the experiments, rhesus monkeys chose between different juices offered simultaneously or in sequence. Choices under sequential offers were less accurate (higher variability). They were also biased in favor of the second offer (order bias) and in favor of the preferred juice (preference bias). Analysis of neuronal activity recorded in the orbitofrontal cortex revealed that these phenomena emerged at different computational stages. Lower choice accuracy reflected weaker offer value signals (valuation stage), the order bias emerged during value comparison (decision stage), and the preference bias emerged late in the trial (post-comparison). By neuronal measures, each phenomenon reduced the value obtained on average in each trial and was thus costly to the monkey. |
Heather Sheridan; Abigail L. Kleinsmith Music reading expertise affects visual change detection: Evidence from a music-related flicker paradigm Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 75, no. 9, pp. 1643–1652, 2022. @article{Sheridan2022,To study the mechanisms and boundary conditions of expertise effects on change detection, we introduced a novel music-related variant of the flicker paradigm. Specifically, we monitored the eye movements of expert musicians (with 10 years of music experience) and non-musicians (who could not read music) while they located changes across two rapidly alternating versions of a music score, with a blank screen presented between each screen change. Relative to the non-musicians, experts were faster at change detection, with shorter fixations and larger saccade amplitudes. Expertise effects on accuracy and saccade amplitude were magnified for visually complex relative to simple music scores. Consistent with the assumptions of chunking and template theories of expertise, our results suggest that expert musicians can use chunking (i.e., perceptual grouping) mechanisms to facilitate perceptual encoding during change detection. |
Jing Shen; Laura P. Fitzgerald; Erin R. Kulick Interactions between acoustic challenges and processing depth in speech perception as measured by task-evoked pupil response Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Shen2022,Speech perception under adverse conditions is a multistage process involving a dynamic interplay among acoustic, cognitive, and linguistic factors. Nevertheless, prior research has primarily focused on factors within this complex system in isolation. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the interaction between processing depth and the acoustic challenge of noise and its effect on processing effort during speech perception in noise. Two tasks were used to represent different depths of processing. The speech recognition task involved repeating back a sentence after auditory presentation (higher-level processing), while the tiredness judgment task entailed a subjective judgment of whether the speaker sounded tired (lower-level processing). The secondary goal of the study was to investigate whether pupil response to alteration of dynamic pitch cues stems from difficult linguistic processing of speech content in noise or a perceptual novelty effect due to the unnatural pitch contours. Task-evoked peak pupil response from two groups of younger adult participants with typical hearing was measured in two experiments. Both tasks (speech recognition and tiredness judgment) were implemented in both experiments, and stimuli were presented with background noise in Experiment 1 and without noise in Experiment 2. Increased peak pupil dilation was associated with deeper processing (i.e., the speech recognition task), particularly in the presence of background noise. Importantly, there is a non-additive interaction between noise and task, as demonstrated by the heightened peak pupil dilation to noise in the speech recognition task as compared to in the tiredness judgment task. Additionally, peak pupil dilation data suggest dynamic pitch alteration induced an increased perceptual novelty effect rather than reflecting effortful linguistic processing of the speech content in noise. These findings extend current theories of speech perception under adverse conditions by demonstrating that the level of processing effort expended by a listener is influenced by the interaction between acoustic challenges and depth of linguistic processing. The study also provides a foundation for future work to investigate the effects of this complex interaction in clinical populations who experience both hearing and cognitive challenges. |
Adi Shechter; Ronen Hershman; David L. Share A pupillometric study of developmental and individual differences in cognitive effort in visual word recognition Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–7, 2022. @article{Shechter2022,Throughout the history of modern psychology, the neural basis of cognitive performance, and particularly its efficiency, has been assumed to be an essential determinant of developmental and individual differences in a wide range of human behaviors. Here, we examine one aspect of cognitive efficiency—cognitive effort, using pupillometry to examine differences in word reading among adults (N = 34) and children (N = 34). The developmental analyses confirmed that children invested more effort in reading than adults, as indicated by larger and sustained pupillary responses. The within-age (individual difference) analyses comparing faster (N = 10) and slower (N = 10) performers revealed that in both age groups, the faster readers demonstrated accelerated pupillary responses compared to slower readers, although both groups invested a similar overall degree of cognitive effort. These findings have the potential to open up new avenues of research in the study of skill growth in word recognition and many other domains of skill learning. |
Sathya Narayana Sharma; Azizuddin Khan Self-other differences in intertemporal decision making: An eye-tracking investigation Journal Article In: Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 102, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Sharma2022,This study investigated how intertemporal choices made for others differed from those made for oneself, and how attention directed to specific attributes of the choice problem contributed to such differences. Moderating effects of components of trait empathy, chronic construal-level, and personal sense of power were examined. Thirty-five participants performed a money choice task where they made choices for themselves and on behalf of an acquaintance, during which their eye movements were tracked. Results showed that lower scores on the fantasy component of empathy predicted decreased delay discounting while making decisions for others, while higher empathic concern favoured less impulsive choices for both self and others. Higher sense of power favoured less impulsive choices for both self and others. While making decisions for others, higher power biased more attention towards the reward attribute of the choice, which in turn predicted less delay discounting. Results are discussed from a construal-level perspective. |
Natela M. Shanidze; Zachary Lively; Rachel Lee; Preeti Verghese Saccadic contributions to smooth pursuit in macular degeneration Journal Article In: Vision Research, vol. 200, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Shanidze2022,Saccades during smooth pursuit can help bring the fovea on target, particularly in cases of low pursuit gain. Individuals with macular degeneration often suffer damage to the central retina including the fovea, which impacts oculomotor function such as fixation, saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. We hypothesized that these oculomotor changes in macular degeneration (MD) would make saccades less appropriately directed (even if more numerous). To investigate saccades during pursuit in MD, we conducted a quantitative analysis of smooth pursuit eye movement data from a prior study, Vision Research 141 (2017) 181–190. Here we examined saccade frequency, magnitude, and direction across viewing conditions for MD and control participants during pursuit of a target moving in a modified step-ramp paradigm. Individuals with MD had more variability in saccade directions that included directions orthogonal to the target trajectory. PRL eccentricity significantly correlated with increases in saccades in non-target directions during smooth pursuit. These results suggest that a large number of saccades during pursuit in MD participants are unlikely to be catch-up saccades that serve to keep the eye on the target. |
Foroogh Shamsi; Rong Liu; MiYoung Kwon Binocularly asymmetric crowding in glaucoma and a lack of binocular summation in crowding Journal Article In: Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Shamsi2022,PURPOSE. Glaucoma is associated with progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells. Here we investigated the impact of glaucomatous damage on monocular and binocular crowding in parafoveal vision. We also examined the binocular summation of crowding to see if crowding is alleviated under binocular viewing. METHODS. The study design included 40 individuals with glaucoma and 24 age-similar normal cohorts. For each subject, the magnitude of crowding was determined by the extent of crowding zone. Crowding zone measurements were made binocularly in parafoveal vision (i.e., at 2° and 4° retinal eccentricities) visual field. For a subgroup of glaucoma subjects (n = 17), crowding zone was also measured monocularly for each eye. RESULTS. Our results showed that, compared with normal cohorts, individuals with glaucoma exhibited significantly larger crowding—enlargement of crowding zone (an increase by 21%; P < 0.01). Moreover, we also observed a lack of binocular summation (i.e., a binocular ratio of 1): binocular crowding was determined by the better eye. Hence, our results did not provide evidence supporting binocular summation of crowding in glaucomatous vision. CONCLUSIONS. Our findings show that crowding is exacerbated in parafoveal vision in glaucoma and binocularly asymmetric glaucoma seems to induce binocularly asymmetric crowding. Furthermore, the lack of binocular summation for crowding observed in glaucomatous vision combined with the lack of binocular summation reported in a previous study on normal healthy vision support the view that crowding may start in the early stages of visual processing, at least before the process of binocular integration takes place. |
Nir Shalev; Anna C. Nobre Eyes wide open: Regulation of arousal by temporal expectations Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 224, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Shalev2022,Maintaining adequate levels of arousal is essential for sustaining performance on extended tasks. To investigate arousal in prolonged tasks such as driving studies have traditionally used monotonous task designs. Both ecological and experimental settings often contain embedded temporal regularities, but it is unknown whether these enable adaptive modulation of arousal. We explored whether temporal predictability can modulate arousal according to the timing of anticipated relevant events. In two experiments, we manipulated the temporal predictability of events to test for behavioural benefits and arousal modulation, using pupillometry as a proxy measure. High temporal predictability significantly lowered the tonic level of arousal briefly increased arousal in anticipation of upcoming stimuli, whereas low temporal predictability resulted in tonically elevated arousal. These novel findings suggest that arousal levels flexibly adapt to the temporal structures of events and bring about energy efficiencies in the context of high levels of behavioural performance. |
Marco S. G. Senaldi; Junyan Wei; Jason W. Gullifer; Debra Titone Scratching your tête over language-switched idioms: Evidence from eye-movement measures of reading Journal Article In: Memory and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 1230–1256, 2022. @article{Senaldi2022a,Idioms are semantically non-compositional multiword units whose meanings often go beyond literal interpretations of their component words (e.g., break the ice, kick the bucket, spill the beans). According to hybrid models of idiom processing, idioms are subject to both direct retrieval from the lexicon in early stages of processing, and word-by-word compositional reanalysis in later stages of comprehension. However, a less clear aspect is how disrupting an idiom's canonical form, and thus its direct retrieval, impacts the time course of comprehension. In this eye-tracking reading study, healthy English-French bilingual adults with English as their dominant language read sentences containing English idioms in their canonical form (e.g., break the ice), or in a switched form where the phrase-final noun was translated into French (e.g., break the glace). Thus, within this manipulation, momentary language switches modified the canonical form of idioms, while at the same time minimally altering the semantics of their component words, thus nudging readers towards a compositional processing route. Analyses of eye-movement data revealed switching costs in longer reading times at early (but not late) processing stages for idioms compared to matched literal phrases. Interestingly, the cost of language switching was attenuated by the availability of a translationally equivalent idiom in the non-target language (French, e.g., briser la glace). Taken together, these results suggest that direct retrieval is the preferential route in the comprehension of idioms' canonical forms, which acts as an effective repair strategy by the language-processing system when recovering the underlying form of modified idioms. |
Marco S. G. Senaldi; Debra A. Titone Less direct, more analytical: Eye-movement measures of L2 idiom reading Journal Article In: Languages, vol. 7, pp. 1–26, 2022. @article{Senaldi2022,Idioms (e.g., break the ice, spill the beans) are ubiquitous multiword units that are often semantically non-compositional. Psycholinguistic data suggests that L1 readers process idioms in a hybrid fashion, with early comprehension facilitated by direct retrieval, and later comprehension inhibited by factors promoting compositional parsing (e.g., semantic decomposability). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the role of direct retrieval and compositional analysis when idioms are read naturally in sentences in an L2. Thus, French–English bilingual adults with French as their L1 were tested using English sentences. For idioms in canonical form, Experiment 1 showed that prospective verb-related decomposability and retrospective noun-related decomposability guided L2 readers towards bottom-up figurative meaning access over different time courses. Direct retrieval played a lesser role, and was mediated by the availability of a congruent “cognate” idiom in the readers' L1. Next, Experiment 2 included idioms where direct retrieval was disrupted by a phrase-final language switch into French (e.g., break the glace, spill the fèves). Switched idioms were read comparably to switched literal phrases at early stages, but were penalized at later stages. These results collectively suggest that L2 idiom processing is mostly compositional, with direct retrieval playing a lesser role in figurative meaning comprehension. |
João D. Semedo; Anna I. Jasper; Amin Zandvakili; Aravind Krishna; Amir Aschner; Christian K. Machens; Adam Kohn; Byron M. Yu Feedforward and feedback interactions between visual cortical areas use different population activity patterns Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Semedo2022,Brain function relies on the coordination of activity across multiple, recurrently connected brain areas. For instance, sensory information encoded in early sensory areas is relayed to, and further processed by, higher cortical areas and then fed back. However, the way in which feedforward and feedback signaling interact with one another is incompletely understood. Here we investigate this question by leveraging simultaneous neuronal population recordings in early and midlevel visual areas (V1–V2 and V1–V4). Using a dimensionality reduction approach, we find that population interactions are feedforward-dominated shortly after stimulus onset and feedback-dominated during spontaneous activity. The population activity patterns most correlated across areas were distinct during feedforward- and feedback-dominated periods. These results suggest that feedforward and feedback signaling rely on separate “channels”, which allows feedback signals to not directly affect activity that is fed forward. |
Elena Selezneva; Nicole Wetzel The impact of probabilistic cues on sound-related pupil dilation and ERP responses in 7–9-year-old children Journal Article In: Auditory Perception & Cognition, vol. 5, no. 1-2, pp. 86–106, 2022. @article{Selezneva2022,Control of involuntary orienting of attention toward new but task-irrelevant events is essential to successfully perform a task. We investigated top-down control of involuntary orienting of attention caused by task-irrelevant novel sounds embedded in a sequence of repeated standard sounds in 7–9-year-old children (N = 30) and in an adult control group (N = 30). The type of sound was announced by visual cues, which were correct in 80% of the trials. We co-registered sound-related pupil dilation responses (PDR), the attention-related component P3a in the EEG and performance. Task-irrelevant novel sounds evoked increased amplitudes of the PDR and the P3a and prolonged reaction times in both age groups. In children only, invalidly cued novel sounds evoked larger PDR amplitudes than validly cued novel sounds, while this cue effect was not observed for standard sounds. In both age groups, P3a amplitudes in the centro-parietal region were reduced to the correctly cued compared to the incorrectly cued novel sounds, indicating top-down control of orienting of attention. The reaction time prolongation to both validly and invalidly cued novel sounds were similar in both age groups. These findings demonstrate that children are capable of reducing the orienting of attention and evaluation triggered by task-irrelevant sounds by using probabilistic cues. Children's pupil results indicate a high sensitivity of pupil dynamics to cue-related top-down influences on novel sound processing, emphasizing the utility of pupillometry in developmental research. |
Joshua A. Seideman; Terrence R. Stanford; Emilio Salinas A conflict between spatial selection and evidence accumulation in area LIP Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{Seideman2022,The lateral intraparietal area (LIP) contains spatially selective neurons that help guide eye movements and, according to numerous studies, do so by accumulating sensory evidence in favor of one choice (e.g., look left) or another (look right). To examine this functional link, we trained two monkeys on an urgent motion discrimination task, a task with which the evolution of both the recorded neuronal activity and the subject's choice can be tracked millisecond by millisecond. We found that while choice accuracy increased steeply with increasing sensory evidence, at the same time, the LIP selection signal became progressively weaker, as if it hindered performance. This effect was consistent with the transient deployment of spatial attention to disparate locations away from the relevant sensory cue. The results demonstrate that spatial selection in LIP is dissociable from, and may even conflict with, evidence accumulation during informed saccadic choices. |
Vladislava Segen; Marios N. Avraamides; Timothy J. Slattery; Jan M. Wiener Age-related changes in visual encoding strategy preferences during a spatial memory task Journal Article In: Psychological Research, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 404–420, 2022. @article{Segen2022,Ageing is associated with declines in spatial memory, however, the source of these deficits remains unclear. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate age-related differences in spatial encoding strategies and the cognitive processes underlying the age-related deficits in spatial memory tasks. To do so we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. The availability and utility of room-based landmarks were manipulated by removing landmarks, presenting identical landmarks rendering them uninformative, or by presenting unique landmarks that could be used to encode object locations. In the test phase, participants viewed a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (30°) and judged whether the objects occupied the same or different locations in the room. We found that the introduction of a perspective shift and swapping of objects between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. Furthermore, our results revealed that although older adults performed the task as well as younger participants, they relied on different visual encoding strategies to solve the task. Specifically, gaze analysis revealed that older adults showed a greater preference towards a more categorical encoding strategy in which they formed relationships between objects and landmarks. |
Ehsan Sedaghat-Nejad; Jay S. Pi; Paul Hage; Mohammad Amin Fakharian; Reza Shadmehr Synchronous spiking of cerebellar Purkinje cells during control of movements Journal Article In: PNAS, vol. 119, no. 14, pp. 1–11, 2022. @article{SedaghatNejad2022,The ability of the brain to accurately control a movement depends on the cerebellum. Yet, how the cerebellar neurons encode information relevant for this control remains poorly understood. The computations that are performed in the cerebellar cortex are transmitted to its nuclei via Purkinje cells (P cells), which are inhibitory neurons. How- ever, if the spiking activity within P cell populations were temporally synchronized, that inhibition would entrain nucleus neurons, making them fire. Do P cells transmit information by synchronously timing their spikes? We simultaneously recorded from multiple P cells while marmosets performed saccadic eye movements, and organized the neurons into populations that shared a complex spike response to error. Before move- ment onset, this population ofP cells increased their simple spike activity with a magni- tude that depended on the velocity of the upcoming saccade, and then sharply reduced their activity below baseline at saccade onset. During deceleration, the spikes became temporally aligned within the population. Thus, the P cells relied on disinhibition, combined with spike synchronization, to convey to the nucleus when to decelerate and potentially stop the movement. |
Rebekka Schröder; Martin Reuter; Kaja Faßbender; Thomas Plieger; Jessie Poulsen; Simon S. Y. Lui; Raymond C. K. Chan; Ulrich Ettinger The role of the SLC6A3 3' UTR VNTR in nicotine effects on cognitive, affective, and motor function Journal Article In: Psychopharmacology, vol. 239, no. 2, pp. 489–507, 2022. @article{Schroeder2022b,Rationale: Nicotine has been widely studied for its pro-dopaminergic effects. However, at the behavioural level, past investigations have yielded heterogeneous results concerning effects on cognitive, affective, and motor outcomes, possibly linked to individual differences at the level of genetics. A candidate polymorphism is the 40-base-pair variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism (rs28363170) in the SLC6A3 gene coding for the dopamine transporter (DAT). The polymorphism has been associated with striatal DAT availability (9R-carriers > 10R-homozygotes), and 9R-carriers have been shown to react more strongly to dopamine agonistic pharmacological challenges than 10R-homozygotes. Objectives: In this preregistered study, we hypothesized that 9R-carriers would be more responsive to nicotine due to genotype-related differences in DAT availability and resulting dopamine activity. Methods: N=194 non-smokers were grouped according to their genotype (9R-carriers, 10R-homozygotes) and received either 2-mg nicotine or placebo gum in a between-subject design. Spontaneous blink rate (SBR) was obtained as an indirect measure of striatal dopamine activity and smooth pursuit, stop signal, simple choice and affective processing tasks were carried out in randomized order. Results: Reaction times were decreased under nicotine compared to placebo in the simple choice and stop signal tasks, but nicotine and genotype had no effects on any of the other task outcomes. Conditional process analyses testing the mediating effect of SBR on performance and how this is affected by genotype yielded no significant results. Conclusions: Overall, we could not confirm our main hypothesis. Individual differences in nicotine response could not be explained by rs28363170 genotype. |
Rebekka Schröder; Kristof Keidel; Peter Trautner; Alexander Radbruch; Ulrich Ettinger Neural mechanisms of background and velocity effects in smooth pursuit eye movements Journal Article In: Human Brain Mapping, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Schroeder2022a,Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) are essential to guide behaviour in complex visual environments. SPEM accuracy is known to be degraded by the presence of a structured visual background and at higher target velocities. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate the neural mechanisms of these robust behavioural effects. N = 33 participants performed a SPEM task with two background conditions (present and absent) at two target velocities (0.4 and 0.6 Hz). Eye movement and BOLD data were collected simultaneously. Both the presence of a structured background and faster target velocity decreased pursuit gain and increased catch-up saccade rate. Faster targets additionally increased position error. Higher BOLD response with background was found in extensive clusters in visual, parietal, and frontal areas (including the medial frontal eye fields; FEF) partially overlapping with the known SPEM network. Faster targets were associated with higher BOLD response in visual cortex and left lateral FEF. Task-based functional connectivity analyses (psychophysiological interactions; PPI) largely replicated previous results in the basic SPEM network but did not yield additional information regarding the neural underpinnings of the background and velocity effects. The results show that the presentation of visual background stimuli during SPEM induces activity in a widespread visuo-parieto-frontal network including areas contributing to cognitive aspects of oculomotor control such as medial FEF, whereas the response to higher target velocity involves visual and motor areas such as lateral FEF. Therefore, we were able to propose for the first time different functions of the medial and lateral FEF during SPEM. |
Rebekka Schröder; Eliana Faiola; Maria Fernanda Urquijo; Katharina Bey; Inga Meyhöfer; Maria Steffens; Anna-Maria Kasparbauer; Anne Ruef; Hanna Högenauer; René Hurlemann; Joseph Kambeitz; Alexandra Philipsen; Michael Wagner; Nikolaos Koutsouleris; Ulrich Ettinger Neural correlates of smooth pursuit eye movements in schizotypy and recent onset psychosis: A multivariate pattern classification approach Journal Article In: Schizophrenia Bulletin Open, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Schroeder2022,Schizotypy refers to a set of personality traits that bear resemblance, at subclinical level, to psychosis. Despite evidence of similarity at multiple levels of analysis, direct comparisons of schizotypy and clinical psychotic disorders are rare. Therefore, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates and task-based functional connectivity (psychophysiological interactions; PPI) of smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) in patients with recent onset psychosis (ROP; n = 34), participants with high levels of negative (HNS; n = 46) or positive (HPS; n = 41) schizotypal traits, and low-schizotypy control participants (LS; n = 61) using machine-learning. Despite strong previous evidence that SPEM is a highly reliable marker of psychosis, patients and controls could not be significantly distinguished based on SPEM performance or blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal during SPEM. Classification was, however, significant for the right frontal eye field (FEF) seed region in the PPI analyses but not for seed regions in other key areas of the SPEM network. Applying the right FEF classifier to the schizotypal samples yielded decision scores between the LS and ROP groups, suggesting similarities and dissimilarities of the HNS and HPS samples with the LS and ROP groups. The very small difference between groups is inconsistent with previous studies that showed significant differences between patients with ROP and controls in both SPEM performance and underlying neural mechanisms with large effect sizes. As the current study had sufficient power to detect such differences, other reasons are discussed. |
Lars Michael Schöpper; Markus Lappe; Christian Frings Saccadic landing positions reveal that eye movements are affected by distractor-based retrieval Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 7, pp. 2219–2235, 2022. @article{Schoepper2022,Binding theories assume that stimulus and response features are integrated into short-lasting episodes and that upon repetition of any feature the whole episode is retrieved, thereby affecting performance. Such binding theories are nowadays the standard explanation for a wide range of action control tasks and aim to explain all simple actions, without making assumptions of effector specificity. Yet, it is unclear if eye movements are affected by integration and retrieval in the same way as manual responses. We asked participants to discriminate letters framed by irrelevant shapes. In Experiment 1, participants gave their responses with eye movements. Saccade landing positions showed a spatial error pattern consistent with predictions of binding theories. Saccadic latencies were not affected. In Experiment 2 with an increased interval between prime and probe, the error pattern diminished, again congruent with predictions of binding theories presuming quickly decaying retrieval effects. Experiment 3 used the same task as in Experiment 1, but participants executed their responses with manual key presses; again, we found a binding pattern in response accuracy. We conclude that eye movements and manual responses are affected by the same integration and retrieval processes, supporting the tacit assumption of binding theories to apply to any effector. |
Merel C. J. Scholman; Liam Blything; Kate Cain; Jet Hoek; Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul Discourse rules: The effects of clause order principles on the reading process Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 1277–1291, 2022. @article{Scholman2022,In an eye-tracking-while-reading study, we investigated adult monolinguals' (N = 80) processing of two-clause sentences embedded in short narratives. Three principles theorised to guide comprehension of complex sentences were contrasted: one operating at the clause level, namely clause structure (main clause–subordinate clause or vice versa), and two operating at the discourse-level, namely givenness (given-new vs. new-given) and event order (chronological vs. reverse order). The results indicate that clause structure mainly affects early stages of processing, whereas the two principles operating at the discourse level are more important during later stages and for reading times of the entire sentence. Event order was found to operate relatively independently of the other principles. Givenness was found to overrule clause structure, a phenomenon that can be related to the grounding function of preposed subordinate clauses. We propose a new principle to reflect this interaction effect: the grounding principle. |
Sebastian Schneegans; Jessica M. V. McMaster; Paul M. Bays Role of time in binding features in visual working memory Journal Article In: Psychological Review, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Schneegans2022,Previous research on feature binding in visual working memory has supported. privileged role for location in binding an object's nonspatial features. However, humans are able to correctly recall feature conjunctions of objects that occupy the same location at different times. In. series of behavioral experiments, we investigated binding errors under these conditions, and specifically tested whether ordinal position can take the role of location in mediating feature binding.We performed two dual report experiments in which participants had to memorize three colored shapes presented sequentially at the screen center.When participants were cued with the ordinal position of one item and had to report its shape and color, report errors for the two features were largely uncorrelated. In contrast, when participants were cued, for example, with an item's shape and reported an incorrect ordinal position, they had. high chance of making. corresponding error in the color report. This pattern of error correlations closely matched the predictions of. model in which color and shape are bound to each other only indirectly via an item's ordinal position. In. third experiment, we directly compared the roles of location and sequential position in feature binding. Participants viewed. sequence of colored disks displayed at different locations and were cued either by. disk's location or its ordinal position to report its remaining properties. The pattern of errors supported. mixed strategy with individual variation, suggesting that binding via either time or space could be used for this task. |
Daniel Schmidtke; Sadaf Rahmanian; Anna L. Moro Tracking reading development in an English language university-level bridging program: Evidence from eye-movements during passage reading Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Schmidtke2022,Increasing numbers of international students enter university education via English language bridging programs. Much research has overlooked the nature of second language reading development during a bridging program, focusing instead on the development of literacy skills of international students who already meet the language requirement for undergraduate admission. We report a longitudinal eye-movement study assessing English passage reading efficiency and comprehension in 405 Chinese-speaking bridging program students. Incoming IELTS reading scores were used as an index of baseline reading ability. Linear mixed-effects regression models fitted to global eye-movement measures and reading comprehension indicated that despite initial between-subjects differences, within-subject change at each ability level progressed at the same rate, following parallel growth trajectories. Therefore, there was significant overall reading progress during the bridging program, but no evidence that the gap between low and high ability readers either closed or widened over time. |
Doris Schmid; Sebastian Schneider; Thomas Schenk How to test blindsight without light-scatter artefacts? Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 173, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Schmid2022,Light-scatter artefacts are a methodological problem in testing residual visual capacities (RVCs), for instance blindsight, in patients with homonymous visual field defects (HVFDs). The term light-scatter artefact describes the phenomenon that light from targets directed towards the HVFD can stray into the sighted visual field. This might enable an observer to respond correctly to information directed at her blind field despite the fact that she is unable to process that information in the blind field itself. In this manuscript, we present a review of the relevance of light-scatter in visual neuroscience, discuss factors that influence the impact of light scatter and evaluate means to test for light-scatter artefacts. Furthermore, we present findings from an empirical study that was aimed at developing tests for RVCs that are free of light-scatter artefacts. Previous studies on light scatter only used small sample sizes and equipment that is no longer in use. Hence, their results cannot be generalized to future experiments making it necessary to run laborious light-scatter tests for every new study on RVCs. To avoid this, we hereby start a pool of stimuli and paradigms which demonstrably do not elicit light-scatter artefacts. To this end, we investigated 21 healthy young participants in three frequently used RVC-paradigms: (1) temporal 2AFC task, (2) movement direction discrimination, and (3) redundant target paradigm. For each paradigm, we applied the blind-spot method. But first, we had to establish that our testing paradigm was sufficiently sensitive to detect light-scatter artefacts. For this, we used conditions that are known to produce strong light scatter and a paradigm that is very sensitive to such effects. Specifically, we presented white targets on a black background in a dark room. The stimuli were presented to observers' blind spot. To check for light-scatter artefacts, we used a target-detection task in a temporal 2AFC format. We obtained clear light-scatter artefacts. Participants produced reliably above-chance detection performance under these conditions. The other two luminance conditions, measured in an illuminated room, did not produce light-scatter artefacts. Accuracy in the temporal 2AFC task was at chance level for white targets on a grey background at the blind-spot position. Additionally, black targets on a grey background avoided light-scatter artefacts in all three RVC-paradigms. In future, researchers can apply these stimulus and illumination conditions when using one of the three above paradigms in their studies. Using these conditions, they will be able to avoid light-scatter artefacts without having to perform their own blind-spot tests. |
Judith Schlenter; Yulia Esaulova; Sarah Dolscheid; Martina Penke Ambiguity in case marking does not affect the description of transitive events in German: Evidence from sentence production and eye-tracking Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 844–865, 2022. @article{Schlenter2022,The current study examined how German speakers described a scene where an agent acts upon a patient when the patient of the event was cued (a red dot preceding the patient, Experiment 1 vs. preview of the patient, Experiment 2). Prior research has shown that effects of attention manipulation on syntactic choice display cross-linguistic variation with notable differences between languages that have morphological case marking on noun phrases and English that lacks such marking. Since in German nominative subject case and accusative object case are unambiguously marked on masculine nouns but not on feminine nouns, it provides the ideal testing ground to investigate how case marking affects sentence production. Our results did not reveal any effect of case marking although the different types of attention manipulation were effective. Moreover, the eye-gaze data revealed that German speakers applied the same sentence-planning strategy for both masculine nouns (unambiguous) and feminine nouns (ambiguous). |
Karly M. Schleicher; Ana I. Schwartz Bilingual discourse comprehension: The role of language overlap in updating the discourse representation Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 184–208, 2022. @article{Schleicher2022,In the present study we examined whether overlap in language across texts influences the integration of information into a coherent discourse representation for bilingual readers. Across two experiments highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals read pairs of expository passages describing two fictional science facts while their eye-movements were monitored. One of the facts was revised in the second passage, requiring a discourse updating. The language of the two passages and follow-up questions was fully crossed. Accuracy was lower for questions pertaining to revised facts when the second passage was in the second language (L2). This cost was exacerbated when the first passage was in the dominant language, suggesting strong interference from the representation of the first passage which impeded updating the discourse model in the L2. This interference was eliminated in Experiment 2 when second passages were written based on a refutation-style text structure. Analyses of reading times on the pseudo-terms before and after the revised fact was stated indicated that the previous version of the fact was reactivated and interfered with processing. This interference was similar regardless of whether passages were written in the same or different languages. |
Karola Schlegelmilch; Annie E. Wertz Visual segmentation of complex naturalistic structures in an infant eye-tracking search task Book 2022. @book{Schlegelmilch2022,An infant's everyday visual environment is composed of a complex array of entities, some of which are well integrated into their surroundings. Although infants are already sensitive to some categories in their first year of life, it is not clear which visual information supports their detection of meaningful elements within naturalistic scenes. Here we investigated the impact of image characteristics on 8-month-olds' search performance using a gaze contingent eye-tracking search task. Infants had to detect a target patch on a background image. The stimuli consisted of images taken from three categories: vegetation, non-living natural elements (e.g., stones), and manmade artifacts, for which we also assessed target background differences in lower- and higher-level visual properties. Our results showed that larger target-background differences in the statistical properties scaling invariance and entropy, and also stimulus backgrounds including low pictorial depth, predicted better detection performance. Furthermore, category membership only affected search performance if supported by luminance contrast. Data from an adult comparison group also indicated that infants' search performance relied more on lower-order visual properties than adults. Taken together, these results suggest that infants use a combination of property- and category-related information to parse complex visual stimuli. |
Sebastian Schindler; Theresa Sofie Richter; Maximilian Bruchmann; Niko A. Busch; Thomas Straube Effects of task load, spatial attention, and trait anxiety on neuronal responses to fearful and neutral faces Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 59, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Schindler2022,There is an ongoing debate on how different components of the event-related potential (ERP) to threat-related facial expressions are modulated by attentional conditions and interindividual differences in trait anxiety. In the current study (N = 80), we examined ERPs to centrally presented, task-irrelevant fearful and neutral faces, while participants had to solve a face-unrelated visual task, which differed in difficulty and spatial position. Critically, we used a fixation-controlled experimental design and ensured the spatial attention manipulation by spectral analysis of the EEG. Besides the factors emotion, spatial attention, and perceptual load, we also investigated correlations between trait anxiety and ERPs. While P1 emotion effects were insignificant, the N170 was increased to fearful faces regardless of load and spatial attention conditions. During the EPN time window, a significantly increased negativity for fearful faces was observed only during low load and spatial attention to the face. We found no significant relationship between ERPs and trait anxiety, questioning the hypothesis of a general hypersensitivity toward fearful expressions in anxious individuals. These results show a high resistance of the N170 amplitude increase for fearful faces to spatial attention and task load manipulations. By contrast, the EPN modulation by fearful faces index a resource-dependent stage of the ERP, requiring both spatial attention at the location of faces and low load of the face-irrelevant task. |
Sebastian Schindler; Niko Busch; Maximilian Bruchmann; Maren-Isabel Wolf; Thomas Straube Early ERP functions are indexed by lateralized effects to peripherally presented emotional faces and scrambles Journal Article In: Psychophysiology, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 1–16, 2022. @article{Schindler2022a,A large body of research suggests that early event-related potentials (ERPs), such as the P1 and N1, are potentiated by attention and represent stimulus amplification. However, recent accounts suggest that the P1 is associated with inhibiting the irrelevant visual field evidenced by a pronounced ipsilateral P1 during sustained attention to peripherally presented stimuli. The current EEG study further investigated this issue to reveal how lateralized ERP findings are modulated by face and emotional information. Therefore, participants were asked to fixate the center of the screen and pay sustained attention either to the right or left visual field, where angry or neutral faces or their Fourier phase-scrambled versions were presented. We found a bilateral P1 to all stimuli with relatively increased, but delayed, ipsilateral P1 amplitudes to faces but not to scrambles. Explorative independent component analyses dissociated an earlier lateralized larger contralateral P1 from a later bilateral P1. By contrast, the N170 showed a contralateral enhancement to all stimuli, which was most pronounced for neutral faces attended in the left hemifield. Finally, increased contralateral alpha power was found for both attended hemifields but was not significantly related to poststimulus ERPs. These results provide evidence against a general inhibitory role of the P1 but suggest stimulus-specific relative enhancements of the ipsilateral P1 for the irrelevant visual hemifield. The lateralized N170, however, is associated with stimulus amplification as a function of facial features. |
Olivera Savic; Layla Unger; Vladimir M. Sloutsky Exposure to co-occurrence regularities in language drives semantic integration of new words Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 48, no. 7, pp. 1064–1081, 2022. @article{Savic2022,Human word learning is remarkable: We not only learn thousands of words but also form organized semantic networks in which words are interconnected according to meaningful links, such as those between apple, juicy, and pear. These links play key roles in our abilities to use language. How do words become integrated into our semantic networks? Here, we investigated whether humans integrate new words by harnessing simple statistical regularities of word use in language, including: (a) Direct co-occurrence (e.g., eat-apple) and (b) Shared co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear both co-occur with eat). In four reported experiments (N = 139), semantic priming (Experiments 1–3) and eye-tracking (Experiment 4) paradigms revealed that new words became linked to familiar words following exposure to sentences in which they either directly co-occurred, or shared co-occurrence. This finding highlights a potentially key role for co-occurrence in building organized word knowledge that is fundamental to our unique fluency with language. |
Tetsuya Sato; Samia Islam; Jeremiah D. Still; Mark W. Scerbo; Yusuke Yamani Task priority reduces an adverse effect of task load on automation trust in a dynamic multitasking environment Journal Article In: Cognition, Technology and Work, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Sato2022,The present study examined how task priority influences operators' scanning patterns and trust ratings toward imperfect automation. Previous research demonstrated that participants display lower trust and fixate less frequently toward a visual display for the secondary task assisted with imperfect automation when the primary task demanded more attention. One account for this phenomenon is that the increased primary task demand induced the participants to prioritize the primary task than the secondary task. The present study asked participants to perform a tracking task, system monitoring task, and resource management task simultaneously using the Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB) II. Automation assisted the system monitoring task with 70% reliability. Task load was manipulated via difficulty of the tracking task. Participants were explicitly instructed to either prioritize the tracking task over all other tasks (tracking priority condition) or reduce tracking performance (equal priority condition). The results demonstrate the effects of task load on attention distribution, task performance and trust ratings. Furthermore, participants under the equal priority condition reported lower performance-based trust when the tracking task required more frequent manual input (tracking condition), while no effect of task load was observed under the tracking priority condition. Task priority can modulate automation trust by eliminating the adverse effect of task load in a dynamic multitasking environment. |
Takafumi Sasaoka; Tokiko Harada; Daichi Sato; Nanae Michida; Hironobu Yonezawa; Masatoshi Takayama; Takahide Nouzawa; Shigeto Yamawaki Neural basis for anxiety and anxiety-related physiological responses during a driving situation: An fMRI study Journal Article In: Cerebral Cortex, vol. 3, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Sasaoka2022,Although the exteroceptive and interoceptive prediction of a negative event increases a person's anxiety in daily life situations, the relationship between the brain mechanism of anxiety and the anxiety-related autonomic response has not been fully understood. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we examined the neural basis of anxiety and anxiety-related autonomic responses in a daily driving situation. Participants viewed a driving video clip in the first-person perspective. During the video clip, participants were presented with a cue to indicate whether a subsequent crash could occur (attention condition) or not (safe condition). Enhanced activities in the anterior insula, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, thalamus, and periaqueductal gray, and higher sympathetic nerve responses (pupil dilation and peripheral arterial stiffness) were triggered by the attention condition but not with the safe condition. Autonomic response-related functional connectivity was detected in the visual cortex, cerebellum, brainstem, and MCC/PCC with the right anterior insula and its adjacent regions as seed regions. Thus, the right anterior insula and adjacent regions, in collaboration with other regions play a role in eliciting anxiety based on the prediction of negative events, by mediating anxiety-related autonomic responses according to interoceptive information. |
Raheleh Saryazdi; Joanne Nuque; Craig G. Chambers Pragmatic inferences in aging and human-robot communication Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 223, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Saryazdi2022a,Despite the increase in research on older adults' communicative behavior, little work has explored patterns of age-related change in pragmatic inferencing and how these patterns are adapted depending on the situation-specific context. In two eye-tracking experiments, participants followed instructions like “Click on the greenhouse”, which were either played over speakers or spoken live by a co-present robot partner. Implicit inferential processes were measured by exploring the extent to which listeners temporarily (mis)understood the unfolding noun to be a modified phrase referring to a competitor object in the display (green hat). This competitor was accompanied by either another member of the same category or an unrelated item (tan hat vs. dice). Experiment 1 (no robot) showed clear evidence of contrastive inferencing in both younger and older adults (more looks to the green hat when the tan hat was also present). Experiment 2 explored the ability to suppress these contrastive inferences when the robot talker was known to lack any color perception, making descriptions like “green hat” implausible. Younger but not older listeners were able to suppress contrastive inferences in this context, suggesting older adults could not keep the relevant limitations in mind and/or were more likely to spontaneously ascribe human attributes to the robot. Together, the findings enhance our understanding of pragmatic inferencing in aging. |
Raheleh Saryazdi; Craig G. Chambers Gesture and reference to objects in the here-and-now: Listeners' use of gesture cues in quiet and in noise Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 583–597, 2022. @article{Saryazdi2022,In face-to-face interaction, speakers spontaneously produce manual gestures that can facilitate listeners' comprehension of spoken language. The present study explores the factors affecting the uptake and influence of gesture cues in situations where a speaker is referring to objects visible to the listener. In this context, the listener's attention must be distributed across various scene regions, potentially reducing the ability to draw on and apply gesture cues in real time. In two experiments, the instruction provided by a speaker (e.g., “pick up the candy”) was accompanied by an iconic grasp gesture (produced alongside the verb) that reflected the size/shape of the intended target. Effects on listeners' comprehension were compared with a no-gesture condition. Experiment 1 (audiovisual gating task) showed that, under simplified processing circumstances, gesture cues allowed earlier identification of intended targets. Experiment 2 (eye tracking) explored whether this facilitation is found in real-time comprehension, and whether attention to gesture information is influenced by the acoustic environment (quiet vs. background noise). Measures of gaze position showed that although the speaker's gesturing hand was rarely fixated directly, gestures did facilitate comprehension, particularly when the target object was smaller relative to alternatives. The magnitude of the gesture effect was greater in quiet than in noise, suggesting that the latter did not provoke listeners to increase attention to gesture to compensate for the challenging auditory signal. Together, the findings clarify how situational factors influence listeners' attention to visual information during real-time comprehension. |
Hannah S. Sarvasy; Adam Milton Morgan; Jenny Yu; Victor S. Ferreira; Shota Momma Cross-clause planning in Nungon (Papua New Guinea): Eye-tracking evidence Journal Article In: Memory and Cognition, pp. 1–15, 2022. @article{Sarvasy2022,Hundreds of languages worldwide use a sentence structure known as the “clause chain,” in which 20 or more clauses can be stacked to form a sentence. The Papuan language Nungon is among a subset of clause chaining languages that require “switch-reference” suffixes on nonfinal verbs in chains. These suffixes announce whether the subject of each upcoming clause will differ from the subject of the previous clause. We examine two major issues in psycholinguistics: predictive processing in comprehension, and advance planning in production. Whereas previous work on other languages has demonstrated that sentence planning can be incremental, switch-reference marking would seem to prohibit strictly incremental planning, as it requires speakers to plan the next clause before they can finish producing the current one. This suggests an intriguing possibility: planning strategies may be fundamentally different in Nungon. We used a mobile eye-tracker and solar-powered laptops in a remote village in Papua, New Guinea, to track Nungon speakers' gaze in two experiments: comprehension and production. Curiously, during comprehension, fixation data failed to find evidence that switch-reference marking is used for predictive processing. However, during production, we found evidence for advance planning of switch-reference markers, and, by extension, the subjects they presage. We propose that this degree of advance syntactic planning pushes the boundaries of what is known about sentence planning, drawing on data from a novel morpheme type in an understudied language. |
McCall E. Sarrett; Christine Shea; Bob McMurray Within- and between-language competition in adult second language learners: Implications for language proficiency Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 165–181, 2022. @article{Sarrett2022,Second language (L2) learners must not only acquire L2 knowledge (i.e. vocabulary and grammar), but they must also rapidly access this knowledge. In monolinguals, efficient spoken word recognition is accomplished via lexical competition, by which listeners activate a range of candidates that compete for recognition as the signal unfolds. We examined this in adult L2 learners, investigating lexical competition both amongst words of the L2, and between L2 and native language (L1) words. Adult L2 learners (N = 33) in their third semester of college Spanish completed a cross-linguistic Visual World Paradigm task to assess lexical activation, along with a proficiency assessment (LexTALE-Esp). L2 learners showed typical incremental processing activating both within-L2 and cross-linguistic competitors, similar to fluent bilinguals. Proficiency correlated with both the speed of activating the target (which prior work links to the developmental progression in L1) and the degree to which competition ultimately resolves (linked to robustness of the lexicon). |
Deshawn Chatman Sambrano; Arlene Lormestoire; Candace Raio; Paul Glimcher; Elizabeth A. Phelps Neither threat of shock nor acute psychosocial stress affects ambiguity attitudes Journal Article In: Affective Science, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 425–437, 2022. @article{Sambrano2022,Decisions under uncertainty can be differentiated into two classes: risky, which has known probabilistic outcomes, and ambiguous, which has unknown probabilistic outcomes. Across a variety of types of decisions, people find ambiguity extremely aversive, subjectively more aversive than risk. It has been shown that the transient sympathetic arousal response to a choice predicts decisions under ambiguity but not risk, and that lifetime stress uniquely predicts attitudes toward ambiguity. Building on these findings, this study explored whether we could bias ambiguity and risk preferences with an arousal or acute stress manipulation that is incidental to the choice in two independent experiments. One experiment induced sympathetic arousal with an anticipatory threat paradigm, and the other manipulated incidental acute stress via a psychosocial stressor. The efficacy of the manipulations was confirmed via pupil dilation and salivary cortisol, respectively. Participants made choices between a guaranteed $5 option and a lottery with either a known (risky) or unknown (ambiguous) probabilistic outcome. Consistent with previous findings, participants were more averse to a given level of ambiguity than to a numerically equal level of risk. However, in contrast to our hypothesis, we found no evidence that transient arousal or acute stress that is incidental to the choice biases ambiguity preferences. |
Arunava Samaddar; Brooke S. Jackson; Christopher J. Helms; Nicole A. Lazar; Jennifer E. McDowell; Cheolwoo Park A group comparison in fMRI data using a semiparametric model under shape invariance Journal Article In: Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, vol. 167, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Samaddar2022,In the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, a common type of analysis is to compare differences across scanning sessions. A challenge to direct comparisons of this type is the low signal-to-noise ratio in fMRI data. By using the property that brain signals from a task-related experiment may exhibit a similar pattern in regions of interest across participants, a semiparametric approach under shape invariance to quantify and test the differences in sessions and groups is developed. The common function is estimated with local polynomial regression and the shape invariance model parameters are estimated using evolutionary optimization methods. The efficacy of the semi-parametric approach is demonstrated on a study of brain activation changes across two sessions associated with practice-related cognitive control. The objective of the study is to evaluate neural circuitry supporting a cognitive control task, and associated practice-related changes via acquisition of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal collected using fMRI. By using the proposed approach, BOLD signals in multiple regions of interest for control participants and participants with schizophrenia are compared as they perform a cognitive control task (known as the antisaccade task) at two sessions, and the effects of task practice in these groups are quantified. |
Uzma Samadani; Robert J. Spinner; Gerard Dynkowski; Susan Kirelik; Tory Schaaf; Stephen P. Wall; Paul Huang Eye tracking for classification of concussion in adults and pediatrics Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neurology, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1–6, 2022. @article{Samadani2022,INTRODUCTION In order to obtain FDA Marketing Authorization for aid in the diagnosis of concussion, an eye tracking study in an intended use population was conducted. METHODS Potentially concussed subjects recruited in emergency department and concussion clinic settings prospectively underwent eye tracking and a subset of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 3 at 6 sites. The results of an eye tracking-based classifier model were then validated against a pre-specified algorithm with a cutoff for concussed vs. non-concussed. The sensitivity and specificity of eye tracking were calculated after plotting of the receiver operating characteristic curve and calculation of the AUC (area under curve). RESULTS When concussion is defined by SCAT3 subsets, the sensitivity and specificity of an eye tracking algorithm was 80.4 and 66.1%, The AUC was 0.718. The misclassification rate (n = 282) was 31.6%. CONCLUSION A pre-specified algorithm and cutoff for diagnosis of concussion vs. non-concussion has a sensitivity and specificity that is useful as a baseline-free aid in diagnosis of concussion. Eye tracking has potential to serve as an objective "gold-standard" for detection of neurophysiologic disruption due to brain injury. |
Samuel Salvaggio; Nicolas Masson; Alexandre Zénon; Michael Andres The predictive role of eye movements in mental arithmetic Journal Article In: Experimental Brain Research, vol. 240, no. 5, pp. 1331–1340, 2022. @article{Salvaggio2022a,Behavioural studies have suggested that number manipulation involves shifting attention along a left-to-right oriented continuum. However, these studies provide little evidence about the time course of attention shifts during number processing. We used an eye-tracker with high spatio-temporal resolution to measure eye movements during the mental solving of addition (e.g., 43 + 4) and subtraction problems (e.g., 53 − 6), as a proxy for the rightward and leftward attention shifts that accompany these operations. A first difference in eye position was observed as soon as the operator was heard: the hearing of “plus” shifted the eye rightward compared to “minus”. A second difference was observed later between problem offset and response onset: addition shifted the eye rightward and upward compared to subtraction, suggesting that the space used to represent the problem is bidimensional. Further analyses confirmed the fast deployment of spatial attention and evidenced its relationship with the carrying and borrowing procedures triggered by the problem presentation. The predictive role of horizontal eye movements, in particular, is essential to understand how attention contributes to narrow down the range of plausible answers. We propose that attention illuminates significant portions of the numerical continuum anticipatively to guide the search of the answer and facilitate the implementation of solving procedures in verbal working memory. |
Samuel Salvaggio; Michael Andres; Alexandre Zénon; Nicolas Masson Pupil size variations reveal covert shifts of attention induced by numbers Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 1844–1853, 2022. @article{Salvaggio2022,The pupil light response is more than a pure reflexive mechanism that reacts to the amount of light entering the eye. The pupil size may also react to the luminance of objects lying in the visual periphery, revealing the locus of covert attention. In the present study, we took advantage of this response to study the spatial coding of abstract concepts with no physical counterpart: numbers. The participants' gaze was maintained fixed in the middle of a screen whose left and right parts were dark or bright, and variations in pupil size were recorded during an auditory number comparison task. The results showed that small numbers accentuated pupil dilation when the darker part of the screen was on the left, while large numbers accentuated pupil dilation when the darker part of the screen was on the right. This finding provides direct evidence for covert attention shifts on a left-to-right oriented mental spatial representation of numbers. From a more general perspective, it shows that the pupillary response to light is subject to modulation from spatial attention mechanisms operating on mental contents. |
Anthony W. Sali; Renate Ma; Mayuri S. Albal; Julianne Key The location independence of learned attentional flexibility Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 682–699, 2022. @article{Sali2022,Individuals can adjust their shift readiness, known as attentional flexibility, according to the statistical structure of the environment. However, the extent to which these modulations in attentional flexibility are associated with a global readiness to shift attention to any location versus an anticipated shift to a single location remains unknown. Across two experiments, participants shifted attention among three rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams of alphanumeric characters in response to embedded visual cues and made button presses in response to targets at the cued location. We manipulated the likelihood that participants would receive a cue that signaled a shift between two of the streams across blocks of trials. The likelihood of a cued shift of attention to the third location was held constant across all blocks. Participants demonstrated smaller target detection shift costs (Experiments 1 and 2) and shorter saccade latencies (Experiment 1) when the overall likelihood of shifting was high than when the overall shift likelihood was low. Critically, we observed evidence of both global shift readiness and location-specific shift readiness in both experiments such that participants shifted attention to the most-likely-to-be cued location the fastest, but still demonstrated a difference in the time to shift attention to the unlikely location according to the overall shift likelihood. Our findings provide evidence that moment-by-moment changes in attentional flexibility are not limited to an expectation to shift to a single location, but rather reflect, in part, a location-independent state of control. |
Sharif Saleki; Kirsten Ziman; Kevin C. Hartstein; Patrick Cavanagh; Peter U. Tse Endogenous attention modulates transformational apparent motion based on high-level shape representations Technical Report no. 12, 2022. @techreport{Saleki2022,When two pre-existing, separated squares are connected by the sudden onset of a bar between them, viewers do not perceive the bar to appear all at once. Instead, they see an illusory morphing of the original squares over time. The direction of this transformational apparent motion (TAM) can be influenced by endogenous attention deployed before the appearance of the connecting bar. Here, we investigated whether the influence of endogenous attention on TAM results from operations over high-level feature-independent shape representations, or instead over lower level shape representations defined by specific visual features. To do so, we tested the influence of endogenous attention on TAM in first- and second-order displays, which shared common shapes but had different shape-defining attributes (luminance and texture contrast, respectively). In terms of both the magnitude of directional bias and timing, we found that endogenous attention exerted a similar influence on both first- and second-order objects. These results imply that endogenous attention biases the perceived direction of TAM by operating on high-level shape representations that are invariant to the low-level visual features that define them. Our results support a four-stage model of TAM, where a feature encoding stage passes a features-specific layout to a parsing stage that forms discrete, high-level meta-featural shapes, which are then matched and visually interpolated over time. |
Amirsaman Sajad; Steven P. Errington; Jeffrey D. Schall Functional architecture of executive control and associated event-related potentials in macaques Journal Article In: Nature Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Sajad2022,The medial frontal cortex (MFC) enables executive control by monitoring relevant information and using it to adapt behavior. In macaques performing a saccade countermanding (stop-signal) task, we simultaneously recorded electrical potentials over MFC and neural spiking across all layers of the supplementary eye field (SEF). We report the laminar organization of neurons enabling executive control by monitoring the conflict between incompatible responses, the timing of events, and sustaining goal maintenance. These neurons were a mix of narrow-spiking and broad-spiking found in all layers, but those predicting the duration of control and sustaining the task goal until the release of operant control were more commonly narrow-spiking neurons confined to layers 2 and 3 (L2/3). We complement these results with evidence for a monkey homolog of the N2/P3 event-related potential (ERP) complex associated with response inhibition. N2 polarization varied with error-likelihood and P3 polarization varied with the duration of expected control. The amplitude of the N2 and P3 were predicted by the spike rate of different classes of neurons located in L2/3 but not L5/6. These findings reveal features of the cortical microcircuitry supporting executive control and producing associated ERPs. |
Muhammet Ikbal Sahan; Jean Philippe Dijck; Wim Fias Eye-movements reveal the serial position of the attended item in verbal working memory Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 530–540, 2022. @article{Sahan2022,The problem of how the mind can retain sequentially organized information has a long research tradition that remains unresolved. While various computational models propose a mechanism of binding serial order information to position markers, the representational nature and processes that operate on these position markers are not clear. Recent behavioral work suggests that space is used to mark positions in serial order and that this process is governed by spatial attention. Based on the assumption that brain areas controlling spatial attention are also involved in saccadic planning, we continuously tracked the eye-movements as a direct measure of the spatial attention during retrieval from a verbal WM sequence. Participants memorized a sequence of auditory numbers. During retention, they heard a number-cue that did or did not belong to the memorized set. After this number-cue, a target-beep could be presented to which they had to respond if the number-cue belonged to the memorized sequence. In Experiment 1, the target-beep was either presented to the left or right ear, and in Experiment 2 bilaterally (removing any spatial aspect). We tested the hypothesis that systematic eye-movements are made when people retrieve items of sequences of auditory words and found that the retrieval of begin items resulted in leftward eye-movements and the retrieval of end items in rightward eye-movements. These observations indicate that the oculomotor system is also involved in the serial order processes in verbal WM thereby providing a promising novel approach to get insight into abstract cognitive processes. |
Nuria Sagarra; Nicole Rodriguez Subject-verb number agreement in bilingual processing: (Lack of) age of acquisition and proficiency effects Journal Article In: Languages, vol. 7, pp. 1–22, 2022. @article{Sagarra2022,Children acquire language more easily than adults, though it is controversial whether this faculty declines as a result of a critical period or something else. To address this question, we investigate the role of age of acquisition and proficiency on morphosyntactic processing in adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Spanish monolinguals and intermediate and advanced early and late bilinguals of Spanish read sentences with adjacent subject–verb number agreements and violations and chose one of four pictures. Eye-tracking data revealed that all groups were sensitive to the violations and attended more to more salient plural and preterit verbs than less obvious singular and present verbs, regardless of AoA and proficiency level. We conclude that the processing of adjacent SV agreement depends on perceptual salience and language use, rather than AoA or proficiency. These findings support usage-based theories of language acquisition. |
Patrick Sadil; Rosemary A. Cowell; David E. Huber A modeling framework for determining modulation of neural-level tuning from non-invasive human fMRI data Journal Article In: Communications Biology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Sadil2022,Many neuroscience theories assume that tuning modulation of individual neurons underlies changes in human cognition. However, non-invasive fMRI lacks sufficient resolution to visualize this modulation. To address this limitation, we developed an analysis framework called Inferring Neural Tuning Modulation (INTM) for “peering inside” voxels. Precise specification of neural tuning from the BOLD signal is not possible. Instead, INTM compares theoretical alternatives for the form of neural tuning modulation that might underlie changes in BOLD across experimental conditions. The most likely form is identified via formal model comparison, with assumed parametric Normal tuning functions, followed by a non-parametric check of conclusions. We validated the framework by successfully identifying a well-established form of modulation: visual contrast-induced multiplicative gain for orientation tuned neurons. INTM can be applied to any experimental paradigm testing several points along a continuous feature dimension (e.g., direction of motion, isoluminant hue) across two conditions (e.g., with/without attention, before/after learning). |
Renata Sadibolova; Luna Monaldi; Devin B. Terhune A proxy measure of striatal dopamine predicts individual differences in temporal precision Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 1307–1316, 2022. @article{Sadibolova2022,The perception of time is characterized by pronounced variability across individuals, with implications for a diverse array of psychological functions. The neurocognitive sources of this variability are poorly understood, but accumulating evidence suggests a role for inter-individual differences in striatal dopamine levels. Here we present a pre-registered study that tested the predictions that spontaneous eyeblink rates, which provide a proxy measure of striatal dopamine availability, would be associated with aberrant interval timing (lower temporal precision or overestimation bias). Neurotypical adults (N = 69) underwent resting state eye tracking and completed visual psychophysical interval timing and control tasks. Elevated spontaneous eyeblink rates were associated with poorer temporal precision but not with inter-individual differences in perceived duration or performance on the control task. These results signify a role for striatal dopamine in variability in human time perception and can help explain deficient temporal precision in psychiatric populations characterized by elevated dopamine levels. |
Satu Saalasti; Jussi Alho; Juha M. Lahnakoski; Mareike Bacha-Trams; Enrico Glerean; Iiro P. Jääskeläinen; Uri Hasson; Mikko Sams Lipreading a naturalistic narrative in a female population: Neural characteristics shared with listening and reading Journal Article In: Brain and Behavior, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Saalasti2022,Introduction: Few of us are skilled lipreaders while most struggle with the task. Neural substrates that enable comprehension of connected natural speech via lipreading are not yet well understood. Methods: We used a data-driven approach to identify brain areas underlying the lipreading of an 8-min narrative with participants whose lipreading skills varied extensively (range 6–100% |
Noam Saadon-Grosman; Peter A. Angeli; Lauren M. DiNicola; Randy L. Buckner A third somatomotor representation in the human cerebellum Journal Article In: Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 128, no. 5, pp. 1051–1073, 2022. @article{SaadonGrosman2022,Seminal neurophysiological studies in the 1940s discovered two somatomotor maps in the cerebellum-an inverted anterior lobe map and an upright posterior lobe map. Both maps have been confirmed in the human using noninvasive neuroimaging with additional hints of a third map within and near to the cerebellar vermis. Here, we sought direct evidence for the third somatomotor map by using intensive, repeated functional MRI (fMRI) scanning of individuals performing movements across multiple body parts (tongue, hands, glutes, and feet). An initial discovery sample (n = 4, 4 sessions per individual including 576 separate blocks of body movements) yielded evidence for the two established cerebellar somatomotor maps, as well as evidence for a third discontinuous foot representation within the vermis. When the left versus right foot movements were directly contrasted, the third representation could be clearly distinguished from the second representation in multiple individuals. Functional connectivity from seed regions in the third somatomotor representation confirmed anatomically specific connectivity with the cerebral cortex, paralleling the patterns observed for the two well-established maps. All results were prospectively replicated in an independent dataset with new individuals (n = 4). These collective findings provide direct support for a third somatomotor representation in the vermis of the cerebellum that may be part of a third map. We discuss the relations of this candidate third map to the broader topography of the cerebellum as well as its implications for understanding the specific organization of the human cerebellar vermis where distinct zones appear functionally specialized for somatomotor and visual domains. |
Brian E. Brain E. Russ; Kenji W. Koyano; Julian Day-Cooney; Neda Perwez; David A. Leopold Temporal continuity shapes visual responses of macaque face patch neurons Journal Article In: Neuron, vol. 111, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Russ2022,Macaque inferior temporal cortex neurons respond selectively to complex visual images, with recent work showing that they are also entrained reliably by the evolving content of natural movies. To what extent does visual continuity itself shape the responses of high-level visual neurons? We addressed this question by measuring how cells in face-selective regions of the macaque temporal cortex were affected by the manipulation of a movie's temporal structure. Sampling the movie at 1s intervals, we measured neural responses to randomized, brief stimuli of different lengths, ranging from 800 ms dynamic movie snippets to 100 ms static frames. We found that the disruption of temporal continuity strongly altered neural response profiles, particularly in the early onset response period of the randomized stimulus. The results suggest that models of visual system function based on discrete and randomized visual presentations may not translate well to the brain's natural modes of operation. |
Anat Rudich-Strassler; Nimrod Hertz-Palmor; Amit Lazarov Looks interesting: Attention allocation in depression when using a news website – An eye tracking study Journal Article In: Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 304, pp. 113–121, 2022. @article{RudichStrassler2022,Background: Eye-tracking-based attention research has shown attentional biases toward dysphoric and away from positive stimuli in depression. However, most research used prototypical stimuli (co-presented contrasting emotional faces/pictures), less reflective of real-life situations. The current study addressed this limitation by examining participants' attentional allocation patterns while freely viewing a news website containing dysphoric and positive news articles. Methods: Participants with high levels of depression (HD; n = 30) and with minimal levels of depression (MD; n = 30) freely viewed a fictitious news website for 3.5 min, containing six articles (picture + text) with dysphoric content and six with positive content. Gaze patterns on corresponding areas of interest (AOIs) were compared. Following the task, participants rated each article's valence, authenticity, and interest. Results: Compared to MD participants, HD participants spent more time dwelling on dysphoric articles and less time dwelling on positive articles. Within group analyses showed that while HD participants spent more time dwelling on dysphoric compared to positive articles, MD participants showed no preference, allocating their attention equally to both article types. Echoing within-group gaze patterns, HD participants rated the dysphoric articles as being more interesting than the positive articles, while MD participants rated both types of articles as being equally interesting. Conclusion: Attentional biases in depression were also evident when using a more ecologically valid task such as viewing a news website, manifesting as increase attention allocation to dysphoric over positive content. This attention pattern may be related to corresponding differences in the level of interest participants found in each article type. |
Kelly C. Roth; Kenna R. H. Clayton; Greg D. Reynolds Infant selective attention to native and non-native audiovisual speech Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Roth2022,The current study utilized eye-tracking to investigate the effects of intersensory redundancy and language on infant visual attention and detection of a change in prosody in audiovisual speech. Twelve-month-old monolingual English-learning infants viewed either synchronous (redundant) or asynchronous (non-redundant) presentations of a woman speaking in native or non-native speech. Halfway through each trial, the speaker changed prosody from infant-directed speech (IDS) to adult-directed speech (ADS) or vice versa. Infants focused more on the mouth of the speaker on IDS trials compared to ADS trials regardless of language or intersensory redundancy. Additionally, infants demonstrated greater detection of prosody changes from IDS speech to ADS speech in native speech. Planned comparisons indicated that infants detected prosody changes across a broader range of conditions during redundant stimulus presentations. These findings shed light on the influence of language and prosody on infant attention and highlight the complexity of audiovisual speech processing in infancy. |
Shannon Ross-Sheehy; Bret Eschman; Esther E. Reynolds Seeing and looking: Evidence for developmental and stimulus-dependent changes in infant scanning efficiency Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 1–24, 2022. @article{RossSheehy2022,Though previous work has examined infant attention across a variety of tasks, less is known about the individual saccades and fixations that make up each bout of attention, and how individual differences in saccade and fixation patterns (i.e., scanning efficiency) change with development, scene content and perceptual load. To address this, infants between the ages of 5 and 11 months were assessed longitudinally (Experiment 1) and cross-sectionally (Experiment 2). Scanning efficiency (fixation duration, saccade rate, saccade amplitude, and saccade velocity) was assessed while infants viewed six quasi-naturalistic scenes that varied in content (social or non-social) and scene complexity (3, 6 or 9 people/objects). Results from Experiment 1 revealed moderate to strong stability of individual differences in saccade rate, mean fixation duration, and saccade amplitude, and both experiments revealed 5-month-old infants to make larger, faster, and more frequent saccades than older infants. Scanning efficiency was assessed as the relation between fixation duration and saccade amplitude, and results revealed 11-month-olds to have high scanning efficiency across all scenes. However, scanning efficiency also varied with scene content, such that all infants showing higher scanning efficiency when viewing social scenes, and more complex scenes. These results suggest both developmental and stimulus-dependent changes in scanning efficiency, and further highlight the use of saccade and fixation metrics as a sensitive indicator of cognitive processing. |
Matthew E. Rossheim; Matthew S. Peterson; M. Doug Livingston; Phenesse Dunlap; Pamela J. Trangenstein; Katherine Tran; Ogechi C. Emechebe; Kayla K. McDonald; Ryan D. Treffers; David H. Jernigan; Dennis L. Thombs Eye-tracking to examine differences in alcohol product appeal by sex among young people Journal Article In: American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 734–744, 2022. @article{Rossheim2022,Background: Advertising of traditional alcopops contains elements that appeal to youth, especially females. Supersized alcopops are marketed differently than traditional alcopops and contain up to 5.5 standard alcoholic drinks. Young females are more likely to underestimate the alcohol content of supersized alcopops, putting them at higher risk of overconsumption. Similar to supersized alcopops, beer is packaged in large cans and in the same areas of store shelves. Objective: This study examined among young people whether supersized alcopops versus beer products disproportionately appealed to females. Methods: Eleven adolescents (13–17 years old) and 72 college students (21–26 years old) were recruited during 2019–2020. Participants viewed 19 photos of convenience store display cases containing both supersized alcopop and beer products. While viewing each image, participants were instructed to click on the beverage that looked the “coolest” (i.e. most appealing). Eye-tracking hardware and software measured the amount of time participants visually fixated on each product. Participants completed a survey to record demographic characteristics. Results: Compared to males (n=25), females (n=58) fixated on supersized alcopops for 6.8 seconds longer (95%CI 0.3,13.3). Females also had 3.7 times the odds of selecting a supersized alcopop as the product they found most appealing compared to males (95%CI 1.68,8.01), adjusting for amount of time visually fixating on supersized alcopops, which was also a significant predictor. Conclusions: Young females' strong preference for supersized alcopops is concerning given they disproportionately underestimate their potency, relative to males, and are more likely to obtain dangerously high BAC levels from consuming one or two supersized alcopops. |
Pauline Rossel; Carole Peyrin; Alexia Roux-Sibilon; Louise Kauffmann It makes sense, so I see it better! Contextual information about the visual environment increases its perceived sharpness Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 331–350, 2022. @article{Rossel2022,Predictive coding theories of visual perception postulate that expectations based on prior knowledge modulate the processing of information by sharpening the representation of expected features of a stimulus in visual cortex but few studies directly investigated whether expectations qualitatively affect perception. Our study investigated the influence of expectations based on prior experience and contextual information on the perceived sharpness of objects and scenes. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used a perceptual matching task. Participants saw two blurred images depicting the same object or scene and had to adjust the blur level of the right image to match the blur level of the left one. We manipulated the availability of relevant information to form expectations about the image's content: one of the two images contained predictable information while the other one unpredictable. At an equal level of blur, predictable objects and scenes were perceived as sharper than unpredictable ones. Experiment 3 involving explicit sharpness judgments confirmed these results. Our findings support the sharpening account of predictive coding theories by showing that expectations increase the perceived sharpness of the visual signal. Expectations about the visual environment help us understand it more easily, but also makes us perceive it better |
Lisa Rosenblum; Elisa Grewe; Jan Churan; Frank Bremmer Influence of tactile flow on visual heading perception Journal Article In: Multisensory Research, vol. 35, pp. 291–308, 2022. @article{Rosenblum2022,The integration of information from different sensory modalities is crucial for successful navigation through an environment. Among others, self-motion induces distinct optic flow patterns on the retina, vestibular signals and tactile flow, which contribute to determine traveled distance (path integration) or movement direction (heading). While the processing of combined visual-vestibular information is subject to a growing body of literature, the processing of visuo-tactile signals in the context of self-motion has received comparatively little attention. Here, we investigated whether visual heading perception is influenced by behaviorally irrelevant tactile flow. In the visual modality, we simulated an observer's self-motion across a horizontal ground plane (optic flow). Tactile self-motion stimuli were delivered by air flow from head-mounted nozzles (tactile flow). In blocks of trials, we presented only visual or tactile stimuli and subjects had to report their perceived heading. In another block of trials, tactile and visual stimuli were presented simultaneously, with the tactile flow within ±40° of the visual heading (bimodal condition). Here, importantly, participants had to report their perceived visual heading. Perceived self-motion direction in all conditions revealed a centripetal bias, i.e., heading directions were perceived as compressed toward straight ahead. In the bimodal condition, we found a small but systematic influence of task-irrelevant tactile flow on visually perceived headings as function of their directional offset. We conclude that tactile flow is more tightly linked to self-motion perception than previously thought. |
Maria C. Romero; Lara Merken; Peter Janssen; Marco Davare Neural effects of continuous theta-burst stimulation in macaque parietal neurons Journal Article In: eLife, vol. 11, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Romero2022,Theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) has become a standard non-invasive technique to induce offline changes in cortical excitability in human volunteers. Yet, TBS suffers from a high variability across subjects. A better knowledge about how TBS affects neural activity in vivo could uncover its mechanisms of action and ultimately allow its mainstream use in basic science and clinical applications. To address this issue, we applied continuous TBS (cTBS, 300 pulses) in awake behaving rhesus monkeys and quantified its after-effects on neuronal activity. Overall, we observed a pronounced, long-lasting, and highly reproducible reduction in neuronal excitability after cTBS in individual parietal neurons, with some neurons also exhibiting periods of hyperexcitability during the recovery phase. These results provide the first experimental evidence of the effects of cTBS on single neurons in awake behaving monkeys, shedding new light on the reasons underlying cTBS variability. |
Kati Roesmann; Ida Wessing; Sophia Kraß; Elisabeth J. Leehr; Tim Klucken; Thomas Straube; Markus Junghöfer Developmental aspects of fear generalization – A MEG study on neurocognitive correlates in adolescents versus adults Journal Article In: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 58, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Roesmann2022,Background: Fear generalization is pivotal for the survival-promoting avoidance of potential danger, but, if too pronounced, it promotes pathological anxiety. Similar to adult patients with anxiety disorders, healthy children tend to show overgeneralized fear responses. Objective: This study aims to investigate neuro-developmental aspects of fear generalization in adolescence – a critical age for the development of anxiety disorders. Methods: We compared healthy adolescents (14–17 years) with healthy adults (19–34 years) regarding their fear responses towards tilted Gabor gratings (conditioned stimuli, CS; and slightly differently titled generalization stimuli, GS). In the conditioning phase, CS were paired (CS+) or remained unpaired (CS-) with an aversive stimulus (unconditioned stimuli, US). In the test phase, behavioral, peripheral and neural responses to CS and GS were captured by fear- and UCS expectancy ratings, a perceptual discrimination task, pupil dilation and source estimations of event-related magnetic fields. Results: Closely resembling adults, adolescents showed robust generalization gradients of fear ratings, pupil dilation, and estimated neural source activity. However, in the UCS expectancy ratings, adolescents revealed shallower generalization gradients indicating overgeneralization. Moreover, adolescents showed stronger visual cortical activity after as compared to before conditioning to all stimuli. Conclusion: Various aspects of fear learning and generalization appear to be mature in healthy adolescents. Yet, cognitive aspects might show a slower course of development. |
Oded Rock; Andrea Albonico; Farnaz Javadian; Mohammad Ashkanani; Alisdair J. G. Taylor; Michael Dreyer; Jason J. S. Barton Oblique saccades in internuclear ophthalmoplegia Journal Article In: Experimental Brain Research, vol. 240, no. 3, pp. 861–869, 2022. @article{Rock2022,Purpose: Oblique saccades often display component stretching, in which the shorter vector in one cardinal direction is slowed so that its duration matches that of the longer vector in the orthogonal direction, resulting in a straighter trajectory. In internuclear ophthalmoplegia, adducting saccades are typically slowed while vertical saccades are unaffected. It is not known whether these slowed adducting movements are accompanied by adaptive component stretching of the vertical vector during oblique saccades. This was a cross-sectional study. We recorded the saccadic eye movement in 5 patients with right or bilateral internuclear ophthalmoplegia from multiple sclerosis and 17 healthy controls, using an EyeLink 1000 machine. The target stimulus was located at varying angles (0–360) and amplitudes (4, 8, 12 degrees). For each saccade we have calculated the curvature index as the main outcome measure, which is the area between the actual and ideal straight trajectory for oblique saccadic eye movements, divided by the square of the length of the straight trajectory, to give a unit-less metric for curvature. In the 17 control subjects, curvature showed a strong positive correlation between adducting saccades and the yoked abducting saccades of the other eye. In internuclear ophthalmoplegia, adducting saccades showed a strong curvature concave to the horizontal meridian, indicating inadequate component stretching, while abducting saccades did not differ from controls. This new sign of oblique saccadic curvature in internuclear ophthalmoplegia indicates a limitation of the range of central adaptive changes in response to distal lesions affecting transmission of the saccadic command. |
Matthew K. Robison; Nathaniel T. Diede; Jessica Nicosia; B. Hunter Ball; Julie M. Bugg A multimodal analysis of sustained attention in younger and older adults Journal Article In: Psychology and Aging, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 307–325, 2022. @article{Robison2022,Age-related cognitive decline has been attributed to processing speed differences, as well as differences in executive control and response inhibition. However, recent research has shown that healthy older adults have intact, if not superior, sustained attention abilities compared to younger adults. The present study used a combination of reaction time (RT), thought probes, and pupillometry to measure sustained attention in samples of younger and older adults. The RT data revealed that, while slightly slower overall, older adults sustained their attention to the task better than younger adults, and did not show a vigilance decrement. Older adults also reported fewer instances of task-unrelated thoughts and reported feeling more motivated and alert than younger adults, despite finding the task more demanding. Additionally, older adults showed larger, albeit laterpeaking, task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs), corroborating the behavioral and self-report data. Finally, older adults did not show a shallowing of TEPRs across time, corroborating the finding that their RTs also did not change across time. The present findings are interpreted in light of processing speed theory, resourcedepletion theories of vigilance, and recent neurological theories of cognitive aging. |
Mariel Roberts; Marisa Carrasco Exogenous attention generalizes location transfer of perceptual learning in adults with amblyopia Journal Article In: iScience, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1–29, 2022. @article{Roberts2022,Visual perceptual learning (VPL) is a behavioral manifestation of brain neuroplasticity. However, its practical effectiveness is limited because improvements are often specific to the trained conditions and require significant time and effort. It is critical to understand the conditions that promote learning and transfer. Covert endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) spatial attention help overcome VPL location specificity in neurotypical adults, but whether they also do so for people with atypical visual development is unknown. This study investigates the role of exogenous attention during VPL in adults with amblyopia, an ideal population given their asymmetrically developed, but highly plastic, visual cortex. Here we show that training on a discrimination task leads to improvements in foveal contrast sensitivity, acuity, and stereoacuity. Notably, exogenous attention helps generalize learning beyond trained spatial locations. Future large-scale studies can verify the extent to which attention enhances the effectiveness of perceptual learning during rehabilitation of visual disorders. |
Ian D. Roberts; Yi Yang Teoh; Cendri A. Hutcherson Time to pay attention? Information search explains amplified framing effects under time pressure Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 90–104, 2022. @article{Roberts2022a,Decades of research have established the ubiquity and importance of choice biases, such as the framing effect, yet why these seemingly irrational behaviors occur remains unknown. A prominent dual-system account maintains that alternate framings bias choices because of the unchecked influence of quick, affective processes, and findings that time pressure increases the framing effect have provided compelling support. Here, we present a novel alternative account of magnified framing biases under time pressure that emphasizes shifts in early visual attention and strategic adaptations in the decision-making process. In a preregistered direct replication (N = 40 adult undergraduates), we found that time constraints produced strong shifts in visual attention toward reward-predictive cues that, when combined with truncated information search, amplified the framing effect. Our results suggest that an attention-guided, strategic information-sampling process may be sufficient to explain prior results and raise challenges for using time pressure to support some dual-system accounts. |
Antonio Rizzo; Sara Ermini; Dario Zanca; Dario Bernabini; Alessandro Rossi A machine learning approach for detecting cognitive interference based on eye-tracking data Journal Article In: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 16, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Rizzo2022,The Stroop test evaluates the ability to inhibit cognitive interference. This interference occurs when the processing of one stimulus characteristic affects the simultaneous processing of another attribute of the same stimulus. Eye movements are an indicator of the individual attention load required for inhibiting cognitive interference. We used an eye tracker to collect eye movements data from more than 60 subjects each performing four different but similar tasks (some with cognitive interference and some without). After the extraction of features related to fixations, saccades and gaze trajectory, we trained different Machine Learning models to recognize tasks performed in the different conditions (i.e., with interference, without interference). The models achieved good classification performances when distinguishing between similar tasks performed with or without cognitive interference. This suggests the presence of characterizing patterns common among subjects, which can be captured by machine learning algorithms despite the individual variability of visual behavior. |
Paula Ríos-López; Andreas Widmann; Aurelie Bidet-Caulet; Nicole Wetzel The effect of background speech on attentive sound processing: A pupil dilation study Journal Article In: International Journal of Psychophysiology, vol. 174, pp. 47–56, 2022. @article{RiosLopez2022,Listening to task-irrelevant speech while performing a cognitive task can involuntarily deviate our attention and lead to decreases in performance. One explanation for the impairing effect of irrelevant speech is that semantic processing can consume attentional resources. In the present study, we tested this assumption by measuring performance in a non-linguistic attentional task while participants were exposed to meaningful (native) and non-meaningful (foreign) speech. Moreover, based on the tight relation between pupillometry and attentional processes, we also registered changes in pupil diameter size to quantify the effect of meaningfulness upon attentional allocation. To these aims, we recruited 41 native German speakers who had neither received formal instruction in French nor had extensive informal contact with this language. The focal task consisted of an auditory oddball task. Participants performed a duration discrimination task containing frequently repeated standard sounds and rarely presented deviant sounds while a story was read in German or (non-meaningful) French in the background. Our results revealed that, whereas effects of language meaningfulness on attention were not detectable at the behavioural level, participants' pupil dilated more in response to the sounds of the auditory task when background speech was played in non-meaningful French compared to German, independent of sound type. In line with the initial hypothesis, this suggested that semantic processing of the native language required attentional resources, which lead to fewer resources devoted to the processing of the sounds of the focal task. Our results highlight the potential of the pupil dilation response for the investigation of subtle cognitive processes that might not surface when only behaviour is measured. |
Stephanie Rich; Jesse A. Harris Global expectations mediate local constraint: Evidence from concessive structures Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, pp. 1–26, 2022. @article{Rich2022a,Numerous studies have found facilitation for lexical processing in highly constraining contexts. However, less is known about cases in which immediately preceding (local) and broader (global) contextual constraint conflict. In two eye-tracking while reading experiments, local and global context were manipulated independently, creating a critical condition where local context biases towards a word that is incongruent with global context. Global context consisted of a clause introduced by a concessive marker generating broad expectations about upcoming material. Experiment 1 compared high- and low-predictability critical words, whereas Experiment 2 held the critical word constant and manipulated the preceding verb to impose different levels of local constraint. Facilitation from local context was reduced when it was incongruent with global context, supporting models in which information from global and local context is rapidly integrated during early lexical processing over models that would initially prioritise only local or only global context. |
Krista Rich; Grant Eckstein; Ethan Lynn Reading rate gain in a second language: The effect of unassisted repeated reading and intensity on word-level reading measures Journal Article In: The Reading Matrix, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Rich2022,Repeated reading is a popular intervention used to help struggling readers by exposing them to the same text multiple times. While the approach has been effective in L1 and some EFL settings, little research has explored its effectiveness compared against a control group or among ESL learners. Our study examined reading rate gains using words per minute and four eye-tracking measures with 46 mid-intermediate ESL learners grouped into three 14-week treatment groups: a control group that read 26 text passages (about two per week) just once through, another that read the same passages twice in each sitting, and a third that read the passages three times per sitting. Data collection on unfamiliar reading passages took place at 7-week intervals. While results indicated no significant difference among the groups, reading rate did improve significantly in all measures within the first seven weeks but tapered off in the final seven weeks. Eye-tracking measures revealed that readers made fewer regressions and skipped fewer words but gazed at words for less time by week 7, a finding that suggests reading fluency interventions helped students become more fluent readers. While these findings corroborate previous L1 and EFL research and provide support for the efficacy of reading fluency intervention, more research is needed to understand specific contexts in which repeated reading is most efficacious. |
Mario Reutter; Matthias Gamer Individual patterns of visual exploration predict the extent of fear generalization in humans Journal Article In: Emotion, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Reutter2022,Generalization of fear is considered an important mechanism contributing to the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Although previous studies have identified the importance of stimulus discrimination for fear generalization, it is still unclear to what degree overt attention to relevant stimulus features might mediate its magnitude. To test the prediction that visual preferences for distinguishing stimulus aspects are associated with reduced fear generalization, we developed a set of facial stimuli that was meticulously manipulated such that pairs of faces could either be distinguished by looking into the eyes or into the region around mouth and nose, respectively. These pairs were then employed as CSþ and CS in a differential fear conditioning paradigm followed by a generalization test with morphs in steps of 20%. Shock expectancy ratings indicated a moderately curved fear generalization gradient that is typical for healthy samples, but its shape was altered depending on individual attentional deployment: Particpants who dwelled on the distinguishing facial features faster and for longer periods of time exhibited less fear generalization. Although both pupil and heart rate responses also showed a generalization gradient, with pupil diameter and heart rate deceleration increasing as a function of threat, these responses were not significantly related to visual exploration. In total, the current results indicate that the extent of explicit fear generalization depends on individual patterns of attentional deployment. Future studies evaluating the efficacy of perceptual trainings that aim to augment stimulus discriminability in order to reduce (over)generalization seem desirable. |
Tracy Reuter; Mia Sullivan; Casey Lew-Williams Look at that: Spatial deixis reveals experience-related differences in prediction Journal Article In: Language Acquisition, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1–26, 2022. @article{Reuter2022,Prediction-based theories posit that interlocutors use prediction to process language efficiently and to coordinate dialogue. The present study evaluated whether listeners can use spatial deixis (i.e., this, that, these, and those) to predict the plurality and proximity of a speaker's upcoming referent. In two eye-tracking experiments with varying referential complexity (N = 168), native English-speaking adults, native English-learning 5-year-olds, and nonnative English-learning adults viewed images while listening to sentences with or without informative deictic determiners, e.g., Look at the/this/that/these/those wonderful cookie(s). Results showed that all groups successfully exploited plurality information. However, they varied in using deixis to anticipate the proximity of the referent; specifically, L1 adults showed more robust prediction than L2 adults, and L1 children did not show evidence of prediction. By evaluating listeners with varied language experiences, this investigation helps refine proposed mechanisms of prediction and suggests that linguistic experience is key to the development of such mechanisms. |
Johannes Rennig; Michael S. Beauchamp Intelligibility of audiovisual sentences drives multivoxel response patterns in human superior temporal cortex Journal Article In: NeuroImage, vol. 247, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Rennig2022,Regions of the human posterior superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (pSTG/S) respond to the visual mouth movements that constitute visual speech and the auditory vocalizations that constitute auditory speech, and neural responses in pSTG/S may underlie the perceptual benefit of visual speech for the comprehension of noisy auditory speech. We examined this possibility through the lens of multivoxel pattern responses in pSTG/S. BOLD fMRI data was collected from 22 participants presented with speech consisting of English sentences presented in five different formats: visual-only; auditory with and without added auditory noise; and audiovisual with and without auditory noise. Participants reported the intelligibility of each sentence with a button press and trials were sorted post-hoc into those that were more or less intelligible. Response patterns were measured in regions of the pSTG/S identified with an independent localizer. Noisy audiovisual sentences with very similar physical properties evoked very different response patterns depending on their intelligibility. When a noisy audiovisual sentence was reported as intelligible, the pattern was nearly identical to that elicited by clear audiovisual sentences. In contrast, an unintelligible noisy audiovisual sentence evoked a pattern like that of visual-only sentences. This effect was less pronounced for noisy auditory-only sentences, which evoked similar response patterns regardless of intelligibility. The successful integration of visual and auditory speech produces a characteristic neural signature in pSTG/S, highlighting the importance of this region in generating the perceptual benefit of visual speech. |
Emily B. Reilly; Kelli L. Dickerson; Lara J. Pierce; Jukka Leppänen; Viviane Valdes; Alma Gharib; Barbara L. Thompson; Lisa J. Schlueter; Pat Levitt; Charles A. Nelson Maternal stress and development of infant attention to threat-related facial expressions Journal Article In: Developmental Psychobiology, vol. 64, no. 7, pp. 1–12, 2022. @article{Reilly2022,Attentional biases to threat-related stimuli, such as fearful and angry facial expressions, are important to survival and emerge early in development. Infants demonstrate an attentional bias to fearful facial expressions by 5–7 months of age and an attentional bias toward anger by 3 years of age that are modulated by experiential factors. In a longitudinal study of 87 mother–infant dyads from families predominantly experiencing low income, we examined whether maternal stress and depressive symptoms were associated with trajectories of attentional biases to threat, assessed during an attention disengagement eye-tracking task when infants were 6-, 9-, and 12-month old. By 9 months, infants demonstrated a generalized bias toward threat (both fearful and angry facial expressions). Maternal perceived stress was associated with the trajectory of the bias toward angry facial expressions between 6 and 12 months. Specifically, infants of mothers with higher perceived stress exhibited a greater bias toward angry facial expressions at 6 months that decreased across the next 6 months, compared to infants of mothers with lower perceived stress who displayed an increased bias to angry facial expressions over this age range. Maternal depressive symptoms and stressful life events were not associated with trajectories of infant attentional bias to anger or fear. These findings highlight the role of maternal perceptions of stress in shaping developmental trajectories of threat-alerting systems. |
Gwendolyn Rehrig; Taylor R. Hayes; John M. Henderson; Fernanda Ferreira Visual attention during seeing for speaking in healthy aging Journal Article In: Psychology and Aging, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Rehrig2022a,As we age, we accumulate a wealth of information, but cognitive processing becomes slower and less efficient. There is mixed evidence on whether world knowledge compensates for age- related cognitive decline (Umanath & Marsh, 2014). We investigated whether older adults are more likely to fixate more meaningful scene locations than are young adults. Young (N=30) and older adults (N=30, aged 66-82) described scenes while eye movements and descriptions were recorded. We used a logistic mixed-effects model to determine whether fixated scene locations differed in meaning, salience, and center distance from locations that were not fixated, and whether those properties differed for locations young and older adults fixated. Meaning predicted fixated locations well overall, though the locations older adults fixated were less meaningful than those that young adults fixated. These results suggest that older adults' visual attention is less sensitive to meaning than young adults, despite extensive experience with scenes. |
Gwendolyn Rehrig; Madison Barker; Candace E. Peacock; Taylor R. Hayes; John M. Henderson; Fernanda Ferreira Look at what I can do: Object affordances guide visual attention while speakers describe potential actions Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, vol. 84, no. 5, pp. 1583–1610, 2022. @article{Rehrig2022,As we act on the world around us, our eyes seek out objects we plan to interact with. A growing body of evidence suggests that overt visual attention selects objects in the environment that could be interacted with, even when the task precludes physical interaction. In previous work, objects that afford grasping interactions influenced attention when static scenes depicted reachable spaces, and attention was otherwise better explained by general informativeness. Because grasping is but one of many object interactions, previous work may have downplayed the influence of object affordances on attention. The current study investigated the relationship between overt visual attention and object affordances versus broadly construed semantic information in scenes as speakers describe or memorize scenes. In addition to meaning and grasp maps—which capture informativeness and grasping object affordances in scenes, respectively—we introduce interact maps, which capture affordances more broadly. In a mixed-effects analysis of 5 eyetracking experiments, we found that meaning predicted fixated locations in a general description task and during scene memorization. Grasp maps marginally predicted fixated locations during action description for scenes that depicted reachable spaces only. Interact maps predicted fixated regions in description experiments alone. Our findings suggest observers allocate attention to scene regions that could be readily interacted with when talking about the scene, while general informativeness preferentially guides attention when the task does not encourage careful consideration of objects in the scene. The current study suggests that the influence of object affordances on visual attention in scenes is mediated by task demands. |
Theresa Redl; Agnieszka Szuba; Peter Swart; Stefan L. Frank; Helen Hoop Masculine generic pronouns as a gender cue in generic statements Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, vol. 59, no. 10, pp. 828–845, 2022. @article{Redl2022,An eye-tracking experiment was conducted with speakers of Dutch (N = 84, 36 male), a language that falls between grammatical and natural-gender languages. We tested whether a masculine generic pronoun causes a male bias when used in generic statements—that is, in the absence of a specific referent. We tested two types of generic statements by varying conceptual number, hypothesizing that the pronoun zijn “his” was more likely to cause a male bias with a conceptually singular than a conceptually plural antecedent (e.g., Someone (conceptually singular)/Everyone (conceptually plural) with perfect pitch can tune his instrument quickly). We found male participants to exhibit a male bias but with the conceptually singular antecedent only. Female participants showed no signs of a male bias. The results show that the generically intended masculine pronoun zijn “his” leads to a male bias in conceptually singular generic contexts but that this further depends on participant gender. |
Lukas Recker; Rebecca M. Foerster; Werner X. Schneider; Christian H. Poth In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Recker2022,The Trail-Making-Test (TMT) is one of the most widely used neuropsychological tests for assessing executive functions, the brain functions underlying cognitively controlled thought and action. Obtaining a number of test scores at once, the TMT allows to characterize an assortment of executive functions efficiently. Critically, however, as most test scores are derived from test completion times, the scores only provide a summary measure of various cognitive control processes. To address this problem, we extended the TMT in two ways. First, using a computerized eye-tracking version of the TMT, we added specific eye movement measures that deliver a richer set of data with a higher degree of cognitive process specificity. Second, we included an experimental manipulation of a fundamental executive function, namely participants' ability to emphasize speed or accuracy in task performance. Our study of healthy participants showed that eye movement measures differed between TMT conditions that are usually compared to assess the cognitive control process of alternating between task sets for action control. This demonstrates that eye movement measures are indeed sensitive to executive functions implicated in the TMT. Crucially, comparing performance under cognitive control sets of speed vs. accuracy emphasis revealed which test scores primarily varied due to this manipulation (e.g., trial duration, number of fixations), and which were still more sensitive to other differences between individuals (e.g., fixation duration, saccade amplitude). This provided an experimental construct validation of the test scores by distinguishing scores primarily reflecting the executive function of emphasizing speed vs. accuracy and those independent from it. In sum, both the inclusion of eye movement measures and of the experimental manipulation of executive functions in the TMT enabled a more specific interpretation of the TMT in terms of cognitive functions and mechanisms, which offers more precise diagnoses in clinical applications and basic research. |