A theory of object identity, knowing whether or not two glimpses refer to the exact same object, ... more A theory of object identity, knowing whether or not two glimpses refer to the exact same object, is presented in two parts. Part I argues that apparent motion, prism adaptation, ventriloquism, priming, stereopsis, and Gestalt grouping all require the identity decision. It is argued that object identity is general and required when samples come from different times, places, modalities, and eyes. Part II argues there is a common solution at a sufficient level of abstraction. Sample 1 and sample 2 are regarded as two forms which differ by a transformation corresponding to one of five geometries, Euclidean, Similarity, Affine, Projective, and Topology (Klein, 1893), that nest within each other like a set of Russian nesting dolls. Identity is resolved from the lowest level of the hierarchy available in the situation, producing a flexible solution whereby the same two samples will sometimes refer to the same object and sometimes not.
A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve ... more A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve as important threat cues. The biological significance of these threat cues is demonstrated by neuroimaging findings of amygdala responses to backward masked fearful faces. Additionally, behavioral dot-probe studies reveal that backward masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, little is known about the behavioral impact of the amygdala sensitivity to masked fearful faces. Using a dot-probe task with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide the first evidence that the amygdala is involved in orienting to backward masked fearful faces. Furthermore, this spatial attention-related amygdala response was correlated with activity in the anterior cingulate, superior temporal sulcus, and lingual gyrus.
Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2010
Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information.... more Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information. Infants, younger children, and adults all appear to orient spatial attention to emotional faces with a particularly strong bias to fearful faces. Yet in young children it is unclear whether or not both happy and fearful faces extract attention. Given that the processing of emotional faces is believed by some to serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose, attentional biases to both fearful and happy expressions would be expected in younger children. However, the extent to which this ability is present in young children and whether or not this ability is genetically mediated is untested. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to assess the spatial-attentional properties of emotional faces in young children, with a preliminary test of whether this effect was influenced by genetics. Five-year-old twin pairs performed a dot-probe task. The results suggest that children preferentially di...
Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2010
Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information.... more Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information. Infants, younger children, and adults all appear to orient spatial attention to emotional faces with a particularly strong bias to fearful faces. Yet in young children it is unclear whether or not both happy and fearful faces extract attention. Given that the processing of emotional faces is believed by some to serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose, attentional biases to both fearful and happy expressions would be expected in younger children. However, the extent to which this ability is present in young children and whether or not this ability is genetically mediated is untested. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to assess the spatial-attentional properties of emotional faces in young children, with a preliminary test of whether this effect was influenced by genetics. Five-year-old twin pairs performed a dot-probe task. The results suggest that children preferentially di...
With practice, people become better at discriminating two similar stimuli, such as two sounds. Th... more With practice, people become better at discriminating two similar stimuli, such as two sounds. The neural mechanisms that underlie this type of learning have been of interest to researchers investigating neural plasticity associated with learning and recovery of function following stroke. We utilized event related potentials (ERP) to study the neural substrates underlying auditory discrimination learning. Stimuli were five steady-state American English vowels. On each trial, participants were presented with a pair of vowels created by summing together the digital waveforms of two different vowels. Listeners were instructed to identify both vowels in the pair. ERPs were recorded during two sessions separated by 1 week. Half of the participants practised the discrimination task during the intervening week while the other half served as controls and did not receive any training. Trained listeners showed greater improvement in accuracy than untrained participants. In both groups, vowels...
A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve ... more A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve as important threat cues. The biological significance of these threat cues is demonstrated by neuroimaging findings of amygdala responses to backward masked fearful faces. Additionally, behavioral dot-probe studies reveal that backward masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, little is known about the behavioral impact of the amygdala sensitivity to masked fearful faces. Using a dot-probe task with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide the first evidence that the amygdala is involved in orienting to backward masked fearful faces. Furthermore, this spatial attention-related amygdala response was correlated with activity in the anterior cingulate, superior temporal sulcus, and lingual gyrus.
The discrimination of concurrent sounds is paramount to speech perception. During social gatherin... more The discrimination of concurrent sounds is paramount to speech perception. During social gatherings, listeners must extract information from a composite acoustic wave, which sums multiple individual voices that are simultaneously active. The observers' ability to identify two simultaneously presented vowels improves with increasing separation between the fundamental frequencies (f0) of the two vowels. Event-related potentials to stimuli presented during attend and ignore conditions revealed activity between 130 and 170 msec after sound onset that reflected the f0 differences between the two vowels. Another, more posterior and right-lateralized, negative wave maximal at 250 msec, and a central-parietal slow negativity were observed only during vowel identification and may index stimulus categorization. This sequence of neural events supports a multistage model of auditory scene analysis in which the spectral pattern of each vowel constituent is automatically extracted and then matched against representations of those vowels in working memory.
Dot probe studies indicate that masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, without... more Dot probe studies indicate that masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, without a baseline to compare congruent and incongruent reaction times, it is unclear which aspect(s) of attention (orienting or disengagement) is affected. Additionally, backward masking studies commonly use a neutral face as the mask stimulus. This method results in greater perceptual inconsistencies for fearful as opposed to neutral faces. Therefore, it is currently unclear whether the effects of backward masked fearful faces are due to the fearful nature of the face or perceptual inconsistencies. Equally unclear, is whether this spatial attention effect is due to orienting or disengagement. Two modified dot probe experiments with neutral (closed mouth in Experiment 1) and smiling (open mouth in Experiment 2) masks were used to determine the role of perceptual inconsistencies in mediating the spatial attention effects elicited by masked fearful faces. The results indicate that masked fearful faces modulate the orienting of spatial attention, and it appears that this effect is due to the fearful nature of the face rather than perceptual inconsistencies between the initial faces and masks.
Fearful facial expressions convey threat-related information and automatically elicit modulations... more Fearful facial expressions convey threat-related information and automatically elicit modulations in spatial attention. The eye-region appears to be a particularly important feature for recognising and responding to fearful faces. However, it is unknown as to whether or not fearful eyes initiate modulations in spatial attention. In the current study, three dot-probe experiments with fearful and neutral eye stimuli were performed. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that fearful eyes capture spatial attention through facilitated attentional orienting to threat and delayed attentional disengagement from threat. In Experiments 2 and 3, these attentional effects were replicated, while ruling out the influence of overall size/shape and brightness differences between fearful and neutral eyes, respectively. Thus, fearful eye-whites appear to be a salient feature of fearful facial expressions that elicit modulations in spatial attention.
A theory of object identity, knowing whether or not two glimpses refer to the exact same object, ... more A theory of object identity, knowing whether or not two glimpses refer to the exact same object, is presented in two parts. Part I argues that apparent motion, prism adaptation, ventriloquism, priming, stereopsis, and Gestalt grouping all require the identity decision. It is argued that object identity is general and required when samples come from different times, places, modalities, and eyes. Part II argues there is a common solution at a sufficient level of abstraction. Sample 1 and sample 2 are regarded as two forms which differ by a transformation corresponding to one of five geometries, Euclidean, Similarity, Affine, Projective, and Topology (Klein, 1893), that nest within each other like a set of Russian nesting dolls. Identity is resolved from the lowest level of the hierarchy available in the situation, producing a flexible solution whereby the same two samples will sometimes refer to the same object and sometimes not.
A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve ... more A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve as important threat cues. The biological significance of these threat cues is demonstrated by neuroimaging findings of amygdala responses to backward masked fearful faces. Additionally, behavioral dot-probe studies reveal that backward masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, little is known about the behavioral impact of the amygdala sensitivity to masked fearful faces. Using a dot-probe task with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide the first evidence that the amygdala is involved in orienting to backward masked fearful faces. Furthermore, this spatial attention-related amygdala response was correlated with activity in the anterior cingulate, superior temporal sulcus, and lingual gyrus.
Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2010
Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information.... more Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information. Infants, younger children, and adults all appear to orient spatial attention to emotional faces with a particularly strong bias to fearful faces. Yet in young children it is unclear whether or not both happy and fearful faces extract attention. Given that the processing of emotional faces is believed by some to serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose, attentional biases to both fearful and happy expressions would be expected in younger children. However, the extent to which this ability is present in young children and whether or not this ability is genetically mediated is untested. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to assess the spatial-attentional properties of emotional faces in young children, with a preliminary test of whether this effect was influenced by genetics. Five-year-old twin pairs performed a dot-probe task. The results suggest that children preferentially di...
Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2010
Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information.... more Emotional facial expressions are important social cues that convey salient affective information. Infants, younger children, and adults all appear to orient spatial attention to emotional faces with a particularly strong bias to fearful faces. Yet in young children it is unclear whether or not both happy and fearful faces extract attention. Given that the processing of emotional faces is believed by some to serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose, attentional biases to both fearful and happy expressions would be expected in younger children. However, the extent to which this ability is present in young children and whether or not this ability is genetically mediated is untested. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to assess the spatial-attentional properties of emotional faces in young children, with a preliminary test of whether this effect was influenced by genetics. Five-year-old twin pairs performed a dot-probe task. The results suggest that children preferentially di...
With practice, people become better at discriminating two similar stimuli, such as two sounds. Th... more With practice, people become better at discriminating two similar stimuli, such as two sounds. The neural mechanisms that underlie this type of learning have been of interest to researchers investigating neural plasticity associated with learning and recovery of function following stroke. We utilized event related potentials (ERP) to study the neural substrates underlying auditory discrimination learning. Stimuli were five steady-state American English vowels. On each trial, participants were presented with a pair of vowels created by summing together the digital waveforms of two different vowels. Listeners were instructed to identify both vowels in the pair. ERPs were recorded during two sessions separated by 1 week. Half of the participants practised the discrimination task during the intervening week while the other half served as controls and did not receive any training. Trained listeners showed greater improvement in accuracy than untrained participants. In both groups, vowels...
A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve ... more A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve as important threat cues. The biological significance of these threat cues is demonstrated by neuroimaging findings of amygdala responses to backward masked fearful faces. Additionally, behavioral dot-probe studies reveal that backward masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, little is known about the behavioral impact of the amygdala sensitivity to masked fearful faces. Using a dot-probe task with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide the first evidence that the amygdala is involved in orienting to backward masked fearful faces. Furthermore, this spatial attention-related amygdala response was correlated with activity in the anterior cingulate, superior temporal sulcus, and lingual gyrus.
The discrimination of concurrent sounds is paramount to speech perception. During social gatherin... more The discrimination of concurrent sounds is paramount to speech perception. During social gatherings, listeners must extract information from a composite acoustic wave, which sums multiple individual voices that are simultaneously active. The observers' ability to identify two simultaneously presented vowels improves with increasing separation between the fundamental frequencies (f0) of the two vowels. Event-related potentials to stimuli presented during attend and ignore conditions revealed activity between 130 and 170 msec after sound onset that reflected the f0 differences between the two vowels. Another, more posterior and right-lateralized, negative wave maximal at 250 msec, and a central-parietal slow negativity were observed only during vowel identification and may index stimulus categorization. This sequence of neural events supports a multistage model of auditory scene analysis in which the spectral pattern of each vowel constituent is automatically extracted and then matched against representations of those vowels in working memory.
Dot probe studies indicate that masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, without... more Dot probe studies indicate that masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, without a baseline to compare congruent and incongruent reaction times, it is unclear which aspect(s) of attention (orienting or disengagement) is affected. Additionally, backward masking studies commonly use a neutral face as the mask stimulus. This method results in greater perceptual inconsistencies for fearful as opposed to neutral faces. Therefore, it is currently unclear whether the effects of backward masked fearful faces are due to the fearful nature of the face or perceptual inconsistencies. Equally unclear, is whether this spatial attention effect is due to orienting or disengagement. Two modified dot probe experiments with neutral (closed mouth in Experiment 1) and smiling (open mouth in Experiment 2) masks were used to determine the role of perceptual inconsistencies in mediating the spatial attention effects elicited by masked fearful faces. The results indicate that masked fearful faces modulate the orienting of spatial attention, and it appears that this effect is due to the fearful nature of the face rather than perceptual inconsistencies between the initial faces and masks.
Fearful facial expressions convey threat-related information and automatically elicit modulations... more Fearful facial expressions convey threat-related information and automatically elicit modulations in spatial attention. The eye-region appears to be a particularly important feature for recognising and responding to fearful faces. However, it is unknown as to whether or not fearful eyes initiate modulations in spatial attention. In the current study, three dot-probe experiments with fearful and neutral eye stimuli were performed. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that fearful eyes capture spatial attention through facilitated attentional orienting to threat and delayed attentional disengagement from threat. In Experiments 2 and 3, these attentional effects were replicated, while ruling out the influence of overall size/shape and brightness differences between fearful and neutral eyes, respectively. Thus, fearful eye-whites appear to be a salient feature of fearful facial expressions that elicit modulations in spatial attention.
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