Visual gate for brain-computer interfaces.

PubMed

Dias, N S; Jacinto, L R; Mendes, P M; Correia, J H

2009-01-01

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) based on event related potentials (ERP) have been successfully developed for applications like virtual spellers and navigation systems. This study tests the use of visual stimuli unbalanced in the subject's field of view to simultaneously cue mental imagery tasks (left vs. right hand movement) and detect subject attention. The responses to unbalanced cues were compared with the responses to balanced cues in terms of classification accuracy. Subject specific ERP spatial filters were calculated for optimal group separation. The unbalanced cues appear to enhance early ERPs related to cue visuospatial processing that improved the classification accuracy (as low as 6%) of ERPs in response to left vs. right cues soon (150-200 ms) after the cue presentation. This work suggests that such visual interface may be of interest in BCI applications as a gate mechanism for attention estimation and validation of control decisions.

Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) use positive, but not negative, auditory cues to infer food location.

PubMed

Heimbauer, Lisa A; Antworth, Rebecca L; Owren, Michael J

2012-01-01

Nonhuman primates appear to capitalize more effectively on visual cues than corresponding auditory versions. For example, studies of inferential reasoning have shown that monkeys and apes readily respond to seeing that food is present ("positive" cuing) or absent ("negative" cuing). Performance is markedly less effective with auditory cues, with many subjects failing to use this input. Extending recent work, we tested eight captive tufted capuchins (Cebus apella) in locating food using positive and negative cues in visual and auditory domains. The monkeys chose between two opaque cups to receive food contained in one of them. Cup contents were either shown or shaken, providing location cues from both cups, positive cues only from the baited cup, or negative cues from the empty cup. As in previous work, subjects readily used both positive and negative visual cues to secure reward. However, auditory outcomes were both similar to and different from those of earlier studies. Specifically, all subjects came to exploit positive auditory cues, but none responded to negative versions. The animals were also clearly different in visual versus auditory performance. Results indicate that a significant proportion of capuchins may be able to use positive auditory cues, with experience and learning likely playing a critical role. These findings raise the possibility that experience may be significant in visually based performance in this task as well, and highlight that coming to grips with evident differences between visual versus auditory processing may be important for understanding primate cognition more generally.

Preventing distraction: Assessing stimulus-specific and general effects of the predictive cueing of deviant auditory events

PubMed Central

Horváth, János; Sussman, Elyse; Winkler, István; Schröger, Erich

2011-01-01

Rare irregular sounds (deviants) embedded into a regular sound sequence have large potential to draw attention to themselves (distraction). It has been previously shown that distraction, as manifested by behavioral response delay, and the P3a and reorienting negativity (RON) event-related potentials, could be reduced when the forthcoming deviant was signaled by visual cues preceding the sounds. In the present study, we investigated the type of information used in the prevention of distraction by manipulating the information content of the visual cues preceding the sounds. Cues could signal the specific variant of the forthcoming deviant, or they could just signal that the next tone was a deviant. We found that stimulus-specific cue information was used in reducing distraction. The results also suggest that early P3a and RON index processes related to the specific deviating stimulus feature, whereas late P3a reflects a general distraction-related process. PMID:21310210

Differential processing of binocular and monocular gloss cues in human visual cortex

PubMed Central

Di Luca, Massimiliano; Ban, Hiroshi; Muryy, Alexander; Fleming, Roland W.

2016-01-01

The visual impression of an object's surface reflectance (“gloss”) relies on a range of visual cues, both monocular and binocular. Whereas previous imaging work has identified processing within ventral visual areas as important for monocular cues, little is known about cortical areas involved in processing binocular cues. Here, we used human functional MRI (fMRI) to test for brain areas selectively involved in the processing of binocular cues. We manipulated stereoscopic information to create four conditions that differed in their disparity structure and in the impression of surface gloss that they evoked. We performed multivoxel pattern analysis to find areas whose fMRI responses allow classes of stimuli to be distinguished based on their depth structure vs. material appearance. We show that higher dorsal areas play a role in processing binocular gloss information, in addition to known ventral areas involved in material processing, with ventral area lateral occipital responding to both object shape and surface material properties. Moreover, we tested for similarities between the representation of gloss from binocular cues and monocular cues. Specifically, we tested for transfer in the decoding performance of an algorithm trained on glossy vs. matte objects defined by either binocular or by monocular cues. We found transfer effects from monocular to binocular cues in dorsal visual area V3B/kinetic occipital (KO), suggesting a shared representation of the two cues in this area. These results indicate the involvement of mid- to high-level visual circuitry in the estimation of surface material properties, with V3B/KO potentially playing a role in integrating monocular and binocular cues. PMID:26912596

Man-systems evaluation of moving base vehicle simulation motion cues. [human acceleration perception involving visual feedback

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kirkpatrick, M.; Brye, R. G.

1974-01-01

A motion cue investigation program is reported that deals with human factor aspects of high fidelity vehicle simulation. General data on non-visual motion thresholds and specific threshold values are established for use as washout parameters in vehicle simulation. A general purpose similator is used to test the contradictory cue hypothesis that acceleration sensitivity is reduced during a vehicle control task involving visual feedback. The simulator provides varying acceleration levels. The method of forced choice is based on the theory of signal detect ability.

Cue Integration in Categorical Tasks: Insights from Audio-Visual Speech Perception

PubMed Central

Bejjanki, Vikranth Rao; Clayards, Meghan; Knill, David C.; Aslin, Richard N.

2011-01-01

Previous cue integration studies have examined continuous perceptual dimensions (e.g., size) and have shown that human cue integration is well described by a normative model in which cues are weighted in proportion to their sensory reliability, as estimated from single-cue performance. However, this normative model may not be applicable to categorical perceptual dimensions (e.g., phonemes). In tasks defined over categorical perceptual dimensions, optimal cue weights should depend not only on the sensory variance affecting the perception of each cue but also on the environmental variance inherent in each task-relevant category. Here, we present a computational and experimental investigation of cue integration in a categorical audio-visual (articulatory) speech perception task. Our results show that human performance during audio-visual phonemic labeling is qualitatively consistent with the behavior of a Bayes-optimal observer. Specifically, we show that the participants in our task are sensitive, on a trial-by-trial basis, to the sensory uncertainty associated with the auditory and visual cues, during phonemic categorization. In addition, we show that while sensory uncertainty is a significant factor in determining cue weights, it is not the only one and participants' performance is consistent with an optimal model in which environmental, within category variability also plays a role in determining cue weights. Furthermore, we show that in our task, the sensory variability affecting the visual modality during cue-combination is not well estimated from single-cue performance, but can be estimated from multi-cue performance. The findings and computational principles described here represent a principled first step towards characterizing the mechanisms underlying human cue integration in categorical tasks. PMID:21637344

A model for the pilot's use of motion cues in roll-axis tracking tasks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Levison, W. H.; Junker, A. M.

1977-01-01

Simulated target-following and disturbance-regulation tasks were explored with subjects using visual-only and combined visual and motion cues. The effects of motion cues on task performance and pilot response behavior were appreciably different for the two task configurations and were consistent with data reported in earlier studies for similar task configurations. The optimal-control model for pilot/vehicle systems provided a task-independent framework for accounting for the pilot's use of motion cues. Specifically, the availability of motion cues was modeled by augmenting the set of perceptual variables to include position, rate, acceleration, and accleration-rate of the motion simulator, and results were consistent with the hypothesis of attention-sharing between visual and motion variables. This straightforward informational model allowed accurate model predictions of the effects of motion cues on a variety of response measures for both the target-following and disturbance-regulation tasks.

Differential processing of binocular and monocular gloss cues in human visual cortex.

PubMed

Sun, Hua-Chun; Di Luca, Massimiliano; Ban, Hiroshi; Muryy, Alexander; Fleming, Roland W; Welchman, Andrew E

2016-06-01

The visual impression of an object's surface reflectance ("gloss") relies on a range of visual cues, both monocular and binocular. Whereas previous imaging work has identified processing within ventral visual areas as important for monocular cues, little is known about cortical areas involved in processing binocular cues. Here, we used human functional MRI (fMRI) to test for brain areas selectively involved in the processing of binocular cues. We manipulated stereoscopic information to create four conditions that differed in their disparity structure and in the impression of surface gloss that they evoked. We performed multivoxel pattern analysis to find areas whose fMRI responses allow classes of stimuli to be distinguished based on their depth structure vs. material appearance. We show that higher dorsal areas play a role in processing binocular gloss information, in addition to known ventral areas involved in material processing, with ventral area lateral occipital responding to both object shape and surface material properties. Moreover, we tested for similarities between the representation of gloss from binocular cues and monocular cues. Specifically, we tested for transfer in the decoding performance of an algorithm trained on glossy vs. matte objects defined by either binocular or by monocular cues. We found transfer effects from monocular to binocular cues in dorsal visual area V3B/kinetic occipital (KO), suggesting a shared representation of the two cues in this area. These results indicate the involvement of mid- to high-level visual circuitry in the estimation of surface material properties, with V3B/KO potentially playing a role in integrating monocular and binocular cues. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

Visual selective attention in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

McLaughlin, Paula M; Anderson, Nicole D; Rich, Jill B; Chertkow, Howard; Murtha, Susan J E

2014-11-01

Subtle deficits in visual selective attention have been found in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). However, few studies have explored performance on visual search paradigms or the Simon task, which are known to be sensitive to disease severity in Alzheimer's patients. Furthermore, there is limited research investigating how deficiencies can be ameliorated with exogenous support (auditory cues). Sixteen individuals with aMCI and 14 control participants completed 3 experimental tasks that varied in demand and cue availability: visual search-alerting, visual search-orienting, and Simon task. Visual selective attention was influenced by aMCI, auditory cues, and task characteristics. Visual search abilities were relatively consistent across groups. The aMCI participants were impaired on the Simon task when working memory was required, but conflict resolution was similar to controls. Spatially informative orienting cues improved response times, whereas spatially neutral alerting cues did not influence performance. Finally, spatially informative auditory cues benefited the aMCI group more than controls in the visual search task, specifically at the largest array size where orienting demands were greatest. These findings suggest that individuals with aMCI have working memory deficits and subtle deficiencies in orienting attention and rely on exogenous information to guide attention. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Audio–visual interactions for motion perception in depth modulate activity in visual area V3A

PubMed Central

Ogawa, Akitoshi; Macaluso, Emiliano

2013-01-01

Multisensory signals can enhance the spatial perception of objects and events in the environment. Changes of visual size and auditory intensity provide us with the main cues about motion direction in depth. However, frequency changes in audition and binocular disparity in vision also contribute to the perception of motion in depth. Here, we presented subjects with several combinations of auditory and visual depth-cues to investigate multisensory interactions during processing of motion in depth. The task was to discriminate the direction of auditory motion in depth according to increasing or decreasing intensity. Rising or falling auditory frequency provided an additional within-audition cue that matched or did not match the intensity change (i.e. intensity-frequency (IF) “matched vs. unmatched” conditions). In two-thirds of the trials, a task-irrelevant visual stimulus moved either in the same or opposite direction of the auditory target, leading to audio–visual “congruent vs. incongruent” between-modalities depth-cues. Furthermore, these conditions were presented either with or without binocular disparity. Behavioral data showed that the best performance was observed in the audio–visual congruent condition with IF matched. Brain imaging results revealed maximal response in visual area V3A when all cues provided congruent and reliable depth information (i.e. audio–visual congruent, IF-matched condition including disparity cues). Analyses of effective connectivity revealed increased coupling from auditory cortex to V3A specifically in audio–visual congruent trials. We conclude that within- and between-modalities cues jointly contribute to the processing of motion direction in depth, and that they do so via dynamic changes of connectivity between visual and auditory cortices. PMID:23333414

Chemical and visual communication during mate searching in rock shrimp.

PubMed

Díaz, Eliecer R; Thiel, Martin

2004-06-01

Mate searching in crustaceans depends on different communicational cues, of which chemical and visual cues are most important. Herein we examined the role of chemical and visual communication during mate searching and assessment in the rock shrimp Rhynchocinetes typus. Adult male rock shrimp experience major ontogenetic changes. The terminal molt stages (named "robustus") are dominant and capable of monopolizing females during the mating process. Previous studies had shown that most females preferably mate with robustus males, but how these dominant males and receptive females find each other is uncertain, and is the question we examined herein. In a Y-maze designed to test for the importance of waterborne chemical cues, we observed that females approached the robustus male significantly more often than the typus male. Robustus males, however, were unable to locate receptive females via chemical signals. Using an experimental set-up that allowed testing for the importance of visual cues, we demonstrated that receptive females do not use visual cues to select robustus males, but robustus males use visual cues to find receptive females. Visual cues used by the robustus males were the tumults created by agitated aggregations of subordinate typus males around the receptive females. These results indicate a strong link between sexual communication and the mating system of rock shrimp in which dominant males monopolize receptive females. We found that females and males use different (sex-specific) communicational cues during mate searching and assessment, and that the sexual communication of rock shrimp is similar to that of the American lobster, where females are first attracted to the dominant males by chemical cues emitted by these males. A brief comparison between these two species shows that female behaviors during sexual communication contribute strongly to the outcome of mate searching and assessment.

The Role of Global and Local Visual Information during Gaze-Cued Orienting of Attention.

PubMed

Munsters, Nicolette M; van den Boomen, Carlijn; Hooge, Ignace T C; Kemner, Chantal

2016-01-01

Gaze direction is an important social communication tool. Global and local visual information are known to play specific roles in processing socially relevant information from a face. The current study investigated whether global visual information has a primary role during gaze-cued orienting of attention and, as such, may influence quality of interaction. Adults performed a gaze-cueing task in which a centrally presented face cued (valid or invalid) the location of a peripheral target through a gaze shift. We measured brain activity (electroencephalography) towards the cue and target and behavioral responses (manual and saccadic reaction times) towards the target. The faces contained global (i.e. lower spatial frequencies), local (i.e. higher spatial frequencies), or a selection of both global and local (i.e. mid-band spatial frequencies) visual information. We found a gaze cue-validity effect (i.e. valid versus invalid), but no interaction effects with spatial frequency content. Furthermore, behavioral responses towards the target were in all cue conditions slower when lower spatial frequencies were not present in the gaze cue. These results suggest that whereas gaze-cued orienting of attention can be driven by both global and local visual information, global visual information determines the speed of behavioral responses towards other entities appearing in the surrounding of gaze cue stimuli.

Dissociating emotion-induced blindness and hypervision.

PubMed

Bocanegra, Bruno R; Zeelenberg, René

2009-12-01

Previous findings suggest that emotional stimuli sometimes improve (emotion-induced hypervision) and sometimes impair (emotion-induced blindness) the visual perception of subsequent neutral stimuli. We hypothesized that these differential carryover effects might be due to 2 distinct emotional influences in visual processing. On the one hand, emotional stimuli trigger a general enhancement in the efficiency of visual processing that can carry over onto other stimuli. On the other hand, emotional stimuli benefit from a stimulus-specific enhancement in later attentional processing at the expense of competing visual stimuli. We investigated whether detrimental (blindness) and beneficial (hypervision) carryover effects of emotion in perception can be dissociated within a single experimental paradigm. In 2 experiments, we manipulated the temporal competition for attention between an emotional cue word and a subsequent neutral target word by varying cue-target interstimulus interval (ISI) and cue visibility. Interestingly, emotional cues impaired target identification at short ISIs but improved target identification when competition was diminished by either increasing ISI or reducing cue visibility, suggesting that emotional significance of stimuli can improve and impair visual performance through distinct perceptual mechanisms.

Role of Self-Generated Odor Cues in Contextual Representation

PubMed Central

Aikath, Devdeep; Weible, Aldis P; Rowland, David C; Kentros, Clifford G

2014-01-01

As first demonstrated in the patient H.M., the hippocampus is critically involved in forming episodic memories, the recall of “what” happened “where” and “when.” In rodents, the clearest functional correlate of hippocampal primary neurons is the place field: a cell fires predominantly when the animal is in a specific part of the environment, typically defined relative to the available visuospatial cues. However, rodents have relatively poor visual acuity. Furthermore, they are highly adept at navigating in total darkness. This raises the question of how other sensory modalities might contribute to a hippocampal representation of an environment. Rodents have a highly developed olfactory system, suggesting that cues such as odor trails may be important. To test this, we familiarized mice to a visually cued environment over a number of days while maintaining odor cues. During familiarization, self-generated odor cues unique to each animal were collected by re-using absorbent paperboard flooring from one session to the next. Visual and odor cues were then put in conflict by counter-rotating the recording arena and the flooring. Perhaps surprisingly, place fields seemed to follow the visual cue rotation exclusively, raising the question of whether olfactory cues have any influence at all on a hippocampal spatial representation. However, subsequent removal of the familiar, self-generated odor cues severely disrupted both long-term stability and rotation to visual cues in a novel environment. Our data suggest that odor cues, in the absence of additional rule learning, do not provide a discriminative spatial signal that anchors place fields. Such cues do, however, become integral to the context over time and exert a powerful influence on the stability of its hippocampal representation. © 2014 The Authors. Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. PMID:24753119

Attention biases visual activity in visual short-term memory.

PubMed

Kuo, Bo-Cheng; Stokes, Mark G; Murray, Alexandra M; Nobre, Anna Christina

2014-07-01

In the current study, we tested whether representations in visual STM (VSTM) can be biased via top-down attentional modulation of visual activity in retinotopically specific locations. We manipulated attention using retrospective cues presented during the retention interval of a VSTM task. Retrospective cues triggered activity in a large-scale network implicated in attentional control and led to retinotopically specific modulation of activity in early visual areas V1-V4. Importantly, shifts of attention during VSTM maintenance were associated with changes in functional connectivity between pFC and retinotopic regions within V4. Our findings provide new insights into top-down control mechanisms that modulate VSTM representations for flexible and goal-directed maintenance of the most relevant memoranda.

Sensory modality of smoking cues modulates neural cue reactivity.

PubMed

Yalachkov, Yavor; Kaiser, Jochen; Görres, Andreas; Seehaus, Arne; Naumer, Marcus J

2013-01-01

Behavioral experiments have demonstrated that the sensory modality of presentation modulates drug cue reactivity. The present study on nicotine addiction tested whether neural responses to smoking cues are modulated by the sensory modality of stimulus presentation. We measured brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 15 smokers and 15 nonsmokers while they viewed images of smoking paraphernalia and control objects and while they touched the same objects without seeing them. Haptically presented, smoking-related stimuli induced more pronounced neural cue reactivity than visual cues in the left dorsal striatum in smokers compared to nonsmokers. The severity of nicotine dependence correlated positively with the preference for haptically explored smoking cues in the left inferior parietal lobule/somatosensory cortex, right fusiform gyrus/inferior temporal cortex/cerebellum, hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and supplementary motor area. These observations are in line with the hypothesized role of the dorsal striatum for the expression of drug habits and the well-established concept of drug-related automatized schemata, since haptic perception is more closely linked to the corresponding object-specific action pattern than visual perception. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that with the growing severity of nicotine dependence, brain regions involved in object perception, memory, self-processing, and motor control exhibit an increasing preference for haptic over visual smoking cues. This difference was not found for control stimuli. Considering the sensory modality of the presented cues could serve to develop more reliable fMRI-specific biomarkers, more ecologically valid experimental designs, and more effective cue-exposure therapies of addiction.

Automaticity of phasic alertness: Evidence for a three-component model of visual cueing.

PubMed

Lin, Zhicheng; Lu, Zhong-Lin

2016-10-01

The automaticity of phasic alertness is investigated using the attention network test. Results show that the cueing effect from the alerting cue-double cue-is strongly enhanced by the task relevance of visual cues, as determined by the informativeness of the orienting cue-single cue-that is being mixed (80 % vs. 50 % valid in predicting where the target will appear). Counterintuitively, the cueing effect from the alerting cue can be negatively affected by its visibility, such that masking the cue from awareness can reveal a cueing effect that is otherwise absent when the cue is visible. Evidently, then, top-down influences-in the form of contextual relevance and cue awareness-can have opposite influences on the cueing effect from the alerting cue. These findings lead us to the view that a visual cue can engage three components of attention-orienting, alerting, and inhibition-to determine the behavioral cueing effect. We propose that phasic alertness, particularly in the form of specific response readiness, is regulated by both internal, top-down expectation and external, bottom-up stimulus properties. In contrast to some existing views, we advance the perspective that phasic alertness is strongly tied to temporal orienting, attentional capture, and spatial orienting. Finally, we discuss how translating attention research to clinical applications would benefit from an improved ability to measure attention. To this end, controlling the degree of intraindividual variability in the attentional components and improving the precision of the measurement tools may prove vital.

Cues used by the black fly, Simulium annulus, for attraction to the common loon (Gavia immer).

PubMed

Weinandt, Meggin L; Meyer, Michael; Strand, Mac; Lindsay, Alec R

2012-12-01

The parasitic relationship between a black fly, Simulium annulus, and the common loon (Gavia immer) has been considered one of the most exclusive relationships between any host species and a black fly species. To test the host specificity of this blood-feeding insect, we made a series of bird decoy presentations to black flies on loon-inhabited lakes in northern Wisconsin, U.S.A. To examine the importance of chemical and visual cues for black fly detection of and attraction to hosts, we made decoy presentations with and without chemical cues. Flies attracted to the decoys were collected, identified to species, and quantified. Results showed that S. annulus had a strong preference for common loon visual and chemical cues, although visual cues from Canada geese (Branta canadensis) and mallards (Anas platyrynchos) did attract some flies in significantly smaller numbers. © 2012 The Society for Vector Ecology.

Visual Cues Given by Humans Are Not Sufficient for Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) to Find Hidden Food

PubMed Central

Plotnik, Joshua M.; Pokorny, Jennifer J.; Keratimanochaya, Titiporn; Webb, Christine; Beronja, Hana F.; Hennessy, Alice; Hill, James; Hill, Virginia J.; Kiss, Rebecca; Maguire, Caitlin; Melville, Beckett L.; Morrison, Violet M. B.; Seecoomar, Dannah; Singer, Benjamin; Ukehaxhaj, Jehona; Vlahakis, Sophia K.; Ylli, Dora; Clayton, Nicola S.; Roberts, John; Fure, Emilie L.; Duchatelier, Alicia P.; Getz, David

2013-01-01

Recent research suggests that domesticated species – due to artificial selection by humans for specific, preferred behavioral traits – are better than wild animals at responding to visual cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. \\Although this seems to be supported by studies on a range of domesticated (including dogs, goats and horses) and wild (including wolves and chimpanzees) animals, there is also evidence that exposure to humans positively influences the ability of both wild and domesticated animals to follow these same cues. Here, we test the performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) on an object choice task that provides them with visual-only cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. Captive elephants are interesting candidates for investigating how both domestication and human exposure may impact cue-following as they represent a non-domesticated species with almost constant human interaction. As a group, the elephants (n = 7) in our study were unable to follow pointing, body orientation or a combination of both as honest signals of food location. They were, however, able to follow vocal commands with which they were already familiar in a novel context, suggesting the elephants are able to follow cues if they are sufficiently salient. Although the elephants’ inability to follow the visual cues provides partial support for the domestication hypothesis, an alternative explanation is that elephants may rely more heavily on other sensory modalities, specifically olfaction and audition. Further research will be needed to rule out this alternative explanation. PMID:23613804

Visual cues given by humans are not sufficient for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to find hidden food.

PubMed

Plotnik, Joshua M; Pokorny, Jennifer J; Keratimanochaya, Titiporn; Webb, Christine; Beronja, Hana F; Hennessy, Alice; Hill, James; Hill, Virginia J; Kiss, Rebecca; Maguire, Caitlin; Melville, Beckett L; Morrison, Violet M B; Seecoomar, Dannah; Singer, Benjamin; Ukehaxhaj, Jehona; Vlahakis, Sophia K; Ylli, Dora; Clayton, Nicola S; Roberts, John; Fure, Emilie L; Duchatelier, Alicia P; Getz, David

2013-01-01

Recent research suggests that domesticated species--due to artificial selection by humans for specific, preferred behavioral traits--are better than wild animals at responding to visual cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. \\Although this seems to be supported by studies on a range of domesticated (including dogs, goats and horses) and wild (including wolves and chimpanzees) animals, there is also evidence that exposure to humans positively influences the ability of both wild and domesticated animals to follow these same cues. Here, we test the performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) on an object choice task that provides them with visual-only cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. Captive elephants are interesting candidates for investigating how both domestication and human exposure may impact cue-following as they represent a non-domesticated species with almost constant human interaction. As a group, the elephants (n = 7) in our study were unable to follow pointing, body orientation or a combination of both as honest signals of food location. They were, however, able to follow vocal commands with which they were already familiar in a novel context, suggesting the elephants are able to follow cues if they are sufficiently salient. Although the elephants' inability to follow the visual cues provides partial support for the domestication hypothesis, an alternative explanation is that elephants may rely more heavily on other sensory modalities, specifically olfaction and audition. Further research will be needed to rule out this alternative explanation.

Social Vision: Functional Forecasting and the Integration of Compound Social Cues

PubMed Central

Adams, Reginald B.; Kveraga, Kestutis

2017-01-01

For decades the study of social perception was largely compartmentalized by type of social cue: race, gender, emotion, eye gaze, body language, facial expression etc. This was partly due to good scientific practice (e.g., controlling for extraneous variability), and partly due to assumptions that each type of social cue was functionally distinct from others. Herein, we present a functional forecast approach to understanding compound social cue processing that emphasizes the importance of shared social affordances across various cues (see too Adams, Franklin, Nelson, & Stevenson, 2010; Adams & Nelson, 2011; Weisbuch & Adams, 2012). We review the traditional theories of emotion and face processing that argued for dissociable and noninteracting pathways (e.g., for specific emotional expressions, gaze, identity cues), as well as more recent evidence for combinatorial processing of social cues. We argue here that early, and presumably reflexive, visual integration of such cues is necessary for adaptive behavioral responding to others. In support of this claim, we review contemporary work that reveals a flexible visual system, one that readily incorporates meaningful contextual influences in even nonsocial visual processing, thereby establishing the functional and neuroanatomical bases necessary for compound social cue integration. Finally, we explicate three likely mechanisms driving such integration. Together, this work implicates a role for cognitive penetrability in visual perceptual abilities that have often been (and in some cases still are) ascribed to direct encapsulated perceptual processes. PMID:29242738

Role of visual and non-visual cues in constructing a rotation-invariant representation of heading in parietal cortex

PubMed Central

Sunkara, Adhira

2015-01-01

As we navigate through the world, eye and head movements add rotational velocity patterns to the retinal image. When such rotations accompany observer translation, the rotational velocity patterns must be discounted to accurately perceive heading. The conventional view holds that this computation requires efference copies of self-generated eye/head movements. Here we demonstrate that the brain implements an alternative solution in which retinal velocity patterns are themselves used to dissociate translations from rotations. These results reveal a novel role for visual cues in achieving a rotation-invariant representation of heading in the macaque ventral intraparietal area. Specifically, we show that the visual system utilizes both local motion parallax cues and global perspective distortions to estimate heading in the presence of rotations. These findings further suggest that the brain is capable of performing complex computations to infer eye movements and discount their sensory consequences based solely on visual cues. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04693.001 PMID:25693417

Stream specificity and asymmetries in feature binding and content-addressable access in visual encoding and memory.

PubMed

Huynh, Duong L; Tripathy, Srimant P; Bedell, Harold E; Ögmen, Haluk

2015-01-01

Human memory is content addressable-i.e., contents of the memory can be accessed using partial information about the bound features of a stored item. In this study, we used a cross-feature cuing technique to examine how the human visual system encodes, binds, and retains information about multiple stimulus features within a set of moving objects. We sought to characterize the roles of three different features (position, color, and direction of motion, the latter two of which are processed preferentially within the ventral and dorsal visual streams, respectively) in the construction and maintenance of object representations. We investigated the extent to which these features are bound together across the following processing stages: during stimulus encoding, sensory (iconic) memory, and visual short-term memory. Whereas all features examined here can serve as cues for addressing content, their effectiveness shows asymmetries and varies according to cue-report pairings and the stage of information processing and storage. Position-based indexing theories predict that position should be more effective as a cue compared to other features. While we found a privileged role for position as a cue at the stimulus-encoding stage, position was not the privileged cue at the sensory and visual short-term memory stages. Instead, the pattern that emerged from our findings is one that mirrors the parallel processing streams in the visual system. This stream-specific binding and cuing effectiveness manifests itself in all three stages of information processing examined here. Finally, we find that the Leaky Flask model proposed in our previous study is applicable to all three features.

Working memory load and the retro-cue effect: A diffusion model account.

PubMed

Shepherdson, Peter; Oberauer, Klaus; Souza, Alessandra S

2018-02-01

Retro-cues (i.e., cues presented between the offset of a memory array and the onset of a probe) have consistently been found to enhance performance in working memory tasks, sometimes ameliorating the deleterious effects of increased memory load. However, the mechanism by which retro-cues exert their influence remains a matter of debate. To inform this debate, we applied a hierarchical diffusion model to data from 4 change detection experiments using single item, location-specific probes (i.e., a local recognition task) with either visual or verbal memory stimuli. Results showed that retro-cues enhanced the quality of information entering the decision process-especially for visual stimuli-and decreased the time spent on nondecisional processes. Further, cues interacted with memory load primarily on nondecision time, decreasing or abolishing load effects. To explain these findings, we propose an account whereby retro-cues act primarily to reduce the time taken to access the relevant representation in memory upon probe presentation, and in addition protect cued representations from visual interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Integration of visual and motion cues for simulator requirements and ride quality investigation. [computerized simulation of aircraft landing, visual perception of aircraft pilots

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Young, L. R.

1975-01-01

Preliminary tests and evaluation are presented of pilot performance during landing (flight paths) using computer generated images (video tapes). Psychophysiological factors affecting pilot visual perception were measured. A turning flight maneuver (pitch and roll) was specifically studied using a training device, and the scaling laws involved were determined. Also presented are medical studies (abstracts) on human response to gravity variations without visual cues, acceleration stimuli effects on the semicircular canals, and neurons affecting eye movements, and vestibular tests.

Static and Motion-Based Visual Features Used by Airport Tower Controllers: Some Implications for the Design of Remote or Virtual Towers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ellis, Stephen R.; Liston, Dorion B.

2011-01-01

Visual motion and other visual cues are used by tower controllers to provide important support for their control tasks at and near airports. These cues are particularly important for anticipated separation. Some of them, which we call visual features, have been identified from structured interviews and discussions with 24 active air traffic controllers or supervisors. The visual information that these features provide has been analyzed with respect to possible ways it could be presented at a remote tower that does not allow a direct view of the airport. Two types of remote towers are possible. One could be based on a plan-view, map-like computer-generated display of the airport and its immediate surroundings. An alternative would present a composite perspective view of the airport and its surroundings, possibly provided by an array of radially mounted cameras positioned at the airport in lieu of a tower. An initial more detailed analyses of one of the specific landing cues identified by the controllers, landing deceleration, is provided as a basis for evaluating how controllers might detect and use it. Understanding other such cues will help identify the information that may be degraded or lost in a remote or virtual tower not located at the airport. Some initial suggestions how some of the lost visual information may be presented in displays are mentioned. Many of the cues considered involve visual motion, though some important static cues are also discussed.

Enhancing visual search abilities of people with intellectual disabilities.

PubMed

Li-Tsang, Cecilia W P; Wong, Jackson K K

2009-01-01

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of cueing in visual search paradigm for people with and without intellectual disabilities (ID). A total of 36 subjects (18 persons with ID and 18 persons with normal intelligence) were recruited using convenient sampling method. A series of experiments were conducted to compare guided cue strategies using either motion contrast or additional cue to basic search task. Repeated measure ANOVA and post hoc multiple comparison tests were used to compare each cue strategy. Results showed that the use of guided strategies was able to capture focal attention in an autonomic manner in the ID group (Pillai's Trace=5.99, p<0.0001). Both guided cue and guided motion search tasks demonstrated functionally similar effects that confirmed the non-specific character of salience. These findings suggested that the visual search efficiency of people with ID was greatly improved if the target was made salient using cueing effect when the complexity of the display increased (i.e. set size increased). This study could have an important implication for the design of the visual searching format of any computerized programs developed for people with ID in learning new tasks.

Cue-recruitment for extrinsic signals after training with low information stimuli.

PubMed

Jain, Anshul; Fuller, Stuart; Backus, Benjamin T

2014-01-01

Cue-recruitment occurs when a previously ineffective signal comes to affect the perceptual appearance of a target object, in a manner similar to the trusted cues with which the signal was put into correlation during training. Jain, Fuller and Backus reported that extrinsic signals, those not carried by the target object itself, were not recruited even after extensive training. However, recent studies have shown that training using weakened trusted cues can facilitate recruitment of intrinsic signals. The current study was designed to examine whether extrinsic signals can be recruited by putting them in correlation with weakened trusted cues. Specifically, we tested whether an extrinsic visual signal, the rotary motion direction of an annulus of random dots, and an extrinsic auditory signal, direction of an auditory pitch glide, can be recruited as cues for the rotation direction of a Necker cube. We found learning, albeit weak, for visual but not for auditory signals. These results extend the generality of the cue-recruitment phenomenon to an extrinsic signal and provide further evidence that the visual system learns to use new signals most quickly when other, long-trusted cues are unavailable or unreliable.

Distraction Effects of Smoking Cues in Antismoking Messages: Examining Resource Allocation to Message Processing as a Function of Smoking Cues and Argument Strength

PubMed Central

Lee, Sungkyoung; Cappella, Joseph N.

2014-01-01

Findings from previous studies on smoking cues and argument strength in antismoking messages have shown that the presence of smoking cues undermines the persuasiveness of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs) with weak arguments. This study conceptualized smoking cues (i.e., scenes showing smoking-related objects and behaviors) as stimuli motivationally relevant to the former smoker population and examined how smoking cues influence former smokers’ processing of antismoking PSAs. Specifically, by defining smoking cues and the strength of antismoking arguments in terms of resource allocation, this study examined former smokers’ recognition accuracy, memory strength, and memory judgment of visual (i.e., scenes excluding smoking cues) and audio information from antismoking PSAs. In line with previous findings, the results of the study showed that the presence of smoking cues undermined former smokers’ encoding of antismoking arguments, which includes the visual and audio information that compose the main content of antismoking messages. PMID:25477766

Gait parameter control timing with dynamic manual contact or visual cues

PubMed Central

Shi, Peter; Werner, William

2016-01-01

We investigated the timing of gait parameter changes (stride length, peak toe velocity, and double-, single-support, and complete step duration) to control gait speed. Eleven healthy participants adjusted their gait speed on a treadmill to maintain a constant distance between them and a fore-aft oscillating cue (a place on a conveyor belt surface). The experimental design balanced conditions of cue modality (vision: eyes-open; manual contact: eyes-closed while touching the cue); treadmill speed (0.2, 0.4, 0.85, and 1.3 m/s); and cue motion (none, ±10 cm at 0.09, 0.11, and 0.18 Hz). Correlation analyses revealed a number of temporal relationships between gait parameters and cue speed. The results suggest that neural control ranged from feedforward to feedback. Specifically, step length preceded cue velocity during double-support duration suggesting anticipatory control. Peak toe velocity nearly coincided with its most-correlated cue velocity during single-support duration. The toe-off concluding step and double-support durations followed their most-correlated cue velocity, suggesting feedback control. Cue-tracking accuracy and cue velocity correlations with timing parameters were higher with the manual contact cue than visual cue. The cue/gait timing relationships generalized across cue modalities, albeit with greater delays of step-cycle events relative to manual contact cue velocity. We conclude that individual kinematic parameters of gait are controlled to achieve a desired velocity at different specific times during the gait cycle. The overall timing pattern of instantaneous cue velocities associated with different gait parameters is conserved across cues that afford different performance accuracies. This timing pattern may be temporally shifted to optimize control. Different cue/gait parameter latencies in our nonadaptation paradigm provide general-case evidence of the independent control of gait parameters previously demonstrated in gait adaptation paradigms. PMID:26936979

Helicopter flight simulation motion platform requirements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schroeder, Jeffery Allyn

Flight simulators attempt to reproduce in-flight pilot-vehicle behavior on the ground. This reproduction is challenging for helicopter simulators, as the pilot is often inextricably dependent on external cues for pilot-vehicle stabilization. One important simulator cue is platform motion; however, its required fidelity is unknown. To determine the required motion fidelity, several unique experiments were performed. A large displacement motion platform was used that allowed pilots to fly tasks with matched motion and visual cues. Then, the platform motion was modified to give cues varying from full motion to no motion. Several key results were found. First, lateral and vertical translational platform cues had significant effects on fidelity. Their presence improved performance and reduced pilot workload. Second, yaw and roll rotational platform cues were not as important as the translational platform cues. In particular, the yaw rotational motion platform cue did not appear at all useful in improving performance or reducing workload. Third, when the lateral translational platform cue was combined with visual yaw rotational cues, pilots believed the platform was rotating when it was not. Thus, simulator systems can be made more efficient by proper combination of platform and visual cues. Fourth, motion fidelity specifications were revised that now provide simulator users with a better prediction of motion fidelity based upon the frequency responses of their motion control laws. Fifth, vertical platform motion affected pilot estimates of steady-state altitude during altitude repositionings. This refutes the view that pilots estimate altitude and altitude rate in simulation solely from visual cues. Finally, the combined results led to a general method for configuring helicopter motion systems and for developing simulator tasks that more likely represent actual flight. The overall results can serve as a guide to future simulator designers and to today's operators.

Automaticity of phasic alertness: evidence for a three-component model of visual cueing

PubMed Central

Lin, Zhicheng; Lu, Zhong-Lin

2017-01-01

The automaticity of phasic alertness is investigated using the attention network test. Results show that the cueing effect from the alerting cue—double cue—is strongly enhanced by the task relevance of visual cues, as determined by the informativeness of the orienting cue—single cue—that is being mixed (80% vs. 50% valid in predicting where the target will appear). Counterintuitively, the cueing effect from the alerting cue can be negatively affected by its visibility, such that masking the cue from awareness can reveal a cueing effect that is otherwise absent when the cue is visible. Evidently, top-down influences—in the form of contextual relevance and cue awareness—can have opposite influences on the cueing effect by the alerting cue. These findings lead us to the view that a visual cue can engage three components of attention—orienting, alerting, and inhibition—to determine the behavioral cueing effect. We propose that phasic alertness, particularly in the form of specific response readiness, is regulated by both internal, top-down expectation and external, bottom-up stimulus properties. In contrast to some existing views, we advance the perspective that phasic alertness is strongly tied to temporal orienting, attentional capture, and spatial orienting. Finally, we discuss how translating attention research to clinical applications would benefit from an improved ability to measure attention. To this end, controlling the degree of intraindividual variability in the attentional components and improving the precision of the measurement tools may prove vital. PMID:27173487

Visual landmarks facilitate rodent spatial navigation in virtual reality environments

PubMed Central

Youngstrom, Isaac A.; Strowbridge, Ben W.

2012-01-01

Because many different sensory modalities contribute to spatial learning in rodents, it has been difficult to determine whether spatial navigation can be guided solely by visual cues. Rodents moving within physical environments with visual cues engage a variety of nonvisual sensory systems that cannot be easily inhibited without lesioning brain areas. Virtual reality offers a unique approach to ask whether visual landmark cues alone are sufficient to improve performance in a spatial task. We found that mice could learn to navigate between two water reward locations along a virtual bidirectional linear track using a spherical treadmill. Mice exposed to a virtual environment with vivid visual cues rendered on a single monitor increased their performance over a 3-d training regimen. Training significantly increased the percentage of time avatars controlled by the mice spent near reward locations in probe trials without water rewards. Neither improvement during training or spatial learning for reward locations occurred with mice operating a virtual environment without vivid landmarks or with mice deprived of all visual feedback. Mice operating the vivid environment developed stereotyped avatar turning behaviors when alternating between reward zones that were positively correlated with their performance on the probe trial. These results suggest that mice are able to learn to navigate to specific locations using only visual cues presented within a virtual environment rendered on a single computer monitor. PMID:22345484

Making the invisible visible: verbal but not visual cues enhance visual detection.

PubMed

Lupyan, Gary; Spivey, Michael J

2010-07-07

Can hearing a word change what one sees? Although visual sensitivity is known to be enhanced by attending to the location of the target, perceptual enhancements of following cues to the identity of an object have been difficult to find. Here, we show that perceptual sensitivity is enhanced by verbal, but not visual cues. Participants completed an object detection task in which they made an object-presence or -absence decision to briefly-presented letters. Hearing the letter name prior to the detection task increased perceptual sensitivity (d'). A visual cue in the form of a preview of the to-be-detected letter did not. Follow-up experiments found that the auditory cuing effect was specific to validly cued stimuli. The magnitude of the cuing effect positively correlated with an individual measure of vividness of mental imagery; introducing uncertainty into the position of the stimulus did not reduce the magnitude of the cuing effect, but eliminated the correlation with mental imagery. Hearing a word made otherwise invisible objects visible. Interestingly, seeing a preview of the target stimulus did not similarly enhance detection of the target. These results are compatible with an account in which auditory verbal labels modulate lower-level visual processing. The findings show that a verbal cue in the form of hearing a word can influence even the most elementary visual processing and inform our understanding of how language affects perception.

Nonspecific verbal cues alleviate forgetting by young children.

PubMed

Morgan, Kirstie; Hayne, Harlene

2007-11-01

Verbal reminders play a pervasive role in memory retrieval by human adults. In fact, relatively nonspecific verbal information (e.g. 'Remember the last time we ate at that restaurant?') will often cue vivid recollections of a past event even when presented outside the original encoding context. Although research has shown that memory retrieval by young children can be initiated by physical cues and by highly specific verbal cues, the effect of less specific verbal cues is not known. Using a Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) procedure, we examined the effect of nonspecific verbal cues on memory retrieval by 4-year-old children. Our findings showed that nonspecific verbal cues were as effective as highly specific nonverbal cues in facilitating memory retrieval after a 2-week delay. We conclude that, at least by 4 years of age, children are able to use nonspecific verbal reminders to cue memory retrieval, and that the VRM paradigm may be particularly valuable in examining the age at which this initially occurs.

Effect of Visual Cues on the Resolution of Perceptual Ambiguity in Parkinson’s Disease and Normal Aging

PubMed Central

Díaz-Santos, Mirella; Cao, Bo; Mauro, Samantha A.; Yazdanbakhsh, Arash; Neargarder, Sandy; Cronin-Golomb, Alice

2017-01-01

Parkinson’s disease (PD) and normal aging have been associated with changes in visual perception, including reliance on external cues to guide behavior. This raises the question of the extent to which these groups use visual cues when disambiguating information. Twenty-seven individuals with PD, 23 normal control adults (NC), and 20 younger adults (YA) were presented a Necker cube in which one face was highlighted by thickening the lines defining the face. The hypothesis was that the visual cues would help PD and NC to exert better control over bistable perception. There were three conditions, including passive viewing and two volitional-control conditions (hold one percept in front; and switch: speed up the alternation between the two). In the Hold condition, the cue was either consistent or inconsistent with task instructions. Mean dominance durations (time spent on each percept) under passive viewing were comparable in PD and NC, and shorter in YA. PD and YA increased dominance durations in the Hold cue-consistent condition relative to NC, meaning that appropriate cues helped PD but not NC hold one perceptual interpretation. By contrast, in the Switch condition, NC and YA decreased dominance durations relative to PD, meaning that the use of cues helped NC but not PD in expediting the switch between percepts. Provision of low-level cues has effects on volitional control in PD that are different from in normal aging, and only under task-specific conditions does the use of such cues facilitate the resolution of perceptual ambiguity. PMID:25765890

The effects of auditory and visual cues on timing synchronicity for robotic rehabilitation.

PubMed

English, Brittney A; Howard, Ayanna M

2017-07-01

In this paper, we explore how the integration of auditory and visual cues can help teach the timing of motor skills for the purpose of motor function rehabilitation. We conducted a study using Amazon's Mechanical Turk in which 106 participants played a virtual therapy game requiring wrist movements. To validate that our results would translate to trends that could also be observed during robotic rehabilitation sessions, we recreated this experiment with 11 participants using a robotic wrist rehabilitation system as means to control the therapy game. During interaction with the therapy game, users were asked to learn and reconstruct a tapping sequence as defined by musical notes flashing on the screen. Participants were divided into 2 test groups: (1) control: participants only received visual cues to prompt them on the timing sequence, and (2) experimental: participants received both visual and auditory cues to prompt them on the timing sequence. To evaluate performance, the timing and length of the sequence were measured. Performance was determined by calculating the number of trials needed before the participant was able to master the specific aspect of the timing task. In the virtual experiment, the group that received visual and auditory cues was able to master all aspects of the timing task faster than the visual cue only group with p-values < 0.05. This trend was also verified for participants using the robotic arm exoskeleton in the physical experiment.

Differentiating Visual from Response Sequencing during Long-term Skill Learning.

PubMed

Lynch, Brighid; Beukema, Patrick; Verstynen, Timothy

2017-01-01

The dual-system model of sequence learning posits that during early learning there is an advantage for encoding sequences in sensory frames; however, it remains unclear whether this advantage extends to long-term consolidation. Using the serial RT task, we set out to distinguish the dynamics of learning sequential orders of visual cues from learning sequential responses. On each day, most participants learned a new mapping between a set of symbolic cues and responses made with one of four fingers, after which they were exposed to trial blocks of either randomly ordered cues or deterministic ordered cues (12-item sequence). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups (n = 15 per group): Visual sequences (same sequence of visual cues across training days), Response sequences (same order of key presses across training days), Combined (same serial order of cues and responses on all training days), and a Control group (a novel sequence each training day). Across 5 days of training, sequence-specific measures of response speed and accuracy improved faster in the Visual group than any of the other three groups, despite no group differences in explicit awareness of the sequence. The two groups that were exposed to the same visual sequence across days showed a marginal improvement in response binding that was not found in the other groups. These results indicate that there is an advantage, in terms of rate of consolidation across multiple days of training, for learning sequences of actions in a sensory representational space, rather than as motoric representations.

Enhancing L2 Vocabulary Acquisition through Implicit Reading Support Cues in E-books

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Yeu-Ting; Leveridge, Aubrey Neil

2017-01-01

Various explicit reading support cues, such as gloss, QR codes and hypertext annotation, have been embedded in e-books designed specifically for fostering various aspects of language development. However, explicit visual cues are not always reliably perceived as salient or effective by language learners. The current study explored the efficacy of…

Location-specific effects of attention during visual short-term memory maintenance.

PubMed

Matsukura, Michi; Cosman, Joshua D; Roper, Zachary J J; Vatterott, Daniel B; Vecera, Shaun P

2014-06-01

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that early sensory areas such as area V1 are recruited to actively maintain a selected feature of the item held in visual short-term memory (VSTM). These findings raise the possibility that visual attention operates in similar manners across perceptual and memory representations to a certain extent, despite memory-level and perception-level selections are functionally dissociable. If VSTM operates by retaining "reasonable copies" of scenes constructed during sensory processing (Serences et al., 2009, p. 207, the sensory recruitment hypothesis), then it is possible that selective attention can be guided by both exogenous (peripheral) and endogenous (central) cues during VSTM maintenance. Yet, the results from the previous studies that examined this issue are inconsistent. In the present study, we investigated whether attention can be directed to a specific item's location represented in VSTM with the exogenous cue in a well-controlled setting. The results from the four experiments suggest that, as observed with the endogenous cue, the exogenous cue can efficiently guide selective attention during VSTM maintenance. The finding is not only consistent with the sensory recruitment hypothesis but also validates the legitimacy of the exogenous cue use in past and future studies. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Do cattle (Bos taurus) retain an association of a visual cue with a food reward for a year?

PubMed

Hirata, Masahiko; Takeno, Nozomi

2014-06-01

Use of visual cues to locate specific food resources from a distance is a critical ability of animals foraging in a spatially heterogeneous environment. However, relatively little is known about how long animals can retain the learned cue-reward association without reinforcement. We compared feeding behavior of experienced and naive Japanese Black cows (Bos taurus) in discovering food locations in a pasture. Experienced animals had been trained to respond to a visual cue (plastic washtub) for a preferred food (grain-based concentrate) 1 year prior to the experiment, while naive animals had no exposure to the cue. Cows were tested individually in a test arena including tubs filled with the concentrate on three successive days (Days 1-3). Experienced cows located the first tub more quickly and visited more tubs than naive cows on Day 1 (usually P < 0.05), but these differences disappeared on Days 2 and 3. The performance of experienced cows tended to increase from Day 1 to Day 2 and level off thereafter. Our results suggest that Japanese Black cows can associate a visual cue with a food reward within a day and retain the association for 1 year despite a slight decay. © 2014 Japanese Society of Animal Science.

Biasing the brain's attentional set: I. cue driven deployments of intersensory selective attention.

PubMed

Foxe, John J; Simpson, Gregory V; Ahlfors, Seppo P; Saron, Clifford D

2005-10-01

Brain activity associated with directing attention to one of two possible sensory modalities was examined using high-density mapping of human event-related potentials. The deployment of selective attention was based on visually presented symbolic cue-words instructing subjects on a trial-by-trial basis, which sensory modality to attend. We measured the spatio-temporal pattern of activation in the approximately 1 second period between the cue-instruction and a subsequent compound auditory-visual imperative stimulus. This allowed us to assess the flow of processing across brain regions involved in deploying and sustaining inter-sensory selective attention, prior to the actual selective processing of the compound audio-visual target stimulus. Activity over frontal and parietal areas showed sensory specific increases in activation during the early part of the anticipatory period (~230 ms), probably representing the activation of fronto-parietal attentional deployment systems for top-down control of attention. In the later period preceding the arrival of the "to-be-attended" stimulus, sustained differential activity was seen over fronto-central regions and parieto-occipital regions, suggesting the maintenance of sensory-specific biased attentional states that would allow for subsequent selective processing. Although there was clear sensory biasing in this late sustained period, it was also clear that both sensory systems were being prepared during the cue-target period. These late sensory-specific biasing effects were also accompanied by sustained activations over frontal cortices that also showed both common and sensory specific activation patterns, suggesting that maintenance of the biased state includes top-down inputs from generators in frontal cortices, some of which are sensory-specific regions. These data support extensive interactions between sensory, parietal and frontal regions during processing of cue information, deployment of attention, and maintenance of the focus of attention in anticipation of impending attentionally relevant input.

An Experimental Study of the Effect of Out-of-the-Window Cues on Training Novice Pilots on a Flight Simulator

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Khan, M. Javed; Rossi, Marcia; Heath, Bruce; Ali, Syed F.; Ward, Marcus

2006-01-01

The effects of out-of-the-window cues on learning a straight-in landing approach and a level 360deg turn by novice pilots on a flight simulator have been investigated. The treatments consisted of training with and without visual cues as well as density of visual cues. The performance of the participants was then evaluated through similar but more challenging tasks. It was observed that the participants in the landing study who trained with visual cues performed poorly than those who trained without the cues. However the performance of those who trained with a faded-cues sequence performed slightly better than those who trained without visual cues. In the level turn study it was observed that those who trained with the visual cues performed better than those who trained without visual cues. The study also showed that those participants who trained with a lower density of cues performed better than those who trained with a higher density of visual cues.

Parallel pathways for cross-modal memory retrieval in Drosophila.

PubMed

Zhang, Xiaonan; Ren, Qingzhong; Guo, Aike

2013-05-15

Memory-retrieval processing of cross-modal sensory preconditioning is vital for understanding the plasticity underlying the interactions between modalities. As part of the sensory preconditioning paradigm, it has been hypothesized that the conditioned response to an unreinforced cue depends on the memory of the reinforced cue via a sensory link between the two cues. To test this hypothesis, we studied cross-modal memory-retrieval processing in a genetically tractable model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. By expressing the dominant temperature-sensitive shibire(ts1) (shi(ts1)) transgene, which blocks synaptic vesicle recycling of specific neural subsets with the Gal4/UAS system at the restrictive temperature, we specifically blocked visual and olfactory memory retrieval, either alone or in combination; memory acquisition remained intact for these modalities. Blocking the memory retrieval of the reinforced olfactory cues did not impair the conditioned response to the unreinforced visual cues or vice versa, in contrast to the canonical memory-retrieval processing of sensory preconditioning. In addition, these conditioned responses can be abolished by blocking the memory retrieval of the two modalities simultaneously. In sum, our results indicated that a conditioned response to an unreinforced cue in cross-modal sensory preconditioning can be recalled through parallel pathways.

Making the Invisible Visible: Verbal but Not Visual Cues Enhance Visual Detection

PubMed Central

Lupyan, Gary; Spivey, Michael J.

2010-01-01

Background Can hearing a word change what one sees? Although visual sensitivity is known to be enhanced by attending to the location of the target, perceptual enhancements of following cues to the identity of an object have been difficult to find. Here, we show that perceptual sensitivity is enhanced by verbal, but not visual cues. Methodology/Principal Findings Participants completed an object detection task in which they made an object-presence or -absence decision to briefly-presented letters. Hearing the letter name prior to the detection task increased perceptual sensitivity (d′). A visual cue in the form of a preview of the to-be-detected letter did not. Follow-up experiments found that the auditory cuing effect was specific to validly cued stimuli. The magnitude of the cuing effect positively correlated with an individual measure of vividness of mental imagery; introducing uncertainty into the position of the stimulus did not reduce the magnitude of the cuing effect, but eliminated the correlation with mental imagery. Conclusions/Significance Hearing a word made otherwise invisible objects visible. Interestingly, seeing a preview of the target stimulus did not similarly enhance detection of the target. These results are compatible with an account in which auditory verbal labels modulate lower-level visual processing. The findings show that a verbal cue in the form of hearing a word can influence even the most elementary visual processing and inform our understanding of how language affects perception. PMID:20628646

[Visual cuing effect for haptic angle judgment].

PubMed

Era, Ataru; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

2009-08-01

We investigated whether visual cues are useful for judging haptic angles. Participants explored three-dimensional angles with a virtual haptic feedback device. For visual cues, we use a location cue, which synchronizes haptic exploration, and a space cue, which specifies the haptic space. In Experiment 1, angles were judged more correctly with both cues, but were overestimated with a location cue only. In Experiment 2, the visual cues emphasized depth, and overestimation with location cues occurred, but space cues had no influence. The results showed that (a) when both cues are presented, haptic angles are judged more correctly. (b) Location cues facilitate only motion information, and not depth information. (c) Haptic angles are apt to be overestimated when there is both haptic and visual information.

Modulation of auditory spatial attention by visual emotional cues: differential effects of attentional engagement and disengagement for pleasant and unpleasant cues.

PubMed

Harrison, Neil R; Woodhouse, Rob

2016-05-01

Previous research has demonstrated that threatening, compared to neutral pictures, can bias attention towards non-emotional auditory targets. Here we investigated which subcomponents of attention contributed to the influence of emotional visual stimuli on auditory spatial attention. Participants indicated the location of an auditory target, after brief (250 ms) presentation of a spatially non-predictive peripheral visual cue. Responses to targets were faster at the location of the preceding visual cue, compared to at the opposite location (cue validity effect). The cue validity effect was larger for targets following pleasant and unpleasant cues compared to neutral cues, for right-sided targets. For unpleasant cues, the crossmodal cue validity effect was driven by delayed attentional disengagement, and for pleasant cues, it was driven by enhanced engagement. We conclude that both pleasant and unpleasant visual cues influence the distribution of attention across modalities and that the associated attentional mechanisms depend on the valence of the visual cue.

Gait parameter control timing with dynamic manual contact or visual cues.

PubMed

Rabin, Ely; Shi, Peter; Werner, William

2016-06-01

We investigated the timing of gait parameter changes (stride length, peak toe velocity, and double-, single-support, and complete step duration) to control gait speed. Eleven healthy participants adjusted their gait speed on a treadmill to maintain a constant distance between them and a fore-aft oscillating cue (a place on a conveyor belt surface). The experimental design balanced conditions of cue modality (vision: eyes-open; manual contact: eyes-closed while touching the cue); treadmill speed (0.2, 0.4, 0.85, and 1.3 m/s); and cue motion (none, ±10 cm at 0.09, 0.11, and 0.18 Hz). Correlation analyses revealed a number of temporal relationships between gait parameters and cue speed. The results suggest that neural control ranged from feedforward to feedback. Specifically, step length preceded cue velocity during double-support duration suggesting anticipatory control. Peak toe velocity nearly coincided with its most-correlated cue velocity during single-support duration. The toe-off concluding step and double-support durations followed their most-correlated cue velocity, suggesting feedback control. Cue-tracking accuracy and cue velocity correlations with timing parameters were higher with the manual contact cue than visual cue. The cue/gait timing relationships generalized across cue modalities, albeit with greater delays of step-cycle events relative to manual contact cue velocity. We conclude that individual kinematic parameters of gait are controlled to achieve a desired velocity at different specific times during the gait cycle. The overall timing pattern of instantaneous cue velocities associated with different gait parameters is conserved across cues that afford different performance accuracies. This timing pattern may be temporally shifted to optimize control. Different cue/gait parameter latencies in our nonadaptation paradigm provide general-case evidence of the independent control of gait parameters previously demonstrated in gait adaptation paradigms. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

Sound arithmetic: auditory cues in the rehabilitation of impaired fact retrieval.

PubMed

Domahs, Frank; Zamarian, Laura; Delazer, Margarete

2008-04-01

The present single case study describes the rehabilitation of an acquired impairment of multiplication fact retrieval. In addition to a conventional drill approach, one set of problems was preceded by auditory cues while the other half was not. After extensive repetition, non-specific improvements could be observed for all trained problems (e.g., 3 * 7) as well as for their non-trained complementary problems (e.g., 7 * 3). Beyond this general improvement, specific therapy effects were found for problems trained with auditory cues. These specific effects were attributed to an involvement of implicit memory systems and/or attentional processes during training. Thus, the present results demonstrate that cues in the training of arithmetic facts do not have to be visual to be effective.

Should visual speech cues (speechreading) be considered when fitting hearing aids?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grant, Ken

2002-05-01

When talker and listener are face-to-face, visual speech cues become an important part of the communication environment, and yet, these cues are seldom considered when designing hearing aids. Models of auditory-visual speech recognition highlight the importance of complementary versus redundant speech information for predicting auditory-visual recognition performance. Thus, for hearing aids to work optimally when visual speech cues are present, it is important to know whether the cues provided by amplification and the cues provided by speechreading complement each other. In this talk, data will be reviewed that show nonmonotonicity between auditory-alone speech recognition and auditory-visual speech recognition, suggesting that efforts designed solely to improve auditory-alone recognition may not always result in improved auditory-visual recognition. Data will also be presented showing that one of the most important speech cues for enhancing auditory-visual speech recognition performance, voicing, is often the cue that benefits least from amplification.

Motor (but not auditory) attention affects syntactic choice.

PubMed

Pokhoday, Mikhail; Scheepers, Christoph; Shtyrov, Yury; Myachykov, Andriy

2018-01-01

Understanding the determinants of syntactic choice in sentence production is a salient topic in psycholinguistics. Existing evidence suggests that syntactic choice results from an interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and a speaker's attention to the elements of a described event represents one such factor. Whereas multimodal accounts of attention suggest a role for different modalities in this process, existing studies examining attention effects in syntactic choice are primarily based on visual cueing paradigms. Hence, it remains unclear whether attentional effects on syntactic choice are limited to the visual modality or are indeed more general. This issue is addressed by the current study. Native English participants viewed and described line drawings of simple transitive events while their attention was directed to the location of the agent or the patient of the depicted event by means of either an auditory (monaural beep) or a motor (unilateral key press) lateral cue. Our results show an effect of cue location, with participants producing more passive-voice descriptions in the patient-cued conditions. Crucially, this cue location effect emerged in the motor-cue but not (or substantially less so) in the auditory-cue condition, as confirmed by a reliable interaction between cue location (agent vs. patient) and cue type (auditory vs. motor). Our data suggest that attentional effects on the speaker's syntactic choices are modality-specific and limited to the visual and motor, but not the auditory, domain.

Can You Hear That Peak? Utilization of Auditory and Visual Feedback at Peak Limb Velocity.

PubMed

Loria, Tristan; de Grosbois, John; Tremblay, Luc

2016-09-01

At rest, the central nervous system combines and integrates multisensory cues to yield an optimal percept. When engaging in action, the relative weighing of sensory modalities has been shown to be altered. Because the timing of peak velocity is the critical moment in some goal-directed movements (e.g., overarm throwing), the current study sought to test whether visual and auditory cues are optimally integrated at that specific kinematic marker when it is the critical part of the trajectory. Participants performed an upper-limb movement in which they were required to reach their peak limb velocity when the right index finger intersected a virtual target (i.e., a flinging movement). Brief auditory, visual, or audiovisual feedback (i.e., 20 ms in duration) was provided to participants at peak limb velocity. Performance was assessed primarily through the resultant position of peak limb velocity and the variability of that position. Relative to when no feedback was provided, auditory feedback significantly reduced the resultant endpoint variability of the finger position at peak limb velocity. However, no such reductions were found for the visual or audiovisual feedback conditions. Further, providing both auditory and visual cues concurrently also failed to yield the theoretically predicted improvements in endpoint variability. Overall, the central nervous system can make significant use of an auditory cue but may not optimally integrate a visual and auditory cue at peak limb velocity, when peak velocity is the critical part of the trajectory.

Hunger-Dependent Enhancement of Food Cue Responses in Mouse Postrhinal Cortex and Lateral Amygdala.

PubMed

Burgess, Christian R; Ramesh, Rohan N; Sugden, Arthur U; Levandowski, Kirsten M; Minnig, Margaret A; Fenselau, Henning; Lowell, Bradford B; Andermann, Mark L

2016-09-07

The needs of the body can direct behavioral and neural processing toward motivationally relevant sensory cues. For example, human imaging studies have consistently found specific cortical areas with biased responses to food-associated visual cues in hungry subjects, but not in sated subjects. To obtain a cellular-level understanding of these hunger-dependent cortical response biases, we performed chronic two-photon calcium imaging in postrhinal association cortex (POR) and primary visual cortex (V1) of behaving mice. As in humans, neurons in mouse POR, but not V1, exhibited biases toward food-associated cues that were abolished by satiety. This emergent bias was mirrored by the innervation pattern of amygdalo-cortical feedback axons. Strikingly, these axons exhibited even stronger food cue biases and sensitivity to hunger state and trial history. These findings highlight a direct pathway by which the lateral amygdala may contribute to state-dependent cortical processing of motivationally relevant sensory cues. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Differential effects of visual-spatial attention on response latency and temporal-order judgment.

PubMed

Neumann, O; Esselmann, U; Klotz, W

1993-01-01

Theorists from both classical structuralism and modern attention research have claimed that attention to a sensory stimulus enhances processing speed. However, they have used different operations to measure this effect, viz., temporal-order judgment (TOJ) and reaction-time (RT) measurement. We report two experiments that compared the effect of a spatial cue on RT and TOJ. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a nonmasked, peripheral cue (the brief brightening of a box) affected both RT and TOJ. However, the former effect was significantly larger than the latter. A masked cue had a smaller, but reliable, effect on TOJ. In Experiment 2, the effects of a masked cue on RT and TOJ were compared under identical stimulus conditions. While the cue had a strong effect on RT, it left TOJ unaffected. These results suggest that a spatial cue may have dissociable effects on response processes and the processes that lead to a conscious percept. Implications for the concept of direct parameter specification and for theories of visual attention are discussed.

Floral reward, advertisement and attractiveness to honey bees in dioecious Salix caprea.

PubMed

Dötterl, Stefan; Glück, Ulrike; Jürgens, Andreas; Woodring, Joseph; Aas, Gregor

2014-01-01

In dioecious, zoophilous plants potential pollinators have to be attracted to both sexes and switch between individuals of both sexes for pollination to occur. It often has been suggested that males and females require different numbers of visits for maximum reproductive success because male fertility is more likely limited by access to mates, whereas female fertility is rather limited by resource availability. According to sexual selection theory, males therefore should invest more in pollinator attraction (advertisement, reward) than females. However, our knowledge on the sex specific investment in floral rewards and advertisement, and its effects on pollinator behaviour is limited. Here, we use an approach that includes chemical, spectrophotometric, and behavioural studies i) to elucidate differences in floral nectar reward and advertisement (visual, olfactory cues) in dioecious sallow, Salix caprea, ii) to determine the relative importance of visual and olfactory floral cues in attracting honey bee pollinators, and iii) to test for differential attractiveness of female and male inflorescence cues to honey bees. Nectar amount and sugar concentration are comparable, but sugar composition varies between the sexes. Olfactory sallow cues are more attractive to honey bees than visual cues; however, a combination of both cues elicits the strongest behavioural responses in bees. Male flowers are due to the yellow pollen more colourful and emit a higher amount of scent than females. Honey bees prefer the visual but not the olfactory display of males over those of females. In all, the data of our multifaceted study are consistent with the sexual selection theory and provide novel insights on how the model organism honey bee uses visual and olfactory floral cues for locating host plants.

Floral Reward, Advertisement and Attractiveness to Honey Bees in Dioecious Salix caprea

PubMed Central

Dötterl, Stefan; Glück, Ulrike; Jürgens, Andreas; Woodring, Joseph; Aas, Gregor

2014-01-01

In dioecious, zoophilous plants potential pollinators have to be attracted to both sexes and switch between individuals of both sexes for pollination to occur. It often has been suggested that males and females require different numbers of visits for maximum reproductive success because male fertility is more likely limited by access to mates, whereas female fertility is rather limited by resource availability. According to sexual selection theory, males therefore should invest more in pollinator attraction (advertisement, reward) than females. However, our knowledge on the sex specific investment in floral rewards and advertisement, and its effects on pollinator behaviour is limited. Here, we use an approach that includes chemical, spectrophotometric, and behavioural studies i) to elucidate differences in floral nectar reward and advertisement (visual, olfactory cues) in dioecious sallow, Salix caprea, ii) to determine the relative importance of visual and olfactory floral cues in attracting honey bee pollinators, and iii) to test for differential attractiveness of female and male inflorescence cues to honey bees. Nectar amount and sugar concentration are comparable, but sugar composition varies between the sexes. Olfactory sallow cues are more attractive to honey bees than visual cues; however, a combination of both cues elicits the strongest behavioural responses in bees. Male flowers are due to the yellow pollen more colourful and emit a higher amount of scent than females. Honey bees prefer the visual but not the olfactory display of males over those of females. In all, the data of our multifaceted study are consistent with the sexual selection theory and provide novel insights on how the model organism honey bee uses visual and olfactory floral cues for locating host plants. PMID:24676333

Visual search and contextual cueing: differential effects in 10-year-old children and adults.

PubMed

Couperus, Jane W; Hunt, Ruskin H; Nelson, Charles A; Thomas, Kathleen M

2011-02-01

The development of contextual cueing specifically in relation to attention was examined in two experiments. Adult and 10-year-old participants completed a context cueing visual search task (Jiang & Chun, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A(4), 1105-1124, 2001) containing stimuli presented in an attended (e.g., red) and unattended (e.g., green) color. When the spatial configuration of stimuli in the attended and unattended color was invariant and consistently paired with the target location, adult reaction times improved, demonstrating learning. Learning also occurred if only the attended stimuli's configuration remained fixed. In contrast, while 10 year olds, like adults, showed incrementally slower reaction times as the number of attended stimuli increased, they did not show learning in the standard paradigm. However, they did show learning when the ratio of attended to unattended stimuli was high, irrespective of the total number of attended stimuli. Findings suggest children show efficient attentional guidance by color in visual search but differences in contextual cueing.

A Case-Based Approach to Creative Design

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-10-05

for solving the sometimes causal (e.g., the operation of ping-pong ball problem. Each time, the designer has different cues shooter 8) and sometimes...In addi- dance (15) is used to quickly communicate the struc- tion to the desired behavior, prominent visual cues may ture of a design alternative...and vague, incomplete havior. specifications. For example, Si’s mental picture of Structural cues describing the proposed solution, or a submarine

How the Relationship between Text and Headings Influences Readers' Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ritchey, Kristin; Schuster, Jonathan; Allen, Jaryn

2008-01-01

Two questions regarding signals' influence on memory were examined. First, the relationship between headings and text was manipulated to determine whether headings serve as visual cues, directing readers to recall all subsequent information, or content-specific cues, directing readers to recall only to certain information. Second, distance between…

Eye guidance during real-world scene search: The role color plays in central and peripheral vision.

PubMed

Nuthmann, Antje; Malcolm, George L

2016-01-01

The visual system utilizes environmental features to direct gaze efficiently when locating objects. While previous research has isolated various features' contributions to gaze guidance, these studies generally used sparse displays and did not investigate how features facilitated search as a function of their location on the visual field. The current study investigated how features across the visual field--particularly color--facilitate gaze guidance during real-world search. A gaze-contingent window followed participants' eye movements, restricting color information to specified regions. Scene images were presented in full color, with color in the periphery and gray in central vision or gray in the periphery and color in central vision, or in grayscale. Color conditions were crossed with a search cue manipulation, with the target cued either with a word label or an exact picture. Search times increased as color information in the scene decreased. A gaze-data based decomposition of search time revealed color-mediated effects on specific subprocesses of search. Color in peripheral vision facilitated target localization, whereas color in central vision facilitated target verification. Picture cues facilitated search, with the effects of cue specificity and scene color combining additively. When available, the visual system utilizes the environment's color information to facilitate different real-world visual search behaviors based on the location within the visual field.

Speech identification in noise: Contribution of temporal, spectral, and visual speech cues.

PubMed

Kim, Jeesun; Davis, Chris; Groot, Christopher

2009-12-01

This study investigated the degree to which two types of reduced auditory signals (cochlear implant simulations) and visual speech cues combined for speech identification. The auditory speech stimuli were filtered to have only amplitude envelope cues or both amplitude envelope and spectral cues and were presented with/without visual speech. In Experiment 1, IEEE sentences were presented in quiet and noise. For in-quiet presentation, speech identification was enhanced by the addition of both spectral and visual speech cues. Due to a ceiling effect, the degree to which these effects combined could not be determined. In noise, these facilitation effects were more marked and were additive. Experiment 2 examined consonant and vowel identification in the context of CVC or VCV syllables presented in noise. For consonants, both spectral and visual speech cues facilitated identification and these effects were additive. For vowels, the effect of combined cues was underadditive, with the effect of spectral cues reduced when presented with visual speech cues. Analysis indicated that without visual speech, spectral cues facilitated the transmission of place information and vowel height, whereas with visual speech, they facilitated lip rounding, with little impact on the transmission of place information.

Neural Responses to Visual Food Cues According to Weight Status: A Systematic Review of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies

PubMed Central

Pursey, Kirrilly M.; Stanwell, Peter; Callister, Robert J.; Brain, Katherine; Collins, Clare E.; Burrows, Tracy L.

2014-01-01

Emerging evidence from recent neuroimaging studies suggests that specific food-related behaviors contribute to the development of obesity. The aim of this review was to report the neural responses to visual food cues, as assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in humans of differing weight status. Published studies to 2014 were retrieved and included if they used visual food cues, studied humans >18 years old, reported weight status, and included fMRI outcomes. Sixty studies were identified that investigated the neural responses of healthy weight participants (n = 26), healthy weight compared to obese participants (n = 17), and weight-loss interventions (n = 12). High-calorie food images were used in the majority of studies (n = 36), however, image selection justification was only provided in 19 studies. Obese individuals had increased activation of reward-related brain areas including the insula and orbitofrontal cortex in response to visual food cues compared to healthy weight individuals, and this was particularly evident in response to energy dense cues. Additionally, obese individuals were more responsive to food images when satiated. Meta-analysis of changes in neural activation post-weight loss revealed small areas of convergence across studies in brain areas related to emotion, memory, and learning, including the cingulate gyrus, lentiform nucleus, and precuneus. Differential activation patterns to visual food cues were observed between obese, healthy weight, and weight-loss populations. Future studies require standardization of nutrition variables and fMRI outcomes to enable more direct comparisons between studies. PMID:25988110

Neural responses to visual food cues according to weight status: a systematic review of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.

PubMed

Pursey, Kirrilly M; Stanwell, Peter; Callister, Robert J; Brain, Katherine; Collins, Clare E; Burrows, Tracy L

2014-01-01

Emerging evidence from recent neuroimaging studies suggests that specific food-related behaviors contribute to the development of obesity. The aim of this review was to report the neural responses to visual food cues, as assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in humans of differing weight status. Published studies to 2014 were retrieved and included if they used visual food cues, studied humans >18 years old, reported weight status, and included fMRI outcomes. Sixty studies were identified that investigated the neural responses of healthy weight participants (n = 26), healthy weight compared to obese participants (n = 17), and weight-loss interventions (n = 12). High-calorie food images were used in the majority of studies (n = 36), however, image selection justification was only provided in 19 studies. Obese individuals had increased activation of reward-related brain areas including the insula and orbitofrontal cortex in response to visual food cues compared to healthy weight individuals, and this was particularly evident in response to energy dense cues. Additionally, obese individuals were more responsive to food images when satiated. Meta-analysis of changes in neural activation post-weight loss revealed small areas of convergence across studies in brain areas related to emotion, memory, and learning, including the cingulate gyrus, lentiform nucleus, and precuneus. Differential activation patterns to visual food cues were observed between obese, healthy weight, and weight-loss populations. Future studies require standardization of nutrition variables and fMRI outcomes to enable more direct comparisons between studies.

Grasp cueing and joint attention.

PubMed

Tschentscher, Nadja; Fischer, Martin H

2008-10-01

We studied how two different hand posture cues affect joint attention in normal observers. Visual targets appeared over lateralized objects, with different delays after centrally presented hand postures. Attention was cued by either hand direction or the congruency between hand aperture and object size. Participants pressed a button when they detected a target. Direction cues alone facilitated target detection following short delays but aperture cues alone were ineffective. In contrast, when hand postures combined direction and aperture cues, aperture congruency effects without directional congruency effects emerged and persisted, but only for power grips. These results suggest that parallel parameter specification makes joint attention mechanisms exquisitely sensitive to the timing and content of contextual cues.

Tiger salamanders' (Ambystoma tigrinum) response learning and usage of visual cues.

PubMed

Kundey, Shannon M A; Millar, Roberto; McPherson, Justin; Gonzalez, Maya; Fitz, Aleyna; Allen, Chadbourne

2016-05-01

We explored tiger salamanders' (Ambystoma tigrinum) learning to execute a response within a maze as proximal visual cue conditions varied. In Experiment 1, salamanders learned to turn consistently in a T-maze for reinforcement before the maze was rotated. All learned the initial task and executed the trained turn during test, suggesting that they learned to demonstrate the reinforced response during training and continued to perform it during test. In a second experiment utilizing a similar procedure, two visual cues were placed consistently at the maze junction. Salamanders were reinforced for turning towards one cue. Cue placement was reversed during test. All learned the initial task, but executed the trained turn rather than turning towards the visual cue during test, evidencing response learning. In Experiment 3, we investigated whether a compound visual cue could control salamanders' behaviour when it was the only cue predictive of reinforcement in a cross-maze by varying start position and cue placement. All learned to turn in the direction indicated by the compound visual cue, indicating that visual cues can come to control their behaviour. Following training, testing revealed that salamanders attended to stimuli foreground over background features. Overall, these results suggest that salamanders learn to execute responses over learning to use visual cues but can use visual cues if required. Our success with this paradigm offers the potential in future studies to explore salamanders' cognition further, as well as to shed light on how features of the tiger salamanders' life history (e.g. hibernation and metamorphosis) impact cognition.

Effects of Presentation Type and Visual Control in Numerosity Discrimination: Implications for Number Processing?

PubMed Central

Smets, Karolien; Moors, Pieter; Reynvoet, Bert

2016-01-01

Performance in a non-symbolic comparison task in which participants are asked to indicate the larger numerosity of two dot arrays, is assumed to be supported by the Approximate Number System (ANS). This system allows participants to judge numerosity independently from other visual cues. Supporting this idea, previous studies indicated that numerosity can be processed when visual cues are controlled for. Consequently, distinct types of visual cue control are assumed to be interchangeable. However, a previous study showed that the type of visual cue control affected performance using a simultaneous presentation of the stimuli in numerosity comparison. In the current study, we explored whether the influence of the type of visual cue control on performance disappeared when sequentially presenting each stimulus in numerosity comparison. While the influence of the applied type of visual cue control was significantly more evident in the simultaneous condition, sequentially presenting the stimuli did not completely exclude the influence of distinct types of visual cue control. Altogether, these results indicate that the implicit assumption that it is possible to compare performances across studies with a differential visual cue control is unwarranted and that the influence of the type of visual cue control partly depends on the presentation format of the stimuli. PMID:26869967

Visual Cues, Verbal Cues and Child Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valentini, Nadia

2004-01-01

In this article, the author discusses two strategies--visual cues (modeling) and verbal cues (short, accurate phrases) which are related to teaching motor skills in maximizing learning in physical education classes. Both visual and verbal cues are strong influences in facilitating and promoting day-to-day learning. Both strategies reinforce…

Estimating the relative weights of visual and auditory tau versus heuristic-based cues for time-to-contact judgments in realistic, familiar scenes by older and younger adults.

PubMed

Keshavarz, Behrang; Campos, Jennifer L; DeLucia, Patricia R; Oberfeld, Daniel

2017-04-01

Estimating time to contact (TTC) involves multiple sensory systems, including vision and audition. Previous findings suggested that the ratio of an object's instantaneous optical size/sound intensity to its instantaneous rate of change in optical size/sound intensity (τ) drives TTC judgments. Other evidence has shown that heuristic-based cues are used, including final optical size or final sound pressure level. Most previous studies have used decontextualized and unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., geometric shapes on a blank background). Here we evaluated TTC estimates by using a traffic scene with an approaching vehicle to evaluate the weights of visual and auditory TTC cues under more realistic conditions. Younger (18-39 years) and older (65+ years) participants made TTC estimates in three sensory conditions: visual-only, auditory-only, and audio-visual. Stimuli were presented within an immersive virtual-reality environment, and cue weights were calculated for both visual cues (e.g., visual τ, final optical size) and auditory cues (e.g., auditory τ, final sound pressure level). The results demonstrated the use of visual τ as well as heuristic cues in the visual-only condition. TTC estimates in the auditory-only condition, however, were primarily based on an auditory heuristic cue (final sound pressure level), rather than on auditory τ. In the audio-visual condition, the visual cues dominated overall, with the highest weight being assigned to visual τ by younger adults, and a more equal weighting of visual τ and heuristic cues in older adults. Overall, better characterizing the effects of combined sensory inputs, stimulus characteristics, and age on the cues used to estimate TTC will provide important insights into how these factors may affect everyday behavior.

Effects of cue modality and emotional category on recognition of nonverbal emotional signals in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Vogel, Bastian D; Brück, Carolin; Jacob, Heike; Eberle, Mark; Wildgruber, Dirk

2016-07-07

Impaired interpretation of nonverbal emotional cues in patients with schizophrenia has been reported in several studies and a clinical relevance of these deficits for social functioning has been assumed. However, it is unclear to what extent the impairments depend on specific emotions or specific channels of nonverbal communication. Here, the effect of cue modality and emotional categories on accuracy of emotion recognition was evaluated in 21 patients with schizophrenia and compared to a healthy control group (n = 21). To this end, dynamic stimuli comprising speakers of both genders in three different sensory modalities (auditory, visual and audiovisual) and five emotional categories (happy, alluring, neutral, angry and disgusted) were used. Patients with schizophrenia were found to be impaired in emotion recognition in comparison to the control group across all stimuli. Considering specific emotions more severe deficits were revealed in the recognition of alluring stimuli and less severe deficits in the recognition of disgusted stimuli as compared to all other emotions. Regarding cue modality the extent of the impairment in emotional recognition did not significantly differ between auditory and visual cues across all emotional categories. However, patients with schizophrenia showed significantly more severe disturbances for vocal as compared to facial cues when sexual interest is expressed (alluring stimuli), whereas more severe disturbances for facial as compared to vocal cues were observed when happiness or anger is expressed. Our results confirmed that perceptual impairments can be observed for vocal as well as facial cues conveying various social and emotional connotations. The observed differences in severity of impairments with most severe deficits for alluring expressions might be related to specific difficulties in recognizing the complex social emotional information of interpersonal intentions as compared to "basic" emotional states. Therefore, future studies evaluating perception of nonverbal cues should consider a broader range of social and emotional signals beyond basic emotions including attitudes and interpersonal intentions. Identifying specific domains of social perception particularly prone for misunderstandings in patients with schizophrenia might allow for a refinement of interventions aiming at improving social functioning.

Social learning of predators in the dark: understanding the role of visual, chemical and mechanical information.

PubMed

Manassa, R P; McCormick, M I; Chivers, D P; Ferrari, M C O

2013-08-22

The ability of prey to observe and learn to recognize potential predators from the behaviour of nearby individuals can dramatically increase survival and, not surprisingly, is widespread across animal taxa. A range of sensory modalities are available for this learning, with visual and chemical cues being well-established modes of transmission in aquatic systems. The use of other sensory cues in mediating social learning in fishes, including mechano-sensory cues, remains unexplored. Here, we examine the role of different sensory cues in social learning of predator recognition, using juvenile damselfish (Amphiprion percula). Specifically, we show that a predator-naive observer can socially learn to recognize a novel predator when paired with a predator-experienced conspecific in total darkness. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that when threatened, individuals release chemical cues (known as disturbance cues) into the water. These cues induce an anti-predator response in nearby individuals; however, they do not facilitate learnt recognition of the predator. As such, another sensory modality, probably mechano-sensory in origin, is responsible for information transfer in the dark. This study highlights the diversity of sensory cues used by coral reef fishes in a social learning context.

Global Repetition Influences Contextual Cueing

PubMed Central

Zang, Xuelian; Zinchenko, Artyom; Jia, Lina; Li, Hong

2018-01-01

Our visual system has a striking ability to improve visual search based on the learning of repeated ambient regularities, an effect named contextual cueing. Whereas most of the previous studies investigated contextual cueing effect with the same number of repeated and non-repeated search displays per block, the current study focused on whether a global repetition frequency formed by different presentation ratios between the repeated and non-repeated configurations influence contextual cueing effect. Specifically, the number of repeated and non-repeated displays presented in each block was manipulated: 12:12, 20:4, 4:20, and 4:4 in Experiments 1–4, respectively. The results revealed a significant contextual cueing effect when the global repetition frequency is high (≥1:1 ratio) in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, given that processing of repeated displays was expedited relative to non-repeated displays. Nevertheless, the contextual cueing effect reduced to a non-significant level when the repetition frequency reduced to 4:20 in Experiment 3. These results suggested that the presentation frequency of repeated relative to the non-repeated displays could influence the strength of contextual cueing. In other words, global repetition statistics could be a crucial factor to mediate contextual cueing effect. PMID:29636716

Global Repetition Influences Contextual Cueing.

PubMed

Zang, Xuelian; Zinchenko, Artyom; Jia, Lina; Assumpção, Leonardo; Li, Hong

2018-01-01

Our visual system has a striking ability to improve visual search based on the learning of repeated ambient regularities, an effect named contextual cueing. Whereas most of the previous studies investigated contextual cueing effect with the same number of repeated and non-repeated search displays per block, the current study focused on whether a global repetition frequency formed by different presentation ratios between the repeated and non-repeated configurations influence contextual cueing effect. Specifically, the number of repeated and non-repeated displays presented in each block was manipulated: 12:12, 20:4, 4:20, and 4:4 in Experiments 1-4, respectively. The results revealed a significant contextual cueing effect when the global repetition frequency is high (≥1:1 ratio) in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, given that processing of repeated displays was expedited relative to non-repeated displays. Nevertheless, the contextual cueing effect reduced to a non-significant level when the repetition frequency reduced to 4:20 in Experiment 3. These results suggested that the presentation frequency of repeated relative to the non-repeated displays could influence the strength of contextual cueing. In other words, global repetition statistics could be a crucial factor to mediate contextual cueing effect.

Homeostatic circuits selectively gate food cue responses in insular cortex

PubMed Central

Livneh, Yoav; Ramesh, Rohan n.; Burgess, christian R.; Levandowski, Kirsten M.; Madara, Joseph c.; Fenselau, henning; Goldey, Glenn J.; Diaz, Veronica E.; Jikomes, nick; Resch, Jon M.; Lowell, Bradford B.; Andermann, Mark L.

2017-01-01

Physiological needs bias perception and attention to relevant sensory cues. This process is ‘hijacked’ by drug addiction, causing cue-induced cravings and relapse. Similarly, its dysregulation contributes to failed diets, obesity, and eating disorders. Neuroimaging studies in humans have implicated insular cortex in these phenomena. However, it remains unclear how ‘cognitive’ cortical representations of motivationally relevant cues are biased by subcortical circuits that drive specific motivational states. Here we develop a microprism-based cellular imaging approach to monitor visual cue responses in the insular cortex of behaving mice across hunger states. Insular cortex neurons demonstrate food- cue-biased responses that are abolished during satiety. Unexpectedly, while multiple satiety-related visceral signals converge in insular cortex, chemogenetic activation of hypothalamic ‘hunger neurons’ (expressing agouti-related peptide (AgRP)) bypasses these signals to restore hunger-like response patterns in insular cortex. Circuit mapping and pathway-specific manipulations uncover a pathway from AgRP neurons to insular cortex via the paraventricular thalamus and basolateral amygdala. These results reveal a neural basis for state-specific biased processing of motivationally relevant cues. PMID:28614299

Circadian timed episodic-like memory - a bee knows what to do when, and also where.

PubMed

Pahl, Mario; Zhu, Hong; Pix, Waltraud; Tautz, Juergen; Zhang, Shaowu

2007-10-01

This study investigates how the colour, shape and location of patterns could be memorized within a time frame. Bees were trained to visit two Y-mazes, one of which presented yellow vertical (rewarded) versus horizontal (non-rewarded) gratings at one site in the morning, while another presented blue horizontal (rewarded) versus vertical (non-rewarded) gratings at another site in the afternoon. The bees could perform well in the learning tests and various transfer tests, in which (i) all contextual cues from the learning test were present; (ii) the colour cues of the visual patterns were removed, but the location cue, the orientation of the visual patterns and the temporal cue still existed; (iii) the location cue was removed, but other contextual cues, i.e. the colour and orientation of the visual patterns and the temporal cue still existed; (iv) the location cue and the orientation cue of the visual patterns were removed, but the colour cue and temporal cue still existed; (v) the location cue, and the colour cue of the visual patterns were removed, but the orientation cue and the temporal cue still existed. The results reveal that the honeybee can recall the memory of the correct visual patterns by using spatial and/or temporal information. The relative importance of different contextual cues is compared and discussed. The bees' ability to integrate elements of circadian time, place and visual stimuli is akin to episodic-like memory; we have therefore named this kind of memory circadian timed episodic-like memory.

Differential effect of glucose ingestion on the neural processing of food stimuli in lean and overweight adults.

PubMed

Heni, Martin; Kullmann, Stephanie; Ketterer, Caroline; Guthoff, Martina; Bayer, Margarete; Staiger, Harald; Machicao, Fausto; Häring, Hans-Ulrich; Preissl, Hubert; Veit, Ralf; Fritsche, Andreas

2014-03-01

Eating behavior is crucial in the development of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. To further investigate its regulation, we studied the effects of glucose versus water ingestion on the neural processing of visual high and low caloric food cues in 12 lean and 12 overweight subjects by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found body weight to substantially impact the brain's response to visual food cues after glucose versus water ingestion. Specifically, there was a significant interaction between body weight, condition (water versus glucose), and caloric content of food cues. Although overweight subjects showed a generalized reduced response to food objects in the fusiform gyrus and precuneus, the lean group showed a differential pattern to high versus low caloric foods depending on glucose versus water ingestion. Furthermore, we observed plasma insulin and glucose associated effects. The hypothalamic response to high caloric food cues negatively correlated with changes in blood glucose 30 min after glucose ingestion, while especially brain regions in the prefrontal cortex showed a significant negative relationship with increases in plasma insulin 120 min after glucose ingestion. We conclude that the postprandial neural processing of food cues is highly influenced by body weight especially in visual areas, potentially altering visual attention to food. Furthermore, our results underline that insulin markedly influences prefrontal activity to high caloric food cues after a meal, indicating that postprandial hormones may be potential players in modulating executive control. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Improving visual spatial working memory in younger and older adults: effects of cross-modal cues.

PubMed

Curtis, Ashley F; Turner, Gary R; Park, Norman W; Murtha, Susan J E

2017-11-06

Spatially informative auditory and vibrotactile (cross-modal) cues can facilitate attention but little is known about how similar cues influence visual spatial working memory (WM) across the adult lifespan. We investigated the effects of cues (spatially informative or alerting pre-cues vs. no cues), cue modality (auditory vs. vibrotactile vs. visual), memory array size (four vs. six items), and maintenance delay (900 vs. 1800 ms) on visual spatial location WM recognition accuracy in younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA). We observed a significant interaction between spatially informative pre-cue type, array size, and delay. OA and YA benefitted equally from spatially informative pre-cues, suggesting that attentional orienting prior to WM encoding, regardless of cue modality, is preserved with age.  Contrary to predictions, alerting pre-cues generally impaired performance in both age groups, suggesting that maintaining a vigilant state of arousal by facilitating the alerting attention system does not help visual spatial location WM.

Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage.

PubMed

Venter, Jan A; Prins, Herbert H T; Mashanova, Alla; Slotow, Rob

2017-01-01

Finding suitable forage patches in a heterogeneous landscape, where patches change dynamically both spatially and temporally could be challenging to large herbivores, especially if they have no a priori knowledge of the location of the patches. We tested whether three large grazing herbivores with a variety of different traits improve their efficiency when foraging at a heterogeneous habitat patch scale by using visual cues to gain a priori knowledge about potential higher value foraging patches. For each species (zebra ( Equus burchelli ), red hartebeest ( Alcelaphus buselaphus subspecies camaa ) and eland ( Tragelaphus oryx )), we used step lengths and directionality of movement to infer whether they were using visual cues to find suitable forage patches at a habitat patch scale. Step lengths were significantly longer for all species when moving to non-visible patches than to visible patches, but all movements showed little directionality. Of the three species, zebra movements were the most directional. Red hartebeest had the shortest step lengths and zebra the longest. We conclude that these large grazing herbivores may not exclusively use visual cues when foraging at a habitat patch scale, but would rather adapt their movement behaviour, mainly step length, to the heterogeneity of the specific landscape.

Multimodal cuing of autobiographical memory in semantic dementia.

PubMed

Greenberg, Daniel L; Ogar, Jennifer M; Viskontas, Indre V; Gorno Tempini, Maria Luisa; Miller, Bruce; Knowlton, Barbara J

2011-01-01

Individuals with semantic dementia (SD) have impaired autobiographical memory (AM), but the extent of the impairment has been controversial. According to one report (Westmacott, Leach, Freedman, & Moscovitch, 2001), patient performance was better when visual cues were used instead of verbal cues; however, the visual cues used in that study (family photographs) provided more retrieval support than do the word cues that are typically used in AM studies. In the present study, we sought to disentangle the effects of retrieval support and cue modality. We cued AMs of 5 patients with SD and 5 controls with words, simple pictures, and odors. Memories were elicited from childhood, early adulthood, and recent adulthood; they were scored for level of detail and episodic specificity. The patients were impaired across all time periods and stimulus modalities. Within the patient group, words and pictures were equally effective as cues (Friedman test; χ² = 0.25, p = .61), whereas odors were less effective than both words and pictures (for words vs. odors, χ² = 7.83, p = .005; for pictures vs. odors, χ² = 6.18, p = .01). There was no evidence of a temporal gradient in either group (for patients with SD, χ² = 0.24, p = .89; for controls, χ² < 2.07, p = .35). Once the effect of retrieval support is equated across stimulus modalities, there is no evidence for an advantage of visual cues over verbal cues. The greater impairment for olfactory cues presumably reflects degeneration of anterior temporal regions that support olfactory memory. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Different effects of color-based and location-based selection on visual working memory.

PubMed

Li, Qi; Saiki, Jun

2015-02-01

In the present study, we investigated how feature- and location-based selection influences visual working memory (VWM) encoding and maintenance. In Experiment 1, cue type (color, location) and cue timing (precue, retro-cue) were manipulated in a change detection task. The stimuli were color-location conjunction objects, and binding memory was tested. We found a significantly greater effect for color precues than for either color retro-cues or location precues, but no difference between location pre- and retro-cues, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Griffin & Nobre in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176-1194, 2003). We also found no difference between location and color retro-cues. Experiment 2 replicated the color precue advantage with more complex color-shape-location conjunction objects. Only one retro-cue effect was different from that in Experiment 1: Color retro-cues were significantly less effective than location retro-cues in Experiment 2, which may relate to a structural property of multidimensional VWM representations. In Experiment 3, a visual search task was used, and the result of a greater location than color precue effect suggests that the color precue advantage in a memory task is related to the modulation of VWM encoding rather than of sensation and perception. Experiment 4, using a task that required only memory for individual features but not for feature bindings, further confirmed that the color precue advantage is specific to binding memory. Together, these findings reveal new aspects of the interaction between attention and VWM and provide potentially important implications for the structural properties of VWM representations.

A designated odor-language integration system in the human brain.

PubMed

Olofsson, Jonas K; Hurley, Robert S; Bowman, Nicholas E; Bao, Xiaojun; Mesulam, M-Marsel; Gottfried, Jay A

2014-11-05

Odors are surprisingly difficult to name, but the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is poorly understood. In experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the physiological basis of odor naming with a paradigm where olfactory and visual object cues were followed by target words that either matched or mismatched the cue. We hypothesized that word processing would not only be affected by its semantic congruency with the preceding cue, but would also depend on the cue modality (olfactory or visual). Performance was slower and less precise when linking a word to its corresponding odor than to its picture. The ERP index of semantic incongruity (N400), reflected in the comparison of nonmatching versus matching target words, was more constrained to posterior electrode sites and lasted longer on odor-cue (vs picture-cue) trials. In parallel, fMRI cross-adaptation in the right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) was observed in response to words when preceded by matching olfactory cues, but not by matching visual cues. Time-series plots demonstrated increased fMRI activity in OFC and ATL at the onset of the odor cue itself, followed by response habituation after processing of a matching (vs nonmatching) target word, suggesting that predictive perceptual representations in these regions are already established before delivery and deliberation of the target word. Together, our findings underscore the modality-specific anatomy and physiology of object identification in the human brain. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3414864-10$15.00/0.

A Conditioned Visual Orientation Requires the Ellipsoid Body in "Drosophila"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guo, Chao; Du, Yifei; Yuan, Deliang; Li, Meixia; Gong, Haiyun; Gong, Zhefeng; Liu, Li

2015-01-01

Orientation, the spatial organization of animal behavior, is an essential faculty of animals. Bacteria and lower animals such as insects exhibit taxis, innate orientation behavior, directly toward or away from a directional cue. Organisms can also orient themselves at a specific angle relative to the cues. In this study, using…

A review of visual cues associated with food on food acceptance and consumption.

PubMed

Wadhera, Devina; Capaldi-Phillips, Elizabeth D

2014-01-01

Several sensory cues affect food intake including appearance, taste, odor, texture, temperature, and flavor. Although taste is an important factor regulating food intake, in most cases, the first sensory contact with food is through the eyes. Few studies have examined the effects of the appearance of a food portion on food acceptance and consumption. The purpose of this review is to identify the various visual factors associated with food such as proximity, visibility, color, variety, portion size, height, shape, number, volume, and the surface area and their effects on food acceptance and consumption. We suggest some ways that visual cues can be used to increase fruit and vegetable intake in children and decrease excessive food intake in adults. In addition, we discuss the need for future studies that can further establish the relationship between several unexplored visual dimensions of food (specifically shape, number, size, and surface area) and food intake. Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Multimodal communication, mismatched messages and the effects of turbidity on the antipredator behavior of the Barton Springs salamander, Eurycea sosorum.

PubMed

Zabierek, Kristina C; Gabor, Caitlin R

2016-09-01

Prey may use multiple sensory channels to detect predators, whose cues may differ in altered sensory environments, such as turbid conditions. Depending on the environment, prey may use cues in an additive/complementary manner or in a compensatory manner. First, to determine whether the purely aquatic Barton Springs salamander, Eurycea sosorum, show an antipredator response to visual cues, we examined their activity when exposed to either visual cues of a predatory fish (Lepomis cyanellus) or a non-predatory fish (Etheostoma lepidum). Salamanders decreased activity in response to predator visual cues only. Then, we examined the antipredator response of these salamanders to all matched and mismatched combinations of chemical and visual cues of the same predatory and non-predatory fish in clear and low turbidity conditions. Salamanders decreased activity in response to predator chemical cues matched with predator visual cues or mismatched with non-predator visual cues. Salamanders also increased latency to first move to predator chemical cues mismatched with non-predator visual cues. Salamanders decreased activity and increased latency to first move more in clear as opposed to turbid conditions in all treatment combinations. Our results indicate that salamanders under all conditions and treatments preferentially rely on chemical cues to determine antipredator behavior, although visual cues are potentially utilized in conjunction for latency to first move. Our results also have potential conservation implications, as decreased antipredator behavior was seen in turbid conditions. These results reveal complexity of antipredator behavior in response to multiple cues under different environmental conditions, which is especially important when considering endangered species. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Learning to match auditory and visual speech cues: social influences on acquisition of phonological categories.

PubMed

Altvater-Mackensen, Nicole; Grossmann, Tobias

2015-01-01

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential looking paradigm, 44 German 6-month olds' ability to detect mismatches between concurrently presented auditory and visual native vowels was tested. Outcomes were related to mothers' speech style and interactive behavior assessed during free play with their infant, and to infant-specific factors assessed through a questionnaire. Results show that mothers' and infants' social behavior modulated infants' preference for matching audiovisual speech. Moreover, infants' audiovisual speech perception correlated with later vocabulary size, suggesting a lasting effect on language development. © 2014 The Authors. Child Development © 2014 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Visual and Olfactory Floral Cues of Campanula (Campanulaceae) and Their Significance for Host Recognition by an Oligolectic Bee Pollinator

PubMed Central

Milet-Pinheiro, Paulo; Ayasse, Manfred; Dötterl, Stefan

2015-01-01

Oligolectic bees collect pollen from a few plants within a genus or family to rear their offspring, and are known to rely on visual and olfactory floral cues to recognize host plants. However, studies investigating whether oligolectic bees recognize distinct host plants by using shared floral cues are scarce. In the present study, we investigated in a comparative approach the visual and olfactory floral cues of six Campanula species, of which only Campanula lactiflora has never been reported as a pollen source of the oligolectic bee Ch. rapunculi. We hypothesized that the flowers of Campanula species visited by Ch. rapunculi share visual (i.e. color) and/or olfactory cues (scents) that give them a host-specific signature. To test this hypothesis, floral color and scent were studied by spectrophotometric and chemical analyses, respectively. Additionally, we performed bioassays within a flight cage to test the innate color preference of Ch. rapunculi. Our results show that Campanula flowers reflect the light predominantly in the UV-blue/blue bee-color space and that Ch. rapunculi displays a strong innate preference for these two colors. Furthermore, we recorded spiroacetals in the floral scent of all Campanula species, but Ca. lactiflora. Spiroacetals, rarely found as floral scent constituents but quite common among Campanula species, were recently shown to play a key function for host-flower recognition by Ch. rapunculi. We conclude that Campanula species share some visual and olfactory floral cues, and that neurological adaptations (i.e. vision and olfaction) of Ch. rapunculi innately drive their foraging flights toward host flowers. The significance of our findings for the evolution of pollen diet breadth in bees is discussed. PMID:26060994

The Role of Color in Search Templates for Real-world Target Objects.

PubMed

Nako, Rebecca; Smith, Tim J; Eimer, Martin

2016-11-01

During visual search, target representations (attentional templates) control the allocation of attention to template-matching objects. The activation of new attentional templates can be prompted by verbal or pictorial target specifications. We measured the N2pc component of the ERP as a temporal marker of attentional target selection to determine the role of color signals in search templates for real-world search target objects that are set up in response to word or picture cues. On each trial run, a word cue (e.g., "apple") was followed by three search displays that contained the cued target object among three distractors. The selection of the first target was based on the word cue only, whereas selection of the two subsequent targets could be controlled by templates set up after the first visual presentation of the target (picture cue). In different trial runs, search displays either contained objects in their natural colors or monochromatic objects. These two display types were presented in different blocks (Experiment 1) or in random order within each block (Experiment 2). RTs were faster, and target N2pc components emerged earlier for the second and third display of each trial run relative to the first display, demonstrating that pictures are more effective than word cues in guiding search. N2pc components were triggered more rapidly for targets in the second and third display in trial runs with colored displays. This demonstrates that when visual target attributes are fully specified by picture cues, the additional presence of color signals in target templates facilitates the speed with which attention is allocated to template-matching objects. No such selection benefits for colored targets were found when search templates were set up in response to word cues. Experiment 2 showed that color templates activated by word cues can even impair the attentional selection of noncolored targets. Results provide new insights into the status of color during the guidance of visual search for real-world target objects. Color is a powerful guiding feature when the precise visual properties of these objects are known but seems to be less important when search targets are specified by word cues.

Getting more from visual working memory: Retro-cues enhance retrieval and protect from visual interference.

PubMed

Souza, Alessandra S; Rerko, Laura; Oberauer, Klaus

2016-06-01

Visual working memory (VWM) has a limited capacity. This limitation can be mitigated by the use of focused attention: if attention is drawn to the relevant working memory content before test, performance improves (the so-called retro-cue benefit). This study tests 2 explanations of the retro-cue benefit: (a) Focused attention protects memory representations from interference by visual input at test, and (b) focusing attention enhances retrieval. Across 6 experiments using color recognition and color reproduction tasks, we varied the amount of color interference at test, and the delay between a retrieval cue (i.e., the retro-cue) and the memory test. Retro-cue benefits were larger when the memory test introduced interfering visual stimuli, showing that the retro-cue effect is in part because of protection from visual interference. However, when visual interference was held constant, retro-cue benefits were still obtained whenever the retro-cue enabled retrieval of an object from VWM but delayed response selection. Our results show that accessible information in VWM might be lost in the processes of testing memory because of visual interference and incomplete retrieval. This is not an inevitable state of affairs, though: Focused attention can be used to get the most out of VWM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparing perceived auditory width to the visual image of a performing ensemble in contrasting bi-modal environmentsa)

PubMed Central

Valente, Daniel L.; Braasch, Jonas; Myrbeck, Shane A.

2012-01-01

Despite many studies investigating auditory spatial impressions in rooms, few have addressed the impact of simultaneous visual cues on localization and the perception of spaciousness. The current research presents an immersive audiovisual environment in which participants were instructed to make auditory width judgments in dynamic bi-modal settings. The results of these psychophysical tests suggest the importance of congruent audio visual presentation to the ecological interpretation of an auditory scene. Supporting data were accumulated in five rooms of ascending volumes and varying reverberation times. Participants were given an audiovisual matching test in which they were instructed to pan the auditory width of a performing ensemble to a varying set of audio and visual cues in rooms. Results show that both auditory and visual factors affect the collected responses and that the two sensory modalities coincide in distinct interactions. The greatest differences between the panned audio stimuli given a fixed visual width were found in the physical space with the largest volume and the greatest source distance. These results suggest, in this specific instance, a predominance of auditory cues in the spatial analysis of the bi-modal scene. PMID:22280585

Perceptual upright: the relative effectiveness of dynamic and static images under different gravity States.

PubMed

Jenkin, Michael R; Dyde, Richard T; Jenkin, Heather L; Zacher, James E; Harris, Laurence R

2011-01-01

The perceived direction of up depends on both gravity and visual cues to orientation. Static visual cues to orientation have been shown to be less effective in influencing the perception of upright (PU) under microgravity conditions than they are on earth (Dyde et al., 2009). Here we introduce dynamic orientation cues into the visual background to ascertain whether they might increase the effectiveness of visual cues in defining the PU under different gravity conditions. Brief periods of microgravity and hypergravity were created using parabolic flight. Observers viewed a polarized, natural scene presented at various orientations on a laptop viewed through a hood which occluded all other visual cues. The visual background was either an animated video clip in which actors moved along the visual ground plane or an individual static frame taken from the same clip. We measured the perceptual upright using the oriented character recognition test (OCHART). Dynamic visual cues significantly enhance the effectiveness of vision in determining the perceptual upright under normal gravity conditions. Strong trends were found for dynamic visual cues to produce an increase in the visual effect under both microgravity and hypergravity conditions.

Helicopter Flight Simulation Motion Platform Requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schroeder, Jeffery Allyn

1999-01-01

To determine motion fidelity requirements, a series of piloted simulations was performed. Several key results were found. First, lateral and vertical translational platform cues had significant effects on fidelity. Their presence improved performance and reduced pilot workload. Second, yaw and roll rotational platform cues were not as important as the translational platform cues. In particular, the yaw rotational motion platform cue did not appear at all useful in improving performance or reducing workload. Third, when the lateral translational platform cue was combined with visual yaw rotational cues, pilots believed the platform was rotating when it was not. Thus, simulator systems can be made more efficient by proper combination of platform and visual cues. Fourth, motion fidelity specifications were revised that now provide simulator users with a better prediction of motion fidelity based upon the frequency responses of their motion control laws. Fifth, vertical platform motion affected pilot estimates of steady-state altitude during altitude repositioning. Finally, the combined results led to a general method for configuring helicopter motion systems and for developing simulator tasks that more likely represent actual flight. The overall results can serve as a guide to future simulator designers and to today's operators.

Recall versus familiarity when recall fails for words and scenes: The differential roles of the hippocampus, perirhinal cortex, and category-specific cortical regions☆

PubMed Central

Ryals, Anthony J.; Cleary, Anne M.; Seger, Carol A.

2013-01-01

This fMRI study examined recall and familiarity for words and scenes using the novel recognition without cued recall (RWCR) paradigm. Subjects performed a cued recall task in which half of the test cues resembled studied items (and thus were familiar) and half did not. Subjects also judged the familiarity of the cue itself. RWCR is the finding that, among cues for which recall fails, subjects generally rate cues that resemble studied items as more familiar than cues that do not. For words, left and right hippocampal activity increased when recall succeeded relative to when it failed. When recall failed, right hippocampal activity was decreased for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues. In contrast, right Prc activity increased for familiar cues for which recall failed relative to both familiar cues for which recall succeeded and to unfamiliar cues. For scenes, left hippocampal activity increased when recall succeeded relative to when it failed but did not differentiate familiar from unfamiliar cues when recall failed. In contrast, right Prc activity increased for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues when recall failed. Category-specific cortical regions showed effects unique to their respective stimulus types: The visual word form area (VWFA) showed effects for recall vs. familiarity specific to words, and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) showed effects for recall vs. familiarity specific to scenes. In both cases, these effects were such that there was increased activity occurring during recall relative to when recall failed, and decreased activity occurring for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues when recall failed. PMID:23142268

Memory under pressure: secondary-task effects on contextual cueing of visual search.

PubMed

Annac, Efsun; Manginelli, Angela A; Pollmann, Stefan; Shi, Zhuanghua; Müller, Hermann J; Geyer, Thomas

2013-11-04

Repeated display configurations improve visual search. Recently, the question has arisen whether this contextual cueing effect (Chun & Jiang, 1998) is itself mediated by attention, both in terms of selectivity and processing resources deployed. While it is accepted that selective attention modulates contextual cueing (Jiang & Leung, 2005), there is an ongoing debate whether the cueing effect is affected by a secondary working memory (WM) task, specifically at which stage WM influences the cueing effect: the acquisition of configural associations (e.g., Travis, Mattingley, & Dux, 2013) versus the expression of learned associations (e.g., Manginelli, Langer, Klose, & Pollmann, 2013). The present study re-investigated this issue. Observers performed a visual search in combination with a spatial WM task. The latter was applied on either early or late search trials--so as to examine whether WM load hampers the acquisition of or retrieval from contextual memory. Additionally, the WM and search tasks were performed either temporally in parallel or in succession--so as to permit the effects of spatial WM load to be dissociated from those of executive load. The secondary WM task was found to affect cueing in late, but not early, experimental trials--though only when the search and WM tasks were performed in parallel. This pattern suggests that contextual cueing involves a spatial WM resource, with spatial WM providing a workspace linking the current search array with configural long-term memory; as a result, occupying this workspace by a secondary WM task hampers the expression of learned configural associations.

Auditory and visual cueing modulate cycling speed of older adults and persons with Parkinson's disease in a Virtual Cycling (V-Cycle) system.

PubMed

Gallagher, Rosemary; Damodaran, Harish; Werner, William G; Powell, Wendy; Deutsch, Judith E

2016-08-19

Evidence based virtual environments (VEs) that incorporate compensatory strategies such as cueing may change motor behavior and increase exercise intensity while also being engaging and motivating. The purpose of this study was to determine if persons with Parkinson's disease and aged matched healthy adults responded to auditory and visual cueing embedded in a bicycling VE as a method to increase exercise intensity. We tested two groups of participants, persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) (n = 15) and age-matched healthy adults (n = 13) as they cycled on a stationary bicycle while interacting with a VE. Participants cycled under two conditions: auditory cueing (provided by a metronome) and visual cueing (represented as central road markers in the VE). The auditory condition had four trials in which auditory cues or the VE were presented alone or in combination. The visual condition had five trials in which the VE and visual cue rate presentation was manipulated. Data were analyzed by condition using factorial RMANOVAs with planned t-tests corrected for multiple comparisons. There were no differences in pedaling rates between groups for both the auditory and visual cueing conditions. Persons with PD increased their pedaling rate in the auditory (F 4.78, p = 0.029) and visual cueing (F 26.48, p < 0.000) conditions. Age-matched healthy adults also increased their pedaling rate in the auditory (F = 24.72, p < 0.000) and visual cueing (F = 40.69, p < 0.000) conditions. Trial-to-trial comparisons in the visual condition in age-matched healthy adults showed a step-wise increase in pedaling rate (p = 0.003 to p < 0.000). In contrast, persons with PD increased their pedaling rate only when explicitly instructed to attend to the visual cues (p < 0.000). An evidenced based cycling VE can modify pedaling rate in persons with PD and age-matched healthy adults. Persons with PD required attention directed to the visual cues in order to obtain an increase in cycling intensity. The combination of the VE and auditory cues was neither additive nor interfering. These data serve as preliminary evidence that embedding auditory and visual cues to alter cycling speed in a VE as method to increase exercise intensity that may promote fitness.

The contribution of dynamic visual cues to audiovisual speech perception.

PubMed

Jaekl, Philip; Pesquita, Ana; Alsius, Agnes; Munhall, Kevin; Soto-Faraco, Salvador

2015-08-01

Seeing a speaker's facial gestures can significantly improve speech comprehension, especially in noisy environments. However, the nature of the visual information from the speaker's facial movements that is relevant for this enhancement is still unclear. Like auditory speech signals, visual speech signals unfold over time and contain both dynamic configural information and luminance-defined local motion cues; two information sources that are thought to engage anatomically and functionally separate visual systems. Whereas, some past studies have highlighted the importance of local, luminance-defined motion cues in audiovisual speech perception, the contribution of dynamic configural information signalling changes in form over time has not yet been assessed. We therefore attempted to single out the contribution of dynamic configural information to audiovisual speech processing. To this aim, we measured word identification performance in noise using unimodal auditory stimuli, and with audiovisual stimuli. In the audiovisual condition, speaking faces were presented as point light displays achieved via motion capture of the original talker. Point light displays could be isoluminant, to minimise the contribution of effective luminance-defined local motion information, or with added luminance contrast, allowing the combined effect of dynamic configural cues and local motion cues. Audiovisual enhancement was found in both the isoluminant and contrast-based luminance conditions compared to an auditory-only condition, demonstrating, for the first time the specific contribution of dynamic configural cues to audiovisual speech improvement. These findings imply that globally processed changes in a speaker's facial shape contribute significantly towards the perception of articulatory gestures and the analysis of audiovisual speech. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visual Attention Patterns of Women with Androphilic and Gynephilic Sexual Attractions.

PubMed

Dawson, Samantha J; Fretz, Katherine M; Chivers, Meredith L

2017-01-01

Women who report exclusive sexual attractions to men (i.e., androphilia) exhibit gender-nonspecific patterns of sexual response-similar magnitude of genital response to both male and female targets. Interestingly, women reporting any degree of attraction to women (i.e., gynephilia) show significantly greater sexual responses to stimuli depicting female targets compared to male targets. At present, the mechanism(s) underlying these patterns are unknown. According to the information processing model (IPM), attentional processing of sexual cues initiates sexual responding; thus, attention to sexual cues may be one mechanism to explain the observed within-gender differences in specificity findings among women. The purpose of the present study was to examine patterns of initial and controlled visual attention among women with varying sexual attractions. We used eye tracking to assess visual attention to sexually preferred and nonpreferred cues in a sample of 164 women who differed in their degree of androphilia and gynephilia. We found that both exclusively and predominantly androphilic women showed gender-nonspecific patterns of initial attention. In contrast, ambiphilic (i.e., concurrent androphilia and gynephilia) and predominantly/exclusively gynephilic women oriented more quickly toward female targets. Controlled attention patterns mirrored patterns of self-reported sexual attractions for three of these four groups of women, such that gender-specific patterns of visual attention were found for androphilic and gynephilic women. Ambiphilic women looked significantly longer at female targets compared to male targets. These findings support predictions from the IPM and suggest that both initial and controlled attention to sexual cues may be mechanisms contributing to within-gender variation in sexual responding.

Electrophysiological evidence for Audio-visuo-lingual speech integration.

PubMed

Treille, Avril; Vilain, Coriandre; Schwartz, Jean-Luc; Hueber, Thomas; Sato, Marc

2018-01-31

Recent neurophysiological studies demonstrate that audio-visual speech integration partly operates through temporal expectations and speech-specific predictions. From these results, one common view is that the binding of auditory and visual, lipread, speech cues relies on their joint probability and prior associative audio-visual experience. The present EEG study examined whether visual tongue movements integrate with relevant speech sounds, despite little associative audio-visual experience between the two modalities. A second objective was to determine possible similarities and differences of audio-visual speech integration between unusual audio-visuo-lingual and classical audio-visuo-labial modalities. To this aim, participants were presented with auditory, visual, and audio-visual isolated syllables, with the visual presentation related to either a sagittal view of the tongue movements or a facial view of the lip movements of a speaker, with lingual and facial movements previously recorded by an ultrasound imaging system and a video camera. In line with previous EEG studies, our results revealed an amplitude decrease and a latency facilitation of P2 auditory evoked potentials in both audio-visual-lingual and audio-visuo-labial conditions compared to the sum of unimodal conditions. These results argue against the view that auditory and visual speech cues solely integrate based on prior associative audio-visual perceptual experience. Rather, they suggest that dynamic and phonetic informational cues are sharable across sensory modalities, possibly through a cross-modal transfer of implicit articulatory motor knowledge. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How visual cues for when to listen aid selective auditory attention.

PubMed

Varghese, Lenny A; Ozmeral, Erol J; Best, Virginia; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G

2012-06-01

Visual cues are known to aid auditory processing when they provide direct information about signal content, as in lip reading. However, some studies hint that visual cues also aid auditory perception by guiding attention to the target in a mixture of similar sounds. The current study directly tests this idea for complex, nonspeech auditory signals, using a visual cue providing only timing information about the target. Listeners were asked to identify a target zebra finch bird song played at a random time within a longer, competing masker. Two different maskers were used: noise and a chorus of competing bird songs. On half of all trials, a visual cue indicated the timing of the target within the masker. For the noise masker, the visual cue did not affect performance when target and masker were from the same location, but improved performance when target and masker were in different locations. In contrast, for the chorus masker, visual cues improved performance only when target and masker were perceived as coming from the same direction. These results suggest that simple visual cues for when to listen improve target identification by enhancing sounds near the threshold of audibility when the target is energetically masked and by enhancing segregation when it is difficult to direct selective attention to the target. Visual cues help little when target and masker already differ in attributes that enable listeners to engage selective auditory attention effectively, including differences in spectrotemporal structure and in perceived location.

Seeing is believing: effects of visual contextual cues on learning and transfer of locomotor adaptation.

PubMed

Torres-Oviedo, Gelsy; Bastian, Amy J

2010-12-15

Devices such as robots or treadmills are often used to drive motor learning because they can create novel physical environments. However, the learning (i.e., adaptation) acquired on these devices only partially generalizes to natural movements. What determines the specificity of motor learning, and can this be reliably made more general? Here we investigated the effect of visual cues on the specificity of split-belt walking adaptation. We systematically removed vision to eliminate the visual-proprioceptive mismatch that is a salient cue specific to treadmills: vision indicates that we are not moving while leg proprioception indicates that we are. We evaluated the adaptation of temporal and spatial features of gait (i.e., timing and location of foot landing), their transfer to walking over ground, and washout of adaptation when subjects returned to the treadmill. Removing vision during both training (i.e., on the treadmill) and testing (i.e., over ground) strongly improved the transfer of treadmill adaptation to natural walking. Removing vision only during training increased transfer of temporal adaptation, whereas removing vision only during testing increased the transfer of spatial adaptation. This dissociation reveals differences in adaptive mechanisms for temporal and spatial features of walking. Finally training without vision increased the amount that was learned and was linked to the variability in the behavior during adaptation. In conclusion, contextual cues can be manipulated to modulate the magnitude, transfer, and washout of device-induced learning in humans. These results bring us closer to our ultimate goal of developing rehabilitation strategies that improve movements beyond the clinical setting.

Temporal and peripheral extraction of contextual cues from scenes during visual search.

PubMed

Koehler, Kathryn; Eckstein, Miguel P

2017-02-01

Scene context is known to facilitate object recognition and guide visual search, but little work has focused on isolating image-based cues and evaluating their contributions to eye movement guidance and search performance. Here, we explore three types of contextual cues (a co-occurring object, the configuration of other objects, and the superordinate category of background elements) and assess their joint contributions to search performance in the framework of cue-combination and the temporal unfolding of their extraction. We also assess whether observers' ability to extract each contextual cue in the visual periphery is a bottleneck that determines the utilization and contribution of each cue to search guidance and decision accuracy. We find that during the first four fixations of a visual search task observers first utilize the configuration of objects for coarse eye movement guidance and later use co-occurring object information for finer guidance. In the absence of contextual cues, observers were suboptimally biased to report the target object as being absent. The presence of the co-occurring object was the only contextual cue that had a significant effect in reducing decision bias. The early influence of object-based cues on eye movements is corroborated by a clear demonstration of observers' ability to extract object cues up to 16° into the visual periphery. The joint contributions of the cues to decision search accuracy approximates that expected from the combination of statistically independent cues and optimal cue combination. Finally, the lack of utilization and contribution of the background-based contextual cue to search guidance cannot be explained by the availability of the contextual cue in the visual periphery; instead it is related to background cues providing the least inherent information about the precise location of the target in the scene.

Volume Attenuation and High Frequency Loss as Auditory Depth Cues in Stereoscopic 3D Cinema

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manolas, Christos; Pauletto, Sandra

2014-09-01

Assisted by the technological advances of the past decades, stereoscopic 3D (S3D) cinema is currently in the process of being established as a mainstream form of entertainment. The main focus of this collaborative effort is placed on the creation of immersive S3D visuals. However, with few exceptions, little attention has been given so far to the potential effect of the soundtrack on such environments. The potential of sound both as a means to enhance the impact of the S3D visual information and to expand the S3D cinematic world beyond the boundaries of the visuals is large. This article reports on our research into the possibilities of using auditory depth cues within the soundtrack as a means of affecting the perception of depth within cinematic S3D scenes. We study two main distance-related auditory cues: high-end frequency loss and overall volume attenuation. A series of experiments explored the effectiveness of these auditory cues. Results, although not conclusive, indicate that the studied auditory cues can influence the audience judgement of depth in cinematic 3D scenes, sometimes in unexpected ways. We conclude that 3D filmmaking can benefit from further studies on the effectiveness of specific sound design techniques to enhance S3D cinema.

Bio-inspired display of polarization information using selected visual cues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yemelyanov, Konstantin M.; Lin, Shih-Schon; Luis, William Q.; Pugh, Edward N., Jr.; Engheta, Nader

2003-12-01

For imaging systems the polarization of electromagnetic waves carries much potentially useful information about such features of the world as the surface shape, material contents, local curvature of objects, as well as about the relative locations of the source, object and imaging system. The imaging system of the human eye however, is "polarization-blind", and cannot utilize the polarization of light without the aid of an artificial, polarization-sensitive instrument. Therefore, polarization information captured by a man-made polarimetric imaging system must be displayed to a human observer in the form of visual cues that are naturally processed by the human visual system, while essentially preserving the other important non-polarization information (such as spectral and intensity information) in an image. In other words, some forms of sensory substitution are needed for representing polarization "signals" without affecting other visual information such as color and brightness. We are investigating several bio-inspired representational methodologies for mapping polarization information into visual cues readily perceived by the human visual system, and determining which mappings are most suitable for specific applications such as object detection, navigation, sensing, scene classifications, and surface deformation. The visual cues and strategies we are exploring are the use of coherently moving dots superimposed on image to represent various range of polarization signals, overlaying textures with spatial and/or temporal signatures to segregate regions of image with differing polarization, modulating luminance and/or color contrast of scenes in terms of certain aspects of polarization values, and fusing polarization images into intensity-only images. In this talk, we will present samples of our findings in this area.

Effects of visual and motion simulation cueing systems on pilot performance during takeoffs with engine failures

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Parris, B. L.; Cook, A. M.

1978-01-01

Data are presented that show the effects of visual and motion during cueing on pilot performance during takeoffs with engine failures. Four groups of USAF pilots flew a simulated KC-135 using four different cueing systems. The most basic of these systems was of the instrument-only type. Visual scene simulation and/or motion simulation was added to produce the other systems. Learning curves, mean performance, and subjective data are examined. The results show that the addition of visual cueing results in significant improvement in pilot performance, but the combined use of visual and motion cueing results in far better performance.

Manual control of yaw motion with combined visual and vestibular cues

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zacharias, G. L.; Young, L. R.

1977-01-01

Measurements are made of manual control performance in the closed-loop task of nulling perceived self-rotation velocity about an earth-vertical axis. Self-velocity estimation was modelled as a function of the simultaneous presentation of vestibular and peripheral visual field motion cues. Based on measured low-frequency operator behavior in three visual field environments, a parallel channel linear model is proposed which has separate visual and vestibular pathways summing in a complementary manner. A correction to the frequency responses is provided by a separate measurement of manual control performance in an analogous visual pursuit nulling task. The resulting dual-input describing function for motion perception dependence on combined cue presentation supports the complementary model, in which vestibular cues dominate sensation at frequencies above 0.05 Hz. The describing function model is extended by the proposal of a non-linear cue conflict model, in which cue weighting depends on the level of agreement between visual and vestibular cues.

Motion/visual cueing requirements for vortex encounters during simulated transport visual approach and landing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Parrish, R. V.; Bowles, R. L.

1983-01-01

This paper addresses the issues of motion/visual cueing fidelity requirements for vortex encounters during simulated transport visual approaches and landings. Four simulator configurations were utilized to provide objective performance measures during simulated vortex penetrations, and subjective comments from pilots were collected. The configurations used were as follows: fixed base with visual degradation (delay), fixed base with no visual degradation, moving base with visual degradation (delay), and moving base with no visual degradation. The statistical comparisons of the objective measures and the subjective pilot opinions indicated that although both minimum visual delay and motion cueing are recommended for the vortex penetration task, the visual-scene delay characteristics were not as significant a fidelity factor as was the presence of motion cues. However, this indication was applicable to a restricted task, and to transport aircraft. Although they were statistically significant, the effects of visual delay and motion cueing on the touchdown-related measures were considered to be of no practical consequence.

Media/Device Configurations for Platoon Leader Tactical Training

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-02-01

munication and visual communication sig- na ls, VInputs to the The device should simulate the real- Platoon Leader time receipt of all tactical voice...communication, audio and visual battle- field cues, and visual communication signals. 14- Table 4 (Continued) Functional Capability Categories and...battlefield cues, and visual communication signals. 0.8 Receipt of limited tactical voice communication, plus audio and visual battlefield cues, and visual

Manipulation of Pre-Target Activity on the Right Frontal Eye Field Enhances Conscious Visual Perception in Humans

PubMed Central

Chanes, Lorena; Chica, Ana B.; Quentin, Romain; Valero-Cabré, Antoni

2012-01-01

The right Frontal Eye Field (FEF) is a region of the human brain, which has been consistently involved in visuo-spatial attention and access to consciousness. Nonetheless, the extent of this cortical site’s ability to influence specific aspects of visual performance remains debated. We hereby manipulated pre-target activity on the right FEF and explored its influence on the detection and categorization of low-contrast near-threshold visual stimuli. Our data show that pre-target frontal neurostimulation has the potential when used alone to induce enhancements of conscious visual detection. More interestingly, when FEF stimulation was combined with visuo-spatial cues, improvements remained present only for trials in which the cue correctly predicted the location of the subsequent target. Our data provide evidence for the causal role of the right FEF pre-target activity in the modulation of human conscious vision and reveal the dependence of such neurostimulatory effects on the state of activity set up by cue validity in the dorsal attentional orienting network. PMID:22615759

Influence of combined visual and vestibular cues on human perception and control of horizontal rotation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zacharias, G. L.; Young, L. R.

1981-01-01

Measurements are made of manual control performance in the closed-loop task of nulling perceived self-rotation velocity about an earth-vertical axis. Self-velocity estimation is modeled as a function of the simultaneous presentation of vestibular and peripheral visual field motion cues. Based on measured low-frequency operator behavior in three visual field environments, a parallel channel linear model is proposed which has separate visual and vestibular pathways summing in a complementary manner. A dual-input describing function analysis supports the complementary model; vestibular cues dominate sensation at higher frequencies. The describing function model is extended by the proposal of a nonlinear cue conflict model, in which cue weighting depends on the level of agreement between visual and vestibular cues.

Exposure to visual cues of pathogen contagion changes preferences for masculinity and symmetry in opposite-sex faces.

PubMed

Little, Anthony C; DeBruine, Lisa M; Jones, Benedict C

2011-07-07

Evolutionary approaches to human attractiveness have documented several traits that are proposed to be attractive across individuals and cultures, although both cross-individual and cross-cultural variations are also often found. Previous studies show that parasite prevalence and mortality/health are related to cultural variation in preferences for attractive traits. Visual experience of pathogen cues may mediate such variable preferences. Here we showed individuals slideshows of images with cues to low and high pathogen prevalence and measured their visual preferences for face traits. We found that both men and women moderated their preferences for facial masculinity and symmetry according to recent experience of visual cues to environmental pathogens. Change in preferences was seen mainly for opposite-sex faces, with women preferring more masculine and more symmetric male faces and men preferring more feminine and more symmetric female faces after exposure to pathogen cues than when not exposed to such cues. Cues to environmental pathogens had no significant effects on preferences for same-sex faces. These data complement studies of cross-cultural differences in preferences by suggesting a mechanism for variation in mate preferences. Similar visual experience could lead to within-cultural agreement and differing visual experience could lead to cross-cultural variation. Overall, our data demonstrate that preferences can be strategically flexible according to recent visual experience with pathogen cues. Given that cues to pathogens may signal an increase in contagion/mortality risk, it may be adaptive to shift visual preferences in favour of proposed good-gene markers in environments where such cues are more evident.

Exposure to visual cues of pathogen contagion changes preferences for masculinity and symmetry in opposite-sex faces

PubMed Central

Little, Anthony C.; DeBruine, Lisa M.; Jones, Benedict C.

2011-01-01

Evolutionary approaches to human attractiveness have documented several traits that are proposed to be attractive across individuals and cultures, although both cross-individual and cross-cultural variations are also often found. Previous studies show that parasite prevalence and mortality/health are related to cultural variation in preferences for attractive traits. Visual experience of pathogen cues may mediate such variable preferences. Here we showed individuals slideshows of images with cues to low and high pathogen prevalence and measured their visual preferences for face traits. We found that both men and women moderated their preferences for facial masculinity and symmetry according to recent experience of visual cues to environmental pathogens. Change in preferences was seen mainly for opposite-sex faces, with women preferring more masculine and more symmetric male faces and men preferring more feminine and more symmetric female faces after exposure to pathogen cues than when not exposed to such cues. Cues to environmental pathogens had no significant effects on preferences for same-sex faces. These data complement studies of cross-cultural differences in preferences by suggesting a mechanism for variation in mate preferences. Similar visual experience could lead to within-cultural agreement and differing visual experience could lead to cross-cultural variation. Overall, our data demonstrate that preferences can be strategically flexible according to recent visual experience with pathogen cues. Given that cues to pathogens may signal an increase in contagion/mortality risk, it may be adaptive to shift visual preferences in favour of proposed good-gene markers in environments where such cues are more evident. PMID:21123269

Recall versus familiarity when recall fails for words and scenes: the differential roles of the hippocampus, perirhinal cortex, and category-specific cortical regions.

PubMed

Ryals, Anthony J; Cleary, Anne M; Seger, Carol A

2013-01-25

This fMRI study examined recall and familiarity for words and scenes using the novel recognition without cued recall (RWCR) paradigm. Subjects performed a cued recall task in which half of the test cues resembled studied items (and thus were familiar) and half did not. Subjects also judged the familiarity of the cue itself. RWCR is the finding that, among cues for which recall fails, subjects generally rate cues that resemble studied items as more familiar than cues that do not. For words, left and right hippocampal activity increased when recall succeeded relative to when it failed. When recall failed, right hippocampal activity was decreased for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues. In contrast, right Prc activity increased for familiar cues for which recall failed relative to both familiar cues for which recall succeeded and to unfamiliar cues. For scenes, left hippocampal activity increased when recall succeeded relative to when it failed but did not differentiate familiar from unfamiliar cues when recall failed. In contrast, right Prc activity increased for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues when recall failed. Category-specific cortical regions showed effects unique to their respective stimulus types: The visual word form area (VWFA) showed effects for recall vs. familiarity specific to words, and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) showed effects for recall vs. familiarity specific to scenes. In both cases, these effects were such that there was increased activity occurring during recall relative to when recall failed, and decreased activity occurring for familiar relative to unfamiliar cues when recall failed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effect of visual context on manual localization of remembered targets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Barry, S. R.; Bloomberg, J. J.; Huebner, W. P.

1997-01-01

This paper examines the contribution of egocentric cues and visual context to manual localization of remembered targets. Subjects pointed in the dark to the remembered position of a target previously viewed without or within a structured visual scene. Without a remembered visual context, subjects pointed to within 2 degrees of the target. The presence of a visual context with cues of straight ahead enhanced pointing performance to the remembered location of central but not off-center targets. Thus, visual context provides strong visual cues of target position and the relationship of body position to target location. Without a visual context, egocentric cues provide sufficient input for accurate pointing to remembered targets.

Preliminary study of visual perspective in mental time travel in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Wang, Ya; Wang, Yi; Zhao, Qing; Cui, Ji-Fang; Hong, Xiao-Hong; Chan, Raymond Ck

2017-10-01

This study explored specificity and visual perspective of mental time travel in schizophrenia. Fifteen patients with schizophrenia and 18 controls were recruited. Participants were asked to recall or imagine specific events according to cue words. Results showed that schizophrenia patients generated fewer specific events than controls, the recalled events were more specific than imagined events. Schizophrenia adopted less field perspective and more observer perspective than controls. These results suggested that patients with schizophrenia were impaired in mental time travel both in specificity and visual perspective. Further studies are needed to identify the underlying mechanisms. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Two Dozen-Plus Ideas That Will Help Special Needs Kids.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyle, Martha; Korn-Rothschild, Sarah

1994-01-01

Contains 27 specific suggestions for teachers with special needs children mainstreamed in their classroom, particularly children with visual and auditory perceptual difficulties and poor motor skills. Notes that teachers need to make sure that directions, visual and verbal cues, learning materials, and computers are appropriate for children with…

The fMRI BOLD response to unisensory and multisensory smoking cues in nicotine-dependent adults

PubMed Central

Cortese, Bernadette M.; Uhde, Thomas W.; Brady, Kathleen T.; McClernon, F. Joseph; Yang, Qing X.; Collins, Heather R.; LeMatty, Todd; Hartwell, Karen J.

2015-01-01

Given that the vast majority of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of drug cue reactivity use unisensory visual cues, but that multisensory cues may elicit greater craving-related brain responses, the current study sought to compare the fMRI BOLD response to unisensory visual and multisensory, visual plus odor, smoking cues in 17 nicotine-dependent adult cigarette smokers. Brain activation to smoking-related, compared to neutral, pictures was assessed under cigarette smoke and odorless odor conditions. While smoking pictures elicited a pattern of activation consistent with the addiction literature, the multisensory (odor + picture) smoking cues elicited significantly greater and more widespread activation in mainly frontal and temporal regions. BOLD signal elicited by the multi-sensory, but not unisensory cues, was significantly related to participants’ level of control over craving as well. Results demonstrated that the co-presentation of cigarette smoke odor with smoking-related visual cues, compared to the visual cues alone, elicited greater levels of craving-related brain activation in key regions implicated in reward. These preliminary findings support future research aimed at a better understanding of multisensory integration of drug cues and craving. PMID:26475784

The fMRI BOLD response to unisensory and multisensory smoking cues in nicotine-dependent adults.

PubMed

Cortese, Bernadette M; Uhde, Thomas W; Brady, Kathleen T; McClernon, F Joseph; Yang, Qing X; Collins, Heather R; LeMatty, Todd; Hartwell, Karen J

2015-12-30

Given that the vast majority of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of drug cue reactivity use unisensory visual cues, but that multisensory cues may elicit greater craving-related brain responses, the current study sought to compare the fMRI BOLD response to unisensory visual and multisensory, visual plus odor, smoking cues in 17 nicotine-dependent adult cigarette smokers. Brain activation to smoking-related, compared to neutral, pictures was assessed under cigarette smoke and odorless odor conditions. While smoking pictures elicited a pattern of activation consistent with the addiction literature, the multisensory (odor+picture) smoking cues elicited significantly greater and more widespread activation in mainly frontal and temporal regions. BOLD signal elicited by the multisensory, but not unisensory cues, was significantly related to participants' level of control over craving as well. Results demonstrated that the co-presentation of cigarette smoke odor with smoking-related visual cues, compared to the visual cues alone, elicited greater levels of craving-related brain activation in key regions implicated in reward. These preliminary findings support future research aimed at a better understanding of multisensory integration of drug cues and craving. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Feature-selective attention enhances color signals in early visual areas of the human brain.

PubMed

Müller, M M; Andersen, S; Trujillo, N J; Valdés-Sosa, P; Malinowski, P; Hillyard, S A

2006-09-19

We used an electrophysiological measure of selective stimulus processing (the steady-state visual evoked potential, SSVEP) to investigate feature-specific attention to color cues. Subjects viewed a display consisting of spatially intermingled red and blue dots that continually shifted their positions at random. The red and blue dots flickered at different frequencies and thereby elicited distinguishable SSVEP signals in the visual cortex. Paying attention selectively to either the red or blue dot population produced an enhanced amplitude of its frequency-tagged SSVEP, which was localized by source modeling to early levels of the visual cortex. A control experiment showed that this selection was based on color rather than flicker frequency cues. This signal amplification of attended color items provides an empirical basis for the rapid identification of feature conjunctions during visual search, as proposed by "guided search" models.

Cue-Reactive Rationality, Visual Imagery and Volitional Control Predict Cue-Reactive Urge to Gamble in Poker-Machine Gamblers.

PubMed

Clark, Gavin I; Rock, Adam J; McKeith, Charles F A; Coventry, William L

2017-09-01

Poker-machine gamblers have been demonstrated to report increases in the urge to gamble following exposure to salient gambling cues. However, the processes which contribute to this urge to gamble remain to be understood. The present study aimed to investigate whether changes in the conscious experience of visual imagery, rationality and volitional control (over one's thoughts, images and attention) predicted changes in the urge to gamble following exposure to a gambling cue. Thirty-one regular poker-machine gamblers who reported at least low levels of problem gambling on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), were recruited to complete an online cue-reactivity experiment. Participants completed the PGSI, the visual imagery, rationality and volitional control subscales of the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), and a visual analogue scale (VAS) assessing urge to gamble. Participants completed the PCI subscales and VAS at baseline, following a neutral video cue and following a gambling video cue. Urge to gamble was found to significantly increase from neutral cue to gambling cue (while controlling for baseline urge) and this increase was predicted by PGSI score. After accounting for the effects of problem-gambling severity, cue-reactive visual imagery, rationality and volitional control significantly improved the prediction of cue-reactive urge to gamble. The small sample size and limited participant characteristic data restricts the generalizability of the findings. Nevertheless, this is the first study to demonstrate that changes in the subjective experience of visual imagery, volitional control and rationality predict changes in the urge to gamble from neutral to gambling cue. The results suggest that visual imagery, rationality and volitional control may play an important role in the experience of the urge to gamble in poker-machine gamblers.

The Effects of Visual Beats on Prosodic Prominence: Acoustic Analyses, Auditory Perception and Visual Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krahmer, Emiel; Swerts, Marc

2007-01-01

Speakers employ acoustic cues (pitch accents) to indicate that a word is important, but may also use visual cues (beat gestures, head nods, eyebrow movements) for this purpose. Even though these acoustic and visual cues are related, the exact nature of this relationship is far from well understood. We investigate whether producing a visual beat…

Visual Features Involving Motion Seen from Airport Control Towers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ellis, Stephen R.; Liston, Dorion

2010-01-01

Visual motion cues are used by tower controllers to support both visual and anticipated separation. Some of these cues are tabulated as part of the overall set of visual features used in towers to separate aircraft. An initial analyses of one motion cue, landing deceleration, is provided as a basis for evaluating how controllers detect and use it for spacing aircraft on or near the surface. Understanding cues like it will help determine if they can be safely used in a remote/virtual tower in which their presentation may be visually degraded.

On the spatial specificity of audiovisual crossmodal exogenous cuing effects.

PubMed

Lee, Jae; Spence, Charles

2017-06-01

It is generally-accepted that the presentation of an auditory cue will direct an observer's spatial attention to the region of space from where it originates and therefore facilitate responses to visual targets presented there rather than from a different position within the cued hemifield. However, to date, there has been surprisingly limited evidence published in support of such within-hemifield crossmodal exogenous spatial cuing effects. Here, we report two experiments designed to investigate within- and between-hemifield spatial cuing effects in the case of audiovisual exogenous covert orienting. Auditory cues were presented from one of four frontal loudspeakers (two on either side of central fixation). There were eight possible visual target locations (one above and another below each of the loudspeakers). The auditory cues were evenly separated laterally by 30° in Experiment 1, and by 10° in Experiment 2. The potential cue and target locations were separated vertically by approximately 19° in Experiment 1, and by 4° in Experiment 2. On each trial, the participants made a speeded elevation (i.e., up vs. down) discrimination response to the visual target following the presentation of a spatially-nonpredictive auditory cue. Within-hemifield spatial cuing effects were observed only when the auditory cues were presented from the inner locations. Between-hemifield spatial cuing effects were observed in both experiments. Taken together, these results demonstrate that crossmodal exogenous shifts of spatial attention depend on the eccentricity of both the cue and target in a way that has not been made explicit by previous research. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Shape from texture: an evaluation of visual cues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mueller, Wolfgang; Hildebrand, Axel

1994-05-01

In this paper an integrated approach is presented to understand and control the influence of texture on shape perception. Following Gibson's hypotheses, which states that texture is a mathematically and psychological sufficient stimulus for surface perception, we evaluate different perceptual cues. Starting out from a perception-based texture classification introduced by Tamura et al., we build up a uniform sampled parameter space. For the synthesis of some of our textures we use the texture description language HiLDTe. To acquire the desired texture specification we take advantage of a genetic algorithm. Employing these textures we practice a number of psychological tests to evaluate the significance of the different texture features. A comprehension of the results derived from the psychological tests is done to constitute new shape analyzing techniques. Since the vanishing point seems to be an important visual cue we introduce the Hough transform. A prospective of future work within the field of visual computing is provided within the final section.

Application of Visual Cues on 3D Dynamic Visualizations for Engineering Technology Students and Effects on Spatial Visualization Ability: A Quasi-Experimental Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katsioloudis, Petros; Jovanovic, Vukica; Jones, Mildred

2016-01-01

Several theorists believe that different types of visual cues influence cognition and behavior through learned associations; however, research provides inconsistent results. Considering this, a quasi-experimental study was done to determine if there are significant positive effects of visual cues (color blue) and to identify if a positive increase…

Role of somatosensory and vestibular cues in attenuating visually induced human postural sway

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Peterka, Robert J.; Benolken, Martha S.

1993-01-01

The purpose was to determine the contribution of visual, vestibular, and somatosensory cues to the maintenance of stance in humans. Postural sway was induced by full field, sinusoidal visual surround rotations about an axis at the level of the ankle joints. The influences of vestibular and somatosensory cues were characterized by comparing postural sway in normal and bilateral vestibular absent subjects in conditions that provided either accurate or inaccurate somatosensory orientation information. In normal subjects, the amplitude of visually induced sway reached a saturation level as stimulus amplitude increased. The saturation amplitude decreased with increasing stimulus frequency. No saturation phenomena was observed in subjects with vestibular loss, implying that vestibular cues were responsible for the saturation phenomenon. For visually induced sways below the saturation level, the stimulus-response curves for both normal and vestibular loss subjects were nearly identical implying that (1) normal subjects were not using vestibular information to attenuate their visually induced sway, possibly because sway was below a vestibular-related threshold level, and (2) vestibular loss subjects did not utilize visual cues to a greater extent than normal subjects; that is, a fundamental change in visual system 'gain' was not used to compensate for a vestibular deficit. An unexpected finding was that the amplitude of body sway induced by visual surround motion could be almost three times greater than the amplitude of the visual stimulus in normals and vestibular loss subjects. This occurred in conditions where somatosensory cues were inaccurate and at low stimulus amplitudes. A control system model of visually induced postural sway was developed to explain this finding. For both subject groups, the amplitude of visually induced sway was smaller by a factor of about four in tests where somatosensory cues provided accurate versus inaccurate orientation information. This implied that (1) the vestibular loss subjects did not utilize somatosensory cues to a greater extent than normal subjects; that is, changes in somatosensory system 'gain' were not used to compensate for a vestibular deficit, and (2) the threshold for the use of vestibular cues in normals was apparently lower in test conditions where somatosensory cues were providing accurate orientation information.

The specificity of learned parallelism in dual-memory retrieval.

PubMed

Strobach, Tilo; Schubert, Torsten; Pashler, Harold; Rickard, Timothy

2014-05-01

Retrieval of two responses from one visually presented cue occurs sequentially at the outset of dual-retrieval practice. Exclusively for subjects who adopt a mode of grouping (i.e., synchronizing) their response execution, however, reaction times after dual-retrieval practice indicate a shift to learned retrieval parallelism (e.g., Nino & Rickard, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 373-388, 2003). In the present study, we investigated how this learned parallelism is achieved and why it appears to occur only for subjects who group their responses. Two main accounts were considered: a task-level versus a cue-level account. The task-level account assumes that learned retrieval parallelism occurs at the level of the task as a whole and is not limited to practiced cues. Grouping response execution may thus promote a general shift to parallel retrieval following practice. The cue-level account states that learned retrieval parallelism is specific to practiced cues. This type of parallelism may result from cue-specific response chunking that occurs uniquely as a consequence of grouped response execution. The results of two experiments favored the second account and were best interpreted in terms of a structural bottleneck model.

The effect of contextual cues on the encoding of motor memories.

PubMed

Howard, Ian S; Wolpert, Daniel M; Franklin, David W

2013-05-01

Several studies have shown that sensory contextual cues can reduce the interference observed during learning of opposing force fields. However, because each study examined a small set of cues, often in a unique paradigm, the relative efficacy of different sensory contextual cues is unclear. In the present study we quantify how seven contextual cues, some investigated previously and some novel, affect the formation and recall of motor memories. Subjects made movements in a velocity-dependent curl field, with direction varying randomly from trial to trial but always associated with a unique contextual cue. Linking field direction to the cursor or background color, or to peripheral visual motion cues, did not reduce interference. In contrast, the orientation of a visual object attached to the hand cursor significantly reduced interference, albeit by a small amount. When the fields were associated with movement in different locations in the workspace, a substantial reduction in interference was observed. We tested whether this reduction in interference was due to the different locations of the visual feedback (targets and cursor) or the movements (proprioceptive). When the fields were associated only with changes in visual display location (movements always made centrally) or only with changes in the movement location (visual feedback always displayed centrally), a substantial reduction in interference was observed. These results show that although some visual cues can lead to the formation and recall of distinct representations in motor memory, changes in spatial visual and proprioceptive states of the movement are far more effective than changes in simple visual contextual cues.

Domain general learning: Infants use social and non-social cues when learning object statistics

PubMed Central

Barry, Ryan A.; Graf Estes, Katharine; Rivera, Susan M.

2015-01-01

Previous research has shown that infants can learn from social cues. But is a social cue more effective at directing learning than a non-social cue? This study investigated whether 9-month-old infants (N = 55) could learn a visual statistical regularity in the presence of a distracting visual sequence when attention was directed by either a social cue (a person) or a non-social cue (a rectangle). The results show that both social and non-social cues can guide infants’ attention to a visual shape sequence (and away from a distracting sequence). The social cue more effectively directed attention than the non-social cue during the familiarization phase, but the social cue did not result in significantly stronger learning than the non-social cue. The findings suggest that domain general attention mechanisms allow for the comparable learning seen in both conditions. PMID:25999879

Driver Distraction Using Visual-Based Sensors and Algorithms.

PubMed

Fernández, Alberto; Usamentiaga, Rubén; Carús, Juan Luis; Casado, Rubén

2016-10-28

Driver distraction, defined as the diversion of attention away from activities critical for safe driving toward a competing activity, is increasingly recognized as a significant source of injuries and fatalities on the roadway. Additionally, the trend towards increasing the use of in-vehicle information systems is critical because they induce visual, biomechanical and cognitive distraction and may affect driving performance in qualitatively different ways. Non-intrusive methods are strongly preferred for monitoring distraction, and vision-based systems have appeared to be attractive for both drivers and researchers. Biomechanical, visual and cognitive distractions are the most commonly detected types in video-based algorithms. Many distraction detection systems only use a single visual cue and therefore, they may be easily disturbed when occlusion or illumination changes appear. Moreover, the combination of these visual cues is a key and challenging aspect in the development of robust distraction detection systems. These visual cues can be extracted mainly by using face monitoring systems but they should be completed with more visual cues (e.g., hands or body information) or even, distraction detection from specific actions (e.g., phone usage). Additionally, these algorithms should be included in an embedded device or system inside a car. This is not a trivial task and several requirements must be taken into account: reliability, real-time performance, low cost, small size, low power consumption, flexibility and short time-to-market. The key points for the development and implementation of sensors to carry out the detection of distraction will also be reviewed. This paper shows a review of the role of computer vision technology applied to the development of monitoring systems to detect distraction. Some key points considered as both future work and challenges ahead yet to be solved will also be addressed.

Driver Distraction Using Visual-Based Sensors and Algorithms

PubMed Central

Fernández, Alberto; Usamentiaga, Rubén; Carús, Juan Luis; Casado, Rubén

2016-01-01

Driver distraction, defined as the diversion of attention away from activities critical for safe driving toward a competing activity, is increasingly recognized as a significant source of injuries and fatalities on the roadway. Additionally, the trend towards increasing the use of in-vehicle information systems is critical because they induce visual, biomechanical and cognitive distraction and may affect driving performance in qualitatively different ways. Non-intrusive methods are strongly preferred for monitoring distraction, and vision-based systems have appeared to be attractive for both drivers and researchers. Biomechanical, visual and cognitive distractions are the most commonly detected types in video-based algorithms. Many distraction detection systems only use a single visual cue and therefore, they may be easily disturbed when occlusion or illumination changes appear. Moreover, the combination of these visual cues is a key and challenging aspect in the development of robust distraction detection systems. These visual cues can be extracted mainly by using face monitoring systems but they should be completed with more visual cues (e.g., hands or body information) or even, distraction detection from specific actions (e.g., phone usage). Additionally, these algorithms should be included in an embedded device or system inside a car. This is not a trivial task and several requirements must be taken into account: reliability, real-time performance, low cost, small size, low power consumption, flexibility and short time-to-market. The key points for the development and implementation of sensors to carry out the detection of distraction will also be reviewed. This paper shows a review of the role of computer vision technology applied to the development of monitoring systems to detect distraction. Some key points considered as both future work and challenges ahead yet to be solved will also be addressed. PMID:27801822

Bayesian integration of position and orientation cues in perception of biological and non-biological forms.

PubMed

Thurman, Steven M; Lu, Hongjing

2014-01-01

Visual form analysis is fundamental to shape perception and likely plays a central role in perception of more complex dynamic shapes, such as moving objects or biological motion. Two primary form-based cues serve to represent the overall shape of an object: the spatial position and the orientation of locations along the boundary of the object. However, it is unclear how the visual system integrates these two sources of information in dynamic form analysis, and in particular how the brain resolves ambiguities due to sensory uncertainty and/or cue conflict. In the current study, we created animations of sparsely-sampled dynamic objects (human walkers or rotating squares) comprised of oriented Gabor patches in which orientation could either coincide or conflict with information provided by position cues. When the cues were incongruent, we found a characteristic trade-off between position and orientation information whereby position cues increasingly dominated perception as the relative uncertainty of orientation increased and vice versa. Furthermore, we found no evidence for differences in the visual processing of biological and non-biological objects, casting doubt on the claim that biological motion may be specialized in the human brain, at least in specific terms of form analysis. To explain these behavioral results quantitatively, we adopt a probabilistic template-matching model that uses Bayesian inference within local modules to estimate object shape separately from either spatial position or orientation signals. The outputs of the two modules are integrated with weights that reflect individual estimates of subjective cue reliability, and integrated over time to produce a decision about the perceived dynamics of the input data. Results of this model provided a close fit to the behavioral data, suggesting a mechanism in the human visual system that approximates rational Bayesian inference to integrate position and orientation signals in dynamic form analysis.

Attentional bias to food-related visual cues: is there a role in obesity?

PubMed

Doolan, K J; Breslin, G; Hanna, D; Gallagher, A M

2015-02-01

The incentive sensitisation model of obesity suggests that modification of the dopaminergic associated reward systems in the brain may result in increased awareness of food-related visual cues present in the current food environment. Having a heightened awareness of these visual food cues may impact on food choices and eating behaviours with those being most aware of or demonstrating greater attention to food-related stimuli potentially being at greater risk of overeating and subsequent weight gain. To date, research related to attentional responses to visual food cues has been both limited and conflicting. Such inconsistent findings may in part be explained by the use of different methodological approaches to measure attentional bias and the impact of other factors such as hunger levels, energy density of visual food cues and individual eating style traits that may influence visual attention to food-related cues outside of weight status alone. This review examines the various methodologies employed to measure attentional bias with a particular focus on the role that attentional processing of food-related visual cues may have in obesity. Based on the findings of this review, it appears that it may be too early to clarify the role visual attention to food-related cues may have in obesity. Results however highlight the importance of considering the most appropriate methodology to use when measuring attentional bias and the characteristics of the study populations targeted while interpreting results to date and in designing future studies.

Subconscious Visual Cues during Movement Execution Allow Correct Online Choice Reactions

PubMed Central

Leukel, Christian; Lundbye-Jensen, Jesper; Christensen, Mark Schram; Gollhofer, Albert; Nielsen, Jens Bo; Taube, Wolfgang

2012-01-01

Part of the sensory information is processed by our central nervous system without conscious perception. Subconscious processing has been shown to be capable of triggering motor reactions. In the present study, we asked the question whether visual information, which is not consciously perceived, could influence decision-making in a choice reaction task. Ten healthy subjects (28±5 years) executed two different experimental protocols. In the Motor reaction protocol, a visual target cue was shown on a computer screen. Depending on the displayed cue, subjects had to either complete a reaching movement (go-condition) or had to abort the movement (stop-condition). The cue was presented with different display durations (20–160 ms). In the second Verbalization protocol, subjects verbalized what they experienced on the screen. Again, the cue was presented with different display durations. This second protocol tested for conscious perception of the visual cue. The results of this study show that subjects achieved significantly more correct responses in the Motor reaction protocol than in the Verbalization protocol. This difference was only observed at the very short display durations of the visual cue. Since correct responses in the Verbalization protocol required conscious perception of the visual information, our findings imply that the subjects performed correct motor responses to visual cues, which they were not conscious about. It is therefore concluded that humans may reach decisions based on subconscious visual information in a choice reaction task. PMID:23049749

Graded Neuronal Modulations Related to Visual Spatial Attention.

PubMed

Mayo, J Patrick; Maunsell, John H R

2016-05-11

Studies of visual attention in monkeys typically measure neuronal activity when the stimulus event to be detected occurs at a cued location versus when it occurs at an uncued location. But this approach does not address how neuronal activity changes relative to conditions where attention is unconstrained by cueing. Human psychophysical studies have used neutral cueing conditions and found that neutrally cued behavioral performance is generally intermediate to that of cued and uncued conditions (Posner et al., 1978; Mangun and Hillyard, 1990; Montagna et al., 2009). To determine whether the neuronal correlates of visual attention during neutral cueing are similarly intermediate, we trained macaque monkeys to detect changes in stimulus orientation that were more likely to occur at one location (cued) than another (uncued), or were equally likely to occur at either stimulus location (neutral). Consistent with human studies, performance was best when the location was cued, intermediate when both locations were neutrally cued, and worst when the location was uncued. Neuronal modulations in visual area V4 were also graded as a function of cue validity and behavioral performance. By recording from both hemispheres simultaneously, we investigated the possibility of switching attention between stimulus locations during neutral cueing. The results failed to support a unitary "spotlight" of attention. Overall, our findings indicate that attention-related changes in V4 are graded to accommodate task demands. Studies of the neuronal correlates of attention in monkeys typically use visual cues to manipulate where attention is focused ("cued" vs "uncued"). Human psychophysical studies often also include neutrally cued trials to study how attention naturally varies between points of interest. But the neuronal correlates of this neutral condition are unclear. We measured behavioral performance and neuronal activity in cued, uncued, and neutrally cued blocks of trials. Behavioral performance and neuronal responses during neutral cueing were intermediate to those of the cued and uncued conditions. We found no signatures of a single mechanism of attention that switches between stimulus locations. Thus, attention-related changes in neuronal activity are largely hemisphere-specific and graded according to task demands. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/365353-09$15.00/0.

Graded Neuronal Modulations Related to Visual Spatial Attention

PubMed Central

Maunsell, John H. R.

2016-01-01

Studies of visual attention in monkeys typically measure neuronal activity when the stimulus event to be detected occurs at a cued location versus when it occurs at an uncued location. But this approach does not address how neuronal activity changes relative to conditions where attention is unconstrained by cueing. Human psychophysical studies have used neutral cueing conditions and found that neutrally cued behavioral performance is generally intermediate to that of cued and uncued conditions (Posner et al., 1978; Mangun and Hillyard, 1990; Montagna et al., 2009). To determine whether the neuronal correlates of visual attention during neutral cueing are similarly intermediate, we trained macaque monkeys to detect changes in stimulus orientation that were more likely to occur at one location (cued) than another (uncued), or were equally likely to occur at either stimulus location (neutral). Consistent with human studies, performance was best when the location was cued, intermediate when both locations were neutrally cued, and worst when the location was uncued. Neuronal modulations in visual area V4 were also graded as a function of cue validity and behavioral performance. By recording from both hemispheres simultaneously, we investigated the possibility of switching attention between stimulus locations during neutral cueing. The results failed to support a unitary “spotlight” of attention. Overall, our findings indicate that attention-related changes in V4 are graded to accommodate task demands. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Studies of the neuronal correlates of attention in monkeys typically use visual cues to manipulate where attention is focused (“cued” vs “uncued”). Human psychophysical studies often also include neutrally cued trials to study how attention naturally varies between points of interest. But the neuronal correlates of this neutral condition are unclear. We measured behavioral performance and neuronal activity in cued, uncued, and neutrally cued blocks of trials. Behavioral performance and neuronal responses during neutral cueing were intermediate to those of the cued and uncued conditions. We found no signatures of a single mechanism of attention that switches between stimulus locations. Thus, attention-related changes in neuronal activity are largely hemisphere-specific and graded according to task demands. PMID:27170131

Auditory Emotional Cues Enhance Visual Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zeelenberg, Rene; Bocanegra, Bruno R.

2010-01-01

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by…

Floral and vegetative cues in oil-secreting and non-oil-secreting Lysimachia species

PubMed Central

Schäffler, I.; Balao, F.; Dötterl, S.

2012-01-01

Background and Aims Unrelated plants pollinated by the same group or guild of animals typically evolve similar floral cues due to pollinator-mediated selection. Related plant species, however, may possess similar cues either as a result of pollinator-mediated selection or as a result of sharing a common ancestor that possessed the same cues or traits. In this study, visual and olfactory floral cues in Lysimachia species exhibiting different pollination strategies were analysed and compared, and the importance of pollinators and phylogeny on the evolution of these floral cues was determined. For comparison, cues of vegetative material were examined where pollinator selection would not be expected. Methods Floral and vegetative scents and colours in floral oil- and non-floral oil-secreting Lysimachia species were studied by chemical and spectrophotometric analyses, respectively, compared between oil- and non-oil-secreting species, and analysed by phylogenetically controlled methods. Key Results Vegetative and floral scent was species specific, and variability in floral but not vegetative scent was lower in oil compared with non-oil species. Overall, oil species did not differ in their floral or vegetative scent from non-oil species. However, a correlation was found between oil secretion and six floral scent constituents specific to oil species, whereas the presence of four other floral compounds can be explained by phylogeny. Four of the five analysed oil species had bee-green flowers and the pattern of occurrence of this colour correlated with oil secretion. Non-oil species had different floral colours. The colour of leaves was similar among all species studied. Conclusions Evidence was found for correlated evolution between secretion of floral oils and floral but not vegetative visual and olfactory cues. The cues correlating with oil secretion were probably selected by Macropis bees, the specialized pollinators of oil-secreting Lysimachia species, and may have evolved in order to attract these bees. PMID:22634256

Auditory emotional cues enhance visual perception.

PubMed

Zeelenberg, René; Bocanegra, Bruno R

2010-04-01

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by emotional cues as compared to neutral cues. When the cue was presented visually we replicated the emotion-induced impairment found in other studies. Our results suggest emotional stimuli have a twofold effect on perception. They impair perception by reflexively attracting attention at the expense of competing stimuli. However, emotional stimuli also induce a nonspecific perceptual enhancement that carries over onto other stimuli when competition is reduced, for example, by presenting stimuli in different modalities. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Effects of Explicit Visual Cues in Reading Biological Diagrams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ge, Yun-Ping; Unsworth, Len; Wang, Kuo-Hua

2017-01-01

Drawing on cognitive theories, this study intends to investigate the effects of explicit visual cues which have been proposed as a critical factor in facilitating understanding of biological images. Three diagrams from Taiwanese textbooks with implicit visual cues, involving the concepts of biological classification systems, fish taxonomy, and…

Neural Circuit to Integrate Opposing Motions in the Visual Field.

PubMed

Mauss, Alex S; Pankova, Katarina; Arenz, Alexander; Nern, Aljoscha; Rubin, Gerald M; Borst, Alexander

2015-07-16

When navigating in their environment, animals use visual motion cues as feedback signals that are elicited by their own motion. Such signals are provided by wide-field neurons sampling motion directions at multiple image points as the animal maneuvers. Each one of these neurons responds selectively to a specific optic flow-field representing the spatial distribution of motion vectors on the retina. Here, we describe the discovery of a group of local, inhibitory interneurons in the fruit fly Drosophila key for filtering these cues. Using anatomy, molecular characterization, activity manipulation, and physiological recordings, we demonstrate that these interneurons convey direction-selective inhibition to wide-field neurons with opposite preferred direction and provide evidence for how their connectivity enables the computation required for integrating opposing motions. Our results indicate that, rather than sharpening directional selectivity per se, these circuit elements reduce noise by eliminating non-specific responses to complex visual information. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stimulus-related activity during conditional associations in monkey perirhinal cortex neurons depends on upcoming reward outcome.

PubMed

Ohyama, Kaoru; Sugase-Miyamoto, Yasuko; Matsumoto, Narihisa; Shidara, Munetaka; Sato, Chikara

2012-11-28

Acquiring the significance of events based on reward-related information is critical for animals to survive and to conduct social activities. The importance of the perirhinal cortex for reward-related information processing has been suggested. To examine whether or not neurons in this cortex represent reward information flexibly when a visual stimulus indicates either a rewarded or unrewarded outcome, neuronal activity in the macaque perirhinal cortex was examined using a conditional-association cued-reward task. The task design allowed us to study how the neuronal responses depended on the animal's prediction of whether it would or would not be rewarded. Two visual stimuli, a color stimulus as Cue1 followed by a pattern stimulus as Cue2, were sequentially presented. Each pattern stimulus was conditionally associated with both rewarded and unrewarded outcomes depending on the preceding color stimulus. We found an activity depending upon the two reward conditions during Cue2, i.e., pattern stimulus presentation. The response appeared after the response dependent upon the image identity of Cue2. The response delineating a specific cue sequence also appeared between the responses dependent upon the identity of Cue2 and reward conditions. Thus, when Cue1 sets the context for whether or not Cue2 indicates a reward, this region represents the meaning of Cue2, i.e., the reward conditions, independent of the identity of Cue2. These results suggest that neurons in the perirhinal cortex do more than associate a single stimulus with a reward to achieve flexible representations of reward information.

Visual Navigation during Colony Emigration by the Ant Temnothorax rugatulus

PubMed Central

Bowens, Sean R.; Glatt, Daniel P.; Pratt, Stephen C.

2013-01-01

Many ants rely on both visual cues and self-generated chemical signals for navigation, but their relative importance varies across species and context. We evaluated the roles of both modalities during colony emigration by Temnothorax rugatulus. Colonies were induced to move from an old nest in the center of an arena to a new nest at the arena edge. In the midst of the emigration the arena floor was rotated 60°around the old nest entrance, thus displacing any substrate-bound odor cues while leaving visual cues unchanged. This manipulation had no effect on orientation, suggesting little influence of substrate cues on navigation. When this rotation was accompanied by the blocking of most visual cues, the ants became highly disoriented, suggesting that they did not fall back on substrate cues even when deprived of visual information. Finally, when the substrate was left in place but the visual surround was rotated, the ants' subsequent headings were strongly rotated in the same direction, showing a clear role for visual navigation. Combined with earlier studies, these results suggest that chemical signals deposited by Temnothorax ants serve more for marking of familiar territory than for orientation. The ants instead navigate visually, showing the importance of this modality even for species with small eyes and coarse visual acuity. PMID:23671713

Cannabis cue-induced brain activation correlates with drug craving in limbic and visual salience regions: Preliminary results

PubMed Central

Charboneau, Evonne J.; Dietrich, Mary S.; Park, Sohee; Cao, Aize; Watkins, Tristan J; Blackford, Jennifer U; Benningfield, Margaret M.; Martin, Peter R.; Buchowski, Maciej S.; Cowan, Ronald L.

2013-01-01

Craving is a major motivator underlying drug use and relapse but the neural correlates of cannabis craving are not well understood. This study sought to determine whether visual cannabis cues increase cannabis craving and whether cue-induced craving is associated with regional brain activation in cannabis-dependent individuals. Cannabis craving was assessed in 16 cannabis-dependent adult volunteers while they viewed cannabis cues during a functional MRI (fMRI) scan. The Marijuana Craving Questionnaire was administered immediately before and after each of three cannabis cue-exposure fMRI runs. FMRI blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal intensity was determined in regions activated by cannabis cues to examine the relationship of regional brain activation to cannabis craving. Craving scores increased significantly following exposure to visual cannabis cues. Visual cues activated multiple brain regions, including inferior orbital frontal cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, amygdala, superior temporal pole, and occipital cortex. Craving scores at baseline and at the end of all three runs were significantly correlated with brain activation during the first fMRI run only, in the limbic system (including amygdala and hippocampus) and paralimbic system (superior temporal pole), and visual regions (occipital cortex). Cannabis cues increased craving in cannabis-dependent individuals and this increase was associated with activation in the limbic, paralimbic, and visual systems during the first fMRI run, but not subsequent fMRI runs. These results suggest that these regions may mediate visually cued aspects of drug craving. This study provides preliminary evidence for the neural basis of cue-induced cannabis craving and suggests possible neural targets for interventions targeted at treating cannabis dependence. PMID:24035535

Bandwidth and SIMDUCE as simulator fidelity criteria

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Key, David

1992-01-01

The potential application of two concepts from the new Handling Qualities Specification for Military Rotorcraft was discussed. The first concept is bandwidth, a measure of the dynamic response to control. The second is a qualitative technique developed for assessing the visual cue environment the pilot has in bad weather and at night. Simulated Day Usable Cue Environment (SIMDUCE) applies this concept to assessing the day cuing fidelity in the simulator.

How do visual and postural cues combine for self-tilt perception during slow pitch rotations?

PubMed

Scotto Di Cesare, C; Buloup, F; Mestre, D R; Bringoux, L

2014-11-01

Self-orientation perception relies on the integration of multiple sensory inputs which convey spatially-related visual and postural cues. In the present study, an experimental set-up was used to tilt the body and/or the visual scene to investigate how these postural and visual cues are integrated for self-tilt perception (the subjective sensation of being tilted). Participants were required to repeatedly rate a confidence level for self-tilt perception during slow (0.05°·s(-1)) body and/or visual scene pitch tilts up to 19° relative to vertical. Concurrently, subjects also had to perform arm reaching movements toward a body-fixed target at certain specific angles of tilt. While performance of a concurrent motor task did not influence the main perceptual task, self-tilt detection did vary according to the visuo-postural stimuli. Slow forward or backward tilts of the visual scene alone did not induce a marked sensation of self-tilt contrary to actual body tilt. However, combined body and visual scene tilt influenced self-tilt perception more strongly, although this effect was dependent on the direction of visual scene tilt: only a forward visual scene tilt combined with a forward body tilt facilitated self-tilt detection. In such a case, visual scene tilt did not seem to induce vection but rather may have produced a deviation of the perceived orientation of the longitudinal body axis in the forward direction, which may have lowered the self-tilt detection threshold during actual forward body tilt. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Toward semantic-based retrieval of visual information: a model-based approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Park, Youngchoon; Golshani, Forouzan; Panchanathan, Sethuraman

2002-07-01

This paper center around the problem of automated visual content classification. To enable classification based image or visual object retrieval, we propose a new image representation scheme called visual context descriptor (VCD) that is a multidimensional vector in which each element represents the frequency of a unique visual property of an image or a region. VCD utilizes the predetermined quality dimensions (i.e., types of features and quantization level) and semantic model templates mined in priori. Not only observed visual cues, but also contextually relevant visual features are proportionally incorporated in VCD. Contextual relevance of a visual cue to a semantic class is determined by using correlation analysis of ground truth samples. Such co-occurrence analysis of visual cues requires transformation of a real-valued visual feature vector (e.g., color histogram, Gabor texture, etc.,) into a discrete event (e.g., terms in text). Good-feature to track, rule of thirds, iterative k-means clustering and TSVQ are involved in transformation of feature vectors into unified symbolic representations called visual terms. Similarity-based visual cue frequency estimation is also proposed and used for ensuring the correctness of model learning and matching since sparseness of sample data causes the unstable results of frequency estimation of visual cues. The proposed method naturally allows integration of heterogeneous visual or temporal or spatial cues in a single classification or matching framework, and can be easily integrated into a semantic knowledge base such as thesaurus, and ontology. Robust semantic visual model template creation and object based image retrieval are demonstrated based on the proposed content description scheme.

Social vision: sustained perceptual enhancement of affective facial cues in social anxiety

PubMed Central

McTeague, Lisa M.; Shumen, Joshua R.; Wieser, Matthias J.; Lang, Peter J.; Keil, Andreas

2010-01-01

Heightened perception of facial cues is at the core of many theories of social behavior and its disorders. In the present study, we continuously measured electrocortical dynamics in human visual cortex, as evoked by happy, neutral, fearful, and angry faces. Thirty-seven participants endorsing high versus low generalized social anxiety (upper and lower tertiles of 2,104 screened undergraduates) viewed naturalistic faces flickering at 17.5 Hz to evoke steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs), recorded from 129 scalp electrodes. Electrophysiological data were evaluated in the time-frequency domain after linear source space projection using the minimum norm method. Source estimation indicated an early visual cortical origin of the face-evoked ssVEP, which showed sustained amplitude enhancement for emotional expressions specifically in individuals with pervasive social anxiety. Participants in the low symptom group showed no such sensitivity, and a correlational analysis across the entire sample revealed a strong relationship between self-reported interpersonal anxiety/avoidance and enhanced visual cortical response amplitude for emotional, versus neutral expressions. This pattern was maintained across the 3500 ms viewing epoch, suggesting that temporally sustained, heightened perceptual bias towards affective facial cues is associated with generalized social anxiety. PMID:20832490

Seeing is believing: information content and behavioural response to visual and chemical cues

PubMed Central

Gonzálvez, Francisco G.; Rodríguez-Gironés, Miguel A.

2013-01-01

Predator avoidance and foraging often pose conflicting demands. Animals can decrease mortality risk searching for predators, but searching decreases foraging time and hence intake. We used this principle to investigate how prey should use information to detect, assess and respond to predation risk from an optimal foraging perspective. A mathematical model showed that solitary bees should increase flower examination time in response to predator cues and that the rate of false alarms should be negatively correlated with the relative value of the flower explored. The predatory ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, and the harmless ant, Polyrhachis dives, differ in the profile of volatiles they emit and in their visual appearance. As predicted, the solitary bee Nomia strigata spent more time examining virgin flowers in presence of predator cues than in their absence. Furthermore, the proportion of flowers rejected decreased from morning to noon, as the relative value of virgin flowers increased. In addition, bees responded differently to visual and chemical cues. While chemical cues induced bees to search around flowers, bees detecting visual cues hovered in front of them. These strategies may allow prey to identify the nature of visual cues and to locate the source of chemical cues. PMID:23698013

Visual cues in low-level flight - Implications for pilotage, training, simulation, and enhanced/synthetic vision systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Foyle, David C.; Kaiser, Mary K.; Johnson, Walter W.

1992-01-01

This paper reviews some of the sources of visual information that are available in the out-the-window scene and describes how these visual cues are important for routine pilotage and training, as well as the development of simulator visual systems and enhanced or synthetic vision systems for aircraft cockpits. It is shown how these visual cues may change or disappear under environmental or sensor conditions, and how the visual scene can be augmented by advanced displays to capitalize on the pilot's excellent ability to extract visual information from the visual scene.

Organization principles in visual working memory: Evidence from sequential stimulus display.

PubMed

Gao, Zaifeng; Gao, Qiyang; Tang, Ning; Shui, Rende; Shen, Mowei

2016-01-01

Although the mechanisms of visual working memory (VWM) have been studied extensively in recent years, the active property of VWM has received less attention. In the current study, we examined how VWM integrates sequentially presented stimuli by focusing on the role of Gestalt principles, which are important organizing principles in perceptual integration. We manipulated the level of Gestalt cues among three or four sequentially presented objects that were memorized. The Gestalt principle could not emerge unless all the objects appeared together. We distinguished two hypotheses: a perception-alike hypothesis and an encoding-specificity hypothesis. The former predicts that the Gestalt cue will play a role in information integration within VWM; the latter predicts that the Gestalt cue will not operate within VWM. In four experiments, we demonstrated that collinearity (Experiment 1) and closure (Experiment 2) cues significantly improved VWM performance, and this facilitation was not affected by the testing manner (Experiment 3) or by adding extra colors to the memorized objects (Experiment 4). Finally, we re-established the Gestalt cue benefit with similarity cues (Experiment 5). These findings together suggest that VWM realizes and uses potential Gestalt principles within the stored representations, supporting a perception-alike hypothesis. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Role of somatosensory and vestibular cues in attenuating visually induced human postural sway

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Peterka, R. J.; Benolken, M. S.

1995-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the contribution of visual, vestibular, and somatosensory cues to the maintenance of stance in humans. Postural sway was induced by full-field, sinusoidal visual surround rotations about an axis at the level of the ankle joints. The influences of vestibular and somatosensory cues were characterized by comparing postural sway in normal and bilateral vestibular absent subjects in conditions that provided either accurate or inaccurate somatosensory orientation information. In normal subjects, the amplitude of visually induced sway reached a saturation level as stimulus amplitude increased. The saturation amplitude decreased with increasing stimulus frequency. No saturation phenomena were observed in subjects with vestibular loss, implying that vestibular cues were responsible for the saturation phenomenon. For visually induced sways below the saturation level, the stimulus-response curves for both normal subjects and subjects experiencing vestibular loss were nearly identical, implying (1) that normal subjects were not using vestibular information to attenuate their visually induced sway, possibly because sway was below a vestibular-related threshold level, and (2) that subjects with vestibular loss did not utilize visual cues to a greater extent than normal subjects; that is, a fundamental change in visual system "gain" was not used to compensate for a vestibular deficit. An unexpected finding was that the amplitude of body sway induced by visual surround motion could be almost 3 times greater than the amplitude of the visual stimulus in normal subjects and subjects with vestibular loss. This occurred in conditions where somatosensory cues were inaccurate and at low stimulus amplitudes. A control system model of visually induced postural sway was developed to explain this finding. For both subject groups, the amplitude of visually induced sway was smaller by a factor of about 4 in tests where somatosensory cues provided accurate versus inaccurate orientation information. This implied (1) that the subjects experiencing vestibular loss did not utilize somatosensory cues to a greater extent than normal subjects; that is, changes in somatosensory system "gain" were not used to compensate for a vestibular deficit, and (2) that the threshold for the use of vestibular cues in normal subjects was apparently lower in test conditions where somatosensory cues were providing accurate orientation information.

Deaf children's use of clear visual cues in mindreading.

PubMed

Hao, Jian; Su, Yanjie

2014-11-01

Previous studies show that typically developing 4-year old children can understand other people's false beliefs but that deaf children of hearing families have difficulty in understanding false beliefs until the age of approximately 13. Because false beliefs are implicit mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues in standard false belief tasks, the present study examines the hypothesis that the deaf children's developmental delay in understanding false beliefs may reflect their difficulty in understanding a spectrum of mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues. Nine- to 13-year-old deaf children of hearing families and 4-6-year-old typically developing children completed false belief tasks and emotion recognition tasks under different cue conditions. The results indicated that after controlling for the effect of the children's language abilities, the deaf children inferred other people's false beliefs as accurately as the typically developing children when other people's false beliefs were clearly expressed through their eye-gaze direction. However, the deaf children performed worse than the typically developing children when asked to infer false beliefs with ambiguous or no eye-gaze cues. Moreover, the deaf children were capable of recognizing other people's emotions that were clearly conveyed by their facial or body expressions. The results suggest that although theory-based or simulation-based mental state understanding is typical of hearing children's theory of mind mechanism, for deaf children of hearing families, clear cue-based mental state understanding may be their specific theory of mind mechanism. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Out of sight, out of mind: racial retrieval cues increase the accessibility of social justice concepts.

PubMed

Salter, Phia S; Kelley, Nicholas J; Molina, Ludwin E; Thai, Luyen T

2017-09-01

Photographs provide critical retrieval cues for personal remembering, but few studies have considered this phenomenon at the collective level. In this research, we examined the psychological consequences of visual attention to the presence (or absence) of racially charged retrieval cues within American racial segregation photographs. We hypothesised that attention to racial retrieval cues embedded in historical photographs would increase social justice concept accessibility. In Study 1, we recorded gaze patterns with an eye-tracker among participants viewing images that contained racial retrieval cues or were digitally manipulated to remove them. In Study 2, we manipulated participants' gaze behaviour by either directing visual attention toward racial retrieval cues, away from racial retrieval cues, or directing attention within photographs where racial retrieval cues were missing. Across Studies 1 and 2, visual attention to racial retrieval cues in photographs documenting historical segregation predicted social justice concept accessibility.

Capture of Xylosandrus crassiusculus and other Scolytinae (Coleoptera, Curculionidae) in response to visual and volatile cues

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

In June and July 2011 traps were deployed in Tuskegee National Forest, Macon County, Alabama to test the influence of chemical and visual cues on for the capture of bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae). \\using chemical and visual cues. The first experiment investigated t...

Impact of Visual, Vocal, and Lexical Cues on Judgments of Counselor Qualities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strahan, Carole; Zytowski, Donald G.

1976-01-01

Undergraduate students (N=130) rated Carl Rogers via visual, lexical, vocal, or vocal-lexical communication channels. Lexical cues were more important in creating favorable impressions among females. Subsequent exposure to combined visual-vocal-lexical cues resulted in warmer and less distant ratings, but not on a consistent basis. (Author)

Visual and auditory cue integration for the generation of saccadic eye movements in monkeys and lever pressing in humans.

PubMed

Schiller, Peter H; Kwak, Michelle C; Slocum, Warren M

2012-08-01

This study examined how effectively visual and auditory cues can be integrated in the brain for the generation of motor responses. The latencies with which saccadic eye movements are produced in humans and monkeys form, under certain conditions, a bimodal distribution, the first mode of which has been termed express saccades. In humans, a much higher percentage of express saccades is generated when both visual and auditory cues are provided compared with the single presentation of these cues [H. C. Hughes et al. (1994) J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform., 20, 131-153]. In this study, we addressed two questions: first, do monkeys also integrate visual and auditory cues for express saccade generation as do humans and second, does such integration take place in humans when, instead of eye movements, the task is to press levers with fingers? Our results show that (i) in monkeys, as in humans, the combined visual and auditory cues generate a much higher percentage of express saccades than do singly presented cues and (ii) the latencies with which levers are pressed by humans are shorter when both visual and auditory cues are provided compared with the presentation of single cues, but the distribution in all cases is unimodal; response latencies in the express range seen in the execution of saccadic eye movements are not obtained with lever pressing. © 2012 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience © 2012 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Gaze cueing by pareidolia faces.

PubMed

Takahashi, Kohske; Watanabe, Katsumi

2013-01-01

Visual images that are not faces are sometimes perceived as faces (the pareidolia phenomenon). While the pareidolia phenomenon provides people with a strong impression that a face is present, it is unclear how deeply pareidolia faces are processed as faces. In the present study, we examined whether a shift in spatial attention would be produced by gaze cueing of face-like objects. A robust cueing effect was observed when the face-like objects were perceived as faces. The magnitude of the cueing effect was comparable between the face-like objects and a cartoon face. However, the cueing effect was eliminated when the observer did not perceive the objects as faces. These results demonstrated that pareidolia faces do more than give the impression of the presence of faces; indeed, they trigger an additional face-specific attentional process.

Gaze cueing by pareidolia faces

PubMed Central

Takahashi, Kohske; Watanabe, Katsumi

2013-01-01

Visual images that are not faces are sometimes perceived as faces (the pareidolia phenomenon). While the pareidolia phenomenon provides people with a strong impression that a face is present, it is unclear how deeply pareidolia faces are processed as faces. In the present study, we examined whether a shift in spatial attention would be produced by gaze cueing of face-like objects. A robust cueing effect was observed when the face-like objects were perceived as faces. The magnitude of the cueing effect was comparable between the face-like objects and a cartoon face. However, the cueing effect was eliminated when the observer did not perceive the objects as faces. These results demonstrated that pareidolia faces do more than give the impression of the presence of faces; indeed, they trigger an additional face-specific attentional process. PMID:25165505

A Rotational Motion Perception Neural Network Based on Asymmetric Spatiotemporal Visual Information Processing.

PubMed

Hu, Bin; Yue, Shigang; Zhang, Zhuhong

All complex motion patterns can be decomposed into several elements, including translation, expansion/contraction, and rotational motion. In biological vision systems, scientists have found that specific types of visual neurons have specific preferences to each of the three motion elements. There are computational models on translation and expansion/contraction perceptions; however, little has been done in the past to create computational models for rotational motion perception. To fill this gap, we proposed a neural network that utilizes a specific spatiotemporal arrangement of asymmetric lateral inhibited direction selective neural networks (DSNNs) for rotational motion perception. The proposed neural network consists of two parts-presynaptic and postsynaptic parts. In the presynaptic part, there are a number of lateral inhibited DSNNs to extract directional visual cues. In the postsynaptic part, similar to the arrangement of the directional columns in the cerebral cortex, these direction selective neurons are arranged in a cyclic order to perceive rotational motion cues. In the postsynaptic network, the delayed excitation from each direction selective neuron is multiplied by the gathered excitation from this neuron and its unilateral counterparts depending on which rotation, clockwise (cw) or counter-cw (ccw), to perceive. Systematic experiments under various conditions and settings have been carried out and validated the robustness and reliability of the proposed neural network in detecting cw or ccw rotational motion. This research is a critical step further toward dynamic visual information processing.All complex motion patterns can be decomposed into several elements, including translation, expansion/contraction, and rotational motion. In biological vision systems, scientists have found that specific types of visual neurons have specific preferences to each of the three motion elements. There are computational models on translation and expansion/contraction perceptions; however, little has been done in the past to create computational models for rotational motion perception. To fill this gap, we proposed a neural network that utilizes a specific spatiotemporal arrangement of asymmetric lateral inhibited direction selective neural networks (DSNNs) for rotational motion perception. The proposed neural network consists of two parts-presynaptic and postsynaptic parts. In the presynaptic part, there are a number of lateral inhibited DSNNs to extract directional visual cues. In the postsynaptic part, similar to the arrangement of the directional columns in the cerebral cortex, these direction selective neurons are arranged in a cyclic order to perceive rotational motion cues. In the postsynaptic network, the delayed excitation from each direction selective neuron is multiplied by the gathered excitation from this neuron and its unilateral counterparts depending on which rotation, clockwise (cw) or counter-cw (ccw), to perceive. Systematic experiments under various conditions and settings have been carried out and validated the robustness and reliability of the proposed neural network in detecting cw or ccw rotational motion. This research is a critical step further toward dynamic visual information processing.

Ocean acidification and responses to predators: can sensory redundancy reduce the apparent impacts of elevated CO2 on fish?

PubMed

Lönnstedt, Oona M; Munday, Philip L; McCormick, Mark I; Ferrari, Maud C O; Chivers, Douglas P

2013-09-01

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere and surface ocean are rising at an unprecedented rate due to sustained and accelerating anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Previous studies have documented that exposure to elevated CO2 causes impaired antipredator behavior by coral reef fish in response to chemical cues associated with predation. However, whether ocean acidification will impair visual recognition of common predators is currently unknown. This study examined whether sensory compensation in the presence of multiple sensory cues could reduce the impacts of ocean acidification on antipredator responses. When exposed to seawater enriched with levels of CO2 predicted for the end of this century (880 μatm CO2), prey fish completely lost their response to conspecific alarm cues. While the visual response to a predator was also affected by high CO2, it was not entirely lost. Fish exposed to elevated CO2, spent less time in shelter than current-day controls and did not exhibit antipredator signaling behavior (bobbing) when multiple predator cues were present. They did, however, reduce feeding rate and activity levels to the same level as controls. The results suggest that the response of fish to visual cues may partially compensate for the lack of response to chemical cues. Fish subjected to elevated CO2 levels, and exposed to chemical and visual predation cues simultaneously, responded with the same intensity as controls exposed to visual cues alone. However, these responses were still less than control fish simultaneously exposed to chemical and visual predation cues. Consequently, visual cues improve antipredator behavior of CO2 exposed fish, but do not fully compensate for the loss of response to chemical cues. The reduced ability to correctly respond to a predator will have ramifications for survival in encounters with predators in the field, which could have repercussions for population replenishment in acidified oceans.

Contextual Cueing Effect in Spatial Layout Defined by Binocular Disparity

PubMed Central

Zhao, Guang; Zhuang, Qian; Ma, Jie; Tu, Shen; Liu, Qiang; Sun, Hong-jin

2017-01-01

Repeated visual context induces higher search efficiency, revealing a contextual cueing effect, which depends on the association between the target and its visual context. In this study, participants performed a visual search task where search items were presented with depth information defined by binocular disparity. When the 3-dimensional (3D) configurations were repeated over blocks, the contextual cueing effect was obtained (Experiment 1). When depth information was in chaos over repeated configurations, visual search was not facilitated and the contextual cueing effect largely crippled (Experiment 2). However, when we made the search items within a tiny random displacement in the 2-dimentional (2D) plane but maintained the depth information constant, the contextual cueing was preserved (Experiment 3). We concluded that the contextual cueing effect was robust in the context provided by 3D space with stereoscopic information, and more importantly, the visual system prioritized stereoscopic information in learning of spatial information when depth information was available. PMID:28912739

Contextual Cueing Effect in Spatial Layout Defined by Binocular Disparity.

PubMed

Zhao, Guang; Zhuang, Qian; Ma, Jie; Tu, Shen; Liu, Qiang; Sun, Hong-Jin

2017-01-01

Repeated visual context induces higher search efficiency, revealing a contextual cueing effect, which depends on the association between the target and its visual context. In this study, participants performed a visual search task where search items were presented with depth information defined by binocular disparity. When the 3-dimensional (3D) configurations were repeated over blocks, the contextual cueing effect was obtained (Experiment 1). When depth information was in chaos over repeated configurations, visual search was not facilitated and the contextual cueing effect largely crippled (Experiment 2). However, when we made the search items within a tiny random displacement in the 2-dimentional (2D) plane but maintained the depth information constant, the contextual cueing was preserved (Experiment 3). We concluded that the contextual cueing effect was robust in the context provided by 3D space with stereoscopic information, and more importantly, the visual system prioritized stereoscopic information in learning of spatial information when depth information was available.

A different outlook on time: visual and auditory month names elicit different mental vantage points for a time-space synaesthete.

PubMed

Jarick, Michelle; Dixon, Mike J; Stewart, Mark T; Maxwell, Emily C; Smilek, Daniel

2009-01-01

Synaesthesia is a fascinating condition whereby individuals report extraordinary experiences when presented with ordinary stimuli. Here we examined an individual (L) who experiences time units (i.e., months of the year and hours of the day) as occupying specific spatial locations (January is 30 degrees to the left of midline). This form of time-space synaesthesia has been recently investigated by Smilek et al. (2007) who demonstrated that synaesthetic time-space associations are highly consistent, occur regardless of intention, and can direct spatial attention. We extended this work by showing that for the synaesthete L, her time-space vantage point changes depending on whether the time units are seen or heard. For example, when L sees the word JANUARY, she reports experiencing January on her left side, however when she hears the word "January" she experiences the month on her right side. L's subjective reports were validated using a spatial cueing paradigm. The names of months were centrally presented followed by targets on the left or right. L was faster at detecting targets in validly cued locations relative to invalidly cued locations both for visually presented cues (January orients attention to the left) and for aurally presented cues (January orients attention to the right). We replicated this difference in visual and aural cueing effects using hour of the day. Our findings support previous research showing that time-space synaesthesia can bias visual spatial attention, and further suggest that for this synaesthete, time-space associations differ depending on whether they are visually or aurally induced.

A magnetoencephalography study of visual processing of pain anticipation.

PubMed

Machado, Andre G; Gopalakrishnan, Raghavan; Plow, Ela B; Burgess, Richard C; Mosher, John C

2014-07-15

Anticipating pain is important for avoiding injury; however, in chronic pain patients, anticipatory behavior can become maladaptive, leading to sensitization and limiting function. Knowledge of networks involved in pain anticipation and conditioning over time could help devise novel, better-targeted therapies. With the use of magnetoencephalography, we evaluated in 10 healthy subjects the neural processing of pain anticipation. Anticipatory cortical activity elicited by consecutive visual cues that signified imminent painful stimulus was compared with cues signifying nonpainful and no stimulus. We found that the neural processing of visually evoked pain anticipation involves the primary visual cortex along with cingulate and frontal regions. Visual cortex could quickly and independently encode and discriminate between visual cues associated with pain anticipation and no pain during preconscious phases following object presentation. When evaluating the effect of task repetition on participating cortical areas, we found that activity of prefrontal and cingulate regions was mostly prominent early on when subjects were still naive to a cue's contextual meaning. Visual cortical activity was significant throughout later phases. Although visual cortex may precisely and time efficiently decode cues anticipating pain or no pain, prefrontal areas establish the context associated with each cue. These findings have important implications toward processes involved in pain anticipation and maladaptive pain conditioning. Copyright © 2014 the American Physiological Society.

Unconscious cues bias first saccades in a free-saccade task.

PubMed

Huang, Yu-Feng; Tan, Edlyn Gui Fang; Soon, Chun Siong; Hsieh, Po-Jang

2014-10-01

Visual-spatial attention can be biased towards salient visual information without visual awareness. It is unclear, however, whether such bias can further influence free-choices such as saccades in a free viewing task. In our experiment, we presented visual cues below awareness threshold immediately before people made free saccades. Our results showed that masked cues could influence the direction and latency of the first free saccade, suggesting that salient visual information can unconsciously influence free actions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Suggested Interactivity: Seeking Perceived Affordances for Information Visualization.

PubMed

Boy, Jeremy; Eveillard, Louis; Detienne, Françoise; Fekete, Jean-Daniel

2016-01-01

In this article, we investigate methods for suggesting the interactivity of online visualizations embedded with text. We first assess the need for such methods by conducting three initial experiments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. We then present a design space for Suggested Interactivity (i. e., visual cues used as perceived affordances-SI), based on a survey of 382 HTML5 and visualization websites. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of three SI cues we designed for suggesting the interactivity of bar charts embedded with text. Our results show that only one cue (SI3) was successful in inciting participants to interact with the visualizations, and we hypothesize this is because this particular cue provided feedforward.

Neuropsychological implications of selective attentional functioning in psychopathic offenders.

PubMed

Mayer, Andrew R; Kosson, David S; Bedrick, Edward J

2006-09-01

Several core characteristics of the psychopathic personality disorder (i.e., impulsivity, failure to attend to interpersonal cues) suggest that psychopaths suffer from disordered attention. However, there is mixed evidence from the cognitive literature as to whether they exhibit superior or deficient selective attention, which has led to the formation of several distinct theories of attentional functioning in psychopathy. The present experiment investigated participants' abilities to purposely allocate attentional resources on the basis of auditory or visual linguistic information and directly tested both theories of deficient or superior selective attention in psychopathy. Specifically, 91 male inmates at a county jail were presented with either auditory or visual linguistic cues (with and without distractors) that correctly indicated the position of an upcoming visual target in 75% of the trials. The results indicated that psychopaths did not exhibit evidence of superior selective attention in any of the conditions but were generally less efficient in shifting attention on the basis of linguistic cues, especially in regard to auditory information. Implications for understanding psychopaths' cognitive functioning and possible neuropsychological deficits are addressed. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Visual speech influences speech perception immediately but not automatically.

PubMed

Mitterer, Holger; Reinisch, Eva

2017-02-01

Two experiments examined the time course of the use of auditory and visual speech cues to spoken word recognition using an eye-tracking paradigm. Results of the first experiment showed that the use of visual speech cues from lipreading is reduced if concurrently presented pictures require a division of attentional resources. This reduction was evident even when listeners' eye gaze was on the speaker rather than the (static) pictures. Experiment 2 used a deictic hand gesture to foster attention to the speaker. At the same time, the visual processing load was reduced by keeping the visual display constant over a fixed number of successive trials. Under these conditions, the visual speech cues from lipreading were used. Moreover, the eye-tracking data indicated that visual information was used immediately and even earlier than auditory information. In combination, these data indicate that visual speech cues are not used automatically, but if they are used, they are used immediately.

Retrospective cues based on object features improve visual working memory performance in older adults.

PubMed

Gilchrist, Amanda L; Duarte, Audrey; Verhaeghen, Paul

2016-01-01

Research with younger adults has shown that retrospective cues can be used to orient top-down attention toward relevant items in working memory. We examined whether older adults could take advantage of these cues to improve memory performance. Younger and older adults were presented with visual arrays of five colored shapes; during maintenance, participants were presented either with an informative cue based on an object feature (here, object shape or color) that would be probed, or with an uninformative, neutral cue. Although older adults were less accurate overall, both age groups benefited from the presentation of an informative, feature-based cue relative to a neutral cue. Surprisingly, we also observed differences in the effectiveness of shape versus color cues and their effects upon post-cue memory load. These results suggest that older adults can use top-down attention to remove irrelevant items from visual working memory, provided that task-relevant features function as cues.

Can Short Duration Visual Cues Influence Students' Reasoning and Eye Movements in Physics Problems?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madsen, Adrian; Rouinfar, Amy; Larson, Adam M.; Loschky, Lester C.; Rebello, N. Sanjay

2013-01-01

We investigate the effects of visual cueing on students' eye movements and reasoning on introductory physics problems with diagrams. Participants in our study were randomly assigned to either the cued or noncued conditions, which differed by whether the participants saw conceptual physics problems overlaid with dynamic visual cues. Students in the…

Sensitivity to Visual Prosodic Cues in Signers and Nonsigners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brentari, Diane; Gonzalez, Carolina; Seidl, Amanda; Wilbur, Ronnie

2011-01-01

Three studies are presented in this paper that address how nonsigners perceive the visual prosodic cues in a sign language. In Study 1, adult American nonsigners and users of American Sign Language (ASL) were compared on their sensitivity to the visual cues in ASL Intonational Phrases. In Study 2, hearing, nonsigning American infants were tested…

Enhancing Learning from Dynamic and Static Visualizations by Means of Cueing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuhl, Tim; Scheiter, Katharina; Gerjets, Peter

2012-01-01

The current study investigated whether learning from dynamic and two presentation formats for static visualizations can be enhanced by means of cueing. One hundred and fifty university students were randomly assigned to six conditions, resulting from a 2x3-design, with cueing (with/without) and type of visualization (dynamic, static-sequential,…

Con-Text: Text Detection for Fine-grained Object Classification.

PubMed

Karaoglu, Sezer; Tao, Ran; van Gemert, Jan C; Gevers, Theo

2017-05-24

This work focuses on fine-grained object classification using recognized scene text in natural images. While the state-of-the-art relies on visual cues only, this paper is the first work which proposes to combine textual and visual cues. Another novelty is the textual cue extraction. Unlike the state-of-the-art text detection methods, we focus more on the background instead of text regions. Once text regions are detected, they are further processed by two methods to perform text recognition i.e. ABBYY commercial OCR engine and a state-of-the-art character recognition algorithm. Then, to perform textual cue encoding, bi- and trigrams are formed between the recognized characters by considering the proposed spatial pairwise constraints. Finally, extracted visual and textual cues are combined for fine-grained classification. The proposed method is validated on four publicly available datasets: ICDAR03, ICDAR13, Con-Text and Flickr-logo. We improve the state-of-the-art end-to-end character recognition by a large margin of 15% on ICDAR03. We show that textual cues are useful in addition to visual cues for fine-grained classification. We show that textual cues are also useful for logo retrieval. Adding textual cues outperforms visual- and textual-only in fine-grained classification (70.7% to 60.3%) and logo retrieval (57.4% to 54.8%).

Soldier-Robot Team Communication: An Investigation of Exogenous Orienting Visual Display Cues and Robot Reporting Preferences

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-02-12

usability preference. Results under the second focus showed that the frequency with which participants expected status updates differed depending upon the...assistance requests for both navigational route and building selection depending on the type of exogenous visual cues displayed? 3) Is there a difference...in response time to visual reports for both navigational route and building selection depending on the type of exogenous visual cues displayed? 4

Do you see what I hear? Vantage point preference and visual dominance in a time-space synaesthete.

PubMed

Jarick, Michelle; Stewart, Mark T; Smilek, Daniel; Dixon, Michael J

2013-01-01

Time-space synaesthetes "see" time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen vs. heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with L's preferred "auditory" viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the "preferred" auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009).

Do you see what I hear? Vantage point preference and visual dominance in a time-space synaesthete

PubMed Central

Jarick, Michelle; Stewart, Mark T.; Smilek, Daniel; Dixon, Michael J.

2013-01-01

Time-space synaesthetes “see” time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen vs. heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with L's preferred “auditory” viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the “preferred” auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009). PMID:24137140

Does Vaping in E-Cigarette Advertisements Affect Tobacco Smoking Urge, Intentions, and Perceptions in Daily, Intermittent, and Former Smokers?

PubMed

Maloney, Erin K; Cappella, Joseph N

2016-01-01

Visual depictions of vaping in electronic cigarette advertisements may serve as smoking cues to smokers and former smokers, increasing urge to smoke and smoking behavior, and decreasing self-efficacy, attitudes, and intentions to quit or abstain. After assessing baseline urge to smoke, 301 daily smokers, 272 intermittent smokers, and 311 former smokers were randomly assigned to view three e-cigarette commercials with vaping visuals (the cue condition) or without vaping visuals (the no-cue condition), or to answer unrelated media use questions (the no-ad condition). Participants then answered a posttest questionnaire assessing the outcome variables of interest. Relative to other conditions, in the cue condition, daily smokers reported greater urge to smoke a tobacco cigarette and a marginally significantly greater incidence of actually smoking a tobacco cigarette during the experiment. Former smokers in the cue condition reported lower intentions to abstain from smoking than former smokers in other conditions. No significant differences emerged among intermittent smokers across conditions. These data suggest that visual depictions of vaping in e-cigarette commercials increase daily smokers' urge to smoke cigarettes and may lead to more actual smoking behavior. For former smokers, these cues in advertising may undermine abstinence efforts. Intermittent smokers did not appear to be reactive to these cues. A lack of significant differences between participants in the no-cue and no-ad conditions compared to the cue condition suggests that visual depictions of e-cigarettes and vaping function as smoking cues, and cue reactivity is the mechanism through which these effects were obtained.

Sight or Scent: Lemur Sensory Reliance in Detecting Food Quality Varies with Feeding Ecology

PubMed Central

Rushmore, Julie; Leonhardt, Sara D.; Drea, Christine M.

2012-01-01

Visual and olfactory cues provide important information to foragers, yet we know little about species differences in sensory reliance during food selection. In a series of experimental foraging studies, we examined the relative reliance on vision versus olfaction in three diurnal, primate species with diverse feeding ecologies, including folivorous Coquerel's sifakas (Propithecus coquereli), frugivorous ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata spp), and generalist ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta). We used animals with known color-vision status and foods for which different maturation stages (and hence quality) produce distinct visual and olfactory cues (the latter determined chemically). We first showed that lemurs preferentially selected high-quality foods over low-quality foods when visual and olfactory cues were simultaneously available for both food types. Next, using a novel apparatus in a series of discrimination trials, we either manipulated food quality (while holding sensory cues constant) or manipulated sensory cues (while holding food quality constant). Among our study subjects that showed relatively strong preferences for high-quality foods, folivores required both sensory cues combined to reliably identify their preferred foods, whereas generalists could identify their preferred foods using either cue alone, and frugivores could identify their preferred foods using olfactory, but not visual, cues alone. Moreover, when only high-quality foods were available, folivores and generalists used visual rather than olfactory cues to select food, whereas frugivores used both cue types equally. Lastly, individuals in all three of the study species predominantly relied on sight when choosing between low-quality foods, but species differed in the strength of their sensory biases. Our results generally emphasize visual over olfactory reliance in foraging lemurs, but we suggest that the relative sensory reliance of animals may vary with their feeding ecology. PMID:22870229

The time course of protecting a visual memory representation from perceptual interference

PubMed Central

van Moorselaar, Dirk; Gunseli, Eren; Theeuwes, Jan; N. L. Olivers, Christian

2015-01-01

Cueing a remembered item during the delay of a visual memory task leads to enhanced recall of the cued item compared to when an item is not cued. This cueing benefit has been proposed to reflect attention within visual memory being shifted from a distributed mode to a focused mode, thus protecting the cued item against perceptual interference. Here we investigated the dynamics of building up this mnemonic protection against visual interference by systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue onset and a subsequent visual mask in an orientation memory task. Experiment 1 showed that a cue counteracted the deteriorating effect of pattern masks. Experiment 2 demonstrated that building up this protection is a continuous process that is completed in approximately half a second after cue onset. The similarities between shifting attention in perceptual and remembered space are discussed. PMID:25628555

Accessing long-term memory representations during visual change detection.

PubMed

Beck, Melissa R; van Lamsweerde, Amanda E

2011-04-01

In visual change detection tasks, providing a cue to the change location concurrent with the test image (post-cue) can improve performance, suggesting that, without a cue, not all encoded representations are automatically accessed. Our studies examined the possibility that post-cues can encourage the retrieval of representations stored in long-term memory (LTM). Participants detected changes in images composed of familiar objects. Performance was better when the cue directed attention to the post-change object. Supporting the role of LTM in the cue effect, the effect was similar regardless of whether the cue was presented during the inter-stimulus interval, concurrent with the onset of the test image, or after the onset of the test image. Furthermore, the post-cue effect and LTM performance were similarly influenced by encoding time. These findings demonstrate that monitoring the visual world for changes does not automatically engage LTM retrieval.

Bow Your Head in Shame, or, Hold Your Head Up with Pride: Semantic Processing of Self-Esteem Concepts Orients Attention Vertically.

PubMed

Taylor, J Eric T; Lam, Timothy K; Chasteen, Alison L; Pratt, Jay

2015-01-01

Embodied cognition holds that abstract concepts are grounded in perceptual-motor simulations. If a given embodied metaphor maps onto a spatial representation, then thinking of that concept should bias the allocation of attention. In this study, we used positive and negative self-esteem words to examine two properties of conceptual cueing. First, we tested the orientation-specificity hypothesis, which predicts that conceptual cues should selectively activate certain spatial axes (in this case, valenced self-esteem concepts should activate vertical space), instead of any spatial continuum. Second, we tested whether conceptual cueing requires semantic processing, or if it can be achieved with shallow visual processing of the cue words. Participants viewed centrally presented words consisting of high or low self-esteem traits (e.g., brave, timid) before detecting a target above or below the cue in the vertical condition, or on the left or right of the word in the horizontal condition. Participants were faster to detect targets when their location was compatible with the valence of the word cues, but only in the vertical condition. Moreover, this effect was observed when participants processed the semantics of the word, but not when processing its orthography. The results show that conceptual cueing by spatial metaphors is orientation-specific, and that an explicit consideration of the word cues' semantics is required for conceptual cueing to occur.

Low-level visual attention and its relation to joint attention in autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Jaworski, Jessica L Bean; Eigsti, Inge-Marie

2017-04-01

Visual attention is integral to social interaction and is a critical building block for development in other domains (e.g., language). Furthermore, atypical attention (especially joint attention) is one of the earliest markers of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study assesses low-level visual attention and its relation to social attentional processing in youth with ASD and typically developing (TD) youth, aged 7 to 18 years. The findings indicate difficulty overriding incorrect attentional cues in ASD, particularly with non-social (arrow) cues relative to social (face) cues. The findings also show reduced competition in ASD from cues that remain on-screen. Furthermore, social attention, autism severity, and age were all predictors of competing cue processing. The results suggest that individuals with ASD may be biased towards speeded rather than accurate responding, and further, that reduced engagement with visual information may impede responses to visual attentional cues. Once attention is engaged, individuals with ASD appear to interpret directional cues as meaningful. These findings from a controlled, experimental paradigm were mirrored in results from an ecologically valid measure of social attention. Attentional difficulties may be exacerbated during the complex and dynamic experience of actual social interaction. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Loneliness and Hypervigilance to Social Cues in Females: An Eye-Tracking Study

PubMed Central

Lodder, Gerine M. A.; Scholte, Ron H. J.; Clemens, Ivar A. H.; Engels, Rutger C. M. E.; Goossens, Luc; Verhagen, Maaike

2015-01-01

The goal of the present study was to examine whether lonely individuals differ from nonlonely individuals in their overt visual attention to social cues. Previous studies showed that loneliness was related to biased post-attentive processing of social cues (e.g., negative interpretation bias), but research on whether lonely and nonlonely individuals also show differences in an earlier information processing stage (gazing behavior) is very limited. A sample of 25 lonely and 25 nonlonely students took part in an eye-tracking study consisting of four tasks. We measured gazing (duration, number of fixations and first fixation) at the eyes, nose and mouth region of faces expressing emotions (Task 1), at emotion quadrants (anger, fear, happiness and neutral expression) (Task 2), at quadrants with positive and negative social and nonsocial images (Task 3), and at the facial area of actors in video clips with positive and negative content (Task 4). In general, participants tended to gaze most often and longest at areas that conveyed most social information, such as the eye region of the face (T1), and social images (T3). Participants gazed most often and longest at happy faces (T2) in still images, and more often and longer at the facial area in negative than in positive video clips (T4). No differences occurred between lonely and nonlonely participants in their gazing times and frequencies, nor at first fixations at social cues in the four different tasks. Based on this study, we found no evidence that overt visual attention to social cues differs between lonely and nonlonely individuals. This implies that biases in social information processing of lonely individuals may be limited to other phases of social information processing. Alternatively, biased overt attention to social cues may only occur under specific conditions, for specific stimuli or for specific lonely individuals. PMID:25915656

Phasic alertness cues modulate visual processing speed in healthy aging.

PubMed

Haupt, Marleen; Sorg, Christian; Napiórkowski, Natan; Finke, Kathrin

2018-05-31

Warning signals temporarily increase the rate of visual information in younger participants and thus optimize perception in critical situations. It is unclear whether such important preparatory processes are preserved in healthy aging. We parametrically assessed the effects of auditory alertness cues on visual processing speed and their time course using a whole report paradigm based on the computational Theory of Visual Attention. We replicated prior findings of significant alerting benefits in younger adults. In conditions with short cue-target onset asynchronies, this effect was baseline-dependent. As younger participants with high baseline speed did not show a profit, an inverted U-shaped function of phasic alerting and visual processing speed was implied. Older adults also showed a significant cue-induced benefit. Bayesian analyses indicated that the cueing benefit on visual processing speed was comparably strong across age groups. Our results indicate that in aging individuals, comparable to younger ones, perception is active and increased expectancy of the appearance of a relevant stimulus can increase the rate of visual information uptake. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How a surgeon becomes superman by visualization of intelligently fused multi-modalities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Erat, Okan; Pauly, Olivier; Weidert, Simon; Thaller, Peter; Euler, Ekkehard; Mutschler, Wolf; Navab, Nassir; Fallavollita, Pascal

2013-03-01

Motivation: The existing visualization of the Camera augmented mobile C-arm (CamC) system does not have enough cues for depth information and presents the anatomical information in a confusing way to surgeons. Methods: We propose a method that segments anatomical information from X-ray and then augment it on the video images. To provide depth cues, pixels belonging to video images are classified as skin and object classes. The augmentation of anatomical information from X-ray is performed only when pixels have a larger probability of belonging to skin class. Results: We tested our algorithm by displaying the new visualization to 2 expert surgeons and 1 medical student during three surgical workflow sequences of the interlocking of intramedullary nail procedure, namely: skin incision, center punching, and drilling. Via a survey questionnaire, they were asked to assess the new visualization when compared to the current alphablending overlay image displayed by CamC. The participants all agreed (100%) that occlusion and instrument tip position detection were immediately improved with our technique. When asked if our visualization has potential to replace the existing alpha-blending overlay during interlocking procedures, all participants did not hesitate to suggest an immediate integration of the visualization for the correct navigation and guidance of the procedure. Conclusion: Current alpha blending visualizations lack proper depth cues and can be a source of confusion for the surgeons when performing surgery. Our visualization concept shows great potential in alleviating occlusion and facilitating clinician understanding during specific workflow steps of the intramedullary nailing procedure.

The Effects of Spatial Endogenous Pre-cueing across Eccentricities

PubMed Central

Feng, Jing; Spence, Ian

2017-01-01

Frequently, we use expectations about likely locations of a target to guide the allocation of our attention. Despite the importance of this attentional process in everyday tasks, examination of pre-cueing effects on attention, particularly endogenous pre-cueing effects, has been relatively little explored outside an eccentricity of 20°. Given the visual field has functional subdivisions that attentional processes can differ significantly among the foveal, perifoveal, and more peripheral areas, how endogenous pre-cues that carry spatial information of targets influence our allocation of attention across a large visual field (especially in the more peripheral areas) remains unclear. We present two experiments examining how the expectation of the location of the target shapes the distribution of attention across eccentricities in the visual field. We measured participants’ ability to pick out a target among distractors in the visual field after the presentation of a highly valid cue indicating the size of the area in which the target was likely to occur, or the likely direction of the target (left or right side of the display). Our first experiment showed that participants had a higher target detection rate with faster responses, particularly at eccentricities of 20° and 30°. There was also a marginal advantage of pre-cueing effects when trials of the same size cue were blocked compared to when trials were mixed. Experiment 2 demonstrated a higher target detection rate when the target occurred at the cued direction. This pre-cueing effect was greater at larger eccentricities and with a longer cue-target interval. Our findings on the endogenous pre-cueing effects across a large visual area were summarized using a simple model to assist in conceptualizing the modifications of the distribution of attention over the visual field. We discuss our finding in light of cognitive penetration of perception, and highlight the importance of examining attentional process across a large area of the visual field. PMID:28638353

The Effects of Spatial Endogenous Pre-cueing across Eccentricities.

PubMed

Feng, Jing; Spence, Ian

2017-01-01

Frequently, we use expectations about likely locations of a target to guide the allocation of our attention. Despite the importance of this attentional process in everyday tasks, examination of pre-cueing effects on attention, particularly endogenous pre-cueing effects, has been relatively little explored outside an eccentricity of 20°. Given the visual field has functional subdivisions that attentional processes can differ significantly among the foveal, perifoveal, and more peripheral areas, how endogenous pre-cues that carry spatial information of targets influence our allocation of attention across a large visual field (especially in the more peripheral areas) remains unclear. We present two experiments examining how the expectation of the location of the target shapes the distribution of attention across eccentricities in the visual field. We measured participants' ability to pick out a target among distractors in the visual field after the presentation of a highly valid cue indicating the size of the area in which the target was likely to occur, or the likely direction of the target (left or right side of the display). Our first experiment showed that participants had a higher target detection rate with faster responses, particularly at eccentricities of 20° and 30°. There was also a marginal advantage of pre-cueing effects when trials of the same size cue were blocked compared to when trials were mixed. Experiment 2 demonstrated a higher target detection rate when the target occurred at the cued direction. This pre-cueing effect was greater at larger eccentricities and with a longer cue-target interval. Our findings on the endogenous pre-cueing effects across a large visual area were summarized using a simple model to assist in conceptualizing the modifications of the distribution of attention over the visual field. We discuss our finding in light of cognitive penetration of perception, and highlight the importance of examining attentional process across a large area of the visual field.

Haptic Cues Used for Outdoor Wayfinding by Individuals with Visual Impairments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koutsoklenis, Athanasios; Papadopoulos, Konstantinos

2014-01-01

Introduction: The study presented here examines which haptic cues individuals with visual impairments use more frequently and determines which of these cues are deemed by these individuals to be the most important for way-finding in urban environments. It also investigates the ways in which these haptic cues are used by individuals with visual…

Visual/motion cue mismatch in a coordinated roll maneuver

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shirachi, D. K.; Shirley, R. S.

1981-01-01

The effects of bandwidth differences between visual and motion cueing systems on pilot performance for a coordinated roll task were investigated. Visual and motion cue configurations which were acceptable and the effects of reduced motion cue scaling on pilot performance were studied to determine the scale reduction threshold for which pilot performance was significantly different from full scale pilot performance. It is concluded that: (1) the presence or absence of high frequency error information in the visual and/or motion display systems significantly affects pilot performance; and (2) the attenuation of motion scaling while maintaining other display dynamic characteristics constant, affects pilot performance.

Modulation of Neuronal Responses by Exogenous Attention in Macaque Primary Visual Cortex.

PubMed

Wang, Feng; Chen, Minggui; Yan, Yin; Zhaoping, Li; Li, Wu

2015-09-30

Visual perception is influenced by attention deployed voluntarily or triggered involuntarily by salient stimuli. Modulation of visual cortical processing by voluntary or endogenous attention has been extensively studied, but much less is known about how involuntary or exogenous attention affects responses of visual cortical neurons. Using implanted microelectrode arrays, we examined the effects of exogenous attention on neuronal responses in the primary visual cortex (V1) of awake monkeys. A bright annular cue was flashed either around the receptive fields of recorded neurons or in the opposite visual field to capture attention. A subsequent grating stimulus probed the cue-induced effects. In a fixation task, when the cue-to-probe stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was <240 ms, the cue induced a transient increase of neuronal responses to the probe at the cued location during 40-100 ms after the onset of neuronal responses to the probe. This facilitation diminished and disappeared after repeated presentations of the same cue but recurred for a new cue of a different color. In another task to detect the probe, relative shortening of monkey's reaction times for the validly cued probe depended on the SOA in a way similar to the cue-induced V1 facilitation, and the behavioral and physiological cueing effects remained after repeated practice. Flashing two cues simultaneously in the two opposite visual fields weakened or diminished both the physiological and behavioral cueing effects. Our findings indicate that exogenous attention significantly modulates V1 responses and that the modulation strength depends on both novelty and task relevance of the stimulus. Significance statement: Visual attention can be involuntarily captured by a sudden appearance of a conspicuous object, allowing rapid reactions to unexpected events of significance. The current study discovered a correlate of this effect in monkey primary visual cortex. An abrupt, salient, flash enhanced neuronal responses, and shortened the animal's reaction time, to a subsequent visual probe stimulus at the same location. However, the enhancement of the neural responses diminished after repeated exposures to this flash if the animal was not required to react to the probe. Moreover, a second, simultaneous, flash at another location weakened the neuronal and behavioral effects of the first one. These findings revealed, beyond the observations reported so far, the effects of exogenous attention in the brain. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/3513419-11$15.00/0.

Gender-Specificity of Initial and Controlled Visual Attention to Sexual Stimuli in Androphilic Women and Gynephilic Men

PubMed Central

Dawson, Samantha J.; Chivers, Meredith L.

2016-01-01

Research across groups and methods consistently finds a gender difference in patterns of specificity of genital response; however, empirically supported mechanisms to explain this difference are lacking. The information-processing model of sexual arousal posits that automatic and controlled cognitive processes are requisite for the generation of sexual responses. Androphilic women’s gender-nonspecific response patterns may be the result of sexually-relevant cues that are common to both preferred and nonpreferred genders capturing attention and initiating an automatic sexual response, whereas men’s attentional system may be biased towards the detection and response to sexually-preferred cues only. In the present study, we used eye tracking to assess visual attention to sexually-preferred and nonpreferred cues in a sample of androphilic women and gynephilic men. Results support predictions from the information-processing model regarding gendered processing of sexual stimuli in men and women. Men’s initial attention patterns were gender-specific, whereas women’s were nonspecific. In contrast, both men and women exhibited gender-specific patterns of controlled attention, although this effect was stronger among men. Finally, measures of attention and self-reported attraction were positively related in both men and women. These findings are discussed in the context of the information-processing model and evolutionary mechanisms that may have evolved to promote gendered attentional systems. PMID:27088358

Audio-Visual and Meaningful Semantic Context Enhancements in Older and Younger Adults.

PubMed

Smayda, Kirsten E; Van Engen, Kristin J; Maddox, W Todd; Chandrasekaran, Bharath

2016-01-01

Speech perception is critical to everyday life. Oftentimes noise can degrade a speech signal; however, because of the cues available to the listener, such as visual and semantic cues, noise rarely prevents conversations from continuing. The interaction of visual and semantic cues in aiding speech perception has been studied in young adults, but the extent to which these two cues interact for older adults has not been studied. To investigate the effect of visual and semantic cues on speech perception in older and younger adults, we recruited forty-five young adults (ages 18-35) and thirty-three older adults (ages 60-90) to participate in a speech perception task. Participants were presented with semantically meaningful and anomalous sentences in audio-only and audio-visual conditions. We hypothesized that young adults would outperform older adults across SNRs, modalities, and semantic contexts. In addition, we hypothesized that both young and older adults would receive a greater benefit from a semantically meaningful context in the audio-visual relative to audio-only modality. We predicted that young adults would receive greater visual benefit in semantically meaningful contexts relative to anomalous contexts. However, we predicted that older adults could receive a greater visual benefit in either semantically meaningful or anomalous contexts. Results suggested that in the most supportive context, that is, semantically meaningful sentences presented in the audiovisual modality, older adults performed similarly to young adults. In addition, both groups received the same amount of visual and meaningful benefit. Lastly, across groups, a semantically meaningful context provided more benefit in the audio-visual modality relative to the audio-only modality, and the presence of visual cues provided more benefit in semantically meaningful contexts relative to anomalous contexts. These results suggest that older adults can perceive speech as well as younger adults when both semantic and visual cues are available to the listener.

Audio-Visual and Meaningful Semantic Context Enhancements in Older and Younger Adults

PubMed Central

Smayda, Kirsten E.; Van Engen, Kristin J.; Maddox, W. Todd; Chandrasekaran, Bharath

2016-01-01

Speech perception is critical to everyday life. Oftentimes noise can degrade a speech signal; however, because of the cues available to the listener, such as visual and semantic cues, noise rarely prevents conversations from continuing. The interaction of visual and semantic cues in aiding speech perception has been studied in young adults, but the extent to which these two cues interact for older adults has not been studied. To investigate the effect of visual and semantic cues on speech perception in older and younger adults, we recruited forty-five young adults (ages 18–35) and thirty-three older adults (ages 60–90) to participate in a speech perception task. Participants were presented with semantically meaningful and anomalous sentences in audio-only and audio-visual conditions. We hypothesized that young adults would outperform older adults across SNRs, modalities, and semantic contexts. In addition, we hypothesized that both young and older adults would receive a greater benefit from a semantically meaningful context in the audio-visual relative to audio-only modality. We predicted that young adults would receive greater visual benefit in semantically meaningful contexts relative to anomalous contexts. However, we predicted that older adults could receive a greater visual benefit in either semantically meaningful or anomalous contexts. Results suggested that in the most supportive context, that is, semantically meaningful sentences presented in the audiovisual modality, older adults performed similarly to young adults. In addition, both groups received the same amount of visual and meaningful benefit. Lastly, across groups, a semantically meaningful context provided more benefit in the audio-visual modality relative to the audio-only modality, and the presence of visual cues provided more benefit in semantically meaningful contexts relative to anomalous contexts. These results suggest that older adults can perceive speech as well as younger adults when both semantic and visual cues are available to the listener. PMID:27031343

Cannabis cue reactivity and craving among never, infrequent and heavy cannabis users.

PubMed

Henry, Erika A; Kaye, Jesse T; Bryan, Angela D; Hutchison, Kent E; Ito, Tiffany A

2014-04-01

Substance cue reactivity is theorized as having a significant role in addiction processes, promoting compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior. However, research extending this phenomenon to cannabis has been limited. To that end, the goal of the current work was to examine the relationship between cannabis cue reactivity and craving in a sample of 353 participants varying in self-reported cannabis use. Participants completed a visual oddball task whereby neutral, exercise, and cannabis cue images were presented, and a neutral auditory oddball task while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Consistent with past research, greater cannabis use was associated with greater reactivity to cannabis images, as reflected in the P300 component of the ERP, but not to neutral auditory oddball cues. The latter indicates the specificity of cue reactivity differences as a function of substance-related cues and not generalized cue reactivity. Additionally, cannabis cue reactivity was significantly related to self-reported cannabis craving as well as problems associated with cannabis use. Implications for cannabis use and addiction more generally are discussed.

Cannabis Cue Reactivity and Craving Among Never, Infrequent and Heavy Cannabis Users

PubMed Central

Henry, Erika A; Kaye, Jesse T; Bryan, Angela D; Hutchison, Kent E; Ito, Tiffany A

2014-01-01

Substance cue reactivity is theorized as having a significant role in addiction processes, promoting compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior. However, research extending this phenomenon to cannabis has been limited. To that end, the goal of the current work was to examine the relationship between cannabis cue reactivity and craving in a sample of 353 participants varying in self-reported cannabis use. Participants completed a visual oddball task whereby neutral, exercise, and cannabis cue images were presented, and a neutral auditory oddball task while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Consistent with past research, greater cannabis use was associated with greater reactivity to cannabis images, as reflected in the P300 component of the ERP, but not to neutral auditory oddball cues. The latter indicates the specificity of cue reactivity differences as a function of substance-related cues and not generalized cue reactivity. Additionally, cannabis cue reactivity was significantly related to self-reported cannabis craving as well as problems associated with cannabis use. Implications for cannabis use and addiction more generally are discussed. PMID:24264815

Conflicting Demands of Abstract and Specific Visual Object Processing Resolved by Fronto-Parietal Networks

PubMed Central

McMenamin, Brenton W.; Marsolek, Chad J.; Morseth, Brianna K.; Speer, MacKenzie F.; Burton, Philip C.; Burgund, E. Darcy

2016-01-01

Object categorization and exemplar identification place conflicting demands on the visual system, yet humans easily perform these fundamentally contradictory tasks. Previous studies suggest the existence of dissociable visual processing subsystems to accomplish the two abilities – an abstract category (AC) subsystem that operates effectively in the left hemisphere, and a specific exemplar (SE) subsystem that operates effectively in the right hemisphere. This multiple subsystems theory explains a range of visual abilities, but previous studies have not explored what mechanisms exist for coordinating the function of multiple subsystems and/or resolving the conflicts that would arise between them. We collected functional MRI data while participants performed two variants of a cue-probe working memory task that required AC or SE processing. During the maintenance phase of the task, the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) exhibited hemispheric asymmetries in functional connectivity consistent with exerting proactive control over the two visual subsystems: greater connectivity to the left hemisphere during the AC task, and greater connectivity to the right hemisphere during the SE task. Moreover, probe-evoked activation revealed activity in a broad fronto-parietal network (containing IPS) associated with reactive control when the two visual subsystems were in conflict, and variations in this conflict signal across trials was related to the visual similarity of the cue/probe stimulus pairs. Although many studies have confirmed the existence of multiple visual processing subsystems, this study is the first to identify the mechanisms responsible for coordinating their operations. PMID:26883940

Conflicting demands of abstract and specific visual object processing resolved by frontoparietal networks.

PubMed

McMenamin, Brenton W; Marsolek, Chad J; Morseth, Brianna K; Speer, MacKenzie F; Burton, Philip C; Burgund, E Darcy

2016-06-01

Object categorization and exemplar identification place conflicting demands on the visual system, yet humans easily perform these fundamentally contradictory tasks. Previous studies suggest the existence of dissociable visual processing subsystems to accomplish the two abilities-an abstract category (AC) subsystem that operates effectively in the left hemisphere and a specific exemplar (SE) subsystem that operates effectively in the right hemisphere. This multiple subsystems theory explains a range of visual abilities, but previous studies have not explored what mechanisms exist for coordinating the function of multiple subsystems and/or resolving the conflicts that would arise between them. We collected functional MRI data while participants performed two variants of a cue-probe working memory task that required AC or SE processing. During the maintenance phase of the task, the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) exhibited hemispheric asymmetries in functional connectivity consistent with exerting proactive control over the two visual subsystems: greater connectivity to the left hemisphere during the AC task, and greater connectivity to the right hemisphere during the SE task. Moreover, probe-evoked activation revealed activity in a broad frontoparietal network (containing IPS) associated with reactive control when the two visual subsystems were in conflict, and variations in this conflict signal across trials was related to the visual similarity of the cue-probe stimulus pairs. Although many studies have confirmed the existence of multiple visual processing subsystems, this study is the first to identify the mechanisms responsible for coordinating their operations.

Contingent capture in cueing: the role of color search templates and cue-target color relations.

PubMed

Ansorge, Ulrich; Becker, Stefanie I

2014-03-01

Visual search studies have shown that attention can be top-down biased to a specific target color, so that only items with this color or a similar color can capture attention. According to some theories of attention, colors from different categories (i.e., red, green, blue, yellow) are represented independently. However, other accounts have proposed that these are related--either because color is filtered through broad overlapping channels (4-channel view), or because colors are represented in one continuous feature space (e.g., CIE space) and search is governed by specific principles (e.g., linear separability between colors, or top-down tuning to relative colors). The present study tested these different views using a cueing experiment in which observers had to select one target color (e.g., red) and ignore two or four differently colored distractors that were presented prior to the target (cues). The results showed clear evidence for top-down contingent capture by colors, as a target-colored cue captured attention more strongly than differently colored cues. However, the results failed to support any of the proposed views that different color categories are related to one another by overlapping channels, linear separability, or relational guidance (N = 96).

Preschoolers Benefit From Visually Salient Speech Cues

PubMed Central

Holt, Rachael Frush

2015-01-01

Purpose This study explored visual speech influence in preschoolers using 3 developmentally appropriate tasks that vary in perceptual difficulty and task demands. They also examined developmental differences in the ability to use visually salient speech cues and visual phonological knowledge. Method Twelve adults and 27 typically developing 3- and 4-year-old children completed 3 audiovisual (AV) speech integration tasks: matching, discrimination, and recognition. The authors compared AV benefit for visually salient and less visually salient speech discrimination contrasts and assessed the visual saliency of consonant confusions in auditory-only and AV word recognition. Results Four-year-olds and adults demonstrated visual influence on all measures. Three-year-olds demonstrated visual influence on speech discrimination and recognition measures. All groups demonstrated greater AV benefit for the visually salient discrimination contrasts. AV recognition benefit in 4-year-olds and adults depended on the visual saliency of speech sounds. Conclusions Preschoolers can demonstrate AV speech integration. Their AV benefit results from efficient use of visually salient speech cues. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, used visual phonological knowledge to take advantage of visually salient speech cues, suggesting possible developmental differences in the mechanisms of AV benefit. PMID:25322336

Opposite Effects of Visual Cueing During Writing-Like Movements of Different Amplitudes in Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Nackaerts, Evelien; Nieuwboer, Alice; Broeder, Sanne; Smits-Engelsman, Bouwien C M; Swinnen, Stephan P; Vandenberghe, Wim; Heremans, Elke

2016-06-01

Handwriting is often impaired in Parkinson's disease (PD). Several studies have shown that writing in PD benefits from the use of cues. However, this was typically studied with writing and drawing sizes that are usually not used in daily life. This study examines the effect of visual cueing on a prewriting task at small amplitudes (≤1.0 cm) in PD patients and healthy controls to better understand the working action of cueing for writing. A total of 15 PD patients and 15 healthy, age-matched controls performed a prewriting task at 0.6 cm and 1.0 cm in the presence and absence of visual cues (target lines). Writing amplitude, variability of amplitude, and speed were chosen as dependent variables, measured using a newly developed touch-sensitive tablet. Cueing led to immediate improvements in writing size, variability of writing size, and speed in both groups in the 1.0 cm condition. However, when writing at 0.6 cm with cues, a decrease in writing size was apparent in both groups (P < .001) and the difference in variability of amplitude between cued and uncued writing disappeared. In addition, the writing speed of controls decreased when the cue was present. Visual target lines of 1.0 cm improved the writing of sequential loops in contrast to lines spaced at 0.6 cm. These results illustrate that, unlike for gait, visual cueing for fine-motor tasks requires a differentiated approach, taking into account the possible increases of accuracy constraints imposed by cueing. © The Author(s) 2015.

Vertical visual features have a strong influence on cuttlefish camouflage.

PubMed

Ulmer, K M; Buresch, K C; Kossodo, M M; Mäthger, L M; Siemann, L A; Hanlon, R T

2013-04-01

Cuttlefish and other cephalopods use visual cues from their surroundings to adaptively change their body pattern for camouflage. Numerous previous experiments have demonstrated the influence of two-dimensional (2D) substrates (e.g., sand and gravel habitats) on camouflage, yet many marine habitats have varied three-dimensional (3D) structures among which cuttlefish camouflage from predators, including benthic predators that view cuttlefish horizontally against such 3D backgrounds. We conducted laboratory experiments, using Sepia officinalis, to test the relative influence of horizontal versus vertical visual cues on cuttlefish camouflage: 2D patterns on benthic substrates were tested versus 2D wall patterns and 3D objects with patterns. Specifically, we investigated the influence of (i) quantity and (ii) placement of high-contrast elements on a 3D object or a 2D wall, as well as (iii) the diameter and (iv) number of 3D objects with high-contrast elements on cuttlefish body pattern expression. Additionally, we tested the influence of high-contrast visual stimuli covering the entire 2D benthic substrate versus the entire 2D wall. In all experiments, visual cues presented in the vertical plane evoked the strongest body pattern response in cuttlefish. These experiments support field observations that, in some marine habitats, cuttlefish will respond to vertically oriented background features even when the preponderance of visual information in their field of view seems to be from the 2D surrounding substrate. Such choices highlight the selective decision-making that occurs in cephalopods with their adaptive camouflage capability.

Processing of visual food cues during bitter taste perception in female patients with binge-eating symptoms: A cross-modal ERP study.

PubMed

Schienle, Anne; Scharmüller, Wilfried; Schwab, Daniela

2017-11-01

In healthy individuals, the perception of an intense bitter taste decreased the reward value of visual food cues, as reflected by the reduction of a specific event-related brain potential (ERP), frontal late positivity. The current cross-modal ERP study investigated responses of female patients with binge-eating symptoms (BES) to this type of visual-gustatory stimulation. Women with BES (n=36) and female control participants (n=38) viewed food images after they rinsed their mouth with either bitter wormwood tea or water. Relative to controls, the patients showed elevated late positivity (LPP: 400-700ms) to the food images in the bitter condition. The LPP source was located in the medial prefrontal cortex. Both groups did not differ in the ratings for the fluids (intensity, bitterness, disgust). This ERP study showed that a bitter taste did not decrease late positivity to visual food cues (reflecting food reward) in women with BES. The atypical bitter responding might be a biological marker of this condition and possibly contributes to overeating. Future studies should additionally record food intake behavior to further investigate this mechanism. Copyright © 2017 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effect of light intensity on food detection in captive great fruit-eating bats, Artibeus lituratus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae).

PubMed

Gutierrez, Eduardo de A; Pessoa, Valdir F; Aguiar, Ludmilla M S; Pessoa, Daniel M A

2014-11-01

Bats are known for their well-developed echolocation. However, several experiments focused on the bat visual system have shown evidence of the importance of visual cues under specific luminosity for different aspects of bat biology, including foraging behavior. This study examined the foraging abilities of five female great fruit-eating bats, Artibeus lituratus, under different light intensities. Animals were given a series of tasks to test for discrimination between a food target against an inedible background, under light levels similar to the twilight illumination (18lx), the full moon (2lx) and complete darkness (0lx). We found that the bats required a longer time frame to detect targets under a light intensity similar to twilight, possibly due to inhibitory effects present under a more intense light level. Additionally, bats were more efficient at detecting and capturing targets under light conditions similar to the luminosity of a full moon, suggesting that visual cues were important for target discrimination. These results demonstrate that light intensity affects foraging behavior and enables the use of visual cues for food detection in frugivorous bats. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Neotropical Behaviour. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Use of cues in virtual reality depends on visual feedback.

PubMed

Fulvio, Jacqueline M; Rokers, Bas

2017-11-22

3D motion perception is of central importance to daily life. However, when tested in laboratory settings, sensitivity to 3D motion signals is found to be poor, leading to the view that heuristics and prior assumptions are critical for 3D motion perception. Here we explore an alternative: sensitivity to 3D motion signals is context-dependent and must be learned based on explicit visual feedback in novel environments. The need for action-contingent visual feedback is well-established in the developmental literature. For example, young kittens that are passively moved through an environment, but unable to move through it themselves, fail to develop accurate depth perception. We find that these principles also obtain in adult human perception. Observers that do not experience visual consequences of their actions fail to develop accurate 3D motion perception in a virtual reality environment, even after prolonged exposure. By contrast, observers that experience the consequences of their actions improve performance based on available sensory cues to 3D motion. Specifically, we find that observers learn to exploit the small motion parallax cues provided by head jitter. Our findings advance understanding of human 3D motion processing and form a foundation for future study of perception in virtual and natural 3D environments.

Usability of Three-dimensional Augmented Visual Cues Delivered by Smart Glasses on (Freezing of) Gait in Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Janssen, Sabine; Bolte, Benjamin; Nonnekes, Jorik; Bittner, Marian; Bloem, Bastiaan R; Heida, Tjitske; Zhao, Yan; van Wezel, Richard J A

2017-01-01

External cueing is a potentially effective strategy to reduce freezing of gait (FOG) in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD). Case reports suggest that three-dimensional (3D) cues might be more effective in reducing FOG than two-dimensional cues. We investigate the usability of 3D augmented reality visual cues delivered by smart glasses in comparison to conventional 3D transverse bars on the floor and auditory cueing via a metronome in reducing FOG and improving gait parameters. In laboratory experiments, 25 persons with PD and FOG performed walking tasks while wearing custom-made smart glasses under five conditions, at the end-of-dose. For two conditions, augmented visual cues (bars/staircase) were displayed via the smart glasses. The control conditions involved conventional 3D transverse bars on the floor, auditory cueing via a metronome, and no cueing. The number of FOG episodes and percentage of time spent on FOG were rated from video recordings. The stride length and its variability, cycle time and its variability, cadence, and speed were calculated from motion data collected with a motion capture suit equipped with 17 inertial measurement units. A total of 300 FOG episodes occurred in 19 out of 25 participants. There were no statistically significant differences in number of FOG episodes and percentage of time spent on FOG across the five conditions. The conventional bars increased stride length, cycle time, and stride length variability, while decreasing cadence and speed. No effects for the other conditions were found. Participants preferred the metronome most, and the augmented staircase least. They suggested to improve the comfort, esthetics, usability, field of view, and stability of the smart glasses on the head and to reduce their weight and size. In their current form, augmented visual cues delivered by smart glasses are not beneficial for persons with PD and FOG. This could be attributable to distraction, blockage of visual feedback, insufficient familiarization with the smart glasses, or display of the visual cues in the central rather than peripheral visual field. Future smart glasses are required to be more lightweight, comfortable, and user friendly to avoid distraction and blockage of sensory feedback, thus increasing usability.

Analyzing the Role of Visual Cues in Developing Prediction-Making Skills of Third- and Ninth-Grade English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, Emily; Cuba, Melissa

2015-01-01

The goal of this action research is to increase student awareness of context clues, with an emphasis on student use of visual cues in making predictions. Visual cues in the classroom were used to differentiate according to the needs of student demographics (Herrera, Perez, & Escamilla, 2010). The purpose of this intervention was to improve…

The Effects of Various Fidelity Factors on Simulated Helicopter Hover

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-01-01

18 VISUAL DISPLAY ....... ....................... ... 20 §. AUDITORY CUES ........... ........................ 23 • SHIP MOTION MODEL...and DiCarlo, 1974), the evaluation of visual, auditory , and motion cues for helicopter simulation (Parrish, Houck, and Martin, 1977), and the...supply the cue. As the tilt should be supplied subliminally , a forward/aft translation must be used to cue the acceleration’s onset. If only rotation

Learning from Instructional Animations: How Does Prior Knowledge Mediate the Effect of Visual Cues?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arslan-Ari, I.

2018-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cueing and prior knowledge on learning and mental effort of students studying an animation with narration. This study employed a 2 (no cueing vs. visual cueing) × 2 (low vs. high prior knowledge) between-subjects factorial design. The results revealed a significant interaction effect…

Anemonefishes rely on visual and chemical cues to correctly identify conspecifics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnston, Nicole K.; Dixson, Danielle L.

2017-09-01

Organisms rely on sensory cues to interpret their environment and make important life-history decisions. Accurate recognition is of particular importance in diverse reef environments. Most evidence on the use of sensory cues focuses on those used in predator avoidance or habitat recognition, with little information on their role in conspecific recognition. Yet conspecific recognition is essential for life-history decisions including settlement, mate choice, and dominance interactions. Using a sensory manipulated tank and a two-chamber choice flume, anemonefish conspecific response was measured in the presence and absence of chemical and/or visual cues. Experiments were then repeated in the presence or absence of two heterospecific species to evaluate whether a heterospecific fish altered the conspecific response. Anemonefishes responded to both the visual and chemical cues of conspecifics, but relied on the combination of the two cues to recognize conspecifics inside the sensory manipulated tank. These results contrast previous studies focusing on predator detection where anemonefishes were found to compensate for the loss of one sensory cue (chemical) by utilizing a second cue (visual). This lack of sensory compensation may impact the ability of anemonefishes to acclimate to changing reef environments in the future.

Laserlight cues for gait freezing in Parkinson's disease: an open-label study.

PubMed

Donovan, S; Lim, C; Diaz, N; Browner, N; Rose, P; Sudarsky, L R; Tarsy, D; Fahn, S; Simon, D K

2011-05-01

Freezing of gait (FOG) and falls are major sources of disability for Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and show limited responsiveness to medications. We assessed the efficacy of visual cues for overcoming FOG in an open-label study of 26 patients with PD. The change in the frequency of falls was a secondary outcome measure. Subjects underwent a 1-2 month baseline period of use of a cane or walker without visual cues, followed by 1 month using the same device with the laserlight visual cue. The laserlight visual cue was associated with a modest but significant mean reduction in FOG Questionnaire (FOGQ) scores of 1.25 ± 0.48 (p = 0.0152, two-tailed paired t-test), representing a 6.6% improvement compared to the mean baseline FOGQ scores of 18.8. The mean reduction in fall frequency was 39.5 ± 9.3% with the laserlight visual cue among subjects experiencing at least one fall during the baseline and subsequent study periods (p = 0.002; two-tailed one-sample t-test with hypothesized mean of 0). Though some individual subjects may have benefited, the overall mean performance on the timed gait test (TGT) across all subjects did not significantly change. However, among the 4 subjects who underwent repeated testing of the TGT, one showed a 50% mean improvement in TGT performance with the laserlight visual cue (p = 0.005; two-tailed paired t-test). This open-label study provides evidence for modest efficacy of a laserlight visual cue in overcoming FOG and reducing falls in PD patients. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Gaze-contingent reinforcement learning reveals incentive value of social signals in young children and adults.

PubMed

Vernetti, Angélina; Smith, Tim J; Senju, Atsushi

2017-03-15

While numerous studies have demonstrated that infants and adults preferentially orient to social stimuli, it remains unclear as to what drives such preferential orienting. It has been suggested that the learned association between social cues and subsequent reward delivery might shape such social orienting. Using a novel, spontaneous indication of reinforcement learning (with the use of a gaze contingent reward-learning task), we investigated whether children and adults' orienting towards social and non-social visual cues can be elicited by the association between participants' visual attention and a rewarding outcome. Critically, we assessed whether the engaging nature of the social cues influences the process of reinforcement learning. Both children and adults learned to orient more often to the visual cues associated with reward delivery, demonstrating that cue-reward association reinforced visual orienting. More importantly, when the reward-predictive cue was social and engaging, both children and adults learned the cue-reward association faster and more efficiently than when the reward-predictive cue was social but non-engaging. These new findings indicate that social engaging cues have a positive incentive value. This could possibly be because they usually coincide with positive outcomes in real life, which could partly drive the development of social orienting. © 2017 The Authors.

Sensor-enhanced 3D conformal cueing for safe and reliable HC operation in DVE in all flight phases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Münsterer, Thomas; Schafhitzel, Tobias; Strobel, Michael; Völschow, Philipp; Klasen, Stephanus; Eisenkeil, Ferdinand

2014-06-01

Low level helicopter operations in Degraded Visual Environment (DVE) still are a major challenge and bear the risk of potentially fatal accidents. DVE generally encompasses all degradations to the visual perception of the pilot ranging from night conditions via rain and snowfall to fog and maybe even blinding sunlight or unstructured outside scenery. Each of these conditions reduce the pilots' ability to perceive visual cues in the outside world reducing his performance and finally increasing risk of mission failure and accidents, like for example Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT). The basis for the presented solution is a fusion of processed and classified high resolution ladar data with database information having a potential to also include other sensor data like forward looking or 360° radar data. This paper reports on a pilot assistance system aiming at giving back the essential visual cues to the pilot by means of displaying 3D conformal cues and symbols in a head-tracked Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) and a combination with synthetic view on a head-down Multi-Function Display (MFD). Each flight phase and each flight envelope requires different symbology sets and different possibilities for the pilots to select specific support functions. Several functionalities have been implemented and tested in a simulator as well as in flight. The symbology ranges from obstacle warning symbology via terrain enhancements through grids or ridge lines to different waypoint symbols supporting navigation. While some adaptations can be automated it emerged as essential that symbology characteristics and completeness can be selected by the pilot to match the relevant flight envelope and outside visual conditions.

Contextual cueing impairment in patients with age-related macular degeneration.

PubMed

Geringswald, Franziska; Herbik, Anne; Hoffmann, Michael B; Pollmann, Stefan

2013-09-12

Visual attention can be guided by past experience of regularities in our visual environment. In the contextual cueing paradigm, incidental learning of repeated distractor configurations speeds up search times compared to random search arrays. Concomitantly, fewer fixations and more direct scan paths indicate more efficient visual exploration in repeated search arrays. In previous work, we found that simulating a central scotoma in healthy observers eliminated this search facilitation. Here, we investigated contextual cueing in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) who suffer from impaired foveal vision. AMD patients performed visual search using only their more severely impaired eye (n = 13) as well as under binocular viewing (n = 16). Normal-sighted controls developed a significant contextual cueing effect. In comparison, patients showed only a small nonsignificant advantage for repeated displays when searching with their worse eye. When searching binocularly, they profited from contextual cues, but still less than controls. Number of fixations and scan pattern ratios showed a comparable pattern as search times. Moreover, contextual cueing was significantly correlated with acuity in monocular search. Thus, foveal vision loss may lead to impaired guidance of attention by contextual memory cues.

Using multisensory cues to facilitate air traffic management.

PubMed

Ngo, Mary K; Pierce, Russell S; Spence, Charles

2012-12-01

In the present study, we sought to investigate whether auditory and tactile cuing could be used to facilitate a complex, real-world air traffic management scenario. Auditory and tactile cuing provides an effective means of improving both the speed and accuracy of participants' performance in a variety of laboratory-based visual target detection and identification tasks. A low-fidelity air traffic simulation task was used in which participants monitored and controlled aircraft.The participants had to ensure that the aircraft landed or exited at the correct altitude, speed, and direction and that they maintained a safe separation from all other aircraft and boundaries. The performance measures recorded included en route time, handoff delay, and conflict resolution delay (the performance measure of interest). In a baseline condition, the aircraft in conflict was highlighted in red (visual cue), and in the experimental conditions, this standard visual cue was accompanied by a simultaneously presented auditory, vibrotactile, or audiotactile cue. Participants responded significantly more rapidly, but no less accurately, to conflicts when presented with an additional auditory or audiotactile cue than with either a vibrotactile or visual cue alone. Auditory and audiotactile cues have the potential for improving operator performance by reducing the time it takes to detect and respond to potential visual target events. These results have important implications for the design and use of multisensory cues in air traffic management.

Visual speech segmentation: using facial cues to locate word boundaries in continuous speech

PubMed Central

Mitchel, Aaron D.; Weiss, Daniel J.

2014-01-01

Speech is typically a multimodal phenomenon, yet few studies have focused on the exclusive contributions of visual cues to language acquisition. To address this gap, we investigated whether visual prosodic information can facilitate speech segmentation. Previous research has demonstrated that language learners can use lexical stress and pitch cues to segment speech and that learners can extract this information from talking faces. Thus, we created an artificial speech stream that contained minimal segmentation cues and paired it with two synchronous facial displays in which visual prosody was either informative or uninformative for identifying word boundaries. Across three familiarisation conditions (audio stream alone, facial streams alone, and paired audiovisual), learning occurred only when the facial displays were informative to word boundaries, suggesting that facial cues can help learners solve the early challenges of language acquisition. PMID:25018577

A Nonlinear, Human-Centered Approach to Motion Cueing with a Neurocomputing Solver

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Telban, Robert J.; Cardullo, Frank M.; Houck, Jacob A.

2002-01-01

This paper discusses the continuation of research into the development of new motion cueing algorithms first reported in 1999. In this earlier work, two viable approaches to motion cueing were identified: the coordinated adaptive washout algorithm or 'adaptive algorithm', and the 'optimal algorithm'. In this study, a novel approach to motion cueing is discussed that would combine features of both algorithms. The new algorithm is formulated as a linear optimal control problem, incorporating improved vestibular models and an integrated visual-vestibular motion perception model previously reported. A control law is generated from the motion platform states, resulting in a set of nonlinear cueing filters. The time-varying control law requires the matrix Riccati equation to be solved in real time. Therefore, in order to meet the real time requirement, a neurocomputing approach is used to solve this computationally challenging problem. Single degree-of-freedom responses for the nonlinear algorithm were generated and compared to the adaptive and optimal algorithms. Results for the heave mode show the nonlinear algorithm producing a motion cue with a time-varying washout, sustaining small cues for a longer duration and washing out larger cues more quickly. The addition of the optokinetic influence from the integrated perception model was shown to improve the response to a surge input, producing a specific force response with no steady-state washout. Improved cues are also observed for responses to a sway input. Yaw mode responses reveal that the nonlinear algorithm improves the motion cues by reducing the magnitude of negative cues. The effectiveness of the nonlinear algorithm as compared to the adaptive and linear optimal algorithms will be evaluated on a motion platform, the NASA Langley Research Center Visual Motion Simulator (VMS), and ultimately the Cockpit Motion Facility (CMF) with a series of pilot controlled maneuvers. A proposed experimental procedure is discussed. The results of this evaluation will be used to assess motion cueing performance.

Activation of prefrontal cortex and anterior thalamus in alcoholic subjects on exposure to alcohol-specific cues.

PubMed

George, M S; Anton, R F; Bloomer, C; Teneback, C; Drobes, D J; Lorberbaum, J P; Nahas, Z; Vincent, D J

2001-04-01

Functional imaging studies have recently demonstrated that specific brain regions become active in cocaine addicts when they are exposed to cocaine stimuli. To test whether there are regional brain activity differences during alcohol cue exposure between alcoholic subjects and social drinkers, we designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol involving alcohol-specific cues. Ten non-treatment-seeking adult alcoholic subjects (2 women) (mean [SD] age, 29.9 [9.9] years) as well as 10 healthy social drinking controls of similar age (2 women) (mean [SD] age, 29.4 [8.9] years) were recruited, screened, and scanned. In the 1.5-T magnetic resonance imaging scanner, subjects were serially rated for alcohol craving before and after a sip of alcohol, and after a 9-minute randomized presentation of pictures of alcoholic beverages, control nonalcoholic beverages, and 2 different visual control tasks. During picture presentation, changes in regional brain activity were measured with the blood oxygen level-dependent technique. Alcoholic subjects, compared with the social drinking subjects, reported higher overall craving ratings for alcohol. After a sip of alcohol, while viewing alcohol cues compared with viewing other beverage cues, only the alcoholic subjects had increased activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior thalamus. The social drinkers exhibited specific activation only while viewing the control beverage pictures. When exposed to alcohol cues, alcoholic subjects have increased brain activity in the prefrontal cortex and anterior thalamus-brain regions associated with emotion regulation, attention, and appetitive behavior.

What does the dot-probe task measure? A reverse correlation analysis of electrocortical activity.

PubMed

Thigpen, Nina N; Gruss, L Forest; Garcia, Steven; Herring, David R; Keil, Andreas

2018-06-01

The dot-probe task is considered a gold standard for assessing the intrinsic attentive selection of one of two lateralized visual cues, measured by the response time to a subsequent, lateralized response probe. However, this task has recently been associated with poor reliability and conflicting results. To resolve these discrepancies, we tested the underlying assumption of the dot-probe task-that fast probe responses index heightened cue selection-using an electrophysiological measure of selective attention. Specifically, we used a reverse correlation approach in combination with frequency-tagged steady-state visual potentials (ssVEPs). Twenty-one participants completed a modified dot-probe task in which each member of a pair of lateralized face cues, varying in emotional expression (angry-angry, neutral-angry, neutral-neutral), flickered at one of two frequencies (15 or 20 Hz), to evoke ssVEPs. One cue was then replaced by a response probe, and participants indicated the probe orientation (0° or 90°). We analyzed the ssVEP evoked by the cues as a function of response speed to the subsequent probe (i.e., a reverse correlation analysis). Electrophysiological measures of cue processing varied with probe hemifield location: Faster responses to left probes were associated with weak amplification of the preceding left cue, apparent only in a median split analysis. By contrast, faster responses to right probes were systematically and parametrically predicted by diminished visuocortical selection of the preceding right cue. Together, these findings highlight the poor validity of the dot-probe task, in terms of quantifying intrinsic, nondirected attentive selection irrespective of probe/cue location. © 2018 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Reliable cues and signals of fruit quality are contingent on the habitat in black elder (Sambucus nigra).

PubMed

Schaefer, H Martin; Braun, Julius

2009-06-01

Communication mediates interactions between organisms and can be based on signals or cues. Signals are selected for their signaling function, whereas cues evolve for reasons other than signaling. To be evolutionarily stable, communication needs to be reliable on average, but the mechanisms that enforce reliability are hotly debated in light of strong environmental influence on signals and cues. While fruit quality in black elder (Sambucus nigra) is unrelated to fruit color, it is indicated by alternative pedicel phenotypes. Information on fruit quality has thus been transferred from the fruit to the developmentally associated pedicels, which are environmentally determined cues. Within each phenotype, color variation indicates fruit quality. Communication by black elder is thus reliable, but the proximate mechanisms enforcing reliability are habitat specific. High irradiance increases both the contrasts of the visual cue and fruit quality in the anthocyanin-based red pedicel phenotype, while shaded plants of the chlorophyll-based green phenotype apparently use signals by forgoing photosynthesis. This is because lower chlorophyll content in green pedicels creates contrasting pedicels, and higher contrasts indicate higher sugar content in the fruits of green pedicels. Because anthocyanins are light-induced, plants use cues when exposed to high irradiance, whereas they apparently use costly signals in the shade by reducing chlorophyll content in the pedicels. In behavioral field and laboratory experiments we document that avian seed dispersers select among pedicel phenotypes that indicate different fruit quality. Plants can thus increase their reproductive success by sending highly informative cues. Our results indicate how reliable information transfer can be maintained both in cues and signals in spite of substantial environmental influence on visual traits.

A conditioned visual orientation requires the ellipsoid body in Drosophila

PubMed Central

Guo, Chao; Du, Yifei; Yuan, Deliang; Li, Meixia; Gong, Haiyun; Gong, Zhefeng

2015-01-01

Orientation, the spatial organization of animal behavior, is an essential faculty of animals. Bacteria and lower animals such as insects exhibit taxis, innate orientation behavior, directly toward or away from a directional cue. Organisms can also orient themselves at a specific angle relative to the cues. In this study, using Drosophila as a model system, we established a visual orientation conditioning paradigm based on a flight simulator in which a stationary flying fly could control the rotation of a visual object. By coupling aversive heat shocks to a fly's orientation toward one side of the visual object, we found that the fly could be conditioned to orientate toward the left or right side of the frontal visual object and retain this conditioned visual orientation. The lower and upper visual fields have different roles in conditioned visual orientation. Transfer experiments showed that conditioned visual orientation could generalize between visual targets of different sizes, compactness, or vertical positions, but not of contour orientation. Rut—Type I adenylyl cyclase and Dnc—phosphodiesterase were dispensable for visual orientation conditioning. Normal activity and scb signaling in R3/R4d neurons of the ellipsoid body were required for visual orientation conditioning. Our studies established a visual orientation conditioning paradigm and examined the behavioral properties and neural circuitry of visual orientation, an important component of the insect's spatial navigation. PMID:25512578

The benefit of forgetting.

PubMed

Williams, Melonie; Hong, Sang W; Kang, Min-Suk; Carlisle, Nancy B; Woodman, Geoffrey F

2013-04-01

Recent research using change-detection tasks has shown that a directed-forgetting cue, indicating that a subset of the information stored in memory can be forgotten, significantly benefits the other information stored in visual working memory. How do these directed-forgetting cues aid the memory representations that are retained? We addressed this question in the present study by using a recall paradigm to measure the nature of the retained memory representations. Our results demonstrated that a directed-forgetting cue leads to higher-fidelity representations of the remaining items and a lower probability of dropping these representations from memory. Next, we showed that this is made possible by the to-be-forgotten item being expelled from visual working memory following the cue, allowing maintenance mechanisms to be focused on only the items that remain in visual working memory. Thus, the present findings show that cues to forget benefit the remaining information in visual working memory by fundamentally improving their quality relative to conditions in which just as many items are encoded but no cue is provided.

Ontogeny and Sexual Differences in Swimming Proximity to Conspecifics in Response to Visual Cues in Medaka Fish.

PubMed

Isoe, Yasuko; Konagaya, Yumi; Yokoi, Saori; Kubo, Takeo; Takeuchi, Hideaki

2016-06-01

Adult medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) exhibit complex social behaviors that depend mainly on visual cues from conspecifics. The ontogeny of visually-mediated social behaviors from larval/juvenile to adult medaka fish, however, is unknown. In the present study, we established a simple behavioral paradigm to evaluate the swimming proximity to conspecifics based on visual cues in an inter-individual interaction of two medaka fish throughout life. When two fish were placed separately in a cylindrical tank with a concentric transparent wall, the two fish maintained close proximity to each other. A normal fish inside the tank maintained proximity to an optic nerve-cut fish outside of the tank, while the converse was not true. This behavioral paradigm enabled us to quantify visually-induced motivation of a single fish inside the tank. The proximity was detected from larval/juvenile to adult fish. Larval fish, however, maintained close proximity not only to conspecifics, but also to heterospecifics. As the growth stage increased, the degree of proximity to heterospecifics decreased, suggesting that shoaling preferences toward conspecifics and/or visual ability to recognize conspecifics is refined and established according to the growth stage. Furthermore, the proximity of adult female fish was affected by their reproductive status and social familiarity. Only before spawning, adult females maintained closer proximity to familiar males rather than to unfamiliar males, suggesting that proximity was affected by familiarity in a female-specific manner. This simple behavioral paradigm will contribute to our understanding of the neural basis of the development of visually-mediated social behavior using medaka fish.

Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception

PubMed Central

Peelle, Jonathan E.; Sommers, Mitchell S.

2015-01-01

During face-to-face conversational speech listeners must efficiently process a rapid and complex stream of multisensory information. Visual speech can serve as a critical complement to auditory information because it provides cues to both the timing of the incoming acoustic signal (the amplitude envelope, influencing attention and perceptual sensitivity) and its content (place and manner of articulation, constraining lexical selection). Here we review behavioral and neurophysiological evidence regarding listeners' use of visual speech information. Multisensory integration of audiovisual speech cues improves recognition accuracy, particularly for speech in noise. Even when speech is intelligible based solely on auditory information, adding visual information may reduce the cognitive demands placed on listeners through increasing precision of prediction. Electrophysiological studies demonstrate oscillatory cortical entrainment to speech in auditory cortex is enhanced when visual speech is present, increasing sensitivity to important acoustic cues. Neuroimaging studies also suggest increased activity in auditory cortex when congruent visual information is available, but additionally emphasize the involvement of heteromodal regions of posterior superior temporal sulcus as playing a role in integrative processing. We interpret these findings in a framework of temporally-focused lexical competition in which visual speech information affects auditory processing to increase sensitivity to auditory information through an early integration mechanism, and a late integration stage that incorporates specific information about a speaker's articulators to constrain the number of possible candidates in a spoken utterance. Ultimately it is words compatible with both auditory and visual information that most strongly determine successful speech perception during everyday listening. Thus, audiovisual speech perception is accomplished through multiple stages of integration, supported by distinct neuroanatomical mechanisms. PMID:25890390

Tactical decisions for changeable cuttlefish camouflage: visual cues for choosing masquerade are relevant from a greater distance than visual cues used for background matching.

PubMed

Buresch, Kendra C; Ulmer, Kimberly M; Cramer, Corinne; McAnulty, Sarah; Davison, William; Mäthger, Lydia M; Hanlon, Roger T

2015-10-01

Cuttlefish use multiple camouflage tactics to evade their predators. Two common tactics are background matching (resembling the background to hinder detection) and masquerade (resembling an uninteresting or inanimate object to impede detection or recognition). We investigated how the distance and orientation of visual stimuli affected the choice of these two camouflage tactics. In the current experiments, cuttlefish were presented with three visual cues: 2D horizontal floor, 2D vertical wall, and 3D object. Each was placed at several distances: directly beneath (in a circle whose diameter was one body length (BL); at zero BL [(0BL); i.e., directly beside, but not beneath the cuttlefish]; at 1BL; and at 2BL. Cuttlefish continued to respond to 3D visual cues from a greater distance than to a horizontal or vertical stimulus. It appears that background matching is chosen when visual cues are relevant only in the immediate benthic surroundings. However, for masquerade, objects located multiple body lengths away remained relevant for choice of camouflage. © 2015 Marine Biological Laboratory.

An fMRI Study of the Neural Systems Involved in Visually Cued Auditory Top-Down Spatial and Temporal Attention

PubMed Central

Li, Chunlin; Chen, Kewei; Han, Hongbin; Chui, Dehua; Wu, Jinglong

2012-01-01

Top-down attention to spatial and temporal cues has been thoroughly studied in the visual domain. However, because the neural systems that are important for auditory top-down temporal attention (i.e., attention based on time interval cues) remain undefined, the differences in brain activity between directed attention to auditory spatial location (compared with time intervals) are unclear. Using fMRI (magnetic resonance imaging), we measured the activations caused by cue-target paradigms by inducing the visual cueing of attention to an auditory target within a spatial or temporal domain. Imaging results showed that the dorsal frontoparietal network (dFPN), which consists of the bilateral intraparietal sulcus and the frontal eye field, responded to spatial orienting of attention, but activity was absent in the bilateral frontal eye field (FEF) during temporal orienting of attention. Furthermore, the fMRI results indicated that activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) was significantly stronger during spatial orienting of attention than during temporal orienting of attention, while the DLPFC showed no significant differences between the two processes. We conclude that the bilateral dFPN and the right VLPFC contribute to auditory spatial orienting of attention. Furthermore, specific activations related to temporal cognition were confirmed within the superior occipital gyrus, tegmentum, motor area, thalamus and putamen. PMID:23166800

Impaired Velocity Processing Reveals an Agnosia for Motion in Depth.

PubMed

Barendregt, Martijn; Dumoulin, Serge O; Rokers, Bas

2016-11-01

Many individuals with normal visual acuity are unable to discriminate the direction of 3-D motion in a portion of their visual field, a deficit previously referred to as a stereomotion scotoma. The origin of this visual deficit has remained unclear. We hypothesized that the impairment is due to a failure in the processing of one of the two binocular cues to motion in depth: changes in binocular disparity over time or interocular velocity differences. We isolated the contributions of these two cues and found that sensitivity to interocular velocity differences, but not changes in binocular disparity, varied systematically with observers' ability to judge motion direction. We therefore conclude that the inability to interpret motion in depth is due to a failure in the neural mechanisms that combine velocity signals from the two eyes. Given these results, we argue that the deficit should be considered a prevalent but previously unrecognized agnosia specific to the perception of visual motion. © The Author(s) 2016.

Neural Representation of Motion-In-Depth in Area MT

PubMed Central

Sanada, Takahisa M.

2014-01-01

Neural processing of 2D visual motion has been studied extensively, but relatively little is known about how visual cortical neurons represent visual motion trajectories that include a component toward or away from the observer (motion in depth). Psychophysical studies have demonstrated that humans perceive motion in depth based on both changes in binocular disparity over time (CD cue) and interocular velocity differences (IOVD cue). However, evidence for neurons that represent motion in depth has been limited, especially in primates, and it is unknown whether such neurons make use of CD or IOVD cues. We show that approximately one-half of neurons in macaque area MT are selective for the direction of motion in depth, and that this selectivity is driven primarily by IOVD cues, with a small contribution from the CD cue. Our results establish that area MT, a central hub of the primate visual motion processing system, contains a 3D representation of visual motion. PMID:25411481

Value associations of irrelevant stimuli modify rapid visual orienting.

PubMed

Rutherford, Helena J V; O'Brien, Jennifer L; Raymond, Jane E

2010-08-01

In familiar environments, goal-directed visual behavior is often performed in the presence of objects with strong, but task-irrelevant, reward or punishment associations that are acquired through prior, unrelated experience. In a two-phase experiment, we asked whether such stimuli could affect speeded visual orienting in a classic visual orienting paradigm. First, participants learned to associate faces with monetary gains, losses, or no outcomes. These faces then served as brief, peripheral, uninformative cues in an explicitly unrewarded, unpunished, speeded, target localization task. Cues preceded targets by either 100 or 1,500 msec and appeared at either the same or a different location. Regardless of interval, reward-associated cues slowed responding at cued locations, as compared with equally familiar punishment-associated or no-value cues, and had no effect when targets were presented at uncued locations. This localized effect of reward-associated cues is consistent with adaptive models of inhibition of return and suggests rapid, low-level effects of motivation on visual processing.

Determinants of structural choice in visually situated sentence production.

PubMed

Myachykov, Andriy; Garrod, Simon; Scheepers, Christoph

2012-11-01

Three experiments investigated how perceptual, structural, and lexical cues affect structural choices during English transitive sentence production. Participants described transitive events under combinations of visual cueing of attention (toward either agent or patient) and structural priming with and without semantic match between the notional verb in the prime and the target event. Speakers had a stronger preference for passive-voice sentences (1) when their attention was directed to the patient, (2) upon reading a passive-voice prime, and (3) when the verb in the prime matched the target event. The verb-match effect was the by-product of an interaction between visual cueing and verb match: the increase in the proportion of passive-voice responses with matching verbs was limited to the agent-cued condition. Persistence of visual cueing effects in the presence of both structural and lexical cues suggests a strong coupling between referent-directed visual attention and Subject assignment in a spoken sentence. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Selective maintenance in visual working memory does not require sustained visual attention.

PubMed

Hollingworth, Andrew; Maxcey-Richard, Ashleigh M

2013-08-01

In four experiments, we tested whether sustained visual attention is required for the selective maintenance of objects in visual working memory (VWM). Participants performed a color change-detection task. During the retention interval, a valid cue indicated the item that would be tested. Change-detection performance was higher in the valid-cue condition than in a neutral-cue control condition. To probe the role of visual attention in the cuing effect, on half of the trials, a difficult search task was inserted after the cue, precluding sustained attention on the cued item. The addition of the search task produced no observable decrement in the magnitude of the cuing effect. In a complementary test, search efficiency was not impaired by simultaneously prioritizing an object for retention in VWM. The results demonstrate that selective maintenance in VWM can be dissociated from the locus of visual attention. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Evidence for cue-independent spatial representation in the human auditory cortex during active listening.

PubMed

Higgins, Nathan C; McLaughlin, Susan A; Rinne, Teemu; Stecker, G Christopher

2017-09-05

Few auditory functions are as important or as universal as the capacity for auditory spatial awareness (e.g., sound localization). That ability relies on sensitivity to acoustical cues-particularly interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD)-that correlate with sound-source locations. Under nonspatial listening conditions, cortical sensitivity to ITD and ILD takes the form of broad contralaterally dominated response functions. It is unknown, however, whether that sensitivity reflects representations of the specific physical cues or a higher-order representation of auditory space (i.e., integrated cue processing), nor is it known whether responses to spatial cues are modulated by active spatial listening. To investigate, sensitivity to parametrically varied ITD or ILD cues was measured using fMRI during spatial and nonspatial listening tasks. Task type varied across blocks where targets were presented in one of three dimensions: auditory location, pitch, or visual brightness. Task effects were localized primarily to lateral posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and modulated binaural-cue response functions differently in the two hemispheres. Active spatial listening (location tasks) enhanced both contralateral and ipsilateral responses in the right hemisphere but maintained or enhanced contralateral dominance in the left hemisphere. Two observations suggest integrated processing of ITD and ILD. First, overlapping regions in medial pSTG exhibited significant sensitivity to both cues. Second, successful classification of multivoxel patterns was observed for both cue types and-critically-for cross-cue classification. Together, these results suggest a higher-order representation of auditory space in the human auditory cortex that at least partly integrates the specific underlying cues.

Interaction between visual and chemical cues in a Liolaemus lizard: a multimodal approach.

PubMed

Vicente, Natalin S; Halloy, Monique

2017-12-01

Multimodal communication involves the use of signals and cues across two or more sensory modalities. The genus Liolaemus (Iguania: Liolaemidae) offers a great potential for studies on the ecology and evolution of multimodal communication, including visual and chemical signals. In this study, we analyzed the response of male and female Liolaemus pacha to chemical, visual and combined (multimodal) stimuli. Using cue-isolation tests, we registered the number of tongue flicks and headbob displays from exposure to signals in each modality. Number of tongue flicks was greater when a chemical stimulus was presented alone than in the presence of visual or multimodal stimuli. In contrast, headbob displays were fewer in number with visual and chemical stimuli alone, but significantly higher in number when combined. Female signallers triggered significantly more tongue flicks than male signallers, suggesting that chemical cues are involved in sexual recognition. We did not find an inhibition between chemical and visual cues. On the contrary, we observed a dominance of the chemical modality, because when presented with visual stimuli, lizards also responded with more tongue flicks than headbob displays. The total response produced by multimodal stimuli was similar to that of the chemical stimuli alone, possibly suggesting non-redundancy. We discuss whether the visual component of a multimodal signal could attract attention at a distance, increasing the effectiveness of transmission and reception of the information in chemical cues. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Visual Cueing and Control Design on Children's Reading Achievement of Audio E-Books with Tablet Computers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Pei-Yu; Huang, Chung-Kai

2015-01-01

This study aims to explore the impact of learner grade, visual cueing, and control design on children's reading achievement of audio e-books with tablet computers. This research was a three-way factorial design where the first factor was learner grade (grade four and six), the second factor was e-book visual cueing (word-based, line-based, and…

Neural substrates of smoking cue reactivity: A meta-analysis of fMRI studies

PubMed Central

Engelmann, Jeffrey M.; Versace, Francesco; Robinson, Jason D.; Minnix, Jennifer A.; Lam, Cho Y.; Cui, Yong; Brown, Victoria L.; Cinciripini, Paul M.

2012-01-01

Reactivity to smoking-related cues may be an important factor that precipitates relapse in smokers who are trying to quit. The neurobiology of smoking cue reactivity has been investigated in several fMRI studies. We combined the results of these studies using activation likelihood estimation, a meta-analytic technique for fMRI data. Results of the meta-analysis indicated that smoking cues reliably evoke larger fMRI responses than neutral cues in the extended visual system, precuneus, posterior cingulate gyrus, anterior cingulate gyrus, dorsal and medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and dorsal striatum. Subtraction meta-analyses revealed that parts of the extended visual system and dorsal prefrontal cortex are more reliably responsive to smoking cues in deprived smokers than in non-deprived smokers, and that short-duration cues presented in event-related designs produce larger responses in the extended visual system than long-duration cues presented in blocked designs. The areas that were found to be responsive to smoking cues agree with theories of the neurobiology of cue reactivity, with two exceptions. First, there was a reliable cue reactivity effect in the precuneus, which is not typically considered a brain region important to addiction. Second, we found no significant effect in the nucleus accumbens, an area that plays a critical role in addiction, but this effect may have been due to technical difficulties associated with measuring fMRI data in that region. The results of this meta-analysis suggest that the extended visual system should receive more attention in future studies of smoking cue reactivity. PMID:22206965

Early, but not late visual distractors affect movement synchronization to a temporal-spatial visual cue.

PubMed

Booth, Ashley J; Elliott, Mark T

2015-01-01

The ease of synchronizing movements to a rhythmic cue is dependent on the modality of the cue presentation: timing accuracy is much higher when synchronizing with discrete auditory rhythms than an equivalent visual stimulus presented through flashes. However, timing accuracy is improved if the visual cue presents spatial as well as temporal information (e.g., a dot following an oscillatory trajectory). Similarly, when synchronizing with an auditory target metronome in the presence of a second visual distracting metronome, the distraction is stronger when the visual cue contains spatial-temporal information rather than temporal only. The present study investigates individuals' ability to synchronize movements to a temporal-spatial visual cue in the presence of same-modality temporal-spatial distractors. Moreover, we investigated how increasing the number of distractor stimuli impacted on maintaining synchrony with the target cue. Participants made oscillatory vertical arm movements in time with a vertically oscillating white target dot centered on a large projection screen. The target dot was surrounded by 2, 8, or 14 distractor dots, which had an identical trajectory to the target but at a phase lead or lag of 0, 100, or 200 ms. We found participants' timing performance was only affected in the phase-lead conditions and when there were large numbers of distractors present (8 and 14). This asymmetry suggests participants still rely on salient events in the stimulus trajectory to synchronize movements. Subsequently, distractions occurring in the window of attention surrounding those events have the maximum impact on timing performance.

Determining the Effectiveness of Visual Input Enhancement across Multiple Linguistic Cues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Comeaux, Ian; McDonald, Janet L.

2018-01-01

Visual input enhancement (VIE) increases the salience of grammatical forms, potentially facilitating acquisition through attention mechanisms. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language containing four linguistic cues (verb agreement, case marking, animacy, word order), with morphological cues either unmarked, marked in the…

Repeated Alcohol Extinction Sessions in Conjunction with MK-801, but not Yohimbine or Propranolol, Reduces Subsequent Alcohol Cue-Induced Responding in Rats

PubMed Central

Williams, Keith L.; Harding, Kaitlyn M.

2014-01-01

Cues associated with alcohol can stimulate subjective states that increase relapse. Alcohol-cue associations may be strengthened by enhancing adrenergic activity with yohimbine or weakened by blocking adrenergic activity with propranolol. Alcohol-cue associations may also be weakened by long cue exposure sessions or strengthened by short cue exposure sessions. A useful treatment approach for alcoholism may combine adrenergic manipulation with cue exposure sessions of a specific duration. The present study sought to determine if cue exposure during long- or short-duration extinction sessions with post-session yohimbine or propranolol would alter alcohol cue-induced responding and self-administration. Rats were trained to respond for alcohol during sessions that included an olfactory cue given at the beginning of the session and a visual/auditory cue complex delivered concurrently with alcohol. Cue-induced responding was assessed before and after the repeated extinction sessions. Repeated alcohol extinction sessions of long duration (45 min) or short duration (5 min) were followed immediately by injections of saline, yohimbine, or propranolol. After the second set of cue-induced responding tests, reacquisition of operant alcohol self-administration was examined. To determine if the experimental procedures were sensitive to memory manipulation through other pharmacological mechanisms, the NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 was given 20 min prior to long-duration extinction sessions. Both the long- and short-duration extinction sessions decreased cue-induced responding. Neither yohimbine nor propranolol, given post-session, had subsequent effects on cue-induced responding or alcohol self-administration. MK-801 blocked the effect of extinction sessions on cue-induced responding but had no effect on self-administration. The present study shows that manipulation of the NMDA system in combination with alcohol cue exposure therapy during extinction-like sessions may be more effective than manipulation of the adrenergic system in reducing the strength of alcohol-cue associations in this specific model of alcohol relapse. PMID:24269546

Preschoolers Benefit from Visually Salient Speech Cues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lalonde, Kaylah; Holt, Rachael Frush

2015-01-01

Purpose: This study explored visual speech influence in preschoolers using 3 developmentally appropriate tasks that vary in perceptual difficulty and task demands. They also examined developmental differences in the ability to use visually salient speech cues and visual phonological knowledge. Method: Twelve adults and 27 typically developing 3-…

Orientation in a crowded environment: can King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) chicks find their creches after a displacement?

PubMed

Nesterova, Anna P; Mardon, Jérôme; Bonadonna, Francesco

2009-01-01

For seabird species, the presence of conspecifics in a crowded breeding colony can obstruct locally available orientation cues. Thus, navigation to specific locations can present a challenging problem. We investigated short-range orientation in King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) chicks that live in a large and densely populated colony. The two main objectives were to determine whether chicks displaced to a novel location away from the colony (i) can orient towards the colony and return to their crèche and (ii) rely on visual or non-visual cues for orientation. To address these questions, a circular arena was constructed 100 m away from the colony. Chicks were released in the arena during the day and at night. After the orientation experiment in the arena, chicks were allowed to return to their home crèche, if they could. Our results showed that, during day trials, chicks preferred the half of the arena closer to the colony, but not at night. However, at night, birds spent more time on ;the colony half' of the arena if the wind blew from the colony direction. When animals were allowed to leave the arena, 98% of chicks homed during the day but only 62% of chicks homed at night. Chicks that homed at night also took longer to find their crèche. The experiments suggest that King Penguin chicks can find their crèche from a novel location. Visual cues are important for homing but, when visual cues are not present, animals are able to make use of other information carried by the wind.

Seeing the world topsy-turvy: The primary role of kinematics in biological motion inversion effects.

PubMed

Fitzgerald, Sue-Anne; Brooks, Anna; van der Zwan, Rick; Blair, Duncan

2014-01-01

Physical inversion of whole or partial human body representations typically has catastrophic consequences on the observer's ability to perform visual processing tasks. Explanations usually focus on the effects of inversion on the visual system's ability to exploit configural or structural relationships, but more recently have also implicated motion or kinematic cue processing. Here, we systematically tested the role of both on perceptions of sex from upright and inverted point-light walkers. Our data suggest that inversion results in systematic degradations of the processing of kinematic cues. Specifically and intriguingly, they reveal sex-based kinematic differences: Kinematics characteristic of females generally are resistant to inversion effects, while those of males drive systematic sex misperceptions. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Distinct Effects of Trial-Driven and Task Set-Related Control in Primary Visual Cortex

PubMed Central

Vaden, Ryan J.; Visscher, Kristina M.

2015-01-01

Task sets are task-specific configurations of cognitive processes that facilitate task-appropriate reactions to stimuli. While it is established that the trial-by-trial deployment of visual attention to expected stimuli influences neural responses in primary visual cortex (V1) in a retinotopically specific manner, it is not clear whether the mechanisms that help maintain a task set over many trials also operate with similar retinotopic specificity. Here, we address this question by using BOLD fMRI to characterize how portions of V1 that are specialized for different eccentricities respond during distinct components of an attention-demanding discrimination task: cue-driven preparation for a trial, trial-driven processing, task-initiation at the beginning of a block of trials, and task-maintenance throughout a block of trials. Tasks required either unimodal attention to an auditory or a visual stimulus or selective intermodal attention to the visual or auditory component of simultaneously presented visual and auditory stimuli. We found that while the retinotopic patterns of trial-driven and cue-driven activity depended on the attended stimulus, the retinotopic patterns of task-initiation and task-maintenance activity did not. Further, only the retinotopic patterns of trial-driven activity were found to depend on the presence of intermodal distraction. Participants who performed well on the intermodal selective attention tasks showed strong task-specific modulations of both trial-driven and task-maintenance activity. Importantly, task-related modulations of trial-driven and task-maintenance activity were in opposite directions. Together, these results confirm that there are (at least) two different processes for top-down control of V1: One, working trial-by-trial, differently modulates activity across different eccentricity sectors—portions of V1 corresponding to different visual eccentricities. The second process works across longer epochs of task performance, and does not differ among eccentricity sectors. These results are discussed in the context of previous literature examining top-down control of visual cortical areas. PMID:26163806

Differential effects of serotonin-specific and excitotoxic lesions of OFC on conditioned reinforcer devaluation and extinction in rats

PubMed Central

West, Elizabeth A.; Forcelli, Patrick A.; McCue, David L.; Malkova, Ludise

2013-01-01

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is critical for behavioral adaptation in response to changes in reward value. Here we investigated, in rats, the role of OFC and, specifically, serotonergic neurotransmission within OFC in a reinforcer devaluation task (which measures behavioral flexibility). This task used two visual cues, each predicting one of two foods, with the spatial position (left-right) of the cues above two levers pseudorandomized across trials. An instrumental action (lever press) was required for reinforcer delivery. After training, rats received either excitotoxic OFC lesions made by NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartic acid), serotonin-specific OFC lesions made by 5,7-DHT (5,7-dihydroxytryptamine), or sham lesions. In sham-lesioned rats, devaluation of one food (by feeding to satiety) significantly decreased responding to the cue associated with that food, when both cues were presented simultaneously during extinction. Both types of OFC lesions disrupted the devaluation effect. In contrast, extinction learning was not affected by serotonin-specific lesions and was only mildly retarded in rats with excitotoxic lesions. Thus, serotonin within OFC is necessary for appropriately adjusting behavior towards cues that predict reward but not for reducing responses in the absence of reward. Our results are the first to demonstrate that serotonin in OFC is necessary for reinforcer devaluation, but not extinction. PMID:23458741

The effect of feature-based attention on flanker interference processing: An fMRI-constrained source analysis.

PubMed

Siemann, Julia; Herrmann, Manfred; Galashan, Daniela

2018-01-25

The present study examined whether feature-based cueing affects early or late stages of flanker conflict processing using EEG and fMRI. Feature cues either directed participants' attention to the upcoming colour of the target or were neutral. Validity-specific modulations during interference processing were investigated using the N200 event-related potential (ERP) component and BOLD signal differences. Additionally, both data sets were integrated using an fMRI-constrained source analysis. Finally, the results were compared with a previous study in which spatial instead of feature-based cueing was applied to an otherwise identical flanker task. Feature-based and spatial attention recruited a common fronto-parietal network during conflict processing. Irrespective of attention type (feature-based; spatial), this network responded to focussed attention (valid cueing) as well as context updating (invalid cueing), hinting at domain-general mechanisms. However, spatially and non-spatially directed attention also demonstrated domain-specific activation patterns for conflict processing that were observable in distinct EEG and fMRI data patterns as well as in the respective source analyses. Conflict-specific activity in visual brain regions was comparable between both attention types. We assume that the distinction between spatially and non-spatially directed attention types primarily applies to temporal differences (domain-specific dynamics) between signals originating in the same brain regions (domain-general localization).

Differential effects of serotonin-specific and excitotoxic lesions of OFC on conditioned reinforcer devaluation and extinction in rats.

PubMed

West, Elizabeth A; Forcelli, Patrick A; McCue, David L; Malkova, Ludise

2013-06-01

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is critical for behavioral adaptation in response to changes in reward value. Here we investigated, in rats, the role of OFC and, specifically, serotonergic neurotransmission within OFC in a reinforcer devaluation task (which measures behavioral flexibility). This task used two visual cues, each predicting one of two foods, with the spatial position (left-right) of the cues above two levers pseudorandomized across trials. An instrumental action (lever press) was required for reinforcer delivery. After training, rats received either excitotoxic OFC lesions made by NMDA (N-methyl-d-aspartic acid), serotonin-specific OFC lesions made by 5,7-DHT (5,7-dihydroxytryptamine), or sham lesions. In sham-lesioned rats, devaluation of one food (by feeding to satiety) significantly decreased responding to the cue associated with that food, when both cues were presented simultaneously during extinction. Both types of OFC lesions disrupted the devaluation effect. In contrast, extinction learning was not affected by serotonin-specific lesions and was only mildly retarded in rats with excitotoxic lesions. Thus, serotonin within OFC is necessary for appropriately adjusting behavior toward cues that predict reward but not for reducing responses in the absence of reward. Our results are the first to demonstrate that serotonin in OFC is necessary for reinforcer devaluation, but not extinction. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Smelling directions: Olfaction modulates ambiguous visual motion perception

PubMed Central

Kuang, Shenbing; Zhang, Tao

2014-01-01

Senses of smells are often accompanied by simultaneous visual sensations. Previous studies have documented enhanced olfactory performance with concurrent presence of congruent color- or shape- related visual cues, and facilitated visual object perception when congruent smells are simultaneously present. These visual object-olfaction interactions suggest the existences of couplings between the olfactory pathway and the visual ventral processing stream. However, it is not known if olfaction can modulate visual motion perception, a function that is related to the visual dorsal stream. We tested this possibility by examining the influence of olfactory cues on the perceptions of ambiguous visual motion signals. We showed that, after introducing an association between motion directions and olfactory cues, olfaction could indeed bias ambiguous visual motion perceptions. Our result that olfaction modulates visual motion processing adds to the current knowledge of cross-modal interactions and implies a possible functional linkage between the olfactory system and the visual dorsal pathway. PMID:25052162

Age-related changes in human posture control: Sensory organization tests

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Peterka, R. J.; Black, F. O.

1989-01-01

Postural control was measured in 214 human subjects ranging in age from 7 to 81 years. Sensory organization tests measured the magnitude of anterior-posterior body sway during six 21 s trials in which visual and somatosensory orientation cues were altered (by rotating the visual surround and support surface in proportion to the subject's sway) or vision eliminated (eyes closed) in various combinations. No age-related increase in postural sway was found for subjects standing on a fixed support surface with eyes open or closed. However, age-related increases in sway were found for conditions involving altered visual or somatosensory cues. Subjects older than about 55 years showed the largest sway increases. Subjects younger than about 15 years were also sensitive to alteration of sensory cues. On average, the older subjects were more affected by altered visual cues whereas younger subjects had more difficulty with altered somatosensory cues.

Functional interplay of top-down attention with affective codes during visual short-term memory maintenance.

PubMed

Kuo, Bo-Cheng; Lin, Szu-Hung; Yeh, Yei-Yu

2018-06-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) allows individuals to briefly maintain information over time for guiding behaviours. Because the contents of VSTM can be neutral or emotional, top-down influence in VSTM may vary with the affective codes of maintained representations. Here we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the functional interplay of top-down attention with affective codes in VSTM using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants were instructed to remember both threatening and neutral objects in a cued VSTM task. Retrospective cues (retro-cues) were presented to direct attention to the hemifield of a threatening object (i.e., cue-to-threat) or a neutral object (i.e., cue-to-neutral) during VSTM maintenance. We showed stronger activity in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex and amygdala for attending threatening relative to neutral representations. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found better classification performance for cue-to-threat versus cue-to-neutral objects in early visual areas and in the amygdala. Importantly, retro-cues modulated the strength of functional connectivity between the frontoparietal and early visual areas. Activity in the frontoparietal areas became strongly correlated with the activity in V3a-V4 coding the threatening representations instructed to be relevant for the task. Together, these findings provide the first demonstration of top-down modulation of activation patterns in early visual areas and functional connectivity between the frontoparietal network and early visual areas for regulating threatening representations during VSTM maintenance. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Proceedings, 13th Annual Conference on Manual Control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1977-01-01

Theoretical aspects of manual control theory are discussed. Specific topics covered include: tracking; performance, attention allocation, and mental load; surface vehicle control; monitoring behavior and supervisory control; manipulators and prosthetics; aerospace vehicle control; motion and visual cues; and displays and controls.

The role of visuohaptic experience in visually perceived depth.

PubMed

Ho, Yun-Xian; Serwe, Sascha; Trommershäuser, Julia; Maloney, Laurence T; Landy, Michael S

2009-06-01

Berkeley suggested that "touch educates vision," that is, haptic input may be used to calibrate visual cues to improve visual estimation of properties of the world. Here, we test whether haptic input may be used to "miseducate" vision, causing observers to rely more heavily on misleading visual cues. Human subjects compared the depth of two cylindrical bumps illuminated by light sources located at different positions relative to the surface. As in previous work using judgments of surface roughness, we find that observers judge bumps to have greater depth when the light source is located eccentric to the surface normal (i.e., when shadows are more salient). Following several sessions of visual judgments of depth, subjects then underwent visuohaptic training in which haptic feedback was artificially correlated with the "pseudocue" of shadow size and artificially decorrelated with disparity and texture. Although there were large individual differences, almost all observers demonstrated integration of haptic cues during visuohaptic training. For some observers, subsequent visual judgments of bump depth were unaffected by the training. However, for 5 of 12 observers, training significantly increased the weight given to pseudocues, causing subsequent visual estimates of shape to be less veridical. We conclude that haptic information can be used to reweight visual cues, putting more weight on misleading pseudocues, even when more trustworthy visual cues are available in the scene.

Empirical comparison of a fixed-base and a moving-base simulation of a helicopter engaged in visually conducted slalom runs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Parrish, R. V.; Houck, J. A.; Martin, D. J., Jr.

1977-01-01

Combined visual, motion, and aural cues for a helicopter engaged in visually conducted slalom runs at low altitude were studied. The evaluation of the visual and aural cues was subjective, whereas the motion cues were evaluated both subjectively and objectively. Subjective and objective results coincided in the area of control activity. Generally, less control activity is present under motion conditions than under fixed-base conditions, a fact attributed subjectively to the feeling of realistic limitations of a machine (helicopter) given by the addition of motion cues. The objective data also revealed that the slalom runs were conducted at significantly higher altitudes under motion conditions than under fixed-base conditions.

Modeling of Depth Cue Integration in Manual Control Tasks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sweet, Barbara T.; Kaiser, Mary K.; Davis, Wendy

2003-01-01

Psychophysical research has demonstrated that human observers utilize a variety of visual cues to form a perception of three-dimensional depth. However, most of these studies have utilized a passive judgement paradigm, and failed to consider depth-cue integration as a dynamic and task-specific process. In the current study, we developed and experimentally validated a model of manual control of depth that examines how two potential cues (stereo disparity and relative size) are utilized in both first- and second-order active depth control tasks. We found that stereo disparity plays the dominate role for determining depth position, while relative size dominates perception of depth velocity. Stereo disparity also plays a reduced role when made less salient (i.e., when viewing distance is increased). Manual control models predict that position information is sufficient for first-order control tasks, while velocity information is required to perform a second-order control task. Thus, the rules for depth-cue integration in active control tasks are dependent on both task demands and cue quality.

Evidence for cue-independent spatial representation in the human auditory cortex during active listening

PubMed Central

McLaughlin, Susan A.; Rinne, Teemu; Stecker, G. Christopher

2017-01-01

Few auditory functions are as important or as universal as the capacity for auditory spatial awareness (e.g., sound localization). That ability relies on sensitivity to acoustical cues—particularly interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD)—that correlate with sound-source locations. Under nonspatial listening conditions, cortical sensitivity to ITD and ILD takes the form of broad contralaterally dominated response functions. It is unknown, however, whether that sensitivity reflects representations of the specific physical cues or a higher-order representation of auditory space (i.e., integrated cue processing), nor is it known whether responses to spatial cues are modulated by active spatial listening. To investigate, sensitivity to parametrically varied ITD or ILD cues was measured using fMRI during spatial and nonspatial listening tasks. Task type varied across blocks where targets were presented in one of three dimensions: auditory location, pitch, or visual brightness. Task effects were localized primarily to lateral posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and modulated binaural-cue response functions differently in the two hemispheres. Active spatial listening (location tasks) enhanced both contralateral and ipsilateral responses in the right hemisphere but maintained or enhanced contralateral dominance in the left hemisphere. Two observations suggest integrated processing of ITD and ILD. First, overlapping regions in medial pSTG exhibited significant sensitivity to both cues. Second, successful classification of multivoxel patterns was observed for both cue types and—critically—for cross-cue classification. Together, these results suggest a higher-order representation of auditory space in the human auditory cortex that at least partly integrates the specific underlying cues. PMID:28827357

Effects of False Tilt Cues on the Training of Manual Roll Control Skills

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zaal, Peter M. T.; Popovici, Alexandru; Zavala, Melinda A.

2015-01-01

This paper describes a transfer-of-training study performed in the NASA Ames Vertica lMotion Simulator. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of false tilt cues on training and transfer of training of manual roll control skills. Of specific interest were the skills needed to control unstable roll dynamics of a mid-size transport aircraft close to the stall point. Nineteen general aviation pilots trained on a roll control task with one of three motion conditions: no motion, roll motion only, or reduced coordinated roll motion. All pilots transferred to full coordinated roll motion in the transfer session. A novel multimodal pilot model identification technique was successfully applied to characterize how pilots' use of visual and motion cues changed over the course of training and after transfer. Pilots who trained with uncoordinated roll motion had significantly higher performance during training and after transfer, even though they experienced the false tilt cues. Furthermore, pilot control behavior significantly changed during the two sessions, as indicated by increasing visual and motion gains, and decreasing lead time constants. Pilots training without motion showed higher learning rates after transfer to the full coordinated roll motion case.

Usability of Three-dimensional Augmented Visual Cues Delivered by Smart Glasses on (Freezing of) Gait in Parkinson’s Disease

PubMed Central

Janssen, Sabine; Bolte, Benjamin; Nonnekes, Jorik; Bittner, Marian; Bloem, Bastiaan R.; Heida, Tjitske; Zhao, Yan; van Wezel, Richard J. A.

2017-01-01

External cueing is a potentially effective strategy to reduce freezing of gait (FOG) in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Case reports suggest that three-dimensional (3D) cues might be more effective in reducing FOG than two-dimensional cues. We investigate the usability of 3D augmented reality visual cues delivered by smart glasses in comparison to conventional 3D transverse bars on the floor and auditory cueing via a metronome in reducing FOG and improving gait parameters. In laboratory experiments, 25 persons with PD and FOG performed walking tasks while wearing custom-made smart glasses under five conditions, at the end-of-dose. For two conditions, augmented visual cues (bars/staircase) were displayed via the smart glasses. The control conditions involved conventional 3D transverse bars on the floor, auditory cueing via a metronome, and no cueing. The number of FOG episodes and percentage of time spent on FOG were rated from video recordings. The stride length and its variability, cycle time and its variability, cadence, and speed were calculated from motion data collected with a motion capture suit equipped with 17 inertial measurement units. A total of 300 FOG episodes occurred in 19 out of 25 participants. There were no statistically significant differences in number of FOG episodes and percentage of time spent on FOG across the five conditions. The conventional bars increased stride length, cycle time, and stride length variability, while decreasing cadence and speed. No effects for the other conditions were found. Participants preferred the metronome most, and the augmented staircase least. They suggested to improve the comfort, esthetics, usability, field of view, and stability of the smart glasses on the head and to reduce their weight and size. In their current form, augmented visual cues delivered by smart glasses are not beneficial for persons with PD and FOG. This could be attributable to distraction, blockage of visual feedback, insufficient familiarization with the smart glasses, or display of the visual cues in the central rather than peripheral visual field. Future smart glasses are required to be more lightweight, comfortable, and user friendly to avoid distraction and blockage of sensory feedback, thus increasing usability. PMID:28659862

Imaging when acting: picture but not word cues induce action-related biases of visual attention.

PubMed

Wykowska, Agnieszka; Hommel, Bernhard; Schubö, Anna

2012-01-01

In line with the Theory of Event Coding (Hommel et al., 2001a), action planning has been shown to affect perceptual processing - an effect that has been attributed to a so-called intentional weighting mechanism (Wykowska et al., 2009; Memelink and Hommel, 2012), whose functional role is to provide information for open parameters of online action adjustment (Hommel, 2010). The aim of this study was to test whether different types of action representations induce intentional weighting to various degrees. To meet this aim, we introduced a paradigm in which participants performed a visual search task while preparing to grasp or to point. The to-be performed movement was signaled either by a picture of a required action or a word cue. We reasoned that picture cues might trigger a more concrete action representation that would be more likely to activate the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions that provide information for online action control. In contrast, word cues were expected to trigger a more abstract action representation that would be less likely to induce intentional weighting. In two experiments, preparing for an action facilitated the processing of targets in an unrelated search task if they differed from distractors on a dimension that provided information for online action control. As predicted, however, this effect was observed only if action preparation was signaled by picture cues but not if it was signaled by word cues. We conclude that picture cues are more efficient than word cues in activating the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions, presumably by specifying not only invariant characteristics of the planned action but also the dimensions of action-specific parameters.

Imaging When Acting: Picture but Not Word Cues Induce Action-Related Biases of Visual Attention

PubMed Central

Wykowska, Agnieszka; Hommel, Bernhard; Schubö, Anna

2012-01-01

In line with the Theory of Event Coding (Hommel et al., 2001a), action planning has been shown to affect perceptual processing – an effect that has been attributed to a so-called intentional weighting mechanism (Wykowska et al., 2009; Memelink and Hommel, 2012), whose functional role is to provide information for open parameters of online action adjustment (Hommel, 2010). The aim of this study was to test whether different types of action representations induce intentional weighting to various degrees. To meet this aim, we introduced a paradigm in which participants performed a visual search task while preparing to grasp or to point. The to-be performed movement was signaled either by a picture of a required action or a word cue. We reasoned that picture cues might trigger a more concrete action representation that would be more likely to activate the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions that provide information for online action control. In contrast, word cues were expected to trigger a more abstract action representation that would be less likely to induce intentional weighting. In two experiments, preparing for an action facilitated the processing of targets in an unrelated search task if they differed from distractors on a dimension that provided information for online action control. As predicted, however, this effect was observed only if action preparation was signaled by picture cues but not if it was signaled by word cues. We conclude that picture cues are more efficient than word cues in activating the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions, presumably by specifying not only invariant characteristics of the planned action but also the dimensions of action-specific parameters. PMID:23087656

Are face representations depth cue invariant?

PubMed

Dehmoobadsharifabadi, Armita; Farivar, Reza

2016-06-01

The visual system can process three-dimensional depth cues defining surfaces of objects, but it is unclear whether such information contributes to complex object recognition, including face recognition. The processing of different depth cues involves both dorsal and ventral visual pathways. We investigated whether facial surfaces defined by individual depth cues resulted in meaningful face representations-representations that maintain the relationship between the population of faces as defined in a multidimensional face space. We measured face identity aftereffects for facial surfaces defined by individual depth cues (Experiments 1 and 2) and tested whether the aftereffect transfers across depth cues (Experiments 3 and 4). Facial surfaces and their morphs to the average face were defined purely by one of shading, texture, motion, or binocular disparity. We obtained identification thresholds for matched (matched identity between adapting and test stimuli), non-matched (non-matched identity between adapting and test stimuli), and no-adaptation (showing only the test stimuli) conditions for each cue and across different depth cues. We found robust face identity aftereffect in both experiments. Our results suggest that depth cues do contribute to forming meaningful face representations that are depth cue invariant. Depth cue invariance would require integration of information across different areas and different pathways for object recognition, and this in turn has important implications for cortical models of visual object recognition.

Are multiple visual short-term memory storages necessary to explain the retro-cue effect?

PubMed

Makovski, Tal

2012-06-01

Recent research has shown that change detection performance is enhanced when, during the retention interval, attention is cued to the location of the upcoming test item. This retro-cue advantage has led some researchers to suggest that visual short-term memory (VSTM) is divided into a durable, limited-capacity storage and a more fragile, high-capacity storage. Consequently, performance is poor on the no-cue trials because fragile VSTM is overwritten by the test display and only durable VSTM is accessible under these conditions. In contrast, performance is improved in the retro-cue condition because attention keeps fragile VSTM accessible. The aim of the present study was to test the assumptions underlying this two-storage account. Participants were asked to encode an array of colors for a change detection task involving no-cue and retro-cue trials. A retro-cue advantage was found even when the cue was presented after a visual (Experiment 1) or a central (Experiment 2) interference. Furthermore, the magnitude of the interference was comparable between the no-cue and retro-cue trials. These data undermine the main empirical support for the two-storage account and suggest that the presence of a retro-cue benefit cannot be used to differentiate between different VSTM storages.

Role of sensory cues on food searching behavior of a captive Manta birostris (Chondrichtyes, Mobulidae).

PubMed

Ari, Csilla; Correia, João P

2008-07-01

This study reports on the first experimental research designed specifically for Manta birostris behavior. The authors attempted to learn about the feeding behavior and environmental cues influencing this behavior, as well as general cognitive ability. The preconditioned Manta's ability to identify food, on the basis of a fraction of the ordinary food signal complex, was tested. The opening of cephalic fins was considered a good indicator of feeding motivation level. The study subject animal used its biological clock to predict time and also associated a specific location with food, suggesting an ability to build up a cognitive map of its environment. Both underwater visual stimuli and olfactory stimuli had a very intense effect on food searching behavior over a 30 m distance, in contrast to visual signs from above the water surface. In addition, although an underwater visual signal resulted in a more intense response than from an olfactory signal, the specimen did not discriminate between different objects tested on the basis of visual sensation. It could therefore be suggested that food searching behavior of Mantas are governed by triggering stimuli, including smell or visual recognition, and modulated by the cognitive spatial map stored in their long-term memory. These findings will hopefully prove useful while devising protecting policies in the natural environment and/or while keeping these animals in captivity. Zoo Biol 27:294-304, 2008. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Visually induced gains in pitch discrimination: Linking audio-visual processing with auditory abilities.

PubMed

Møller, Cecilie; Højlund, Andreas; Bærentsen, Klaus B; Hansen, Niels Chr; Skewes, Joshua C; Vuust, Peter

2018-05-01

Perception is fundamentally a multisensory experience. The principle of inverse effectiveness (PoIE) states how the multisensory gain is maximal when responses to the unisensory constituents of the stimuli are weak. It is one of the basic principles underlying multisensory processing of spatiotemporally corresponding crossmodal stimuli that are well established at behavioral as well as neural levels. It is not yet clear, however, how modality-specific stimulus features influence discrimination of subtle changes in a crossmodally corresponding feature belonging to another modality. Here, we tested the hypothesis that reliance on visual cues to pitch discrimination follow the PoIE at the interindividual level (i.e., varies with varying levels of auditory-only pitch discrimination abilities). Using an oddball pitch discrimination task, we measured the effect of varying visually perceived vertical position in participants exhibiting a wide range of pitch discrimination abilities (i.e., musicians and nonmusicians). Visual cues significantly enhanced pitch discrimination as measured by the sensitivity index d', and more so in the crossmodally congruent than incongruent condition. The magnitude of gain caused by compatible visual cues was associated with individual pitch discrimination thresholds, as predicted by the PoIE. This was not the case for the magnitude of the congruence effect, which was unrelated to individual pitch discrimination thresholds, indicating that the pitch-height association is robust to variations in auditory skills. Our findings shed light on individual differences in multisensory processing by suggesting that relevant multisensory information that crucially aids some perceivers' performance may be of less importance to others, depending on their unisensory abilities.

Seeing Emotion with Your Ears: Emotional Prosody Implicitly Guides Visual Attention to Faces

PubMed Central

Rigoulot, Simon; Pell, Marc D.

2012-01-01

Interpersonal communication involves the processing of multimodal emotional cues, particularly facial expressions (visual modality) and emotional speech prosody (auditory modality) which can interact during information processing. Here, we investigated whether the implicit processing of emotional prosody systematically influences gaze behavior to facial expressions of emotion. We analyzed the eye movements of 31 participants as they scanned a visual array of four emotional faces portraying fear, anger, happiness, and neutrality, while listening to an emotionally-inflected pseudo-utterance (Someone migged the pazing) uttered in a congruent or incongruent tone. Participants heard the emotional utterance during the first 1250 milliseconds of a five-second visual array and then performed an immediate recall decision about the face they had just seen. The frequency and duration of first saccades and of total looks in three temporal windows ([0–1250 ms], [1250–2500 ms], [2500–5000 ms]) were analyzed according to the emotional content of faces and voices. Results showed that participants looked longer and more frequently at faces that matched the prosody in all three time windows (emotion congruency effect), although this effect was often emotion-specific (with greatest effects for fear). Effects of prosody on visual attention to faces persisted over time and could be detected long after the auditory information was no longer present. These data imply that emotional prosody is processed automatically during communication and that these cues play a critical role in how humans respond to related visual cues in the environment, such as facial expressions. PMID:22303454

Heuristics of Reasoning and Analogy in Children's Visual Perspective Taking.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yaniv, Ilan; Shatz, Marilyn

1990-01-01

In three experiments, children of three through six years of age were generally better able to reproduce a perceiver's perspective if a visual cue in the perceiver's line of sight was salient. Children had greater difficulty when the task hinged on attending to configural cues. Availability of distinctive cues affixed to objects facilitated…

Enhancing Interactive Tutorial Effectiveness through Visual Cueing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jamet, Eric; Fernandez, Jonathan

2016-01-01

The present study investigated whether learning how to use a web service with an interactive tutorial can be enhanced by cueing. We expected the attentional guidance provided by visual cues to facilitate the selection of information in static screen displays that corresponded to spoken explanations. Unlike most previous studies in this area, we…

The Influence of Alertness on Spatial and Nonspatial Components of Visual Attention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matthias, Ellen; Bublak, Peter; Muller, Hermann J.; Schneider, Werner X.; Krummenacher, Joseph; Finke, Kathrin

2010-01-01

Three experiments investigated whether spatial and nonspatial components of visual attention would be influenced by changes in (healthy, young) subjects' level of alertness and whether such effects on separable components would occur independently of each other. The experiments used a no-cue/alerting-cue design with varying cue-target stimulus…

Multisensory Cues Capture Spatial Attention Regardless of Perceptual Load

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santangelo, Valerio; Spence, Charles

2007-01-01

We compared the ability of auditory, visual, and audiovisual (bimodal) exogenous cues to capture visuo-spatial attention under conditions of no load versus high perceptual load. Participants had to discriminate the elevation (up vs. down) of visual targets preceded by either unimodal or bimodal cues under conditions of high perceptual load (in…

Learning to Match Auditory and Visual Speech Cues: Social Influences on Acquisition of Phonological Categories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altvater-Mackensen, Nicole; Grossmann, Tobias

2015-01-01

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential…

Top-down controlled alpha band activity in somatosensory areas determines behavioral performance in a discrimination task.

PubMed

Haegens, Saskia; Händel, Barbara F; Jensen, Ole

2011-04-06

The brain receives a rich flow of information which must be processed according to behavioral relevance. How is the state of the sensory system adjusted to up- or downregulate processing according to anticipation? We used magnetoencephalography to investigate whether prestimulus alpha band activity (8-14 Hz) reflects allocation of attentional resources in the human somatosensory system. Subjects performed a tactile discrimination task where a visual cue directed attention to their right or left hand. The strength of attentional modulation was controlled by varying the reliability of the cue in three experimental blocks (100%, 75%, or 50% valid cueing). While somatosensory prestimulus alpha power lateralized strongly with a fully predictive cue (100%), lateralization was decreased with lower cue reliability (75%) and virtually absent if the cue had no predictive value at all (50%). Importantly, alpha lateralization influenced the subjects' behavioral performance positively: both accuracy and speed of response improved with the degree of alpha lateralization. This study demonstrates that prestimulus alpha lateralization in the somatosensory system behaves similarly to posterior alpha activity observed in visual attention tasks. Our findings extend the notion that alpha band activity is involved in shaping the functional architecture of the working brain by determining both the engagement and disengagement of specific regions: the degree of anticipation modulates the alpha activity in sensory regions in a graded manner. Thus, the alpha activity is under top-down control and seems to play an important role for setting the state of sensory regions to optimize processing.

Neural correlates of differential retrieval orientation: Sustained and item-related components.

PubMed

Woodruff, C Chad; Uncapher, Melina R; Rugg, Michael D

2006-01-01

Retrieval orientation refers to a cognitive state that biases processing of retrieval cues in service of a specific goal. The present study used a mixed fMRI design to investigate whether adoption of different retrieval orientations - as indexed by differences in the activity elicited by retrieval cues corresponding to unstudied items - is associated with differences in the state-related activity sustained across a block of test trials sharing a common retrieval goal. Subjects studied mixed lists comprising visually presented words and pictures. They then undertook a series of short test blocks in which all test items were visually presented words. The blocks varied according to whether the test items were used to cue retrieval of studied words or studied pictures. In several regions, neural activity elicited by correctly classified new items differed according to whether words or pictures were the targeted material. The loci of these effects suggest that one factor driving differential cue processing is modulation of the degree of overlap between cue and targeted memory representations. In addition to these item-related effects, neural activity sustained throughout the test blocks also differed according to the nature of the targeted material. These findings indicate that the adoption of different retrieval orientations is associated with distinct neural states. The loci of these sustained effects were distinct from those where new item activity varied, suggesting that the effects may play a role in biasing retrieval cue processing in favor of the current retrieval goal.

When they listen and when they watch: Pianists’ use of nonverbal audio and visual cues during duet performance

PubMed Central

Goebl, Werner

2015-01-01

Nonverbal auditory and visual communication helps ensemble musicians predict each other’s intentions and coordinate their actions. When structural characteristics of the music make predicting co-performers’ intentions difficult (e.g., following long pauses or during ritardandi), reliance on incoming auditory and visual signals may change. This study tested whether attention to visual cues during piano–piano and piano–violin duet performance increases in such situations. Pianists performed the secondo part to three duets, synchronizing with recordings of violinists or pianists playing the primo parts. Secondos’ access to incoming audio and visual signals and to their own auditory feedback was manipulated. Synchronization was most successful when primo audio was available, deteriorating when primo audio was removed and only cues from primo visual signals were available. Visual cues were used effectively following long pauses in the music, however, even in the absence of primo audio. Synchronization was unaffected by the removal of secondos’ own auditory feedback. Differences were observed in how successfully piano–piano and piano–violin duos synchronized, but these effects of instrument pairing were not consistent across pieces. Pianists’ success at synchronizing with violinists and other pianists is likely moderated by piece characteristics and individual differences in the clarity of cueing gestures used. PMID:26279610

Using auditory-visual speech to probe the basis of noise-impaired consonant-vowel perception in dyslexia and auditory neuropathy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramirez, Joshua; Mann, Virginia

2005-08-01

Both dyslexics and auditory neuropathy (AN) subjects show inferior consonant-vowel (CV) perception in noise, relative to controls. To better understand these impairments, natural acoustic speech stimuli that were masked in speech-shaped noise at various intensities were presented to dyslexic, AN, and control subjects either in isolation or accompanied by visual articulatory cues. AN subjects were expected to benefit from the pairing of visual articulatory cues and auditory CV stimuli, provided that their speech perception impairment reflects a relatively peripheral auditory disorder. Assuming that dyslexia reflects a general impairment of speech processing rather than a disorder of audition, dyslexics were not expected to similarly benefit from an introduction of visual articulatory cues. The results revealed an increased effect of noise masking on the perception of isolated acoustic stimuli by both dyslexic and AN subjects. More importantly, dyslexics showed less effective use of visual articulatory cues in identifying masked speech stimuli and lower visual baseline performance relative to AN subjects and controls. Last, a significant positive correlation was found between reading ability and the ameliorating effect of visual articulatory cues on speech perception in noise. These results suggest that some reading impairments may stem from a central deficit of speech processing.

Forgotten but Not Gone: Retro-Cue Costs and Benefits in a Double-Cueing Paradigm Suggest Multiple States in Visual Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Moorselaar, Dirk; Olivers, Christian N. L.; Theeuwes, Jan; Lamme, Victor A. F.; Sligte, Ilja G.

2015-01-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) performance is enhanced when the to-be-tested item is cued after encoding. This so-called retro-cue benefit is typically accompanied by a cost for the noncued items, suggesting that information is lost from VSTM upon presentation of a retrospective cue. Here we assessed whether noncued items can be restored to VSTM…

Task-relevant information is prioritized in spatiotemporal contextual cueing.

PubMed

Higuchi, Yoko; Ueda, Yoshiyuki; Ogawa, Hirokazu; Saiki, Jun

2016-11-01

Implicit learning of visual contexts facilitates search performance-a phenomenon known as contextual cueing; however, little is known about contextual cueing under situations in which multidimensional regularities exist simultaneously. In everyday vision, different information, such as object identity and location, appears simultaneously and interacts with each other. We tested the hypothesis that, in contextual cueing, when multiple regularities are present, the regularities that are most relevant to our behavioral goals would be prioritized. Previous studies of contextual cueing have commonly used the visual search paradigm. However, this paradigm is not suitable for directing participants' attention to a particular regularity. Therefore, we developed a new paradigm, the "spatiotemporal contextual cueing paradigm," and manipulated task-relevant and task-irrelevant regularities. In four experiments, we demonstrated that task-relevant regularities were more responsible for search facilitation than task-irrelevant regularities. This finding suggests our visual behavior is focused on regularities that are relevant to our current goal.

Temporal attention for visual food stimuli in restrained eaters.

PubMed

Neimeijer, Renate A M; de Jong, Peter J; Roefs, Anne

2013-05-01

Although restrained eaters try to limit their food intake, they often fail and indulge in exactly those foods that they want to avoid. A possible explanation is a temporal attentional bias for food cues. It could be that for these people food stimuli are processed relatively efficiently and require less attentional resources to enter awareness. Once a food stimulus has captured attention, it may be preferentially processed and granted prioritized access to limited cognitive resources. This might help explain why restrained eaters often fail in their attempts to restrict their food intake. A Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task consisting of dual and single target trials with food and neutral pictures as targets and/or distractors was administered to restrained (n=40) and unrestrained (n=40) eaters to study temporal attentional bias. Results indicated that (1) food cues did not diminish the attentional blink in restrained eaters when presented as second target; (2) specifically restrained eaters showed an interference effect of identifying food targets on the identification of preceding neutral targets; (3) for both restrained and unrestrained eaters, food cues enhanced the attentional blink; (4) specifically in restrained eaters, food distractors elicited an attention blink in the single target trials. In restrained eaters, food cues get prioritized access to limited cognitive resources, even if this processing priority interferes with their current goals. This temporal attentional bias for food stimuli might help explain why restrained eaters typically have difficulties maintaining their diet rules. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selective Maintenance in Visual Working Memory Does Not Require Sustained Visual Attention

PubMed Central

Hollingworth, Andrew; Maxcey-Richard, Ashleigh M.

2012-01-01

In four experiments, we tested whether sustained visual attention is required for the selective maintenance of objects in VWM. Participants performed a color change-detection task. During the retention interval, a valid cue indicated the item that would be tested. Change detection performance was higher in the valid-cue condition than in a neutral-cue control condition. To probe the role of visual attention in the cuing effect, on half of the trials, a difficult search task was inserted after the cue, precluding sustained attention on the cued item. The addition of the search task produced no observable decrement in the magnitude of the cuing effect. In a complementary test, search efficiency was not impaired by simultaneously prioritizing an object for retention in VWM. The results demonstrate that selective maintenance in VWM can be dissociated from the locus of visual attention. PMID:23067118

Peripheral Visual Cues: Their Fate in Processing and Effects on Attention and Temporal-Order Perception.

PubMed

Tünnermann, Jan; Scharlau, Ingrid

2016-01-01

Peripheral visual cues lead to large shifts in psychometric distributions of temporal-order judgments. In one view, such shifts are attributed to attention speeding up processing of the cued stimulus, so-called prior entry. However, sometimes these shifts are so large that it is unlikely that they are caused by attention alone. Here we tested the prevalent alternative explanation that the cue is sometimes confused with the target on a perceptual level, bolstering the shift of the psychometric function. We applied a novel model of cued temporal-order judgments, derived from Bundesen's Theory of Visual Attention. We found that cue-target confusions indeed contribute to shifting psychometric functions. However, cue-induced changes in the processing rates of the target stimuli play an important role, too. At smaller cueing intervals, the cue increased the processing speed of the target. At larger intervals, inhibition of return was predominant. Earlier studies of cued TOJs were insensitive to these effects because in psychometric distributions they are concealed by the conjoint effects of cue-target confusions and processing rate changes.

One-trial overshadowing: Evidence for fast specific fear learning in humans.

PubMed

Haesen, Kim; Beckers, Tom; Baeyens, Frank; Vervliet, Bram

2017-03-01

Adaptive defensive actions necessitate a fear learning system that is both fast and specific. Fast learning serves to minimize the number of threat confrontations, while specific learning ensures that the acquired fears are tied to threat-relevant cues only. In Pavlovian fear conditioning, fear acquisition is typically studied via repetitive pairings of a single cue with an aversive experience, which is not optimal for the examination of fast specific fear learning. In this study, we adopted the one-trial overshadowing procedure from basic learning research, in which a combination of two visual cues is presented once and paired with an aversive electrical stimulation. Using on-line shock expectancy ratings, skin conductance reactivity and startle reflex modulation as indices of fear learning, we found evidence of strong fear after a single conditioning trial (fast learning) as well as attenuated fear responding when only half of the trained stimulus combination was presented (specific learning). Moreover, specificity of fear responding tended to correlate with levels of state and trait anxiety. These results suggest that one-trial overshadowing can be used as a model to study fast specific fear learning in humans and individual differences therein. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The disassociation of visual and acoustic conspecific cues decreases discrimination by female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

PubMed

Campbell, Dana L M; Hauber, Mark E

2009-08-01

Female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) use visual and acoustic traits for accurate recognition of male conspecifics. Evidence from video playbacks confirms that both sensory modalities are important for conspecific and species discrimination, but experimental evidence of the individual roles of these cue types affecting live conspecific recognition is limited. In a spatial paradigm to test discrimination, the authors used live male zebra finch stimuli of 2 color morphs, wild-type (conspecific) and white with a painted black beak (foreign), producing 1 of 2 vocalization types: songs and calls learned from zebra finch parents (conspecific) or cross-fostered songs and calls learned from Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata vars. domestica) foster parents (foreign). The authors found that female zebra finches consistently preferred males with conspecific visual and acoustic cues over males with foreign cues, but did not discriminate when the conspecific and foreign visual and acoustic cues were mismatched. These results indicate the importance of both visual and acoustic features for female zebra finches when discriminating between live conspecific males. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Neural substrates of resisting craving during cigarette cue exposure.

PubMed

Brody, Arthur L; Mandelkern, Mark A; Olmstead, Richard E; Jou, Jennifer; Tiongson, Emmanuelle; Allen, Valerie; Scheibal, David; London, Edythe D; Monterosso, John R; Tiffany, Stephen T; Korb, Alex; Gan, Joanna J; Cohen, Mark S

2007-09-15

In cigarette smokers, the most commonly reported areas of brain activation during visual cigarette cue exposure are the prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and visual cortices. We sought to determine changes in brain activity in response to cigarette cues when smokers actively resist craving. Forty-two tobacco-dependent smokers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, during which they were presented with videotaped cues. Three cue presentation conditions were tested: cigarette cues with subjects allowing themselves to crave (cigarette cue crave), cigarette cues with the instruction to resist craving (cigarette cue resist), and matched neutral cues. Activation was found in the cigarette cue resist (compared with the cigarette cue crave) condition in the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus. Lower magnetic resonance signal for the cigarette cue resist condition was found in the cuneus bilaterally, left lateral occipital gyrus, and right postcentral gyrus. These relative activations and deactivations were more robust when the cigarette cue resist condition was compared with the neutral cue condition. Suppressing craving during cigarette cue exposure involves activation of limbic (and related) brain regions and deactivation of primary sensory and motor cortices.

Response of hatchling Komodo Dragons (Varanus komodoensis) at Denver Zoo to visual and chemical cues arising from prey.

PubMed

Chiszar, David; Krauss, Susan; Shipley, Bryon; Trout, Tim; Smith, Hobart M

2009-01-01

Five hatchling Komodo Dragons (Varanus komodoensis) at Denver Zoo were observed in two experiments that studied the effects of visual and chemical cues arising from prey. Rate of tongue flicking was recorded in Experiment 1, and amount of time the lizards spent interacting with stimuli was recorded in Experiment 2. Our hypothesis was that young V. komodoensis would be more dependent upon vision than chemoreception, especially when dealing with live, moving, prey. Although visual cues, including prey motion, had a significant effect, chemical cues had a far stronger effect. Implications of this falsification of our initial hypothesis are discussed.

Visual spatial cue use for guiding orientation in two-to-three-year-old children

PubMed Central

van den Brink, Danielle; Janzen, Gabriele

2013-01-01

In spatial development representations of the environment and the use of spatial cues change over time. To date, the influence of individual differences in skills relevant for orientation and navigation has not received much attention. The current study investigated orientation abilities on the basis of visual spatial cues in 2–3-year-old children, and assessed factors that possibly influence spatial task performance. Thirty-month and 35-month-olds performed an on-screen Virtual Reality (VR) orientation task searching for an animated target in the presence of visual self-movement cues and landmark information. Results show that, in contrast to 30-month-old children, 35-month-olds were successful in using visual spatial cues for maintaining orientation. Neither age group benefited from landmarks present in the environment, suggesting that successful task performance relied on the use of optic flow cues, rather than object-to-object relations. Analysis of individual differences revealed that 2-year-olds who were relatively more independent in comparison to their peers, as measured by the daily living skills scale of the parental questionnaire Vineland-Screener were most successful at the orientation task. These results support previous findings indicating that the use of various spatial cues gradually improves during early childhood. Our data show that a developmental transition in spatial cue use can be witnessed within a relatively short period of 5 months only. Furthermore, this study indicates that rather than chronological age, individual differences may play a role in successful use of visual cues for spatial updating in an orientation task. Future studies are necessary to assess the exact nature of these individual differences. PMID:24368903

Visual spatial cue use for guiding orientation in two-to-three-year-old children.

PubMed

van den Brink, Danielle; Janzen, Gabriele

2013-01-01

In spatial development representations of the environment and the use of spatial cues change over time. To date, the influence of individual differences in skills relevant for orientation and navigation has not received much attention. The current study investigated orientation abilities on the basis of visual spatial cues in 2-3-year-old children, and assessed factors that possibly influence spatial task performance. Thirty-month and 35-month-olds performed an on-screen Virtual Reality (VR) orientation task searching for an animated target in the presence of visual self-movement cues and landmark information. Results show that, in contrast to 30-month-old children, 35-month-olds were successful in using visual spatial cues for maintaining orientation. Neither age group benefited from landmarks present in the environment, suggesting that successful task performance relied on the use of optic flow cues, rather than object-to-object relations. Analysis of individual differences revealed that 2-year-olds who were relatively more independent in comparison to their peers, as measured by the daily living skills scale of the parental questionnaire Vineland-Screener were most successful at the orientation task. These results support previous findings indicating that the use of various spatial cues gradually improves during early childhood. Our data show that a developmental transition in spatial cue use can be witnessed within a relatively short period of 5 months only. Furthermore, this study indicates that rather than chronological age, individual differences may play a role in successful use of visual cues for spatial updating in an orientation task. Future studies are necessary to assess the exact nature of these individual differences.

A treat for the eyes. An eye-tracking study on children's attention to unhealthy and healthy food cues in media content.

PubMed

Spielvogel, Ines; Matthes, Jörg; Naderer, Brigitte; Karsay, Kathrin

2018-06-01

Based on cue reactivity theory, food cues embedded in media content can lead to physiological and psychological responses in children. Research suggests that unhealthy food cues are represented more extensively and interactively in children's media environments than healthy ones. However, it is not clear to this date whether children react differently to unhealthy compared to healthy food cues. In an experimental study with 56 children (55.4% girls; M age  = 8.00, SD = 1.58), we used eye-tracking to determine children's attention to unhealthy and healthy food cues embedded in a narrative cartoon movie. Besides varying the food type (i.e., healthy vs. unhealthy), we also manipulated the integration levels of food cues with characters (i.e., level of food integration; no interaction vs. handling vs. consumption), and we assessed children's individual susceptibility factors by measuring the impact of their hunger level. Our results indicated that unhealthy food cues attract children's visual attention to a larger extent than healthy cues. However, their initial visual interest did not differ between unhealthy and healthy food cues. Furthermore, an increase in the level of food integration led to an increase in visual attention. Our findings showed no moderating impact of hunger. We conclude that especially unhealthy food cues with an interactive connection trigger cue reactivity in children. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Validating Visual Cues In Flight Simulator Visual Displays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aronson, Moses

1987-09-01

Currently evaluation of visual simulators are performed by either pilot opinion questionnaires or comparison of aircraft terminal performance. The approach here is to compare pilot performance in the flight simulator with a visual display to his performance doing the same visual task in the aircraft as an indication that the visual cues are identical. The A-7 Night Carrier Landing task was selected. Performance measures which had high pilot performance prediction were used to compare two samples of existing pilot performance data to prove that the visual cues evoked the same performance. The performance of four pilots making 491 night landing approaches in an A-7 prototype part task trainer were compared with the performance of 3 pilots performing 27 A-7E carrier landing qualification approaches on the CV-60 aircraft carrier. The results show that the pilots' performances were similar, therefore concluding that the visual cues provided in the simulator were identical to those provided in the real world situation. Differences between the flight simulator's flight characteristics and the aircraft have less of an effect than the pilots individual performances. The measurement parameters used in the comparison can be used for validating the visual display for adequacy for training.

I can see what you are saying: Auditory labels reduce visual search times.

PubMed

Cho, Kit W

2016-10-01

The present study explored the self-directed-speech effect, the finding that relative to silent reading of a label (e.g., DOG), saying it aloud reduces visual search reaction times (RTs) for locating a target picture among distractors. Experiment 1 examined whether this effect is due to a confound in the differences in the number of cues in self-directed speech (two) vs. silent reading (one) and tested whether self-articulation is required for the effect. The results showed that self-articulation is not required and that merely hearing the auditory label reduces visual search RTs relative to silent reading. This finding also rules out the number of cues confound. Experiment 2 examined whether hearing an auditory label activates more prototypical features of the label's referent and whether the auditory-label benefit is moderated by the target's imagery concordance (the degree to which the target picture matches the mental picture that is activated by a written label for the target). When the target imagery concordance was high, RTs following the presentation of a high prototypicality picture or auditory cue were comparable and shorter than RTs following a visual label or low prototypicality picture cue. However, when the target imagery concordance was low, RTs following an auditory cue were shorter than the comparable RTs following the picture cues and visual-label cue. The results suggest that an auditory label activates both prototypical and atypical features of a concept and can facilitate visual search RTs even when compared to picture primes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Warriors and peacekeepers: testing a biosocial implicit leadership hypothesis of intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces.

PubMed

Spisak, Brian R; Dekker, Peter H; Krüger, Max; van Vugt, Mark

2012-01-01

This paper examines the impact of facial cues on leadership emergence. Using evolutionary social psychology, we expand upon implicit and contingent theories of leadership and propose that different types of intergroup relations elicit different implicit cognitive leadership prototypes. It is argued that a biologically based hormonal connection between behavior and corresponding facial characteristics interacts with evolutionarily consistent social dynamics to influence leadership emergence. We predict that masculine-looking leaders are selected during intergroup conflict (war) and feminine-looking leaders during intergroup cooperation (peace). Across two experiments we show that a general categorization of leader versus nonleader is an initial implicit requirement for emergence, and at a context-specific level facial cues of masculinity and femininity contingently affect war versus peace leadership emergence in the predicted direction. In addition, we replicate our findings in Experiment 1 across culture using Western and East Asian samples. In Experiment 2, we also show that masculine-feminine facial cues are better predictors of leadership than male-female cues. Collectively, our results indicate a multi-level classification of context-specific leadership based on visual cues imbedded in the human face and challenge traditional distinctions of male and female leadership.

Warriors and Peacekeepers: Testing a Biosocial Implicit Leadership Hypothesis of Intergroup Relations Using Masculine and Feminine Faces

PubMed Central

Spisak, Brian R.; Dekker, Peter H.; Krüger, Max; van Vugt, Mark

2012-01-01

This paper examines the impact of facial cues on leadership emergence. Using evolutionary social psychology, we expand upon implicit and contingent theories of leadership and propose that different types of intergroup relations elicit different implicit cognitive leadership prototypes. It is argued that a biologically based hormonal connection between behavior and corresponding facial characteristics interacts with evolutionarily consistent social dynamics to influence leadership emergence. We predict that masculine-looking leaders are selected during intergroup conflict (war) and feminine-looking leaders during intergroup cooperation (peace). Across two experiments we show that a general categorization of leader versus nonleader is an initial implicit requirement for emergence, and at a context-specific level facial cues of masculinity and femininity contingently affect war versus peace leadership emergence in the predicted direction. In addition, we replicate our findings in Experiment 1 across culture using Western and East Asian samples. In Experiment 2, we also show that masculine-feminine facial cues are better predictors of leadership than male-female cues. Collectively, our results indicate a multi-level classification of context-specific leadership based on visual cues imbedded in the human face and challenge traditional distinctions of male and female leadership. PMID:22276190

A Model of Manual Control with Perspective Scene Viewing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sweet, Barbara Townsend

2013-01-01

A model of manual control during perspective scene viewing is presented, which combines the Crossover Model with a simpli ed model of perspective-scene viewing and visual- cue selection. The model is developed for a particular example task: an idealized constant- altitude task in which the operator controls longitudinal position in the presence of both longitudinal and pitch disturbances. An experiment is performed to develop and vali- date the model. The model corresponds closely with the experimental measurements, and identi ed model parameters are highly consistent with the visual cues available in the perspective scene. The modeling results indicate that operators used one visual cue for position control, and another visual cue for velocity control (lead generation). Additionally, operators responded more quickly to rotation (pitch) than translation (longitudinal).

The answer is blowing in the wind: free-flying honeybees can integrate visual and mechano-sensory inputs for making complex foraging decisions.

PubMed

Ravi, Sridhar; Garcia, Jair E; Wang, Chun; Dyer, Adrian G

2016-11-01

Bees navigate in complex environments using visual, olfactory and mechano-sensorial cues. In the lowest region of the atmosphere, the wind environment can be highly unsteady and bees employ fine motor-skills to enhance flight control. Recent work reveals sophisticated multi-modal processing of visual and olfactory channels by the bee brain to enhance foraging efficiency, but it currently remains unclear whether wind-induced mechano-sensory inputs are also integrated with visual information to facilitate decision making. Individual honeybees were trained in a linear flight arena with appetitive-aversive differential conditioning to use a context-setting cue of 3 m s -1 cross-wind direction to enable decisions about either a 'blue' or 'yellow' star stimulus being the correct alternative. Colour stimuli properties were mapped in bee-specific opponent-colour spaces to validate saliency, and to thus enable rapid reverse learning. Bees were able to integrate mechano-sensory and visual information to facilitate decisions that were significantly different to chance expectation after 35 learning trials. An independent group of bees were trained to find a single rewarding colour that was unrelated to the wind direction. In these trials, wind was not used as a context-setting cue and served only as a potential distracter in identifying the relevant rewarding visual stimuli. Comparison between respective groups shows that bees can learn to integrate visual and mechano-sensory information in a non-elemental fashion, revealing an unsuspected level of sensory processing in honeybees, and adding to the growing body of knowledge on the capacity of insect brains to use multi-modal sensory inputs in mediating foraging behaviour. © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception.

PubMed

Peelle, Jonathan E; Sommers, Mitchell S

2015-07-01

During face-to-face conversational speech listeners must efficiently process a rapid and complex stream of multisensory information. Visual speech can serve as a critical complement to auditory information because it provides cues to both the timing of the incoming acoustic signal (the amplitude envelope, influencing attention and perceptual sensitivity) and its content (place and manner of articulation, constraining lexical selection). Here we review behavioral and neurophysiological evidence regarding listeners' use of visual speech information. Multisensory integration of audiovisual speech cues improves recognition accuracy, particularly for speech in noise. Even when speech is intelligible based solely on auditory information, adding visual information may reduce the cognitive demands placed on listeners through increasing the precision of prediction. Electrophysiological studies demonstrate that oscillatory cortical entrainment to speech in auditory cortex is enhanced when visual speech is present, increasing sensitivity to important acoustic cues. Neuroimaging studies also suggest increased activity in auditory cortex when congruent visual information is available, but additionally emphasize the involvement of heteromodal regions of posterior superior temporal sulcus as playing a role in integrative processing. We interpret these findings in a framework of temporally-focused lexical competition in which visual speech information affects auditory processing to increase sensitivity to acoustic information through an early integration mechanism, and a late integration stage that incorporates specific information about a speaker's articulators to constrain the number of possible candidates in a spoken utterance. Ultimately it is words compatible with both auditory and visual information that most strongly determine successful speech perception during everyday listening. Thus, audiovisual speech perception is accomplished through multiple stages of integration, supported by distinct neuroanatomical mechanisms. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visuospatial selective attention in chickens.

PubMed

Sridharan, Devarajan; Ramamurthy, Deepa L; Schwarz, Jason S; Knudsen, Eric I

2014-05-13

Voluntary control of attention promotes intelligent, adaptive behaviors by enabling the selective processing of information that is most relevant for making decisions. Despite extensive research on attention in primates, the capacity for selective attention in nonprimate species has never been quantified. Here we demonstrate selective attention in chickens by applying protocols that have been used to characterize visual spatial attention in primates. Chickens were trained to localize and report the vertical position of a target in the presence of task-relevant distracters. A spatial cue, the location of which varied across individual trials, indicated the horizontal, but not vertical, position of the upcoming target. Spatial cueing improved localization performance: accuracy (d') increased and reaction times decreased in a space-specific manner. Distracters severely impaired perceptual performance, and this impairment was greatly reduced by spatial cueing. Signal detection analysis with an "indecision" model demonstrated that spatial cueing significantly increased choice certainty in localizing targets. By contrast, error-aversion certainty (certainty of not making an error) remained essentially constant across cueing protocols, target contrasts, and individuals. The results show that chickens shift spatial attention rapidly and dynamically, following principles of stimulus selection that closely parallel those documented in primates. The findings suggest that the mechanisms that control attention have been conserved through evolution, and establish chickens--a highly visual species that is easily trained and amenable to cutting-edge experimental technologies--as an attractive model for linking behavior to neural mechanisms of selective attention.

Reward reduces conflict by enhancing attentional control and biasing visual cortical processing.

PubMed

Padmala, Srikanth; Pessoa, Luiz

2011-11-01

How does motivation interact with cognitive control during challenging behavioral conditions? Here, we investigated the interactions between motivation and cognition during a response conflict task and tested a specific model of the effect of reward on cognitive processing. Behaviorally, participants exhibited reduced conflict during the reward versus no-reward condition. Brain imaging results revealed that a group of subcortical and fronto-parietal regions was robustly influenced by reward at cue processing and, importantly, that cue-related responses in fronto-parietal attentional regions were predictive of reduced conflict-related signals in the medial pFC (MPFC)/ACC during the upcoming target phase. Path analysis revealed that the relationship between cue responses in the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and interference-related responses in the MPFC during the subsequent target phase was mediated via signals in the left fusiform gyrus, which we linked to distractor-related processing. Finally, reward increased functional connectivity between the right IPS and both bilateral putamen and bilateral nucleus accumbens during the cue phase, a relationship that covaried with across-individual sensitivity to reward in the case of the right nucleus accumbens. Taken together, our findings are consistent with a model in which motivationally salient cues are employed to upregulate top-down control processes that bias the selection of visual information, thereby leading to more efficient stimulus processing during conflict conditions.

Gender recognition depends on type of movement and motor skill. Analyzing and perceiving biological motion in musical and nonmusical tasks.

PubMed

Wöllner, Clemens; Deconinck, Frederik J A

2013-05-01

Gender recognition in point-light displays was investigated with regard to body morphology cues and motion cues of human motion performed with different levels of technical skill. Gestures of male and female orchestral conductors were recorded with a motion capture system while they conducted excerpts from a Mendelssohn string symphony to musicians. Point-light displays of conductors were presented to observers under the following conditions: visual-only, auditory-only, audiovisual, and two non-conducting conditions (walking and static images). Observers distinguished between male and female conductors in gait and static images, but not in visual-only and auditory-only conducting conditions. Across all conductors, gender recognition for audiovisual stimuli was better than chance, yet significantly less reliable than for gait. Separate analyses for two groups of conductors indicated an expertise effect in that novice conductors' gender was perceived above chance level for visual-only and audiovisual conducting, while skilled conducting gestures of experts did not afford gender-specific cues. In these conditions, participants may have ignored the body morphology cues that led to correct judgments for static images. Results point to a response bias such that conductors were more often judged to be male. Thus judgment accuracy depended both on the conductors' level of expertise as well as on the observers' concepts, suggesting that perceivable differences between men and women may diminish for highly trained movements of experienced individuals. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An eye movement analysis of the effect of interruption modality on primary task resumption.

PubMed

Ratwani, Raj; Trafton, J Gregory

2010-06-01

We examined the effect of interruption modality (visual or auditory) on primary task (visual) resumption to determine which modality was the least disruptive. Theories examining interruption modality have focused on specific periods of the interruption timeline. Preemption theory has focused on the switch from the primary task to the interrupting task. Multiple resource theory has focused on interrupting tasks that are to be performed concurrently with the primary task. Our focus was on examining how interruption modality influences task resumption.We leverage the memory-for-goals theory, which suggests that maintaining an associative link between environmental cues and the suspended primary task goal is important for resumption. Three interruption modality conditions were examined: auditory interruption with the primary task visible, auditory interruption with a blank screen occluding the primary task, and a visual interruption occluding the primary task. Reaction time and eye movement data were collected. The auditory condition with the primary task visible was the least disruptive. Eye movement data suggest that participants in this condition were actively maintaining an associative link between relevant environmental cues on the primary task interface and the suspended primary task goal during the interruption. These data suggest that maintaining cue association is the important factor for reducing the disruptiveness of interruptions, not interruption modality. Interruption-prone computing environments should be designed to allow for the user to have access to relevant primary task cues during an interruption to minimize disruptiveness.

Cortisol, but not intranasal insulin, affects the central processing of visual food cues.

PubMed

Ferreira de Sá, Diana S; Schulz, André; Streit, Fabian E; Turner, Jonathan D; Oitzl, Melly S; Blumenthal, Terry D; Schächinger, Hartmut

2014-12-01

Stress glucocorticoids and insulin are important endocrine regulators of energy homeostasis, but little is known about their central interaction on the reward-related processing of food cues. According to a balanced group design, healthy food deprived men received either 40IU intranasal insulin (n=13), 30mg oral cortisol (n=12), both (n=15), or placebo (n=14). Acoustic startle responsiveness was assessed during presentation of food and non-food pictures. Cortisol enhanced startle responsiveness during visual presentation of "high glycemic" food pictures, but not during presentation of neutral and pleasant non-food pictures. Insulin had no effect. Based on the "frustrative nonreward" model these results suggest that the reward value of high glycemic food items is specifically increased by cortisol. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Seeing the world topsy-turvy: The primary role of kinematics in biological motion inversion effects

PubMed Central

Fitzgerald, Sue-Anne; Brooks, Anna; van der Zwan, Rick; Blair, Duncan

2014-01-01

Physical inversion of whole or partial human body representations typically has catastrophic consequences on the observer's ability to perform visual processing tasks. Explanations usually focus on the effects of inversion on the visual system's ability to exploit configural or structural relationships, but more recently have also implicated motion or kinematic cue processing. Here, we systematically tested the role of both on perceptions of sex from upright and inverted point-light walkers. Our data suggest that inversion results in systematic degradations of the processing of kinematic cues. Specifically and intriguingly, they reveal sex-based kinematic differences: Kinematics characteristic of females generally are resistant to inversion effects, while those of males drive systematic sex misperceptions. Implications of the findings are discussed. PMID:25469217

Combining Behavioral and ERP Methodologies to Investigate the Differences Between McGurk Effects Demonstrated by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers.

PubMed

Zhang, Juan; Meng, Yaxuan; McBride, Catherine; Fan, Xitao; Yuan, Zhen

2018-01-01

The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dialects on McGurk effect using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodologies. Specifically, intra-language comparison of McGurk effect was conducted between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. The behavioral results showed that Cantonese speakers exhibited a stronger McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception compared to Mandarin speakers, although both groups performed equally in the auditory and visual conditions. ERP results revealed that Cantonese speakers were more sensitive to visual cues than Mandarin speakers, though this was not the case for the auditory cues. Taken together, the current findings suggest that the McGurk effect generated by Chinese speakers is mainly influenced by segmental phonology during audiovisual speech integration.

Combining Behavioral and ERP Methodologies to Investigate the Differences Between McGurk Effects Demonstrated by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers

PubMed Central

Zhang, Juan; Meng, Yaxuan; McBride, Catherine; Fan, Xitao; Yuan, Zhen

2018-01-01

The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dialects on McGurk effect using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodologies. Specifically, intra-language comparison of McGurk effect was conducted between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. The behavioral results showed that Cantonese speakers exhibited a stronger McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception compared to Mandarin speakers, although both groups performed equally in the auditory and visual conditions. ERP results revealed that Cantonese speakers were more sensitive to visual cues than Mandarin speakers, though this was not the case for the auditory cues. Taken together, the current findings suggest that the McGurk effect generated by Chinese speakers is mainly influenced by segmental phonology during audiovisual speech integration. PMID:29780312

Simon Effect with and without Awareness of the Accessory Stimulus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Treccani, Barbara; Umilta, Carlo; Tagliabue, Mariaelena

2006-01-01

The authors investigated whether a Simon effect could be observed in an accessory-stimulus Simon task when participants were unaware of the task-irrelevant accessory cue. In Experiment 1A a central visual target was accompanied by a suprathreshold visual lateral cue. A regular Simon effect (i.e., faster cue-response corresponding reaction times…

Infants' Selective Attention to Reliable Visual Cues in the Presence of Salient Distractors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tummeltshammer, Kristen Swan; Mareschal, Denis; Kirkham, Natasha Z.

2014-01-01

With many features competing for attention in their visual environment, infants must learn to deploy attention toward informative cues while ignoring distractions. Three eye tracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether 6- and 8-month-olds (total N = 102) would shift attention away from a distractor stimulus to learn a cue-reward…

Atypical Visual Orienting to Gaze- and Arrow-Cues in Adults with High Functioning Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vlamings, Petra H. J. M.; Stauder, Johannes E. A.; van Son, Ilona A. M.; Mottron, Laurent

2005-01-01

The present study investigates visual orienting to directional cues (arrow or eyes) in adults with high functioning autism (n = 19) and age matched controls (n = 19). A choice reaction time paradigm is used in which eye-or arrow direction correctly (congruent) or incorrectly (incongruent) cues target location. In typically developing participants,…

Integration of visual and motion cues for simulator requirements and ride quality investigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Young, L. R.

1976-01-01

Practical tools which can extend the state of the art of moving base flight simulation for research and training are developed. Main approaches to this research effort include: (1) application of the vestibular model for perception of orientation based on motion cues: optimum simulator motion controls; and (2) visual cues in landing.

Memory for Drug Related Visual Stimuli in Young Adult, Cocaine Dependent Polydrug Users

PubMed Central

Ray, Suchismita; Pandina, Robert; Bates, Marsha E.

2015-01-01

Background and Objectives Implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) memory associations with drugs have been examined primarily using verbal cues. However, drug seeking, drug use behaviors, and relapse in chronic cocaine and other drug users are frequently triggered by viewing substance related visual cues in the environment. We thus examined implicit and explicit memory for drug picture cues to understand the relative extent to which conscious and unconscious memory facilitation of visual drug cues occurs during cocaine dependence. Methods Memory for drug related and neutral picture cues was assessed in 14 inpatient cocaine dependent polydrug users and a comparison group of 21 young adults with limited drug experience (N = 35). Participants completed picture cue exposure, free recall and recognition tasks to assess explicit memory, and a repetition priming task to assess implicit memory. Results Drug cues, compared to neutral cues were better explicitly recalled and implicitly primed, and especially so in the cocaine group. In contrast, neutral cues were better explicitly recognized, and especially in the control group. Conclusion Certain forms of explicit and implicit memory for drug cues were enhanced in cocaine users compared to controls when memory was tested a short time following cue exposure. Enhanced unconscious memory processing of drug cues in chronic cocaine users may be a behavioral manifestation of heightened drug cue salience that supports drug seeking and taking. There may be value in expanding intervention techniques to utilize cocaine users’ implicit memory system. PMID:24588421

Food and conspecific chemical cues modify visual behavior of zebrafish, Danio rerio.

PubMed

Stephenson, Jessica F; Partridge, Julian C; Whitlock, Kathleen E

2012-06-01

Animals use the different qualities of olfactory and visual sensory information to make decisions. Ethological and electrophysiological evidence suggests that there is cross-modal priming between these sensory systems in fish. We present the first experimental study showing that ecologically relevant chemical mixtures alter visual behavior, using adult male and female zebrafish, Danio rerio. Neutral-density filters were used to attenuate the light reaching the tank to an initial light intensity of 2.3×10(16) photons/s/m2. Fish were exposed to food cue and to alarm cue. The light intensity was then increased by the removal of one layer of filter (nominal absorbance 0.3) every minute until, after 10 minutes, the light level was 15.5×10(16) photons/s/m2. Adult male and female zebrafish responded to a moving visual stimulus at lower light levels if they had been first exposed to food cue, or to conspecific alarm cue. These results suggest the need for more integrative studies of sensory biology.

Visuo-vestibular interaction: predicting the position of a visual target during passive body rotation.

PubMed

Mackrous, I; Simoneau, M

2011-11-10

Following body rotation, optimal updating of the position of a memorized target is attained when retinal error is perceived and corrective saccade is performed. Thus, it appears that these processes may enable the calibration of the vestibular system by facilitating the sharing of information between both reference frames. Here, it is assessed whether having sensory information regarding body rotation in the target reference frame could enhance an individual's learning rate to predict the position of an earth-fixed target. During rotation, participants had to respond when they felt their body midline had crossed the position of the target and received knowledge of result. During practice blocks, for two groups, visual cues were displayed in the same reference frame of the target, whereas a third group relied on vestibular information (vestibular-only group) to predict the location of the target. Participants, unaware of the role of the visual cues (visual cues group), learned to predict the location of the target and spatial error decreased from 16.2 to 2.0°, reflecting a learning rate of 34.08 trials (determined from fitting a falling exponential model). In contrast, the group aware of the role of the visual cues (explicit visual cues group) showed a faster learning rate (i.e. 2.66 trials) but similar final spatial error 2.9°. For the vestibular-only group, similar accuracy was achieved (final spatial error of 2.3°), but their learning rate was much slower (i.e. 43.29 trials). Transferring to the Post-test (no visual cues and no knowledge of result) increased the spatial error of the explicit visual cues group (9.5°), but it did not change the performance of the vestibular group (1.2°). Overall, these results imply that cognition assists the brain in processing the sensory information within the target reference frame. Copyright © 2011 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On the generality of the displaywide contingent orienting hypothesis: can a visual onset capture attention without top-down control settings for displaywide onset?

PubMed

Yeh, Su-Ling; Liao, Hsin-I

2010-10-01

The contingent orienting hypothesis (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992) states that attentional capture is contingent on top-down control settings induced by task demands. Past studies supporting this hypothesis have identified three kinds of top-down control settings: for target-specific features, for the strategy to search for a singleton, and for visual features in the target display as a whole. Previously, we have found stimulus-driven capture by onset that was not contingent on the first two kinds of settings (Yeh & Liao, 2008). The current study aims to test the third kind: the displaywide contingent orienting hypothesis (Gibson & Kelsey, 1998). Specifically, we ask whether an onset stimulus can still capture attention in the spatial cueing paradigm when attentional control settings for the displaywide onset of the target are excluded by making all letters in the target display emerge from placeholders. Results show that a preceding uninformative onset cue still captured attention to its location in a stimulus-driven fashion, whereas a color cue captured attention only when it was contingent on the setting for displaywide color. These results raise doubts as to the generality of the displaywide contingent orienting hypothesis and help delineate the boundary conditions on this hypothesis. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The contribution of visual information to the perception of speech in noise with and without informative temporal fine structure

PubMed Central

Stacey, Paula C.; Kitterick, Pádraig T.; Morris, Saffron D.; Sumner, Christian J.

2017-01-01

Understanding what is said in demanding listening situations is assisted greatly by looking at the face of a talker. Previous studies have observed that normal-hearing listeners can benefit from this visual information when a talker's voice is presented in background noise. These benefits have also been observed in quiet listening conditions in cochlear-implant users, whose device does not convey the informative temporal fine structure cues in speech, and when normal-hearing individuals listen to speech processed to remove these informative temporal fine structure cues. The current study (1) characterised the benefits of visual information when listening in background noise; and (2) used sine-wave vocoding to compare the size of the visual benefit when speech is presented with or without informative temporal fine structure. The accuracy with which normal-hearing individuals reported words in spoken sentences was assessed across three experiments. The availability of visual information and informative temporal fine structure cues was varied within and across the experiments. The results showed that visual benefit was observed using open- and closed-set tests of speech perception. The size of the benefit increased when informative temporal fine structure cues were removed. This finding suggests that visual information may play an important role in the ability of cochlear-implant users to understand speech in many everyday situations. Models of audio-visual integration were able to account for the additional benefit of visual information when speech was degraded and suggested that auditory and visual information was being integrated in a similar way in all conditions. The modelling results were consistent with the notion that audio-visual benefit is derived from the optimal combination of auditory and visual sensory cues. PMID:27085797

Use of olfactory cues by newly metamorphosed wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) during emigration

USGS Publications Warehouse

Zydlewski, Joseph D.; Popescu, Viorel D.; Brodie, Bekka S.; Hunter, Malcom L.

2012-01-01

Juvenile amphibians are capable of long-distance upland movements, yet cues used for orientation during upland movements are poorly understood. We used newly metamorphosed Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) to investigate: (1) the existence of innate (i.e., inherited) directionality, and (2) the use of olfactory cues, specifically forested wetland and natal pond cues during emigration. In a circular arena experiment, animals with assumed innate directionality did not orient in the expected direction (suggested by previous studies) when deprived of visual and olfactory cues. This suggests that juvenile Wood Frogs most likely rely on proximate cues for orientation. Animals reared in semi-natural conditions (1500 l cattle tanks) showed a strong avoidance of forested wetland cues in two different experimental settings, although they had not been previously exposed to such cues. This finding is contrary to known habitat use by adult Wood Frogs during summer. Juvenile Wood Frogs were indifferent to the chemical signature of natal pond (cattle tank) water. Our findings suggest that management strategies for forest amphibians should consider key habitat features that potentially influence the orientation of juveniles during emigration movements, as well as adult behavior.

Adaptability and specificity of inhibition processes in distractor-induced blindness.

PubMed

Winther, Gesche N; Niedeggen, Michael

2017-12-01

In a rapid serial visual presentation task, inhibition processes cumulatively impair processing of a target possessing distractor properties. This phenomenon-known as distractor-induced blindness-has thus far only been elicited using dynamic visual features, such as motion and orientation changes. In three ERP experiments, we used a visual object feature-color-to test for the adaptability and specificity of the effect. In Experiment I, participants responded to a color change (target) in the periphery whose onset was signaled by a central cue. Presentation of irrelevant color changes prior to the cue (distractors) led to reduced target detection, accompanied by a frontal ERP negativity that increased with increasing number of distractors, similar to the effects previously found for dynamic targets. This suggests that distractor-induced blindness is adaptable to color features. In Experiment II, the target consisted of coherent motion contrasting the color distractors. Correlates of distractor-induced blindness were found neither in the behavioral nor in the ERP data, indicating a feature specificity of the process. Experiment III confirmed the strict distinction between congruent and incongruent distractors: A single color distractor was embedded in a stream of motion distractors with the target consisting of a coherent motion. While behavioral performance was affected by the distractors, the color distractor did not elicit a frontal negativity. The experiments show that distractor-induced blindness is also triggered by visual stimuli predominantly processed in the ventral stream. The strict specificity of the central inhibition process also applies to these stimulus features. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Gaze-contingent reinforcement learning reveals incentive value of social signals in young children and adults

PubMed Central

Smith, Tim J.; Senju, Atsushi

2017-01-01

While numerous studies have demonstrated that infants and adults preferentially orient to social stimuli, it remains unclear as to what drives such preferential orienting. It has been suggested that the learned association between social cues and subsequent reward delivery might shape such social orienting. Using a novel, spontaneous indication of reinforcement learning (with the use of a gaze contingent reward-learning task), we investigated whether children and adults' orienting towards social and non-social visual cues can be elicited by the association between participants' visual attention and a rewarding outcome. Critically, we assessed whether the engaging nature of the social cues influences the process of reinforcement learning. Both children and adults learned to orient more often to the visual cues associated with reward delivery, demonstrating that cue–reward association reinforced visual orienting. More importantly, when the reward-predictive cue was social and engaging, both children and adults learned the cue–reward association faster and more efficiently than when the reward-predictive cue was social but non-engaging. These new findings indicate that social engaging cues have a positive incentive value. This could possibly be because they usually coincide with positive outcomes in real life, which could partly drive the development of social orienting. PMID:28250186

Working memory enhances visual perception: evidence from signal detection analysis.

PubMed

Soto, David; Wriglesworth, Alice; Bahrami-Balani, Alex; Humphreys, Glyn W

2010-03-01

We show that perceptual sensitivity to visual stimuli can be modulated by matches between the contents of working memory (WM) and stimuli in the visual field. Observers were presented with an object cue (to hold in WM or to merely attend) and subsequently had to identify a brief target presented within a colored shape. The cue could be re-presented in the display, where it surrounded either the target (on valid trials) or a distractor (on invalid trials). Perceptual identification of the target, as indexed by A', was enhanced on valid relative to invalid trials but only when the cue was kept in WM. There was minimal effect of the cue when it was merely attended and not kept in WM. Verbal cues were as effective as visual cues at modulating perceptual identification, and the effects were independent of the effects of target saliency. Matches to the contents of WM influenced perceptual sensitivity even under conditions that minimized competition for selecting the target. WM cues were also effective when targets were less likely to fall in a repeated WM stimulus than in other stimuli in the search display. There were no effects of WM on decisional criteria, in contrast to sensitivity. The findings suggest that reentrant feedback from WM can affect early stages of perceptual processing.

The association between reading abilities and visual-spatial attention in Hong Kong Chinese children.

PubMed

Liu, Sisi; Liu, Duo; Pan, Zhihui; Xu, Zhengye

2018-03-25

A growing body of research suggests that visual-spatial attention is important for reading achievement. However, few studies have been conducted in non-alphabetic orthographies. This study extended the current research to reading development in Chinese, a logographic writing system known for its visual complexity. Eighty Hong Kong Chinese children were selected and divided into poor reader and typical reader groups, based on their performance on the measures of reading fluency, Chinese character reading, and reading comprehension. The poor and typical readers were matched on age and nonverbal intelligence. A Posner's spatial cueing task was adopted to measure the exogenous and endogenous orienting of visual-spatial attention. Although the typical readers showed the cueing effect in the central cue condition (i.e., responses to targets following valid cues were faster than those to targets following invalid cues), the poor readers did not respond differently in valid and invalid conditions, suggesting an impairment of the endogenous orienting of attention. The two groups, however, showed a similar cueing effect in the peripheral cue condition, indicating intact exogenous orienting in the poor readers. These findings generally supported a link between the orienting of covert attention and Chinese reading, providing evidence for the attentional-deficit theory of dyslexia. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Audiovisual Temporal Perception in Aging: The Role of Multisensory Integration and Age-Related Sensory Loss

PubMed Central

Brooks, Cassandra J.; Chan, Yu Man; Anderson, Andrew J.; McKendrick, Allison M.

2018-01-01

Within each sensory modality, age-related deficits in temporal perception contribute to the difficulties older adults experience when performing everyday tasks. Since perceptual experience is inherently multisensory, older adults also face the added challenge of appropriately integrating or segregating the auditory and visual cues present in our dynamic environment into coherent representations of distinct objects. As such, many studies have investigated how older adults perform when integrating temporal information across audition and vision. This review covers both direct judgments about temporal information (the sound-induced flash illusion, temporal order, perceived synchrony, and temporal rate discrimination) and judgments regarding stimuli containing temporal information (the audiovisual bounce effect and speech perception). Although an age-related increase in integration has been demonstrated on a variety of tasks, research specifically investigating the ability of older adults to integrate temporal auditory and visual cues has produced disparate results. In this short review, we explore what factors could underlie these divergent findings. We conclude that both task-specific differences and age-related sensory loss play a role in the reported disparity in age-related effects on the integration of auditory and visual temporal information. PMID:29867415

Audiovisual Temporal Perception in Aging: The Role of Multisensory Integration and Age-Related Sensory Loss.

PubMed

Brooks, Cassandra J; Chan, Yu Man; Anderson, Andrew J; McKendrick, Allison M

2018-01-01

Within each sensory modality, age-related deficits in temporal perception contribute to the difficulties older adults experience when performing everyday tasks. Since perceptual experience is inherently multisensory, older adults also face the added challenge of appropriately integrating or segregating the auditory and visual cues present in our dynamic environment into coherent representations of distinct objects. As such, many studies have investigated how older adults perform when integrating temporal information across audition and vision. This review covers both direct judgments about temporal information (the sound-induced flash illusion, temporal order, perceived synchrony, and temporal rate discrimination) and judgments regarding stimuli containing temporal information (the audiovisual bounce effect and speech perception). Although an age-related increase in integration has been demonstrated on a variety of tasks, research specifically investigating the ability of older adults to integrate temporal auditory and visual cues has produced disparate results. In this short review, we explore what factors could underlie these divergent findings. We conclude that both task-specific differences and age-related sensory loss play a role in the reported disparity in age-related effects on the integration of auditory and visual temporal information.

Time-resolved neuroimaging of visual short term memory consolidation by post-perceptual attention shifts.

PubMed

Hecht, Marcus; Thiemann, Ulf; Freitag, Christine M; Bender, Stephan

2016-01-15

Post-perceptual cues can enhance visual short term memory encoding even after the offset of the visual stimulus. However, both the mechanisms by which the sensory stimulus characteristics are buffered as well as the mechanisms by which post-perceptual selective attention enhances short term memory encoding remain unclear. We analyzed late post-perceptual event-related potentials (ERPs) in visual change detection tasks (100ms stimulus duration) by high-resolution ERP analysis to elucidate these mechanisms. The effects of early and late auditory post-cues (300ms or 850ms after visual stimulus onset) as well as the effects of a visual interference stimulus were examined in 27 healthy right-handed adults. Focusing attention with post-perceptual cues at both latencies significantly improved memory performance, i.e. sensory stimulus characteristics were available for up to 850ms after stimulus presentation. Passive watching of the visual stimuli without auditory cue presentation evoked a slow negative wave (N700) over occipito-temporal visual areas. N700 was strongly reduced by a visual interference stimulus which impeded memory maintenance. In contrast, contralateral delay activity (CDA) still developed in this condition after the application of auditory post-cues and was thereby dissociated from N700. CDA and N700 seem to represent two different processes involved in short term memory encoding. While N700 could reflect visual post processing by automatic attention attraction, CDA may reflect the top-down process of searching selectively for the required information through post-perceptual attention. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Motivation and short-term memory in visual search: Attention's accelerator revisited.

PubMed

Schneider, Daniel; Bonmassar, Claudia; Hickey, Clayton

2018-05-01

A cue indicating the possibility of cash reward will cause participants to perform memory-based visual search more efficiently. A recent study has suggested that this performance benefit might reflect the use of multiple memory systems: when needed, participants may maintain the to-be-remembered object in both long-term and short-term visual memory, with this redundancy benefitting target identification during search (Reinhart, McClenahan & Woodman, 2016). Here we test this compelling hypothesis. We had participants complete a memory-based visual search task involving a reward cue that either preceded presentation of the to-be-remembered target (pre-cue) or followed it (retro-cue). Following earlier work, we tracked memory representation using two components of the event-related potential (ERP): the contralateral delay activity (CDA), reflecting short-term visual memory, and the anterior P170, reflecting long-term storage. We additionally tracked attentional preparation and deployment in the contingent negative variation (CNV) and N2pc, respectively. Results show that only the reward pre-cue impacted our ERP indices of memory. However, both types of cue elicited a robust CNV, reflecting an influence on task preparation, both had equivalent impact on deployment of attention to the target, as indexed in the N2pc, and both had equivalent impact on visual search behavior. Reward prospect thus has an influence on memory-guided visual search, but this does not appear to be necessarily mediated by a change in the visual memory representations indexed by CDA. Our results demonstrate that the impact of motivation on search is not a simple product of improved memory for target templates. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Rebalancing Spatial Attention: Endogenous Orienting May Partially Overcome the Left Visual Field Bias in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.

PubMed

Śmigasiewicz, Kamila; Hasan, Gabriel Sami; Verleger, Rolf

2017-01-01

In dynamically changing environments, spatial attention is not equally distributed across the visual field. For instance, when two streams of stimuli are presented left and right, the second target (T2) is better identified in the left visual field (LVF) than in the right visual field (RVF). Recently, it has been shown that this bias is related to weaker stimulus-driven orienting of attention toward the RVF: The RVF disadvantage was reduced with salient task-irrelevant valid cues and increased with invalid cues. Here we studied if also endogenous orienting of attention may compensate for this unequal distribution of stimulus-driven attention. Explicit information was provided about the location of T1 and T2. Effectiveness of the cue manipulation was confirmed by EEG measures: decreasing alpha power before stream onset with informative cues, earlier latencies of potentials evoked by T1-preceding distractors at the right than at the left hemisphere when T1 was cued left, and decreasing T1- and T2-evoked N2pc amplitudes with informative cues. Importantly, informative cues reduced (though did not completely abolish) the LVF advantage, indicated by improved identification of right T2, and reflected by earlier N2pc latency evoked by right T2 and larger decrease in alpha power after cues indicating right T2. Overall, these results suggest that endogenously driven attention facilitates stimulus-driven orienting of attention toward the RVF, thereby partially overcoming the basic LVF bias in spatial attention.

A systematic comparison between visual cues for boundary detection.

PubMed

Mély, David A; Kim, Junkyung; McGill, Mason; Guo, Yuliang; Serre, Thomas

2016-03-01

The detection of object boundaries is a critical first step for many visual processing tasks. Multiple cues (we consider luminance, color, motion and binocular disparity) available in the early visual system may signal object boundaries but little is known about their relative diagnosticity and how to optimally combine them for boundary detection. This study thus aims at understanding how early visual processes inform boundary detection in natural scenes. We collected color binocular video sequences of natural scenes to construct a video database. Each scene was annotated with two full sets of ground-truth contours (one set limited to object boundaries and another set which included all edges). We implemented an integrated computational model of early vision that spans all considered cues, and then assessed their diagnosticity by training machine learning classifiers on individual channels. Color and luminance were found to be most diagnostic while stereo and motion were least. Combining all cues yielded a significant improvement in accuracy beyond that of any cue in isolation. Furthermore, the accuracy of individual cues was found to be a poor predictor of their unique contribution for the combination. This result suggested a complex interaction between cues, which we further quantified using regularization techniques. Our systematic assessment of the accuracy of early vision models for boundary detection together with the resulting annotated video dataset should provide a useful benchmark towards the development of higher-level models of visual processing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attentional Capture of Objects Referred to by Spoken Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salverda, Anne Pier; Altmann, Gerry T. M.

2011-01-01

Participants saw a small number of objects in a visual display and performed a visual detection or visual-discrimination task in the context of task-irrelevant spoken distractors. In each experiment, a visual cue was presented 400 ms after the onset of a spoken word. In experiments 1 and 2, the cue was an isoluminant color change and participants…

Cross-modal cueing of attention alters appearance and early cortical processing of visual stimuli

PubMed Central

Störmer, Viola S.; McDonald, John J.; Hillyard, Steven A.

2009-01-01

The question of whether attention makes sensory impressions appear more intense has been a matter of debate for over a century. Recent psychophysical studies have reported that attention increases apparent contrast of visual stimuli, but the issue continues to be debated. We obtained converging neurophysiological evidence from human observers as they judged the relative contrast of visual stimuli presented to the left and right visual fields following a lateralized auditory cue. Cross-modal cueing of attention boosted the apparent contrast of the visual target in association with an enlarged neural response in the contralateral visual cortex that began within 100 ms after target onset. The magnitude of the enhanced neural response was positively correlated with perceptual reports of the cued target being higher in contrast. The results suggest that attention increases the perceived contrast of visual stimuli by boosting early sensory processing in the visual cortex. PMID:20007778

Cross-modal cueing of attention alters appearance and early cortical processing of visual stimuli.

PubMed

Störmer, Viola S; McDonald, John J; Hillyard, Steven A

2009-12-29

The question of whether attention makes sensory impressions appear more intense has been a matter of debate for over a century. Recent psychophysical studies have reported that attention increases apparent contrast of visual stimuli, but the issue continues to be debated. We obtained converging neurophysiological evidence from human observers as they judged the relative contrast of visual stimuli presented to the left and right visual fields following a lateralized auditory cue. Cross-modal cueing of attention boosted the apparent contrast of the visual target in association with an enlarged neural response in the contralateral visual cortex that began within 100 ms after target onset. The magnitude of the enhanced neural response was positively correlated with perceptual reports of the cued target being higher in contrast. The results suggest that attention increases the perceived contrast of visual stimuli by boosting early sensory processing in the visual cortex.

The role of temporal synchrony as a binding cue for visual persistence in early visual areas: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Wong, Yvonne J; Aldcroft, Adrian J; Large, Mary-Ellen; Culham, Jody C; Vilis, Tutis

2009-12-01

We examined the role of temporal synchrony-the simultaneous appearance of visual features-in the perceptual and neural processes underlying object persistence. When a binding cue (such as color or motion) momentarily exposes an object from a background of similar elements, viewers remain aware of the object for several seconds before it perceptually fades into the background, a phenomenon known as object persistence. We showed that persistence from temporal stimulus synchrony, like that arising from motion and color, is associated with activation in the lateral occipital (LO) area, as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We also compared the distribution of occipital cortex activity related to persistence to that of iconic visual memory. Although activation related to iconic memory was largely confined to LO, activation related to object persistence was present across V1 to LO, peaking in V3 and V4, regardless of the binding cue (temporal synchrony, motion, or color). Although persistence from motion cues was not associated with higher activation in the MT+ motion complex, persistence from color cues was associated with increased activation in V4. Taken together, these results demonstrate that although persistence is a form of visual memory, it relies on neural mechanisms different from those of iconic memory. That is, persistence not only activates LO in a cue-independent manner, it also recruits visual areas that may be necessary to maintain binding between object elements.

Orienting attention within visual short-term memory: development and mechanisms.

PubMed

Shimi, Andria; Nobre, Anna C; Astle, Duncan; Scerif, Gaia

2014-01-01

How does developing attentional control operate within visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Seven-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults (total n = 205) were asked to report whether probe items were part of preceding visual arrays. In Experiment 1, central or peripheral cues oriented attention to the location of to-be-probed items either prior to encoding or during maintenance. Cues improved memory regardless of their position, but younger children benefited less from cues presented during maintenance, and these benefits related to VSTM span over and above basic memory in uncued trials. In Experiment 2, cues of low validity eliminated benefits, suggesting that even the youngest children use cues voluntarily, rather than automatically. These findings elucidate the close coupling between developing visuospatial attentional control and VSTM. © 2013 The Authors. Child Development © 2013 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Multiperson visual focus of attention from head pose and meeting contextual cues.

PubMed

Ba, Sileye O; Odobez, Jean-Marc

2011-01-01

This paper introduces a novel contextual model for the recognition of people's visual focus of attention (VFOA) in meetings from audio-visual perceptual cues. More specifically, instead of independently recognizing the VFOA of each meeting participant from his own head pose, we propose to jointly recognize the participants' visual attention in order to introduce context-dependent interaction models that relate to group activity and the social dynamics of communication. Meeting contextual information is represented by the location of people, conversational events identifying floor holding patterns, and a presentation activity variable. By modeling the interactions between the different contexts and their combined and sometimes contradictory impact on the gazing behavior, our model allows us to handle VFOA recognition in difficult task-based meetings involving artifacts, presentations, and moving people. We validated our model through rigorous evaluation on a publicly available and challenging data set of 12 real meetings (5 hours of data). The results demonstrated that the integration of the presentation and conversation dynamical context using our model can lead to significant performance improvements.

Intercepting a sound without vision

PubMed Central

Vercillo, Tiziana; Tonelli, Alessia; Gori, Monica

2017-01-01

Visual information is extremely important to generate internal spatial representations. In the auditory modality, the absence of visual cues during early infancy does not preclude the development of some spatial strategies. However, specific spatial abilities might result impaired. In the current study, we investigated the effect of early visual deprivation on the ability to localize static and moving auditory stimuli by comparing sighted and early blind individuals’ performance in different spatial tasks. We also examined perceptual stability in the two groups of participants by matching localization accuracy in a static and a dynamic head condition that involved rotational head movements. Sighted participants accurately localized static and moving sounds. Their localization ability remained unchanged after rotational movements of the head. Conversely, blind participants showed a leftward bias during the localization of static sounds and a little bias for moving sounds. Moreover, head movements induced a significant bias in the direction of head motion during the localization of moving sounds. These results suggest that internal spatial representations might be body-centered in blind individuals and that in sighted people the availability of visual cues during early infancy may affect sensory-motor interactions. PMID:28481939

Multimodal retrieval of autobiographical memories: sensory information contributes differently to the recollection of events.

PubMed

Willander, Johan; Sikström, Sverker; Karlsson, Kristina

2015-01-01

Previous studies on autobiographical memory have focused on unimodal retrieval cues (i.e., cues pertaining to one modality). However, from an ecological perspective multimodal cues (i.e., cues pertaining to several modalities) are highly important to investigate. In the present study we investigated age distributions and experiential ratings of autobiographical memories retrieved with unimodal and multimodal cues. Sixty-two participants were randomized to one of four cue-conditions: visual, olfactory, auditory, or multimodal. The results showed that the peak of the distributions depends on the modality of the retrieval cue. The results indicated that multimodal retrieval seemed to be driven by visual and auditory information to a larger extent and to a lesser extent by olfactory information. Finally, no differences were observed in the number of retrieved memories or experiential ratings across the four cue-conditions.

Are Distal and Proximal Visual Cues Equally Important during Spatial Learning in Mice? A Pilot Study of Overshadowing in the Spatial Domain

PubMed Central

Hébert, Marie; Bulla, Jan; Vivien, Denis; Agin, Véronique

2017-01-01

Animals use distal and proximal visual cues to accurately navigate in their environment, with the possibility of the occurrence of associative mechanisms such as cue competition as previously reported in honey-bees, rats, birds and humans. In this pilot study, we investigated one of the most common forms of cue competition, namely the overshadowing effect, between visual landmarks during spatial learning in mice. To this end, C57BL/6J × Sv129 mice were given a two-trial place recognition task in a T-maze, based on a novelty free-choice exploration paradigm previously developed to study spatial memory in rodents. As this procedure implies the use of different aspects of the environment to navigate (i.e., mice can perceive from each arm of the maze), we manipulated the distal and proximal visual landmarks during both the acquisition and retrieval phases. Our prospective findings provide a first set of clues in favor of the occurrence of an overshadowing between visual cues during a spatial learning task in mice when both types of cues are of the same modality but at varying distances from the goal. In addition, the observed overshadowing seems to be non-reciprocal, as distal visual cues tend to overshadow the proximal ones when competition occurs, but not vice versa. The results of the present study offer a first insight about the occurrence of associative mechanisms during spatial learning in mice, and may open the way to promising new investigations in this area of research. Furthermore, the methodology used in this study brings a new, useful and easy-to-use tool for the investigation of perceptive, cognitive and/or attentional deficits in rodents. PMID:28634446

Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams

PubMed Central

Rouinfar, Amy; Agra, Elise; Larson, Adam M.; Rebello, N. Sanjay; Loschky, Lester C.

2014-01-01

This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants’ attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants’ verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers’ attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions. PMID:25324804

Effects of visual cues of object density on perception and anticipatory control of dexterous manipulation.

PubMed

Crajé, Céline; Santello, Marco; Gordon, Andrew M

2013-01-01

Anticipatory force planning during grasping is based on visual cues about the object's physical properties and sensorimotor memories of previous actions with grasped objects. Vision can be used to estimate object mass based on the object size to identify and recall sensorimotor memories of previously manipulated objects. It is not known whether subjects can use density cues to identify the object's center of mass (CM) and create compensatory moments in an anticipatory fashion during initial object lifts to prevent tilt. We asked subjects (n = 8) to estimate CM location of visually symmetric objects of uniform densities (plastic or brass, symmetric CM) and non-uniform densities (mixture of plastic and brass, asymmetric CM). We then asked whether subjects can use density cues to scale fingertip forces when lifting the visually symmetric objects of uniform and non-uniform densities. Subjects were able to accurately estimate an object's center of mass based on visual density cues. When the mass distribution was uniform, subjects could scale their fingertip forces in an anticipatory fashion based on the estimation. However, despite their ability to explicitly estimate CM location when object density was non-uniform, subjects were unable to scale their fingertip forces to create a compensatory moment and prevent tilt on initial lifts. Hefting object parts in the hand before the experiment did not affect this ability. This suggests a dichotomy between the ability to accurately identify the object's CM location for objects with non-uniform density cues and the ability to utilize this information to correctly scale their fingertip forces. These results are discussed in the context of possible neural mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration linking visual cues and anticipatory control of grasping.

Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams.

PubMed

Rouinfar, Amy; Agra, Elise; Larson, Adam M; Rebello, N Sanjay; Loschky, Lester C

2014-01-01

This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants' attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants' verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers' attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions.

Effects of Tactile, Visual, and Auditory Cues About Threat Location on Target Acquisition and Attention to Visual and Auditory Communications

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-08-01

Space Administration ( NASA ) Task Load Index ( TLX ...SITREP Questionnaire Example 33 Appendix C. NASA - TLX 35 Appendix D. Demographic Questionnaire 39 Appendix E. Post-Test Questionnaire 41...Mean ratings of physical demand by cue condition using NASA - TLX . ..................... 19 Figure 9. Mean ratings of temporal demand by cue condition

Flight simulator with spaced visuals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gilson, Richard D. (Inventor); Thurston, Marlin O. (Inventor); Olson, Karl W. (Inventor); Ventola, Ronald W. (Inventor)

1980-01-01

A flight simulator arrangement wherein a conventional, movable base flight trainer is combined with a visual cue display surface spaced a predetermined distance from an eye position within the trainer. Thus, three degrees of motive freedom (roll, pitch and crab) are provided for a visual proprioceptive, and vestibular cue system by the trainer while the remaining geometric visual cue image alterations are developed by a video system. A geometric approach to computing runway image eliminates a need to electronically compute trigonometric functions, while utilization of a line generator and designated vanishing point at the video system raster permits facile development of the images of the longitudinal edges of the runway.

Visual learning in drosophila: application on a roving robot and comparisons

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arena, P.; De Fiore, S.; Patané, L.; Termini, P. S.; Strauss, R.

2011-05-01

Visual learning is an important aspect of fly life. Flies are able to extract visual cues from objects, like colors, vertical and horizontal distributedness, and others, that can be used for learning to associate a meaning to specific features (i.e. a reward or a punishment). Interesting biological experiments show trained stationary flying flies avoiding flying towards specific visual objects, appearing on the surrounding environment. Wild-type flies effectively learn to avoid those objects but this is not the case for the learning mutant rutabaga defective in the cyclic AMP dependent pathway for plasticity. A bio-inspired architecture has been proposed to model the fly behavior and experiments on roving robots were performed. Statistical comparisons have been considered and mutant-like effect on the model has been also investigated.

Multimodal Floral Signals and Moth Foraging Decisions

PubMed Central

Riffell, Jeffrey A.; Alarcón, Ruben

2013-01-01

Background Combinations of floral traits – which operate as attractive signals to pollinators – act on multiple sensory modalities. For Manduca sexta hawkmoths, how learning modifies foraging decisions in response to those traits remains untested, and the contribution of visual and olfactory floral displays on behavior remains unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings Using M. sexta and the floral traits of two important nectar resources in southwestern USA, Datura wrightii and Agave palmeri, we examined the relative importance of olfactory and visual signals. Natural visual and olfactory cues from D. wrightii and A. palmeri flowers permits testing the cues at their native intensities and composition – a contrast to many studies that have used artificial stimuli (essential oils, single odorants) that are less ecologically relevant. Results from a series of two-choice assays where the olfactory and visual floral displays were manipulated showed that naïve hawkmoths preferred flowers displaying both olfactory and visual cues. Furthermore, experiments using A. palmeri flowers – a species that is not very attractive to hawkmoths – showed that the visual and olfactory displays did not have synergistic effects. The combination of olfactory and visual display of D. wrightii, however – a flower that is highly attractive to naïve hawkmoths – did influence the time moths spent feeding from the flowers. The importance of the olfactory and visual signals were further demonstrated in learning experiments in which experienced moths, when exposed to uncoupled floral displays, ultimately chose flowers based on the previously experienced olfactory, and not visual, signals. These moths, however, had significantly longer decision times than moths exposed to coupled floral displays. Conclusions/Significance These results highlight the importance of specific sensory modalities for foraging hawkmoths while also suggesting that they learn the floral displays as combinatorial signals and use the integrated floral traits from their memory traces to mediate future foraging decisions. PMID:23991154

Uncovering Dangerous Cheats: How Do Avian Hosts Recognize Adult Brood Parasites?

PubMed Central

Trnka, Alfréd; Prokop, Pavol; Grim, Tomáš

2012-01-01

Background Co-evolutionary struggles between dangerous enemies (e.g., brood parasites) and their victims (hosts) lead to the emergence of sophisticated adaptations and counter-adaptations. Salient host tricks to reduce parasitism costs include, as front line defence, adult enemy discrimination. In contrast to the well studied egg stage, investigations addressing the specific cues for adult enemy recognition are rare. Previous studies have suggested barred underparts and yellow eyes may provide cues for the recognition of cuckoos Cuculus canorus by their hosts; however, no study to date has examined the role of the two cues simultaneously under a consistent experimental paradigm. Methodology/Principal Findings We modify and extend previous work using a novel experimental approach – custom-made dummies with various combinations of hypothesized recognition cues. The salient recognition cue turned out to be the yellow eye. Barred underparts, the only trait examined previously, had a statistically significant but small effect on host aggression highlighting the importance of effect size vs. statistical significance. Conclusion Relative importance of eye vs. underpart phenotypes may reflect ecological context of host-parasite interaction: yellow eyes are conspicuous from the typical direction of host arrival (from above), whereas barred underparts are poorly visible (being visually blocked by the upper part of the cuckoo's body). This visual constraint may reduce usefulness of barred underparts as a reliable recognition cue under a typical situation near host nests. We propose a novel hypothesis that recognition cues for enemy detection can vary in a context-dependent manner (e.g., depending on whether the enemy is approached from below or from above). Further we suggest a particular cue can trigger fear reactions (escape) in some hosts/populations whereas the same cue can trigger aggression (attack) in other hosts/populations depending on presence/absence of dangerous enemies that are phenotypically similar to brood parasites and costs and benefits associated with particular host responses. PMID:22624031

Working Memory and Speech Recognition in Noise Under Ecologically Relevant Listening Conditions: Effects of Visual Cues and Noise Type Among Adults With Hearing Loss.

PubMed

Miller, Christi W; Stewart, Erin K; Wu, Yu-Hsiang; Bishop, Christopher; Bentler, Ruth A; Tremblay, Kelly

2017-08-16

This study evaluated the relationship between working memory (WM) and speech recognition in noise with different noise types as well as in the presence of visual cues. Seventy-six adults with bilateral, mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss (mean age: 69 years) participated. Using a cross-sectional design, 2 measures of WM were taken: a reading span measure, and Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure (Smith, Pichora-Fuller, & Alexander, 2016). Speech recognition was measured with the Multi-Modal Lexical Sentence Test for Adults (Kirk et al., 2012) in steady-state noise and 4-talker babble, with and without visual cues. Testing was under unaided conditions. A linear mixed model revealed visual cues and pure-tone average as the only significant predictors of Multi-Modal Lexical Sentence Test outcomes. Neither WM measure nor noise type showed a significant effect. The contribution of WM in explaining unaided speech recognition in noise was negligible and not influenced by noise type or visual cues. We anticipate that with audibility partially restored by hearing aids, the effects of WM will increase. For clinical practice to be affected, more significant effect sizes are needed.

Signal enhancement, not active suppression, follows the contingent capture of visual attention.

PubMed

Livingstone, Ashley C; Christie, Gregory J; Wright, Richard D; McDonald, John J

2017-02-01

Irrelevant visual cues capture attention when they possess a task-relevant feature. Electrophysiologically, this contingent capture of attention is evidenced by the N2pc component of the visual event-related potential (ERP) and an enlarged ERP positivity over the occipital hemisphere contralateral to the cued location. The N2pc reflects an early stage of attentional selection, but presently it is unclear what the contralateral ERP positivity reflects. One hypothesis is that it reflects the perceptual enhancement of the cued search-array item; another hypothesis is that it is time-locked to the preceding cue display and reflects active suppression of the cue itself. Here, we varied the time interval between a cue display and a subsequent target display to evaluate these competing hypotheses. The results demonstrated that the contralateral ERP positivity is tightly time-locked to the appearance of the search display rather than the cue display, thereby supporting the perceptual enhancement hypothesis and disconfirming the cue-suppression hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Missing depth cues in virtual reality limit performance and quality of three dimensional reaching movements

PubMed Central

Mayo, Johnathan; Baur, Kilian; Wittmann, Frieder; Riener, Robert; Wolf, Peter

2018-01-01

Background Goal-directed reaching for real-world objects by humans is enabled through visual depth cues. In virtual environments, the number and quality of available visual depth cues is limited, which may affect reaching performance and quality of reaching movements. Methods We assessed three-dimensional reaching movements in five experimental groups each with ten healthy volunteers. Three groups used a two-dimensional computer screen and two groups used a head-mounted display. The first screen group received the typically recreated visual depth cues, such as aerial and linear perspective, occlusion, shadows, and texture gradients. The second screen group received an abstract minimal rendering lacking those. The third screen group received the cues of the first screen group and absolute depth cues enabled by retinal image size of a known object, which realized with visual renderings of the handheld device and a ghost handheld at the target location. The two head-mounted display groups received the same virtually recreated visual depth cues as the second or the third screen group respectively. Additionally, they could rely on stereopsis and motion parallax due to head-movements. Results and conclusion All groups using the screen performed significantly worse than both groups using the head-mounted display in terms of completion time normalized by the straight-line distance to the target. Both groups using the head-mounted display achieved the optimal minimum in number of speed peaks and in hand path ratio, indicating that our subjects performed natural movements when using a head-mounted display. Virtually recreated visual depth cues had a minor impact on reaching performance. Only the screen group with rendered handhelds could outperform the other screen groups. Thus, if reaching performance in virtual environments is in the main scope of a study, we suggest applying a head-mounted display. Otherwise, when two-dimensional screens are used, achievable performance is likely limited by the reduced depth perception and not just by subjects’ motor skills. PMID:29293512

Cross-modal prediction changes the timing of conscious access during the motion-induced blindness.

PubMed

Chang, Acer Y C; Kanai, Ryota; Seth, Anil K

2015-01-01

Despite accumulating evidence that perceptual predictions influence perceptual content, the relations between these predictions and conscious contents remain unclear, especially for cross-modal predictions. We examined whether predictions of visual events by auditory cues can facilitate conscious access to the visual stimuli. We trained participants to learn associations between auditory cues and colour changes. We then asked whether congruency between auditory cues and target colours would speed access to consciousness. We did this by rendering a visual target subjectively invisible using motion-induced blindness and then gradually changing its colour while presenting congruent or incongruent auditory cues. Results showed that the visual target gained access to consciousness faster in congruent than in incongruent trials; control experiments excluded potentially confounding effects of attention and motor response. The expectation effect was gradually established over blocks suggesting a role for extensive training. Overall, our findings show that predictions learned through cross-modal training can facilitate conscious access to visual stimuli. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Is Posner's "beam" the same as Treisman's "glue"?: On the relation between visual orienting and feature integration theory.

PubMed

Briand, K A; Klein, R M

1987-05-01

In the present study we investigated whether the visually allocated "beam" studied by Posner and others is the same visual attentional resource that performs the role of feature integration in Treisman's model. Subjects were cued to attend to a certain spatial location by a visual cue, and performance at expected and unexpected stimulus locations was compared. Subjects searched for a target letter (R) with distractor letters that either could give rise to illusory conjunctions (PQ) or could not (PB). Results from three separate experiments showed that orienting attention in response to central cues (endogenous orienting) showed similar effects for both conjunction and feature search. However, when attention was oriented with peripheral visual cues (exogenous orienting), conjunction search showed larger effects of attention than did feature search. It is suggested that the attentional systems that are oriented in response to central and peripheral cues may not be the same and that only the latter performs a role in feature integration. Possibilities for future research are discussed.

Modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visual spatial or temporal cue: an event-related potentials study.

PubMed

Tang, Xiaoyu; Li, Chunlin; Li, Qi; Gao, Yulin; Yang, Weiping; Yang, Jingjing; Ishikawa, Soushirou; Wu, Jinglong

2013-10-11

Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how visual spatial or temporal cues modulated the auditory stimulus processing. The visual spatial cue (VSC) induces orienting of attention to spatial locations; the visual temporal cue (VTC) induces orienting of attention to temporal intervals. Participants were instructed to respond to auditory targets. Behavioral responses to auditory stimuli following VSC were faster and more accurate than those following VTC. VSC and VTC had the same effect on the auditory N1 (150-170 ms after stimulus onset). The mean amplitude of the auditory P1 (90-110 ms) in VSC condition was larger than that in VTC condition, and the mean amplitude of late positivity (300-420 ms) in VTC condition was larger than that in VSC condition. These findings suggest that modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visually induced spatial or temporal orienting of attention were different, but partially overlapping. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Toward a New Theory for Selecting Instructional Visuals.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Croft, Richard S.; Burton, John K.

This paper provides a rationale for the selection of illustrations and visual aids for the classroom. The theories that describe the processing of visuals are dual coding theory and cue summation theory. Concept attainment theory offers a basis for selecting which cues are relevant for any learning task which includes a component of identification…

Visual Landmarks Facilitate Rodent Spatial Navigation in Virtual Reality Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Youngstrom, Isaac A.; Strowbridge, Ben W.

2012-01-01

Because many different sensory modalities contribute to spatial learning in rodents, it has been difficult to determine whether spatial navigation can be guided solely by visual cues. Rodents moving within physical environments with visual cues engage a variety of nonvisual sensory systems that cannot be easily inhibited without lesioning brain…

Design Criteria for Visual Cues Used in Disruptive Learning Interventions within Sustainability Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tillmanns, Tanja; Holland, Charlotte; Filho, Alfredo Salomão

2017-01-01

This paper presents the design criteria for Visual Cues--visual stimuli that are used in combination with other pedagogical processes and tools in Disruptive Learning interventions in sustainability education--to disrupt learners' existing frames of mind and help re-orient learners' mind-sets towards sustainability. The theory of Disruptive…

Comparison of the visual perception of a runway model in pilots and nonpilots during simulated night landing approaches.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1978-03-01

At night, reduced visual cues may promote illusions and a dangerous tendency for pilots to fly low during approaches to landing. Relative motion parallax (a difference in rate of apparent movement of objects in the visual field), a cue that can contr...

Emotion potentiates response activation and inhibition in masked priming

PubMed Central

Bocanegra, Bruno R.; Zeelenberg, René

2012-01-01

Previous studies have shown that emotion can have 2-fold effects on perception. At the object-level, emotional stimuli benefit from a stimulus-specific boost in visual attention at the relative expense of competing stimuli. At the visual feature-level, recent findings indicate that emotion may inhibit the processing of small visual details and facilitate the processing of coarse visual features. In the present study, we investigated whether emotion can boost the activation and inhibition of automatic motor responses that are generated prior to overt perception. To investigate this, we tested whether an emotional cue affects covert motor responses in a masked priming task. We used a masked priming paradigm in which participants responded to target arrows that were preceded by invisible congruent or incongruent prime arrows. In the standard paradigm, participants react faster, and commit fewer errors responding to the directionality of target arrows, when they are preceded by congruent vs. incongruent masked prime arrows (positive congruency effect, PCE). However, as prime-target SOAs increase, this effect reverses (negative congruency effect, NCE). These findings have been explained as evidence for an initial activation and a subsequent inhibition of a partial response elicited by the masked prime arrow. Our results show that the presentation of fearful face cues, compared to neutral face cues, increased the size of both the PCE and NCE, despite the fact that the primes were invisible. This is the first demonstration that emotion prepares an individual's visuomotor system for automatic activation and inhibition of motor responses in the absence of visual awareness. PMID:23162447

Emotion potentiates response activation and inhibition in masked priming.

PubMed

Bocanegra, Bruno R; Zeelenberg, René

2012-01-01

Previous studies have shown that emotion can have 2-fold effects on perception. At the object-level, emotional stimuli benefit from a stimulus-specific boost in visual attention at the relative expense of competing stimuli. At the visual feature-level, recent findings indicate that emotion may inhibit the processing of small visual details and facilitate the processing of coarse visual features. In the present study, we investigated whether emotion can boost the activation and inhibition of automatic motor responses that are generated prior to overt perception. To investigate this, we tested whether an emotional cue affects covert motor responses in a masked priming task. We used a masked priming paradigm in which participants responded to target arrows that were preceded by invisible congruent or incongruent prime arrows. In the standard paradigm, participants react faster, and commit fewer errors responding to the directionality of target arrows, when they are preceded by congruent vs. incongruent masked prime arrows (positive congruency effect, PCE). However, as prime-target SOAs increase, this effect reverses (negative congruency effect, NCE). These findings have been explained as evidence for an initial activation and a subsequent inhibition of a partial response elicited by the masked prime arrow. Our results show that the presentation of fearful face cues, compared to neutral face cues, increased the size of both the PCE and NCE, despite the fact that the primes were invisible. This is the first demonstration that emotion prepares an individual's visuomotor system for automatic activation and inhibition of motor responses in the absence of visual awareness.

Musicians have enhanced audiovisual multisensory binding: experience-dependent effects in the double-flash illusion.

PubMed

Bidelman, Gavin M

2016-10-01

Musical training is associated with behavioral and neurophysiological enhancements in auditory processing for both musical and nonmusical sounds (e.g., speech). Yet, whether the benefits of musicianship extend beyond enhancements to auditory-specific skills and impact multisensory (e.g., audiovisual) processing has yet to be fully validated. Here, we investigated multisensory integration of auditory and visual information in musicians and nonmusicians using a double-flash illusion, whereby the presentation of multiple auditory stimuli (beeps) concurrent with a single visual object (flash) induces an illusory perception of multiple flashes. We parametrically varied the onset asynchrony between auditory and visual events (leads and lags of ±300 ms) to quantify participants' "temporal window" of integration, i.e., stimuli in which auditory and visual cues were fused into a single percept. Results show that musically trained individuals were both faster and more accurate at processing concurrent audiovisual cues than their nonmusician peers; nonmusicians had a higher susceptibility for responding to audiovisual illusions and perceived double flashes over an extended range of onset asynchronies compared to trained musicians. Moreover, temporal window estimates indicated that musicians' windows (<100 ms) were ~2-3× shorter than nonmusicians' (~200 ms), suggesting more refined multisensory integration and audiovisual binding. Collectively, findings indicate a more refined binding of auditory and visual cues in musically trained individuals. We conclude that experience-dependent plasticity of intensive musical experience extends beyond simple listening skills, improving multimodal processing and the integration of multiple sensory systems in a domain-general manner.

Vision in flying insects.

PubMed

Egelhaaf, Martin; Kern, Roland

2002-12-01

Vision guides flight behaviour in numerous insects. Despite their small brain, insects easily outperform current man-made autonomous vehicles in many respects. Examples are the virtuosic chasing manoeuvres male flies perform as part of their mating behaviour and the ability of bees to assess, on the basis of visual motion cues, the distance travelled in a novel environment. Analyses at both the behavioural and neuronal levels are beginning to unveil reasons for such extraordinary capabilities of insects. One recipe for their success is the adaptation of visual information processing to the specific requirements of the behavioural tasks and to the specific spatiotemporal properties of the natural input.

Neutral location cues and cost/benefit analysis of visual attention shifts.

PubMed

Wright, R D; Richard, C M; McDonald, J J

1995-12-01

The effects of location cuing on target responses can be examined by comparing informative and neutral cuing conditions. In particular, the magnitudes of costs of invalid location cuing and of benefits of valid location cuing can be determined by comparing invalid and valid cue responses to location-nonspecific neutral cue responses. Cost/benefit analysis is based on the assumption that neutral baseline measures reflect a general warning effect about the impending target's onset but no other specific target information. The experiments we report were carried out to determine the appropriateness of two baseline measures for cost/benefit analyses of direct (nonsymbolic) location cuing effects. We found that a multiple-cue baseline attenuated the benefits of valid cuing, and that a background-flash baseline arbitrarily attenuated costs or benefits depending on flash intensity. It is proposed that a background flash is the more suitable neutral cue because it is target-location-nonspecific, but that its intensity should be adjusted to elicit a target-onset warning signal of the same magnitude as the location cues with which it will be compared.

Stimulus homogeneity enhances implicit learning: evidence from contextual cueing.

PubMed

Feldmann-Wüstefeld, Tobias; Schubö, Anna

2014-04-01

Visual search for a target object is faster if the target is embedded in a repeatedly presented invariant configuration of distractors ('contextual cueing'). It has also been shown that the homogeneity of a context affects the efficiency of visual search: targets receive prioritized processing when presented in a homogeneous context compared to a heterogeneous context, presumably due to grouping processes at early stages of visual processing. The present study investigated in three Experiments whether context homogeneity also affects contextual cueing. In Experiment 1, context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-relevant dimension (orientation) and contextual cueing was most pronounced for context configurations with high orientation homogeneity. When context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-irrelevant dimension (color) and orientation homogeneity was fixed, no modulation of contextual cueing was observed: high orientation homogeneity led to large contextual cueing effects (Experiment 2) and low orientation homogeneity led to low contextual cueing effects (Experiment 3), irrespective of color homogeneity. Enhanced contextual cueing for homogeneous context configurations suggest that grouping processes do not only affect visual search but also implicit learning. We conclude that memory representation of context configurations are more easily acquired when context configurations can be processed as larger, grouped perceptual units. However, this form of implicit perceptual learning is only improved by stimulus homogeneity when stimulus homogeneity facilitates grouping processes on a dimension that is currently relevant in the task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Non-conscious visual cues related to affect and action alter perception of effort and endurance performance

PubMed Central

Blanchfield, Anthony; Hardy, James; Marcora, Samuele

2014-01-01

The psychobiological model of endurance performance proposes that endurance performance is determined by a decision-making process based on perception of effort and potential motivation. Recent research has reported that effort-based decision-making during cognitive tasks can be altered by non-conscious visual cues relating to affect and action. The effects of these non-conscious visual cues on effort and performance during physical tasks are however unknown. We report two experiments investigating the effects of subliminal priming with visual cues related to affect and action on perception of effort and endurance performance. In Experiment 1 thirteen individuals were subliminally primed with happy or sad faces as they cycled to exhaustion in a counterbalanced and randomized crossover design. A paired t-test (happy vs. sad faces) revealed that individuals cycled significantly longer (178 s, p = 0.04) when subliminally primed with happy faces. A 2 × 5 (condition × iso-time) ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of condition on rating of perceived exertion (RPE) during the time to exhaustion (TTE) test with lower RPE when subjects were subliminally primed with happy faces (p = 0.04). In Experiment 2, a single-subject randomization tests design found that subliminal priming with action words facilitated a significantly longer TTE (399 s, p = 0.04) in comparison to inaction words. Like Experiment 1, this greater TTE was accompanied by a significantly lower RPE (p = 0.03). These experiments are the first to show that subliminal visual cues relating to affect and action can alter perception of effort and endurance performance. Non-conscious visual cues may therefore influence the effort-based decision-making process that is proposed to determine endurance performance. Accordingly, the findings raise notable implications for individuals who may encounter such visual cues during endurance competitions, training, or health related exercise. PMID:25566014

Relationship between Parental Feeding Practices and Neural Responses to Food Cues in Adolescents

PubMed Central

Chambers, Alison; Blissett, Jacqueline; Chechlacz, Magdalena; Barrett, Timothy; Higgs, Suzanne; Nouwen, Arie

2016-01-01

Social context, specifically within the family, influences adolescent eating behaviours and thus their health. Little is known about the specific mechanisms underlying the effects of parental feeding practices on eating. We explored relationships between parental feeding practices and adolescent eating habits and brain activity in response to viewing food images. Fifty- seven adolescents (15 with type 2 diabetes mellitus, 21 obese and 21 healthy weight controls) underwent fMRI scanning whilst viewing images of food or matched control images. Participants completed the Kids Child Feeding Questionnaire, the Childrens’ Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) and took part in an observed meal. Parents completed the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionniare and the DEBQ. We were particularly interested in brain activity in response to food cues that was modulated by different feeding and eating styles. Healthy-weight participants increased activation (compared to the other groups) to food in proportion to the level of parental restriction in visual areas of the brain such as right lateral occipital cortex (LOC), right temporal occipital cortex, left occipital fusiform gyrus, left lateral and superior LOC. Adolescents with type 2 diabetes mellitus had higher activation (compared to the other groups) with increased parental restrictive feeding in areas relating to emotional control, attention and decision-making, such as posterior cingulate, precuneus, frontal operculum and right middle frontal gyrus. Participants with type 2 diabetes mellitus also showed higher activation (compared to the other groups) in the left anterior intraparietal sulcus and angular gyrus when they also reported higher self restraint. Parental restriction did not modulate food responses in obese participants, but there was increased activity in visual (visual cortex, left LOC, left occipital fusiform gyrus) and reward related brain areas (thalamus and parietal operculum) in response to parental teaching and modelling of behaviour. Parental restrictive feeding and parental teaching and modelling affected neural responses to food cues in different ways, depending on motivations and diagnoses, illustrating a social influence on neural responses to food cues. PMID:27479051

Relationship between Parental Feeding Practices and Neural Responses to Food Cues in Adolescents.

PubMed

Allen, Harriet A; Chambers, Alison; Blissett, Jacqueline; Chechlacz, Magdalena; Barrett, Timothy; Higgs, Suzanne; Nouwen, Arie

2016-01-01

Social context, specifically within the family, influences adolescent eating behaviours and thus their health. Little is known about the specific mechanisms underlying the effects of parental feeding practices on eating. We explored relationships between parental feeding practices and adolescent eating habits and brain activity in response to viewing food images. Fifty- seven adolescents (15 with type 2 diabetes mellitus, 21 obese and 21 healthy weight controls) underwent fMRI scanning whilst viewing images of food or matched control images. Participants completed the Kids Child Feeding Questionnaire, the Childrens' Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) and took part in an observed meal. Parents completed the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionniare and the DEBQ. We were particularly interested in brain activity in response to food cues that was modulated by different feeding and eating styles. Healthy-weight participants increased activation (compared to the other groups) to food in proportion to the level of parental restriction in visual areas of the brain such as right lateral occipital cortex (LOC), right temporal occipital cortex, left occipital fusiform gyrus, left lateral and superior LOC. Adolescents with type 2 diabetes mellitus had higher activation (compared to the other groups) with increased parental restrictive feeding in areas relating to emotional control, attention and decision-making, such as posterior cingulate, precuneus, frontal operculum and right middle frontal gyrus. Participants with type 2 diabetes mellitus also showed higher activation (compared to the other groups) in the left anterior intraparietal sulcus and angular gyrus when they also reported higher self restraint. Parental restriction did not modulate food responses in obese participants, but there was increased activity in visual (visual cortex, left LOC, left occipital fusiform gyrus) and reward related brain areas (thalamus and parietal operculum) in response to parental teaching and modelling of behaviour. Parental restrictive feeding and parental teaching and modelling affected neural responses to food cues in different ways, depending on motivations and diagnoses, illustrating a social influence on neural responses to food cues.

Trial-by-trial adjustments in control triggered by incidentally encoded semantic cues.

PubMed

Blais, Chris; Harris, Michael B; Sinanian, Michael H; Bunge, Silvia A

2015-01-01

Cognitive control mechanisms provide the flexibility to rapidly adapt to contextual demands. These contexts can be defined by top-down goals-but also by bottom-up perceptual factors, such as the location at which a visual stimulus appears. There are now several experiments reporting contextual control effects. Such experiments establish that contexts defined by low-level perceptual cues such as the location of a visual stimulus can lead to context-specific control, suggesting a relatively early focus for cognitive control. The current set of experiments involved a word-word interference task designed to assess whether a high-level cue, the semantic category to which a word belongs, can also facilitate contextual control. Indeed, participants exhibit a larger Flanker effect to items pertaining to a semantic category in which 75% of stimuli are incongruent than in response to items pertaining to a category in which 25% of stimuli are incongruent. Thus, both low-level and high-level stimulus features can affect the bottom-up engagement of cognitive control. The implications for current models of cognitive control are discussed.

'You see?' Teaching and learning how to interpret visual cues during surgery.

PubMed

Cope, Alexandra C; Bezemer, Jeff; Kneebone, Roger; Lingard, Lorelei

2015-11-01

The ability to interpret visual cues is important in many medical specialties, including surgery, in which poor outcomes are largely attributable to errors of perception rather than poor motor skills. However, we know little about how trainee surgeons learn to make judgements in the visual domain. We explored how trainees learn visual cue interpretation in the operating room. A multiple case study design was used. Participants were postgraduate surgical trainees and their trainers. Data included observer field notes, and integrated video- and audio-recordings from 12 cases representing more than 11 hours of observation. A constant comparative methodology was used to identify dominant themes. Visual cue interpretation was a recurrent feature of trainer-trainee interactions and was achieved largely through the pedagogic mechanism of co-construction. Co-construction was a dialogic sequence between trainer and trainee in which they explored what they were looking at together to identify and name structures or pathology. Co-construction took two forms: 'guided co-construction', in which the trainer steered the trainee to see what the trainer was seeing, and 'authentic co-construction', in which neither trainer nor trainee appeared certain of what they were seeing and pieced together the information collaboratively. Whether the co-construction activity was guided or authentic appeared to be influenced by case difficulty and trainee seniority. Co-construction was shown to occur verbally, through discussion, and also through non-verbal exchanges in which gestures made with laparoscopic instruments contributed to the co-construction discourse. In the training setting, learning visual cue interpretation occurs in part through co-construction. Co-construction is a pedagogic phenomenon that is well recognised in the context of learning to interpret verbal information. In articulating the features of co-construction in the visual domain, this work enables the development of explicit pedagogic strategies for maximising trainees' learning of visual cue interpretation. This is relevant to multiple medical specialties in which judgements must be based on visual information. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The role of lower peripheral visual cues in the visuomotor coordination of locomotion and prehension.

PubMed

Graci, Valentina

2011-10-01

It has been previously suggested that coupled upper and limb movements need visuomotor coordination to be achieved. Previous studies have not investigated the role that visual cues may play in the coordination of locomotion and prehension. The aim of this study was to investigate if lower peripheral visual cues provide online control of the coordination of locomotion and prehension as they have been showed to do during adaptive gait and level walking. Twelve subjects reached a semi-empty or a full glass with their dominant or non-dominant hand at gait termination. Two binocular visual conditions were investigated: normal vision and lower visual occlusion. Outcome measures were determined using 3D motion capture techniques. Results showed that although the subjects were able to successfully complete the task without spilling the water from the glass under lower visual occlusion, they increased the margin of safety between final foot placements and glass. These findings suggest that lower visual cues are mainly used online to fine tune the trajectory of the upper and lower limbs moving toward the target. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

All set, indeed! N2pc components reveal simultaneous attentional control settings for multiple target colors.

PubMed

Grubert, Anna; Eimer, Martin

2016-08-01

To study whether top-down attentional control processes can be set simultaneously for different visual features, we employed a spatial cueing procedure to measure behavioral and electrophysiological markers of task-set contingent attentional capture during search for targets defined by 1 or 2 possible colors (one-color and two-color tasks). Search arrays were preceded by spatially nonpredictive color singleton cues. Behavioral spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture were elicited only by target-matching but not by distractor-color cues. However, when search displays contained 1 target-color and 1 distractor-color object among gray nontargets, N2pc components were triggered not only by target-color but also by distractor-color cues both in the one-color and two-color task, demonstrating that task-set nonmatching items attracted attention. When search displays contained 6 items in 6 different colors, so that participants had to adopt a fully feature-specific task set, the N2pc to distractor-color cues was eliminated in both tasks, indicating that nonmatching items were now successfully excluded from attentional processing. These results demonstrate that when observers adopt a feature-specific search mode, attentional task sets can be configured flexibly for multiple features within the same dimension, resulting in the rapid allocation of attention to task-set matching objects only. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Slushy weightings for the optimal pilot model. [considering visual tracking task

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dillow, J. D.; Picha, D. G.; Anderson, R. O.

1975-01-01

A pilot model is described which accounts for the effect of motion cues in a well defined visual tracking task. The effect of visual and motion cues are accounted for in the model in two ways. First, the observation matrix in the pilot model is structured to account for the visual and motion inputs presented to the pilot. Secondly, the weightings in the quadratic cost function associated with the pilot model are modified to account for the pilot's perception of the variables he considers important in the task. Analytic results obtained using the pilot model are compared to experimental results and in general good agreement is demonstrated. The analytic model yields small improvements in tracking performance with the addition of motion cues for easily controlled task dynamics and large improvements in tracking performance with the addition of motion cues for difficult task dynamics.

Comparing Auditory-Only and Audiovisual Word Learning for Children with Hearing Loss.

PubMed

McDaniel, Jena; Camarata, Stephen; Yoder, Paul

2018-05-15

Although reducing visual input to emphasize auditory cues is a common practice in pediatric auditory (re)habilitation, the extant literature offers minimal empirical evidence for whether unisensory auditory-only (AO) or multisensory audiovisual (AV) input is more beneficial to children with hearing loss for developing spoken language skills. Using an adapted alternating treatments single case research design, we evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of a receptive word learning intervention with and without access to visual speechreading cues. Four preschool children with prelingual hearing loss participated. Based on probes without visual cues, three participants demonstrated strong evidence for learning in the AO and AV conditions relative to a control (no-teaching) condition. No participants demonstrated a differential rate of learning between AO and AV conditions. Neither an inhibitory effect predicted by a unisensory theory nor a beneficial effect predicted by a multisensory theory for providing visual cues was identified. Clinical implications are discussed.

Learning and Discrimination of Audiovisual Events in Human Infants: The Hierarchical Relation between Intersensory Temporal Synchrony and Rhythmic Pattern Cues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewkowicz, David J.

2003-01-01

Three experiments examined 4- to 10-month-olds' perception of audio-visual (A-V) temporal synchrony cues in the presence or absence of rhythmic pattern cues. Results established that infants of all ages could discriminate between two different audio-visual rhythmic events. Only 10-month-olds detected a desynchronization of the auditory and visual…

The redbay ambrosia beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) uses stem silhouette diameter as a visual host-finding cue

Treesearch

Albert (Bud) Mayfield; Cavell Brownie

2013-01-01

The redbay ambrosia beetle (Syleborus glabratus Eichhoff) is an invasive pest and vector of the pathogen that causes laurel wilt disease in Lauraceous tree species in the eastern United States. This insect uses olfactory cues during host finding, but use of visual cues by X. Glabratus has not been previously investigated and may help explain diameter...

Slow changing postural cues cancel visual field dependence on self-tilt detection.

PubMed

Scotto Di Cesare, C; Macaluso, T; Mestre, D R; Bringoux, L

2015-01-01

Interindividual differences influence the multisensory integration process involved in spatial perception. Here, we assessed the effect of visual field dependence on self-tilt detection relative to upright, as a function of static vs. slow changing visual or postural cues. To that aim, we manipulated slow rotations (i.e., 0.05° s(-1)) of the body and/or the visual scene in pitch. Participants had to indicate whether they felt being tilted forward at successive angles. Results show that thresholds for self-tilt detection substantially differed between visual field dependent/independent subjects, when only the visual scene was rotated. This difference was no longer present when the body was actually rotated, whatever the visual scene condition (i.e., absent, static or rotated relative to the observer). These results suggest that the cancellation of visual field dependence by dynamic postural cues may rely on a multisensory reweighting process, where slow changing vestibular/somatosensory inputs may prevail over visual inputs. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effect of changing the secondary task in dual-task paradigms for measuring listening effort.

PubMed

Picou, Erin M; Ricketts, Todd A

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of changing the secondary task in dual-task paradigms that measure listening effort. Specifically, the effects of increasing the secondary task complexity or the depth of processing on a paradigm's sensitivity to changes in listening effort were quantified in a series of two experiments. Specific factors investigated within each experiment were background noise and visual cues. Participants in Experiment 1 were adults with normal hearing (mean age 23 years) and participants in Experiment 2 were adults with mild sloping to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss (mean age 60.1 years). In both experiments, participants were tested using three dual-task paradigms. These paradigms had identical primary tasks, which were always monosyllable word recognition. The secondary tasks were all physical reaction time measures. The stimulus for the secondary task varied by paradigm and was a (1) simple visual probe, (2) a complex visual probe, or (3) the category of word presented. In this way, the secondary tasks mainly varied from the simple paradigm by either complexity or depth of speech processing. Using all three paradigms, participants were tested in four conditions, (1) auditory-only stimuli in quiet, (2) auditory-only stimuli in noise, (3) auditory-visual stimuli in quiet, and (4) auditory-visual stimuli in noise. During auditory-visual conditions, the talker's face was visible. Signal-to-noise ratios used during conditions with background noise were set individually so word recognition performance was matched in auditory-only and auditory-visual conditions. In noise, word recognition performance was approximately 80% and 65% for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. For both experiments, word recognition performance was stable across the three paradigms, confirming that none of the secondary tasks interfered with the primary task. In Experiment 1 (listeners with normal hearing), analysis of median reaction times revealed a significant main effect of background noise on listening effort only with the paradigm that required deep processing. Visual cues did not change listening effort as measured with any of the three dual-task paradigms. In Experiment 2 (listeners with hearing loss), analysis of median reaction times revealed expected significant effects of background noise using all three paradigms, but no significant effects of visual cues. None of the dual-task paradigms were sensitive to the effects of visual cues. Furthermore, changing the complexity of the secondary task did not change dual-task paradigm sensitivity to the effects of background noise on listening effort for either group of listeners. However, the paradigm whose secondary task involved deeper processing was more sensitive to the effects of background noise for both groups of listeners. While this paradigm differed from the others in several respects, depth of processing may be partially responsible for the increased sensitivity. Therefore, this paradigm may be a valuable tool for evaluating other factors that affect listening effort.

All I saw was the cake. Hunger effects on attentional capture by visual food cues.

PubMed

Piech, Richard M; Pastorino, Michael T; Zald, David H

2010-06-01

While effects of hunger on motivation and food reward value are well-established, far less is known about the effects of hunger on cognitive processes. Here, we deployed the emotional blink of attention paradigm to investigate the impact of visual food cues on attentional capture under conditions of hunger and satiety. Participants were asked to detect targets which appeared in a rapid visual stream after different types of task irrelevant distractors. We observed that food stimuli acquired increased power to capture attention and prevent target detection when participants were hungry. This occurred despite monetary incentives to perform well. Our findings suggest an attentional mechanism through which hunger heightens perception of food cues. As an objective behavioral marker of the attentional sensitivity to food cues, the emotional attentional blink paradigm may provide a useful technique for studying individual differences, and state manipulations in the sensitivity to food cues. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Working memory can enhance unconscious visual perception.

PubMed

Pan, Yi; Cheng, Qiu-Ping; Luo, Qian-Ying

2012-06-01

We demonstrate that unconscious processing of a stimulus property can be enhanced when there is a match between the contents of working memory and the stimulus presented in the visual field. Participants first held a cue (a colored circle) in working memory and then searched for a brief masked target shape presented simultaneously with a distractor shape. When participants reported having no awareness of the target shape at all, search performance was more accurate in the valid condition, where the target matched the cue in color, than in the neutral condition, where the target mismatched the cue. This effect cannot be attributed to bottom-up perceptual priming from the presentation of a memory cue, because unconscious perception was not enhanced when the cue was merely perceptually identified but not actively held in working memory. These findings suggest that reentrant feedback from the contents of working memory modulates unconscious visual perception.

The Effect of Eye Contact Is Contingent on Visual Awareness

PubMed Central

Xu, Shan; Zhang, Shen; Geng, Haiyan

2018-01-01

The present study explored how eye contact at different levels of visual awareness influences gaze-induced joint attention. We adopted a spatial-cueing paradigm, in which an averted gaze was used as an uninformative central cue for a joint-attention task. Prior to the onset of the averted-gaze cue, either supraliminal (Experiment 1) or subliminal (Experiment 2) eye contact was presented. The results revealed a larger subsequent gaze-cueing effect following supraliminal eye contact compared to a no-contact condition. In contrast, the gaze-cueing effect was smaller in the subliminal eye-contact condition than in the no-contact condition. These findings suggest that the facilitation effect of eye contact on coordinating social attention depends on visual awareness. Furthermore, subliminal eye contact might have an impact on subsequent social attention processes that differ from supraliminal eye contact. This study highlights the need to further investigate the role of eye contact in implicit social cognition. PMID:29467703

Evidence for impairments in using static line drawings of eye gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention in children with high functioning autism.

PubMed

Goldberg, Melissa C; Mostow, Allison J; Vecera, Shaun P; Larson, Jennifer C Gidley; Mostofsky, Stewart H; Mahone, E Mark; Denckla, Martha B

2008-09-01

We examined the ability to use static line drawings of eye gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention in children with high functioning autism (HFA) compared to typically developing children (TD). The task was organized such that on valid trials, gaze cues were directed toward the same spatial location as the appearance of an upcoming target, while on invalid trials gaze cues were directed to an opposite location. Unlike TD children, children with HFA showed no advantage in reaction time (RT) on valid trials compared to invalid trials (i.e., no significant validity effect). The two stimulus onset asynchronies (200 ms, 700 ms) did not differentially affect these findings. The results suggest that children with HFA show impairments in utilizing static line drawings of gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention.

Modulation of neuronal responses during covert search for visual feature conjunctions

PubMed Central

Buracas, Giedrius T.; Albright, Thomas D.

2009-01-01

While searching for an object in a visual scene, an observer's attentional focus and eye movements are often guided by information about object features and spatial locations. Both spatial and feature-specific attention are known to modulate neuronal responses in visual cortex, but little is known of the dynamics and interplay of these mechanisms as visual search progresses. To address this issue, we recorded from directionally selective cells in visual area MT of monkeys trained to covertly search for targets defined by a unique conjunction of color and motion features and to signal target detection with an eye movement to the putative target. Two patterns of response modulation were observed. One pattern consisted of enhanced responses to targets presented in the receptive field (RF). These modulations occurred at the end-stage of search and were more potent during correct target identification than during erroneous saccades to a distractor in RF, thus suggesting that this modulation is not a mere presaccadic enhancement. A second pattern of modulation was observed when RF stimuli were nontargets that shared a feature with the target. The latter effect was observed during early stages of search and is consistent with a global feature-specific mechanism. This effect often terminated before target identification, thus suggesting that it interacts with spatial attention. This modulation was exhibited not only for motion but also for color cue, although MT neurons are known to be insensitive to color. Such cue-invariant attentional effects may contribute to a feature binding mechanism acting across visual dimensions. PMID:19805385

Modulation of neuronal responses during covert search for visual feature conjunctions.

PubMed

Buracas, Giedrius T; Albright, Thomas D

2009-09-29

While searching for an object in a visual scene, an observer's attentional focus and eye movements are often guided by information about object features and spatial locations. Both spatial and feature-specific attention are known to modulate neuronal responses in visual cortex, but little is known of the dynamics and interplay of these mechanisms as visual search progresses. To address this issue, we recorded from directionally selective cells in visual area MT of monkeys trained to covertly search for targets defined by a unique conjunction of color and motion features and to signal target detection with an eye movement to the putative target. Two patterns of response modulation were observed. One pattern consisted of enhanced responses to targets presented in the receptive field (RF). These modulations occurred at the end-stage of search and were more potent during correct target identification than during erroneous saccades to a distractor in RF, thus suggesting that this modulation is not a mere presaccadic enhancement. A second pattern of modulation was observed when RF stimuli were nontargets that shared a feature with the target. The latter effect was observed during early stages of search and is consistent with a global feature-specific mechanism. This effect often terminated before target identification, thus suggesting that it interacts with spatial attention. This modulation was exhibited not only for motion but also for color cue, although MT neurons are known to be insensitive to color. Such cue-invariant attentional effects may contribute to a feature binding mechanism acting across visual dimensions.

Behavioral responses of Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) to visual stimuli under laboratory, semifield, and field conditions

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is an invasive pest in the United States that attacks soft-skinned ripening fruit such as raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Little is known regarding specific cues D. suzukii utilizes to locate and select host fruit, and inconsistenc...

Food Avoidance Learning in Squirrel Monkeys and Common Marmosets

PubMed Central

Laska, Matthias; Metzker, Karin

1998-01-01

Using a conditioned food avoidance learning paradigm, six squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and six common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) were tested for their ability to (1) reliably form associations between visual or olfactory cues of a potential food and its palatability and (2) remember such associations over prolonged periods of time. We found (1) that at the group level both species showed one-trial learning with the visual cues color and shape, whereas only the marmosets were able to do so with the olfactory cue, (2) that all individuals from both species learned to reliably avoid the unpalatable food items within 10 trials, (3) a tendency in both species for quicker acquisition of the association with the visual cues compared with the olfactory cue, (4) a tendency for quicker acquisition and higher reliability of the aversion by the marmosets compared with the squirrel monkeys, and (5) that all individuals from both species were able to reliably remember the significance of the visual cues, color and shape, even after 4 months, whereas only the marmosets showed retention of the significance of the olfactory cues for up to 4 weeks. Furthermore, the results suggest that in both species tested, illness is not a necessary prerequisite for food avoidance learning but that the presumably innate rejection responses toward highly concentrated but nontoxic bitter and sour tastants are sufficient to induce robust learning and retention. PMID:10454364

Searching for emotion or race: task-irrelevant facial cues have asymmetrical effects.

PubMed

Lipp, Ottmar V; Craig, Belinda M; Frost, Mareka J; Terry, Deborah J; Smith, Joanne R

2014-01-01

Facial cues of threat such as anger and other race membership are detected preferentially in visual search tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these facial cues interact in visual search. If both cues equally facilitate search, a symmetrical interaction would be predicted; anger cues should facilitate detection of other race faces and cues of other race membership should facilitate detection of anger. Past research investigating this race by emotional expression interaction in categorisation tasks revealed an asymmetrical interaction. This suggests that cues of other race membership may facilitate the detection of angry faces but not vice versa. Utilising the same stimuli and procedures across two search tasks, participants were asked to search for targets defined by either race or emotional expression. Contrary to the results revealed in the categorisation paradigm, cues of anger facilitated detection of other race faces whereas differences in race did not differentially influence detection of emotion targets.

Pigeons Exhibit Contextual Cueing to Both Simple and Complex Backgrounds

PubMed Central

Wasserman, Edward A.; Teng, Yuejia; Castro, Leyre

2014-01-01

Repeated pairings of a particular visual context with a specific location of a target stimulus facilitate target search in humans. We explored an animal model of this contextual cueing effect using a novel Cueing-Miscueing design. Pigeons had to peck a target which could appear in one of four possible locations on four possible color backgrounds or four possible color photographs of real-world scenes. On 80% of the trials, each of the contexts was uniquely paired with one of the target locations; on the other 20% of the trials, each of the contexts was randomly paired with the remaining target locations. Pigeons came to exhibit robust contextual cueing when the context preceded the target by 2 s, with reaction times to the target being shorter on correctly-cued trials than on incorrectly-cued trials. Contextual cueing proved to be more robust with photographic backgrounds than with uniformly colored backgrounds. In addition, during the context-target delay, pigeons predominately pecked toward the location of the upcoming target, suggesting that attentional guidance contributes to contextual cueing. These findings confirm the effectiveness of animal models of contextual cueing and underscore the important part played by associative learning in producing the effect. PMID:24491468

Predator Cue and Prey Density Interactively Influence Indirect Effects on Basal Resources in Intertidal Oyster Reefs

PubMed Central

Hughes, A. Randall; Rooker, Kelly; Murdock, Meagan; Kimbro, David L.

2012-01-01

Predators can influence prey abundance and traits by direct consumption, as well as by non-consumptive effects of visual, olfactory, or tactile cues. The strength of these non-consumptive effects (NCEs) can be influenced by a variety of factors, including predator foraging mode, temporal variation in predator cues, and the density of competing prey. Testing the relative importance of these factors for determining NCEs is critical to our understanding of predator-prey interactions in a variety of settings. We addressed this knowledge gap by conducting two mesocosm experiments in a tri-trophic intertidal oyster reef food web. More specifically, we tested how a predatory fish (hardhead catfish, Ariopsis felis) directly influenced their prey (mud crabs, Panopeus spp.) and indirectly affected basal resources (juvenile oysters, Crassostrea virginica), as well as whether these direct and indirect effects changed across a density gradient of competing prey. Per capita crab foraging rates were inversely influenced by crab density, but they were not affected by water-borne predator cues. As a result, direct consumptive effects on prey foraging rates were stronger than non-consumptive effects. In contrast, predator cue and crab density interactively influenced indirect predator effects on oyster mortality in two experiments, with trait-mediated and density-mediated effects of similar magnitude operating to enhance oyster abundance. Consistent differences between a variable predator cue environment and other predator cue treatments (no cue and constant cue) suggests that an understanding of the natural risk environment experienced by prey is critical to testing and interpreting trait-mediated indirect interactions. Further, the prey response to the risk environment may be highly dependent on prey density, particularly in prey populations with strong intra-specific interactions. PMID:22970316

Integration of visual and motion cues for flight simulator requirements and ride quality investigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Young, L. R.

1976-01-01

Investigations for the improvement of flight simulators are reported. Topics include: visual cues in landing, comparison of linear and nonlinear washout filters using a model of the vestibular system, and visual vestibular interactions (yaw axis). An abstract is given for a thesis on the applications of human dynamic orientation models to motion simulation.

Smell or vision? The use of different sensory modalities in predator discrimination.

PubMed

Fischer, Stefan; Oberhummer, Evelyne; Cunha-Saraiva, Filipa; Gerber, Nina; Taborsky, Barbara

2017-01-01

Theory predicts that animals should adjust their escape responses to the perceived predation risk. The information animals obtain about potential predation risk may differ qualitatively depending on the sensory modality by which a cue is perceived. For instance, olfactory cues may reveal better information about the presence or absence of threats, whereas visual information can reliably transmit the position and potential attack distance of a predator. While this suggests a differential use of information perceived through the two sensory channels, the relative importance of visual vs. olfactory cues when distinguishing between different predation threats is still poorly understood. Therefore, we exposed individuals of the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher to a standardized threat stimulus combined with either predator or non-predator cues presented either visually or chemically. We predicted that flight responses towards a threat stimulus are more pronounced if cues of dangerous rather than harmless heterospecifics are presented and that N. pulcher , being an aquatic species, relies more on olfaction when discriminating between dangerous and harmless heterospecifics. N. pulcher responded faster to the threat stimulus, reached a refuge faster and entered a refuge more likely when predator cues were perceived. Unexpectedly, the sensory modality used to perceive the cues did not affect the escape response or the duration of the recovery phase. This suggests that N. pulcher are able to discriminate heterospecific cues with similar acuity when using vision or olfaction. We discuss that this ability may be advantageous in aquatic environments where the visibility conditions strongly vary over time. The ability to rapidly discriminate between dangerous predators and harmless heterospecifics is crucial for the survival of prey animals. In seasonally fluctuating environment, sensory conditions may change over the year and may make the use of multiple sensory modalities for heterospecific discrimination highly beneficial. Here we compared the efficacy of visual and olfactory senses in the discrimination ability of the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher . We presented individual fish with visual or olfactory cues of predators or harmless heterospecifics and recorded their flight response. When exposed to predator cues, individuals responded faster, reached a refuge faster and were more likely to enter the refuge. Unexpectedly, the olfactory and visual senses seemed to be equally efficient in this discrimination task, suggesting that seasonal variation of water conditions experienced by N. pulcher may necessitate the use of multiple sensory channels for the same task.

Reliability and relative weighting of visual and nonvisual information for perceiving direction of self-motion during walking

PubMed Central

Saunders, Jeffrey A.

2014-01-01

Direction of self-motion during walking is indicated by multiple cues, including optic flow, nonvisual sensory cues, and motor prediction. I measured the reliability of perceived heading from visual and nonvisual cues during walking, and whether cues are weighted in an optimal manner. I used a heading alignment task to measure perceived heading during walking. Observers walked toward a target in a virtual environment with and without global optic flow. The target was simulated to be infinitely far away, so that it did not provide direct feedback about direction of self-motion. Variability in heading direction was low even without optic flow, with average RMS error of 2.4°. Global optic flow reduced variability to 1.9°–2.1°, depending on the structure of the environment. The small amount of variance reduction was consistent with optimal use of visual information. The relative contribution of visual and nonvisual information was also measured using cue conflict conditions. Optic flow specified a conflicting heading direction (±5°), and bias in walking direction was used to infer relative weighting. Visual feedback influenced heading direction by 16%–34% depending on scene structure, with more effect with dense motion parallax. The weighting of visual feedback was close to the predictions of an optimal integration model given the observed variability measures. PMID:24648194

Priming and the guidance by visual and categorical templates in visual search.

PubMed

Wilschut, Anna; Theeuwes, Jan; Olivers, Christian N L

2014-01-01

Visual search is thought to be guided by top-down templates that are held in visual working memory. Previous studies have shown that a search-guiding template can be rapidly and strongly implemented from a visual cue, whereas templates are less effective when based on categorical cues. Direct visual priming from cue to target may underlie this difference. In two experiments we first asked observers to remember two possible target colors. A postcue then indicated which of the two would be the relevant color. The task was to locate a briefly presented and masked target of the cued color among irrelevant distractor items. Experiment 1 showed that overall search accuracy improved more rapidly on the basis of a direct visual postcue that carried the target color, compared to a neutral postcue that pointed to the memorized color. However, selectivity toward the target feature, i.e., the extent to which observers searched selectively among items of the cued vs. uncued color, was found to be relatively unaffected by the presence of the visual signal. In Experiment 2 we compared search that was based on either visual or categorical information, but now controlled for direct visual priming. This resulted in no differences in overall performance nor selectivity. Altogether the results suggest that perceptual processing of visual search targets is facilitated by priming from visual cues, whereas attentional selectivity is enhanced by a working memory template that can formed from both visual and categorical input. Furthermore, if the priming is controlled for, categorical- and visual-based templates similarly enhance search guidance.

A comparison of visuomotor cue integration strategies for object placement and prehension.

PubMed

Greenwald, Hal S; Knill, David C

2009-01-01

Visual cue integration strategies are known to depend on cue reliability and how rapidly the visual system processes incoming information. We investigated whether these strategies also depend on differences in the information demands for different natural tasks. Using two common goal-oriented tasks, prehension and object placement, we determined whether monocular and binocular information influence estimates of three-dimensional (3D) orientation differently depending on task demands. Both tasks rely on accurate 3D orientation estimates, but 3D position is potentially more important for grasping. Subjects placed an object on or picked up a disc in a virtual environment. On some trials, the monocular cues (aspect ratio and texture compression) and binocular cues (e.g., binocular disparity) suggested slightly different 3D orientations for the disc; these conflicts either were present upon initial stimulus presentation or were introduced after movement initiation, which allowed us to quantify how information from the cues accumulated over time. We analyzed the time-varying orientations of subjects' fingers in the grasping task and those of the object in the object placement task to quantify how different visual cues influenced motor control. In the first experiment, different subjects performed each task, and those performing the grasping task relied on binocular information more when orienting their hands than those performing the object placement task. When subjects in the second experiment performed both tasks in interleaved sessions, binocular cues were still more influential during grasping than object placement, and the different cue integration strategies observed for each task in isolation were maintained. In both experiments, the temporal analyses showed that subjects processed binocular information faster than monocular information, but task demands did not affect the time course of cue processing. How one uses visual cues for motor control depends on the task being performed, although how quickly the information is processed appears to be task invariant.

Audio-visual speech perception: a developmental ERP investigation

PubMed Central

Knowland, Victoria CP; Mercure, Evelyne; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Dick, Fred; Thomas, Michael SC

2014-01-01

Being able to see a talking face confers a considerable advantage for speech perception in adulthood. However, behavioural data currently suggest that children fail to make full use of these available visual speech cues until age 8 or 9. This is particularly surprising given the potential utility of multiple informational cues during language learning. We therefore explored this at the neural level. The event-related potential (ERP) technique has been used to assess the mechanisms of audio-visual speech perception in adults, with visual cues reliably modulating auditory ERP responses to speech. Previous work has shown congruence-dependent shortening of auditory N1/P2 latency and congruence-independent attenuation of amplitude in the presence of auditory and visual speech signals, compared to auditory alone. The aim of this study was to chart the development of these well-established modulatory effects over mid-to-late childhood. Experiment 1 employed an adult sample to validate a child-friendly stimulus set and paradigm by replicating previously observed effects of N1/P2 amplitude and latency modulation by visual speech cues; it also revealed greater attenuation of component amplitude given incongruent audio-visual stimuli, pointing to a new interpretation of the amplitude modulation effect. Experiment 2 used the same paradigm to map cross-sectional developmental change in these ERP responses between 6 and 11 years of age. The effect of amplitude modulation by visual cues emerged over development, while the effect of latency modulation was stable over the child sample. These data suggest that auditory ERP modulation by visual speech represents separable underlying cognitive processes, some of which show earlier maturation than others over the course of development. PMID:24176002

Developmental changes in the balance of disparity, blur and looming/proximity cues to drive ocular alignment and focus

PubMed Central

Horwood, Anna M; Riddell, Patricia M

2015-01-01

Accurate co-ordination of accommodation and convergence is necessary to view near objects and develop fine motor co-ordination. We used a remote haploscopic videorefraction paradigm to measure longitudinal changes in simultaneous ocular accommodation and vergence to targets at different depths, and to all combinations of blur, binocular disparity, and change-in-size (“proximity”) cues. Infants were followed longitudinally and compared to older children and young adults, with the prediction that sensitivity to different cues would change during development. Mean infant responses to the most naturalistic condition were similar to those of adults from 6-7 weeks (accommodation) and 8-9 weeks (vergence). Proximity cues influenced responses most in infants less than 14 weeks of age, but sensitivity declined thereafter. Between 12-28 weeks of age infants were equally responsive to all three cues, while in older children and adults manipulation of disparity resulted in the greatest changes in response. Despite rapid development of visual acuity (thus increasing availability of blur cues), responses to blur were stable throughout development. Our results suggest that during much of infancy, vergence and accommodation responses are not dependent on the development of specific depth cues, but make use of any cues available to drive appropriate changes in response. PMID:24344547

Exogenous temporal cues enhance recognition memory in an object-based manner.

PubMed

Ohyama, Junji; Watanabe, Katsumi

2010-11-01

Exogenous attention enhances the perception of attended items in both a space-based and an object-based manner. Exogenous attention also improves recognition memory for attended items in the space-based mode. However, it has not been examined whether object-based exogenous attention enhances recognition memory. To address this issue, we examined whether a sudden visual change in a task-irrelevant stimulus (an exogenous cue) would affect participants' recognition memory for items that were serially presented around a cued time. The results showed that recognition accuracy for an item was strongly enhanced when the visual cue occurred at the same location and time as the item (Experiments 1 and 2). The memory enhancement effect occurred when the exogenous visual cue and an item belonged to the same object (Experiments 3 and 4) and even when the cue was counterpredictive of the timing of an item to be asked about (Experiment 5). The present study suggests that an exogenous temporal cue automatically enhances the recognition accuracy for an item that is presented at close temporal proximity to the cue and that recognition memory enhancement occurs in an object-based manner.

Object based implicit contextual learning: a study of eye movements.

PubMed

van Asselen, Marieke; Sampaio, Joana; Pina, Ana; Castelo-Branco, Miguel

2011-02-01

Implicit contextual cueing refers to a top-down mechanism in which visual search is facilitated by learned contextual features. In the current study we aimed to investigate the mechanism underlying implicit contextual learning using object information as a contextual cue. Therefore, we measured eye movements during an object-based contextual cueing task. We demonstrated that visual search is facilitated by repeated object information and that this reduction in response times is associated with shorter fixation durations. This indicates that by memorizing associations between objects in our environment we can recognize objects faster, thereby facilitating visual search.

Working Memory and Speech Recognition in Noise Under Ecologically Relevant Listening Conditions: Effects of Visual Cues and Noise Type Among Adults With Hearing Loss

PubMed Central

Stewart, Erin K.; Wu, Yu-Hsiang; Bishop, Christopher; Bentler, Ruth A.; Tremblay, Kelly

2017-01-01

Purpose This study evaluated the relationship between working memory (WM) and speech recognition in noise with different noise types as well as in the presence of visual cues. Method Seventy-six adults with bilateral, mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss (mean age: 69 years) participated. Using a cross-sectional design, 2 measures of WM were taken: a reading span measure, and Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure (Smith, Pichora-Fuller, & Alexander, 2016). Speech recognition was measured with the Multi-Modal Lexical Sentence Test for Adults (Kirk et al., 2012) in steady-state noise and 4-talker babble, with and without visual cues. Testing was under unaided conditions. Results A linear mixed model revealed visual cues and pure-tone average as the only significant predictors of Multi-Modal Lexical Sentence Test outcomes. Neither WM measure nor noise type showed a significant effect. Conclusion The contribution of WM in explaining unaided speech recognition in noise was negligible and not influenced by noise type or visual cues. We anticipate that with audibility partially restored by hearing aids, the effects of WM will increase. For clinical practice to be affected, more significant effect sizes are needed. PMID:28744550

Tailored information for cancer patients on the Internet: effects of visual cues and language complexity on information recall and satisfaction.

PubMed

van Weert, Julia C M; van Noort, Guda; Bol, Nadine; van Dijk, Liset; Tates, Kiek; Jansen, Jesse

2011-09-01

This study was designed to investigate the effects of visual cues and language complexity on satisfaction and information recall using a personalised website for lung cancer patients. In addition, age effects were investigated. An experiment using a 2 (complex vs. non-complex language)×3 (text only vs. photograph vs. drawing) factorial design was conducted. In total, 200 respondents without cancer were exposed to one of the six conditions. Respondents were more satisfied with the comprehensibility of both websites when they were presented with a visual cue. A significant interaction effect was found between language complexity and photograph use such that satisfaction with comprehensibility improved when a photograph was added to the complex language condition. Next, an interaction effect was found between age and satisfaction, which indicates that adding a visual cue is more important for older adults than younger adults. Finally, respondents who were exposed to a website with less complex language showed higher recall scores. The use of visual cues enhances satisfaction with the information presented on the website, and the use of non-complex language improves recall. The results of the current study can be used to improve computer-based information systems for patients. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Working memory dependence of spatial contextual cueing for visual search.

PubMed

Pollmann, Stefan

2018-05-10

When spatial stimulus configurations repeat in visual search, a search facilitation, resulting in shorter search times, can be observed that is due to incidental learning. This contextual cueing effect appears to be rather implicit, uncorrelated with observers' explicit memory of display configurations. Nevertheless, as I review here, this search facilitation due to contextual cueing depends on visuospatial working memory resources, and it disappears when visuospatial working memory is loaded by a concurrent delayed match to sample task. However, the search facilitation immediately recovers for displays learnt under visuospatial working memory load when this load is removed in a subsequent test phase. Thus, latent learning of visuospatial configurations does not depend on visuospatial working memory, but the expression of learning, as memory-guided search in repeated displays, does. This working memory dependence has also consequences for visual search with foveal vision loss, where top-down controlled visual exploration strategies pose high demands on visuospatial working memory, in this way interfering with memory-guided search in repeated displays. Converging evidence for the contribution of working memory to contextual cueing comes from neuroimaging data demonstrating that distinct cortical areas along the intraparietal sulcus as well as more ventral parieto-occipital cortex are jointly activated by visual working memory and contextual cueing. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

Elemental or contextual? It depends: individual difference in the hippocampal dependence of associative learning for a simple sensory stimulus

PubMed Central

Lee, Kyung J.; Park, Seong-Beom; Lee, Inah

2014-01-01

Learning theories categorize learning systems into elemental and contextual systems, the former being processed by non-hippocampal regions and the latter being processed in the hippocampus. A set of complex stimuli such as a visual background is often considered a contextual stimulus and simple sensory stimuli such as pure tone and light are considered elemental stimuli. However, this elemental-contextual categorization scheme has only been tested in limited behavioral paradigms and it is largely unknown whether it can be generalized across different learning situations. By requiring rats to respond differently to a common object in association with various types of sensory cues including contextual and elemental stimuli, we tested whether different types of elemental and contextual sensory stimuli depended on the hippocampus to different degrees. In most rats, a surrounding visual background and a tactile stimulus served as contextual (hippocampal dependent) and elemental (non-hippocampal dependent) stimuli, respectively. However, simple tone and light stimuli frequently used as elemental cues in traditional experiments required the hippocampus to varying degrees among rats. Specifically, one group of rats showed a normal contextual bias when both contextual and elemental cues were present. These rats effectively switched to using elemental cues when the hippocampus was inactivated. The other group showed a strong contextual bias (and hippocampal dependence) because these rats were not able to use elemental cues when the hippocampus was unavailable. It is possible that the latter group of rats might have interpreted the elemental cues (light and tone) as background stimuli and depended more on the hippocampus in associating the cues with choice responses. Although exact mechanisms underlying these individual variances are unclear, our findings recommend a caution for adopting a simple sensory stimulus as a non-hippocampal sensory cue only based on the literature. PMID:24982624

Cycle-specific female preferences for visual and non-visual cues in the horse (Equus caballus)

PubMed Central

Burger, Dominik; Meuwly, Charles; Thomas, Selina; Sieme, Harald; Oberthür, Michael; Wedekind, Claus; Meinecke-Tillmann, Sabine

2018-01-01

Although female preferences are well studied in many mammals, the possible effects of the oestrous cycle are not yet sufficiently understood. Here we investigate female preferences for visual and non-visual male traits relative to the periodically cycling of sexual proceptivity (oestrus) and inactivity (dioestrus), respectively, in the polygynous horse (Equus caballus). We individually exposed mares to stallions in four experimental situations: (i) mares in oestrus and visual contact to stallions allowed, (ii) mares in oestrus, with blinds (wooden partitions preventing visual contact but allowing for acoustic and olfactory communication), (iii) mares in dioestrus, no blinds, and (iv) mares in dioestrus, with blinds. Contact times of the mares with each stallion, defined as the cumulative amount of time a mare was in the vicinity of an individual stallion and actively searching contact, were used to rank stallions according to each mare’s preferences. We found that preferences based on visual traits differed significantly from preferences based on non-visual traits in dioestrous mares. The mares then showed a preference for older and larger males, but only if visual cues were available. In contrast, oestrous mares showed consistent preferences with or without blinds, i.e. their preferences were mainly based on non-visual traits and could not be predicted by male age or size. Stallions who were generally preferred displayed a high libido that may have positively influenced female interest or may have been a consequence of it. We conclude that the oestrous cycle has a significant influence on female preferences for visual and non-visual male traits in the horse. PMID:29466358

Awareness in contextual cueing of visual search as measured with concurrent access- and phenomenal-consciousness tasks.

PubMed

Schlagbauer, Bernhard; Müller, Hermann J; Zehetleitner, Michael; Geyer, Thomas

2012-10-25

In visual search, context information can serve as a cue to guide attention to the target location. When observers repeatedly encounter displays with identical target-distractor arrangements, reaction times (RTs) are faster for repeated relative to nonrepeated displays, the latter containing novel configurations. This effect has been termed "contextual cueing." The present study asked whether information about the target location in repeated displays is "explicit" (or "conscious") in nature. To examine this issue, observers performed a test session (after an initial training phase in which RTs to repeated and nonrepeated displays were measured) in which the search stimuli were presented briefly and terminated by visual masks; following this, observers had to make a target localization response (with accuracy as the dependent measure) and indicate their visual experience and confidence associated with the localization response. The data were examined at the level of individual displays, i.e., in terms of whether or not a repeated display actually produced contextual cueing. The results were that (a) contextual cueing was driven by only a very small number of about four actually learned configurations; (b) localization accuracy was increased for learned relative to nonrepeated displays; and (c) both consciousness measures were enhanced for learned compared to nonrepeated displays. It is concluded that contextual cueing is driven by only a few repeated displays and the ability to locate the target in these displays is associated with increased visual experience.

Comparing brain activity patterns during spontaneous exploratory and cue-instructed learning using single photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging of regional cerebral blood flow in freely behaving rats.

PubMed

Mannewitz, A; Bock, J; Kreitz, S; Hess, A; Goldschmidt, J; Scheich, H; Braun, Katharina

2018-05-01

Learning can be categorized into cue-instructed and spontaneous learning types; however, so far, there is no detailed comparative analysis of specific brain pathways involved in these learning types. The aim of this study was to compare brain activity patterns during these learning tasks using the in vivo imaging technique of single photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT) of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). During spontaneous exploratory learning, higher levels of rCBF compared to cue-instructed learning were observed in motor control regions, including specific subregions of the motor cortex and the striatum, as well as in regions of sensory pathways including olfactory, somatosensory, and visual modalities. In addition, elevated activity was found in limbic areas, including specific subregions of the hippocampal formation, the amygdala, and the insula. The main difference between the two learning paradigms analyzed in this study was the higher rCBF observed in prefrontal cortical regions during cue-instructed learning when compared to spontaneous learning. Higher rCBF during cue-instructed learning was also observed in the anterior insular cortex and in limbic areas, including the ectorhinal and entorhinal cortexes, subregions of the hippocampus, subnuclei of the amygdala, and the septum. Many of the rCBF changes showed hemispheric lateralization. Taken together, our study is the first to compare partly lateralized brain activity patterns during two different types of learning.

Working Memory Enhances Visual Perception: Evidence from Signal Detection Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soto, David; Wriglesworth, Alice; Bahrami-Balani, Alex; Humphreys, Glyn W.

2010-01-01

We show that perceptual sensitivity to visual stimuli can be modulated by matches between the contents of working memory (WM) and stimuli in the visual field. Observers were presented with an object cue (to hold in WM or to merely attend) and subsequently had to identify a brief target presented within a colored shape. The cue could be…

Visual cues and listening effort: individual variability.

PubMed

Picou, Erin M; Ricketts, Todd A; Hornsby, Benjamin W Y

2011-10-01

To investigate the effect of visual cues on listening effort as well as whether predictive variables such as working memory capacity (WMC) and lipreading ability affect the magnitude of listening effort. Twenty participants with normal hearing were tested using a paired-associates recall task in 2 conditions (quiet and noise) and 2 presentation modalities (audio only [AO] and auditory-visual [AV]). Signal-to-noise ratios were adjusted to provide matched speech recognition across audio-only and AV noise conditions. Also measured were subjective perceptions of listening effort and 2 predictive variables: (a) lipreading ability and (b) WMC. Objective and subjective results indicated that listening effort increased in the presence of noise, but on average the addition of visual cues did not significantly affect the magnitude of listening effort. Although there was substantial individual variability, on average participants who were better lipreaders or had larger WMCs demonstrated reduced listening effort in noise in AV conditions. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that integrating auditory and visual cues requires cognitive resources in some participants. The data indicate that low lipreading ability or low WMC is associated with relatively effortful integration of auditory and visual information in noise.

Feasibility of external rhythmic cueing with the Google Glass for improving gait in people with Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Zhao, Yan; Nonnekes, Jorik; Storcken, Erik J M; Janssen, Sabine; van Wegen, Erwin E H; Bloem, Bastiaan R; Dorresteijn, Lucille D A; van Vugt, Jeroen P P; Heida, Tjitske; van Wezel, Richard J A

2016-06-01

New mobile technologies like smartglasses can deliver external cues that may improve gait in people with Parkinson's disease in their natural environment. However, the potential of these devices must first be assessed in controlled experiments. Therefore, we evaluated rhythmic visual and auditory cueing in a laboratory setting with a custom-made application for the Google Glass. Twelve participants (mean age = 66.8; mean disease duration = 13.6 years) were tested at end of dose. We compared several key gait parameters (walking speed, cadence, stride length, and stride length variability) and freezing of gait for three types of external cues (metronome, flashing light, and optic flow) and a control condition (no-cue). For all cueing conditions, the subjects completed several walking tasks of varying complexity. Seven inertial sensors attached to the feet, legs and pelvis captured motion data for gait analysis. Two experienced raters scored the presence and severity of freezing of gait using video recordings. User experience was evaluated through a semi-open interview. During cueing, a more stable gait pattern emerged, particularly on complicated walking courses; however, freezing of gait did not significantly decrease. The metronome was more effective than rhythmic visual cues and most preferred by the participants. Participants were overall positive about the usability of the Google Glass and willing to use it at home. Thus, smartglasses like the Google Glass could be used to provide personalized mobile cueing to support gait; however, in its current form, auditory cues seemed more effective than rhythmic visual cues.

Anticipation by basketball defenders: an explanation based on the three-dimensional inverted pendulum model.

PubMed

Fujii, Keisuke; Shinya, Masahiro; Yamashita, Daichi; Kouzaki, Motoki; Oda, Shingo

2014-01-01

We previously estimated the timing when ball game defenders detect relevant information through visual input for reacting to an attacker's running direction after a cutting manoeuvre, called cue timing. The purpose of this study was to investigate what specific information is relevant for defenders, and how defenders process this information to decide on their opponents' running direction. In this study, we hypothesised that defenders extract information regarding the position and velocity of the attackers' centre of mass (CoM) and the contact foot. We used a model which simulates the future trajectory of the opponent's CoM based upon an inverted pendulum movement. The hypothesis was tested by comparing observed defender's cue timing, model-estimated cue timing using the inverted pendulum model (IPM cue timing) and cue timing using only the current CoM position (CoM cue timing). The IPM cue timing was defined as the time when the simulated pendulum falls leftward or rightward given the initial values for position and velocity of the CoM and the contact foot at the time. The model-estimated IPM cue timing and the empirically observed defender's cue timing were comparable in median value and were significantly correlated, whereas the CoM cue timing was significantly more delayed than the IPM and the defender's cue timings. Based on these results, we discuss the possibility that defenders may be able to anticipate the future direction of an attacker by forwardly simulating inverted pendulum movement.

Field Assessment of the Predation Risk - Food Availability Trade-Off in Crab Megalopae Settlement

PubMed Central

Tapia-Lewin, Sebastián; Pardo, Luis Miguel

2014-01-01

Settlement is a key process for meroplanktonic organisms as it determines distribution of adult populations. Starvation and predation are two of the main mortality causes during this period; therefore, settlement tends to be optimized in microhabitats with high food availability and low predator density. Furthermore, brachyuran megalopae actively select favorable habitats for settlement, via chemical, visual and/or tactile cues. The main objective in this study was to assess the settlement of Metacarcinus edwardsii and Cancer plebejus under different combinations of food availability levels and predator presence. We determined, in the field, which factor is of greater relative importance when choosing a suitable microhabitat for settling. Passive larval collectors were deployed, crossing different scenarios of food availability and predator presence. We also explore if megalopae actively choose predator-free substrates in response to visual and/or chemical cues. We tested the response to combined visual and chemical cues and to each individually. Data was tested using a two-way factorial design ANOVA. In both species, food did not cause significant effect on settlement success, but predator presence did, therefore there was not trade-off in this case and megalopae respond strongly to predation risk by active aversion. Larvae of M. edwardsii responded to chemical and visual cues simultaneously, but there was no response to either cue by itself. Statistically, C. plebejus did not exhibit a differential response to cues, but reacted with a strong similar tendency as M. edwardsii. We concluded that crab megalopae actively select predator-free microhabitat, independently of food availability, using chemical and visual cues combined. The findings in this study highlight the great relevance of predation on the settlement process and recruitment of marine invertebrates with complex life cycles. PMID:24748151

Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation

PubMed Central

Azadi, Reza

2014-01-01

The accuracy of saccades, as maintained by saccade adaptation, has been shown to be context dependent: able to have different amplitude movements to the same retinal displacement dependent on motor contexts such as orbital starting location. There is conflicting evidence as to whether purely visual cues also effect contextual saccade adaptation and, if so, what function this might serve. We tested what visual cues might evoke contextual adaptation. Over 5 experiments, 78 naive subjects made saccades to circularly moving targets, which stepped outward or inward during the saccade depending on target movement direction, speed, or color and shape. To test if the movement or context postsaccade were critical, we stopped the postsaccade target motion (experiment 4) or neutralized the contexts by equating postsaccade target speed to an intermediate value (experiment 5). We found contextual adaptation in all conditions except those defined by color and shape. We conclude that some, but not all, visual cues before the saccade are sufficient for contextual adaptation. We conjecture that this visual contextuality functions to allow for different motor states for different coordinated movement patterns, such as coordinated saccade and pursuit motor planning. PMID:24647429

Retro-dimension-cue benefit in visual working memory.

PubMed

Ye, Chaoxiong; Hu, Zhonghua; Ristaniemi, Tapani; Gendron, Maria; Liu, Qiang

2016-10-24

In visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants' performance can be improved by a retro-object-cue. However, previous studies have not investigated whether participants' performance can also be improved by a retro-dimension-cue. Three experiments investigated this issue. We used a recall task with a retro-dimension-cue in all experiments. In Experiment 1, we found benefits from retro-dimension-cues compared to neutral cues. This retro-dimension-cue benefit is reflected in an increased probability of reporting the target, but not in the probability of reporting the non-target, as well as increased precision with which this item is remembered. Experiment 2 replicated the retro-dimension-cue benefit and showed that the length of the blank interval after the cue disappeared did not influence recall performance. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 with a lower memory load. Our studies provide evidence that there is a robust retro-dimension-cue benefit in VWM. Participants can use internal attention to flexibly allocate cognitive resources to a particular dimension of memory representations. The results also support the feature-based storing hypothesis.

Retro-dimension-cue benefit in visual working memory

PubMed Central

Ye, Chaoxiong; Hu, Zhonghua; Ristaniemi, Tapani; Gendron, Maria; Liu, Qiang

2016-01-01

In visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants’ performance can be improved by a retro-object-cue. However, previous studies have not investigated whether participants’ performance can also be improved by a retro-dimension-cue. Three experiments investigated this issue. We used a recall task with a retro-dimension-cue in all experiments. In Experiment 1, we found benefits from retro-dimension-cues compared to neutral cues. This retro-dimension-cue benefit is reflected in an increased probability of reporting the target, but not in the probability of reporting the non-target, as well as increased precision with which this item is remembered. Experiment 2 replicated the retro-dimension-cue benefit and showed that the length of the blank interval after the cue disappeared did not influence recall performance. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 with a lower memory load. Our studies provide evidence that there is a robust retro-dimension-cue benefit in VWM. Participants can use internal attention to flexibly allocate cognitive resources to a particular dimension of memory representations. The results also support the feature-based storing hypothesis. PMID:27774983

Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm

PubMed Central

Kasties, Nils; Starosta, Sarah; Güntürkün, Onur; Stüttgen, Maik C.

2016-01-01

Animals exploit visual information to identify objects, form stimulus-reward associations, and prepare appropriate behavioral responses. The nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an associative region of the avian endbrain, contains neurons exhibiting prominent response modulation during presentation of reward-predicting visual stimuli, but it is unclear whether neural activity represents valuation signals, stimulus properties, or sensorimotor contingencies. To test the hypothesis that NCL neurons represent stimulus value, we subjected pigeons to a Pavlovian sign-tracking paradigm in which visual cues predicted rewards differing in magnitude (large vs. small) and delay to presentation (short vs. long). Subjects’ strength of conditioned responding to visual cues reliably differentiated between predicted reward types and thus indexed valuation. The majority of NCL neurons discriminated between visual cues, with discriminability peaking shortly after stimulus onset and being maintained at lower levels throughout the stimulus presentation period. However, while some cells’ firing rates correlated with reward value, such neurons were not more frequent than expected by chance. Instead, neurons formed discernible clusters which differed in their preferred visual cue. We propose that this activity pattern constitutes a prerequisite for using visual information in more complex situations e.g. requiring value-based choices. PMID:27762287

Examining the Effect of Age on Visual-Vestibular Self-Motion Perception Using a Driving Paradigm.

PubMed

Ramkhalawansingh, Robert; Keshavarz, Behrang; Haycock, Bruce; Shahab, Saba; Campos, Jennifer L

2017-05-01

Previous psychophysical research has examined how younger adults and non-human primates integrate visual and vestibular cues to perceive self-motion. However, there is much to be learned about how multisensory self-motion perception changes with age, and how these changes affect performance on everyday tasks involving self-motion. Evidence suggests that older adults display heightened multisensory integration compared with younger adults; however, few previous studies have examined this for visual-vestibular integration. To explore age differences in the way that visual and vestibular cues contribute to self-motion perception, we had younger and older participants complete a basic driving task containing visual and vestibular cues. We compared their performance against a previously established control group that experienced visual cues alone. Performance measures included speed, speed variability, and lateral position. Vestibular inputs resulted in more precise speed control among older adults, but not younger adults, when traversing curves. Older adults demonstrated more variability in lateral position when vestibular inputs were available versus when they were absent. These observations align with previous evidence of age-related differences in multisensory integration and demonstrate that they may extend to visual-vestibular integration. These findings may have implications for vehicle and simulator design when considering older users.

Retrospective attention enhances visual working memory in the young but not the old: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Duarte, Audrey; Hearons, Patricia; Jiang, Yashu; Delvin, Mary Courtney; Newsome, Rachel N.; Verhaeghen, Paul

2013-01-01

Behavioral evidence from the young suggests spatial cues that orient attention toward task relevant items in visual working memory (VWM) enhance memory capacity. Whether older adults can also use retrospective cues (“retro-cues”) to enhance VWM capacity is unknown. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, young and old adults performed a VWM task in which spatially informative retro-cues were presented during maintenance. Young but not older adults’ VWM capacity benefitted from retro-cueing. The contralateral delay activity (CDA) ERP index of VWM maintenance was attenuated after the retro-cue, which effectively reduced the impact of memory load. CDA amplitudes were reduced prior to retro-cue onset in the old only. Despite a preserved ability to delete items from VWM, older adults may be less able to use retrospective attention to enhance memory capacity when expectancy of impending spatial cues disrupts effective VWM maintenance. PMID:23445536

The effects of stereo disparity on the behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of perception of audio-visual motion in depth.

PubMed

Harrison, Neil R; Witheridge, Sian; Makin, Alexis; Wuerger, Sophie M; Pegna, Alan J; Meyer, Georg F

2015-11-01

Motion is represented by low-level signals, such as size-expansion in vision or loudness changes in the auditory modality. The visual and auditory signals from the same object or event may be integrated and facilitate detection. We explored behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of congruent and incongruent audio-visual depth motion in conditions where auditory level changes, visual expansion, and visual disparity cues were manipulated. In Experiment 1 participants discriminated auditory motion direction whilst viewing looming or receding, 2D or 3D, visual stimuli. Responses were faster and more accurate for congruent than for incongruent audio-visual cues, and the congruency effect (i.e., difference between incongruent and congruent conditions) was larger for visual 3D cues compared to 2D cues. In Experiment 2, event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected during presentation of the 2D and 3D, looming and receding, audio-visual stimuli, while participants detected an infrequent deviant sound. Our main finding was that audio-visual congruity was affected by retinal disparity at an early processing stage (135-160ms) over occipito-parietal scalp. Topographic analyses suggested that similar brain networks were activated for the 2D and 3D congruity effects, but that cortical responses were stronger in the 3D condition. Differences between congruent and incongruent conditions were observed between 140-200ms, 220-280ms, and 350-500ms after stimulus onset. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The road to understanding is paved with the speaker's intentions: cues to the speaker's attention and intentions affect pronoun comprehension.

PubMed

Nappa, Rebecca; Arnold, Jennifer E

2014-05-01

A series of experiments explore the effects of attention-directing cues on pronoun resolution, contrasting four specific hypotheses about the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns he and she: (1) it is driven by grammatical rules, (2) it is primarily a function of social processing of the speaker's intention to communicate, (3) it is modulated by the listener's own egocentric attention, and (4) it is primarily a function of learned probabilistic cues. Experiment 1 demonstrates that pronoun interpretation is guided by the well-known N1 (first-mention) bias, which is also modulated by both the speaker's gaze and pointing gestures. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a low-level visual capture cue has no effect on pronoun interpretation, in contrast with the social cue of pointing. Experiment 3 uses a novel intentional cue: the same attention-capture flash as in Experiment 2, but with instructions that the cue is intentionally created by the speaker. This cue does modulate the N1 bias, demonstrating the importance of information about the speaker's intentions to pronoun resolution. Taken in sum, these findings demonstrate that pronoun resolution is a process best categorized as driven by an appreciation of the speaker's communicative intent, which may be subserved by a sensitivity to predictive cues in the environment. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2,000 ms.

PubMed

Holmes, Emma; Kitterick, Padraig T; Summerfield, A Quentin

2018-04-25

Endogenous attention is typically studied by presenting instructive cues in advance of a target stimulus array. For endogenous visual attention, task performance improves as the duration of the cue-target interval increases up to 800 ms. Less is known about how endogenous auditory attention unfolds over time or the mechanisms by which an instructive cue presented in advance of an auditory array improves performance. The current experiment used five cue-target intervals (0, 250, 500, 1,000, and 2,000 ms) to compare four hypotheses for how preparatory attention develops over time in a multi-talker listening task. Young adults were cued to attend to a target talker who spoke in a mixture of three talkers. Visual cues indicated the target talker's spatial location or their gender. Participants directed attention to location and gender simultaneously ("objects") at all cue-target intervals. Participants were consistently faster and more accurate at reporting words spoken by the target talker when the cue-target interval was 2,000 ms than 0 ms. In addition, the latency of correct responses progressively shortened as the duration of the cue-target interval increased from 0 to 2,000 ms. These findings suggest that the mechanisms involved in preparatory auditory attention develop gradually over time, taking at least 2,000 ms to reach optimal configuration, yet providing cumulative improvements in speech intelligibility as the duration of the cue-target interval increases from 0 to 2,000 ms. These results demonstrate an improvement in performance for cue-target intervals longer than those that have been reported previously in the visual or auditory modalities.

A Comparison of Perceptual Strategies Utilized by Expert and Novice Performers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moore, John O.

This paper reviews the literature comparing the perceptual strategies of expert and novice sport/skill performers in ball sports to specifically identify where differences exist. The following comparisons were made: (1) experts attend to fewer, somewhat different visual cues than beginners; (2) experts exhibit an ability to utilize advanced…

Coping with Terrorism--Helping Children with Special Needs: Tips for School Personnel and Parents.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Communication Disorders Quarterly, 2002

2002-01-01

This article offers suggestions to help children with disabilities cope with terrorism. It stresses recognition of triggers and cues to anticipate rather than react to stress and offers tips for specific populations including autism; cognitive limitations; learning disabilities; visual, hearing or physical limitations; and severe emotional…

Visual cues for data mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rogowitz, Bernice E.; Rabenhorst, David A.; Gerth, John A.; Kalin, Edward B.

1996-04-01

This paper describes a set of visual techniques, based on principles of human perception and cognition, which can help users analyze and develop intuitions about tabular data. Collections of tabular data are widely available, including, for example, multivariate time series data, customer satisfaction data, stock market performance data, multivariate profiles of companies and individuals, and scientific measurements. In our approach, we show how visual cues can help users perform a number of data mining tasks, including identifying correlations and interaction effects, finding clusters and understanding the semantics of cluster membership, identifying anomalies and outliers, and discovering multivariate relationships among variables. These cues are derived from psychological studies on perceptual organization, visual search, perceptual scaling, and color perception. These visual techniques are presented as a complement to the statistical and algorithmic methods more commonly associated with these tasks, and provide an interactive interface for the human analyst.

Contextual cueing: implicit learning and memory of visual context guides spatial attention.

PubMed

Chun, M M; Jiang, Y

1998-06-01

Global context plays an important, but poorly understood, role in visual tasks. This study demonstrates that a robust memory for visual context exists to guide spatial attention. Global context was operationalized as the spatial layout of objects in visual search displays. Half of the configurations were repeated across blocks throughout the entire session, and targets appeared within consistent locations in these arrays. Targets appearing in learned configurations were detected more quickly. This newly discovered form of search facilitation is termed contextual cueing. Contextual cueing is driven by incidentally learned associations between spatial configurations (context) and target locations. This benefit was obtained despite chance performance for recognizing the configurations, suggesting that the memory for context was implicit. The results show how implicit learning and memory of visual context can guide spatial attention towards task-relevant aspects of a scene.

EEG activity evoked in preparation for multi-talker listening by adults and children.

PubMed

Holmes, Emma; Kitterick, Padraig T; Summerfield, A Quentin

2016-06-01

Selective attention is critical for successful speech perception because speech is often encountered in the presence of other sounds, including the voices of competing talkers. Faced with the need to attend selectively, listeners perceive speech more accurately when they know characteristics of upcoming talkers before they begin to speak. However, the neural processes that underlie the preparation of selective attention for voices are not fully understood. The current experiments used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the time course of brain activity during preparation for an upcoming talker in young adults aged 18-27 years with normal hearing (Experiments 1 and 2) and in typically-developing children aged 7-13 years (Experiment 3). Participants reported key words spoken by a target talker when an opposite-gender distractor talker spoke simultaneously. The two talkers were presented from different spatial locations (±30° azimuth). Before the talkers began to speak, a visual cue indicated either the location (left/right) or the gender (male/female) of the target talker. Adults evoked preparatory EEG activity that started shortly after (<50 ms) the visual cue was presented and was sustained until the talkers began to speak. The location cue evoked similar preparatory activity in Experiments 1 and 2 with different samples of participants. The gender cue did not evoke preparatory activity when it predicted gender only (Experiment 1) but did evoke preparatory activity when it predicted the identity of a specific talker with greater certainty (Experiment 2). Location cues evoked significant preparatory EEG activity in children but gender cues did not. The results provide converging evidence that listeners evoke consistent preparatory brain activity for selecting a talker by their location (regardless of their gender or identity), but not by their gender alone. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual attention to food cues is differentially modulated by gustatory-hedonic and post-ingestive attributes.

PubMed

Garcia-Burgos, David; Lao, Junpeng; Munsch, Simone; Caldara, Roberto

2017-07-01

Although attentional biases towards food cues may play a critical role in food choices and eating behaviours, it remains largely unexplored which specific food attribute governs visual attentional deployment. The allocation of visual attention might be modulated by anticipatory postingestive consequences, from taste sensations derived from eating itself, or both. Therefore, in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the attentional mechanisms involved in the processing of food-related cues, we recorded the eye movements to five categories of well-standardised pictures: neutral non-food, high-calorie, good taste, distaste and dangerous food. In particular, forty-four healthy adults of both sexes were assessed with an antisaccade paradigm (which requires the generation of a voluntary saccade and the suppression of a reflex one) and a free viewing paradigm (which implies the free visual exploration of two images). The results showed that observers directed their initial fixations more often and faster on items with high survival relevance such as nutrient and possible dangers; although an increase in antisaccade error rates was only detected for high-calorie items. We also found longer prosaccade fixation duration and initial fixation duration bias score related to maintained attention towards high-calorie, good taste and danger categories; while shorter reaction times to correct an incorrect prosaccade related to less difficulties in inhibiting distasteful images. Altogether, these findings suggest that visual attention is differentially modulated by both the accepted and rejected food attributes, but also that normal-weight, non-eating disordered individuals exhibit enhanced approach to food's postingestive effects and avoidance of distasteful items (such as bitter vegetables or pungent products). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Usability Evaluation of a Flight-Deck Airflow Hazard Visualization System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Aragon, Cecilia R.

2004-01-01

Many aircraft accidents each year are caused by encounters with unseen airflow hazards near the ground, such as vortices, downdrafts, low level wind shear, microbursts, or turbulence from surrounding vegetation or structures near the landing site. These hazards can be dangerous even to airliners; there have been hundreds of fatalities in the United States in the last two decades attributable to airliner encounters with microbursts and low level wind shear alone. However, helicopters are especially vulnerable to airflow hazards because they often have to operate in confined spaces and under operationally stressful conditions (such as emergency search and rescue, military or shipboard operations). Providing helicopter pilots with an augmented-reality display visualizing local airflow hazards may be of significant benefit. However, the form such a visualization might take, and whether it does indeed provide a benefit, had not been studied before our experiment. We recruited experienced military and civilian helicopter pilots for a preliminary usability study to evaluate a prototype augmented-reality visualization system. The study had two goals: first, to assess the efficacy of presenting airflow data in flight; and second, to obtain expert feedback on sample presentations of hazard indicators to refine our design choices. The study addressed the optimal way to provide critical safety information to the pilot, what level of detail to provide, whether to display specific aerodynamic causes or potential effects only, and how to safely and effectively shift the locus of attention during a high-workload task. Three-dimensional visual cues, with varying shape, color, transparency, texture, depth cueing, and use of motion, depicting regions of hazardous airflow, were developed and presented to the pilots. The study results indicated that such a visualization system could be of significant value in improving safety during critical takeoff and landing operations, and also gave clear indications of the best design choices in producing the hazard visual cues.

Demonstrating the Potential for Dynamic Auditory Stimulation to Contribute to Motion Sickness

PubMed Central

Keshavarz, Behrang; Hettinger, Lawrence J.; Kennedy, Robert S.; Campos, Jennifer L.

2014-01-01

Auditory cues can create the illusion of self-motion (vection) in the absence of visual or physical stimulation. The present study aimed to determine whether auditory cues alone can also elicit motion sickness and how auditory cues contribute to motion sickness when added to visual motion stimuli. Twenty participants were seated in front of a curved projection display and were exposed to a virtual scene that constantly rotated around the participant's vertical axis. The virtual scene contained either visual-only, auditory-only, or a combination of corresponding visual and auditory cues. All participants performed all three conditions in a counterbalanced order. Participants tilted their heads alternately towards the right or left shoulder in all conditions during stimulus exposure in order to create pseudo-Coriolis effects and to maximize the likelihood for motion sickness. Measurements of motion sickness (onset, severity), vection (latency, strength, duration), and postural steadiness (center of pressure) were recorded. Results showed that adding auditory cues to the visual stimuli did not, on average, affect motion sickness and postural steadiness, but it did reduce vection onset times and increased vection strength compared to pure visual or pure auditory stimulation. Eighteen of the 20 participants reported at least slight motion sickness in the two conditions including visual stimuli. More interestingly, six participants also reported slight motion sickness during pure auditory stimulation and two of the six participants stopped the pure auditory test session due to motion sickness. The present study is the first to demonstrate that motion sickness may be caused by pure auditory stimulation, which we refer to as “auditorily induced motion sickness”. PMID:24983752

Increased Variability and Asymmetric Expansion of the Hippocampal Spatial Representation in a Distal Cue-Dependent Memory Task.

PubMed

Park, Seong-Beom; Lee, Inah

2016-08-01

Place cells in the hippocampus fire at specific positions in space, and distal cues in the environment play critical roles in determining the spatial firing patterns of place cells. Many studies have shown that place fields are influenced by distal cues in foraging animals. However, it is largely unknown whether distal-cue-dependent changes in place fields appear in different ways in a memory task if distal cues bear direct significance to achieving goals. We investigated this possibility in this study. Rats were trained to choose different spatial positions in a radial arm in association with distal cue configurations formed by visual cue sets attached to movable curtains around the apparatus. The animals were initially trained to associate readily discernible distal cue configurations (0° vs. 80° angular separation between distal cue sets) with different food-well positions and then later experienced ambiguous cue configurations (14° and 66°) intermixed with the original cue configurations. Rats showed no difficulty in transferring the associated memory formed for the original cue configurations when similar cue configurations were presented. Place field positions remained at the same locations across different cue configurations, whereas stability and coherence of spatial firing patterns were significantly disrupted when ambiguous cue configurations were introduced. Furthermore, the spatial representation was extended backward and skewed more negatively at the population level when processing ambiguous cue configurations, compared with when processing the original cue configurations only. This effect was more salient for large cue-separation conditions than for small cue-separation conditions. No significant rate remapping was observed across distal cue configurations. These findings suggest that place cells in the hippocampus dynamically change their detailed firing characteristics in response to a modified cue environment and that some of the firing properties previously reported in a foraging task might carry more functional weight than others when tested in a distal-cue-dependent memory task. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Influence of perceptual cues and conceptual information on the activation and reduction of claustrophobic fear.

PubMed

Shiban, Youssef; Peperkorn, Henrik; Alpers, Georg W; Pauli, Paul; Mühlberger, Andreas

2016-06-01

Fear reactions in phobic patients can be activated by specific perceptual cues (C) or by conceptual fear-related information (I). An earlier study with spider phobic participants documented that perceptual stimuli are particularly potent to trigger fear responses. Because fear of spiders is activated by very circumscribed stimuli, we set out to investigate whether another phobia with more contextual fear-elicitation (i.e., a situational phobia) would yield similar patterns. Thus, we investigate the two paths of fear activation (cues vs. information) and fear reduction during exposure in claustrophobic patients. Forty-eight claustrophobic patients and 48 healthy control participants were randomly assigned to one of three virtual reality exposure conditions: C, I, or a combination of both (CI). Exposure lasted 5 min and was repeated 4 times. Self-report and physiological reactions were assessed. Claustrophobic patients experienced more initial self-reported fear when confronted with fear-relevant perceptual cues than conceptual information, when the perceptual cues were combined with conceptual information there was no significant enhancement. Furthermore, fear habituated more in the perceptual condition. For the physiological parameters, groups differed and in claustrophobic patients heart rate decreased differently in the conditions. Longer exposure duration and long-term effects of the manipulation were not investigated. We found similar patterns in a situational phobia as compared to a specific-cue related phobia (animal type). Thus, once more this highlights the central role of visual cues in phobic fear and the potential of virtual reality for conducting exposure therapy. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neuronal activity during a cued strategy task: Comparison of dorsolateral, orbital and polar prefrontal cortex

PubMed Central

Tsujimoto, Satoshi; Genovesio, Aldo; Wise, Steven P.

2012-01-01

We compared neuronal activity in the dorsolateral (PFdl), orbital (PFo) and polar (PFp) prefrontal cortex as monkeys performed three tasks. In two tasks, a cue instructed one of two strategies: stay with the previous response or shift to the alternative. Visual stimuli served as cues in one of these tasks; in the other, fluid rewards did so. In the third task, visuospatial cues instructed each response. A delay period followed each cue. As reported previously, PFdl encoded strategies (stay or shift) and responses (left or right) during the cue and delay periods, while PFo encoded strategies and PFp encoded neither strategies nor responses; during the feedback period, all three areas encoded responses, not strategies. Four novel findings emerged from the present analysis. (1) The strategy encoded by PFdl and PFo cells during the cue and delay periods was modality specific. (2) The response encoded by PFdl cells was task- and modality specific during the cue period, but during the delay and feedback periods it became task- and modality general. (3) Although some PFdl and PFo cells responded to or anticipated rewards, we could rule out reward effects for most strategy-and response-related activity. (4) Immediately before feedback, only PFp signaled responses that were correct according to the cued strategy; after feedback, only PFo signaled the response that had been made, whether correct or incorrect. These signals support a role in generating responses by PFdl, assigning outcomes to choices by PFo, and assigning outcomes to cognitive processes by PFp. PMID:22875935

fMRI study of neural sensitization to hedonic stimuli in long‐term, daily cannabis users

PubMed Central

Dunlop, Joseph; Ketcherside, Ariel; Baine, Jessica; Rhinehardt, Tyler; Kuhn, Brittany; DeWitt, Sam; Alvi, Talha

2016-01-01

Abstract Although there is emergent evidence illustrating neural sensitivity to cannabis cues in cannabis users, the specificity of this effect to cannabis cues as opposed to a generalized hyper‐sensitivity to hedonic stimuli has not yet been directly tested. Using fMRI, we presented 53 daily, long‐term cannabis users and 68 non‐using controls visual and tactile cues for cannabis, a natural reward, and, a sensory‐perceptual control object to evaluate brain response to hedonic stimuli in cannabis users. The results showed an interaction between group and reward type such that the users had greater response during cannabis cues relative to natural reward cues (i.e., fruit) in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, anterior cingulate gyrus, and ventral tegmental area compared to non‐users (cluster‐threshold z = 2.3, P < 0.05). In the users, there were positive brain‐behavior correlations between neural response to cannabis cues in fronto‐striatal‐temporal regions and subjective craving, marijuana‐related problems, withdrawal symptoms, and levels of THC metabolites (cluster‐threshold z = 2.3, P < 0.05). These findings demonstrate hyper‐responsivity, and, specificity of brain response to cannabis cues in long‐term cannabis users that are above that of response to natural reward cues. These observations are concordant with incentive sensitization models suggesting sensitization of mesocorticolimbic regions and disruption of natural reward processes following drug use. Although the cross‐sectional nature of this study does not provide information on causality, the positive correlations between neural response and indicators of cannabis use (i.e., THC levels) suggest that alterations in the reward system are, in part, related to cannabis use. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3431–3443, 2016. © 2016 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. PMID:27168331

"On" freezing in Parkinson's disease: resistance to visual cue walking devices.

PubMed

Kompoliti, K; Goetz, C G; Leurgans, S; Morrissey, M; Siegel, I M

2000-03-01

To measure "on" freezing during unassisted walking (UW) and test if two devices, a modified inverted stick (MIS) and a visual laser beam stick (LBS) improved walking speed and number of "on" freezing episodes in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Multiple visual cues can overcome "off' freezing episodes and can be useful in improving gait function in parkinsonian patients. These devices have not been specifically tested in "on" freezing, which is unresponsive to pharmacologic manipulations. Patients with PD, motor fluctuations and freezing while "on," attempted walking on a 60-ft track with each of three walking conditions in a randomized order: UW, MIS, and LBS. Total time to complete a trial, number of freezes, and the ratio of walking time to the number of freezes were compared using Friedman's test. Twenty-eight patients with PD, mean age 67.81 years (standard deviation [SD] 7.54), mean disease duration 13.04 years (SD 7.49), and mean motor Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale score "on" 32.59 (SD 10.93), participated in the study. There was a statistically significant correlation of time needed to complete a trial and number of freezes for all three conditions (Spearman correlations: UW 0.973, LBS 0.0.930, and MIS 0.842). The median number of freezes, median time to walk in each condition, and median walking time per freeze were not significantly different in pairwise comparisons of the three conditions (Friedman's test). Of the 28 subjects, six showed improvement with the MIS and six with the LBS in at least one outcome measure. Assisting devices, specifically based on visual cues, are not consistently beneficial in overcoming "on" freezing in most patients with PD. Because this is an otherwise untreatable clinical problem and because occasional subjects do respond, cautious trials of such devices under the supervision of a health professional should be conducted to identify those patients who might benefit from their long-term use.

Drosophila increase exploration after visually detecting predators.

PubMed

de la Flor, Miguel; Chen, Lijian; Manson-Bishop, Claire; Chu, Tzu-Chun; Zamora, Kathya; Robbins, Danielle; Gunaratne, Gemunu; Roman, Gregg

2017-01-01

Novel stimuli elicit behaviors that are collectively known as specific exploration. These behaviors allow the animal to become more familiar with the novel objects within its environment. Specific exploration is frequently suppressed by defensive reactions to predator cues. Herein, we examine if this suppression occurs in Drosophila melanogaster by measuring the response of these flies to wild harvested predators. The flies used in our experiments have been cultured and had not lived under predator threat for multiple decades. In a circular arena with centrally-caged predators, wild type Drosophila actively avoided the pantropical jumping spider, Plexippus paykulli, and the Texas unicorn mantis, Phyllovates chlorophaena, indicating an innate defensive reaction to these predators. Interestingly, wild type Drosophila males also avoided a centrally-caged mock spider, and the avoidance of the mock spider became exaggerated when it was made to move within the cage. Visually impaired Drosophila failed to detect and avoid the Plexippus paykulli and the moving mock spider, while the broadly anosmic orco2 mutants were fully capable of detecting and avoiding Plexippus paykulli, indicating that these flies principally relied upon vison to perceive the predator stimuli. During early exploration of the arena, exploratory activity increased in the presence of Plexippus paykulli and the moving mock spider. The elevated activity induced by Plexippus paykulli disappeared after the fly had finished exploring, suggesting the flies were capable of habituating the predator cues. Taken together, these results indicate that despite being isolated from predators for decades Drosophila will visually detect these predators, retain innate defensive behaviors, respond by increasing exploratory activity in the arena rather than suppressing activity, and may habituate to normal predator cues.

Drosophila increase exploration after visually detecting predators

PubMed Central

Manson-Bishop, Claire; Chu, Tzu-Chun; Zamora, Kathya; Robbins, Danielle; Gunaratne, Gemunu

2017-01-01

Novel stimuli elicit behaviors that are collectively known as specific exploration. These behaviors allow the animal to become more familiar with the novel objects within its environment. Specific exploration is frequently suppressed by defensive reactions to predator cues. Herein, we examine if this suppression occurs in Drosophila melanogaster by measuring the response of these flies to wild harvested predators. The flies used in our experiments have been cultured and had not lived under predator threat for multiple decades. In a circular arena with centrally-caged predators, wild type Drosophila actively avoided the pantropical jumping spider, Plexippus paykulli, and the Texas unicorn mantis, Phyllovates chlorophaena, indicating an innate defensive reaction to these predators. Interestingly, wild type Drosophila males also avoided a centrally-caged mock spider, and the avoidance of the mock spider became exaggerated when it was made to move within the cage. Visually impaired Drosophila failed to detect and avoid the Plexippus paykulli and the moving mock spider, while the broadly anosmic orco2 mutants were fully capable of detecting and avoiding Plexippus paykulli, indicating that these flies principally relied upon vison to perceive the predator stimuli. During early exploration of the arena, exploratory activity increased in the presence of Plexippus paykulli and the moving mock spider. The elevated activity induced by Plexippus paykulli disappeared after the fly had finished exploring, suggesting the flies were capable of habituating the predator cues. Taken together, these results indicate that despite being isolated from predators for decades Drosophila will visually detect these predators, retain innate defensive behaviors, respond by increasing exploratory activity in the arena rather than suppressing activity, and may habituate to normal predator cues. PMID:28746346

Two (or three) is one too many: testing the flexibility of contextual cueing with multiple target locations.

PubMed

Zellin, Martina; Conci, Markus; von Mühlenen, Adrian; Müller, Hermann J

2011-10-01

Visual search for a target object is facilitated when the object is repeatedly presented within an invariant context of surrounding items ("contextual cueing"; Chun & Jiang, Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28-71, 1998). The present study investigated whether such invariant contexts can cue more than one target location. In a series of three experiments, we showed that contextual cueing is significantly reduced when invariant contexts are paired with two rather than one possible target location, whereas no contextual cueing occurs with three distinct target locations. Closer data inspection revealed that one "dominant" target always exhibited substantially more contextual cueing than did the other, "minor" target(s), which caused negative contextual-cueing effects. However, minor targets could benefit from the invariant context when they were spatially close to the dominant target. In sum, our experiments suggest that contextual cueing can guide visual attention to a spatially limited region of the display, only enhancing the detection of targets presented inside that region.

Perceiving Prosody from the Face and Voice: Distinguishing Statements from Echoic Questions in English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Srinivasan, Ravindra J.; Massaro, Dominic W.

2003-01-01

Examined the processing of potential auditory and visual cues that differentiate statements from echoic questions. Found that both auditory and visual cues reliably conveyed statement and question intonation, were successfully synthesized, and generalized to other utterances. (Author/VWL)

Vestibular-visual interactions in flight simulators

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Clark, B.

1977-01-01

The following research work is reported: (1) vestibular-visual interactions; (2) flight management and crew system interactions; (3) peripheral cue utilization in simulation technology; (4) control of signs and symptoms of motion sickness; (5) auditory cue utilization in flight simulators, and (6) vestibular function: Animal experiments.

Cue-induced brain activity in pathological gamblers.

PubMed

Crockford, David N; Goodyear, Bradley; Edwards, Jodi; Quickfall, Jeremy; el-Guebaly, Nady

2005-11-15

Previous studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have identified differential brain activity in healthy subjects performing gambling tasks and in pathological gambling (PG) subjects when exposed to motivational and emotional predecessors for gambling as well as during gambling or response inhibition tasks. The goal of the present study was to determine if PG subjects exhibit differential brain activity when exposed to visual gambling cues. Ten male DSM-IV-TR PG subjects and 10 matched healthy control subjects underwent fMRI during visual presentations of gambling-related video alternating with video of nature scenes. Pathological gambling subjects and control subjects exhibited overlap in areas of brain activity in response to the visual gambling cues; however, compared with control subjects, PG subjects exhibited significantly greater activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), including the inferior and medial frontal gyri, the right parahippocampal gyrus, and left occipital cortex, including the fusiform gyrus. Pathological gambling subjects also reported a significant increase in mean craving for gambling after the study. Post hoc analyses revealed a dissociation in visual processing stream (dorsal vs. ventral) activation by subject group and cue type. These findings may represent a component of cue-induced craving for gambling or conditioned behavior that could underlie pathological gambling.

Depth reversals in stereoscopic displays driven by apparent size

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sacher, Gunnar; Hayes, Amy; Thornton, Ian M.; Sereno, Margaret E.; Malony, Allen D.

1998-04-01

In visual scenes, depth information is derived from a variety of monocular and binocular cues. When in conflict, a monocular cue is sometimes able to override the binocular information. We examined the accuracy of relative depth judgments in orthographic, stereoscopic displays and found that perceived relative size can override binocular disparity as a depth cue in a situation where the relative size information is itself generated from disparity information, not from retinal size difference. A size discrimination task confirmed the assumption that disparity information was perceived and used to generate apparent size differences. The tendency for the apparent size cue to override disparity information can be modulated by varying the strength of the apparent size cue. In addition, an analysis of reaction times provides supporting evidence for this novel depth reversal effect. We believe that human perception must be regarded as an important component of stereoscopic applications. Hence, if applications are to be effective and accurate, it is necessary to take into account the richness and complexity of the human visual perceptual system that interacts with them. We discuss implications of this and similar research for human performance in virtual environments, the design of visual presentations for virtual worlds, and the design of visualization tools.

Sexual selection in the squirrel treefrog Hyla squirella: the role of multimodal cue assessment in female choice

USGS Publications Warehouse

Taylor, Ryan C.; Buchanan, Bryant W.; Doherty, Jessie L.

2007-01-01

Anuran amphibians have provided an excellent system for the study of animal communication and sexual selection. Studies of female mate choice in anurans, however, have focused almost exclusively on the role of auditory signals. In this study, we examined the effect of both auditory and visual cues on female choice in the squirrel treefrog. Our experiments used a two-choice protocol in which we varied male vocalization properties, visual cues, or both, to assess female preferences for the different cues. Females discriminated against high-frequency calls and expressed a strong preference for calls that contained more energy per unit time (faster call rate). Females expressed a preference for the visual stimulus of a model of a calling male when call properties at the two speakers were held the same. They also showed a significant attraction to a model possessing a relatively large lateral body stripe. These data indicate that visual cues do play a role in mate attraction in this nocturnal frog species. Furthermore, this study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that multimodal signals play an important role in sexual selection.

Modeling human perception and estimation of kinematic responses during aircraft landing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schmidt, David K.; Silk, Anthony B.

1988-01-01

The thrust of this research is to determine estimation accuracy of aircraft responses based on observed cues. By developing the geometric relationships between the outside visual scene and the kinematics during landing, visual and kinesthetic cues available to the pilot were modeled. Both fovial and peripheral vision was examined. The objective was to first determine estimation accuracy in a variety of flight conditions, and second to ascertain which parameters are most important and lead to the best achievable accuracy in estimating the actual vehicle response. It was found that altitude estimation was very sensitive to the FOV. For this model the motion cue of perceived vertical acceleration was shown to be less important than the visual cues. The inclusion of runway geometry in the visual scene increased estimation accuracy in most cases. Finally, it was shown that for this model if the pilot has an incorrect internal model of the system kinematics the choice of observations thought to be 'optimal' may in fact be suboptimal.

Age-related changes in event-cued visual and auditory prospective memory proper.

PubMed

Uttl, Bob

2006-06-01

We rely upon prospective memory proper (ProMP) to bring back to awareness previously formed plans and intentions at the right place and time, and to enable us to act upon those plans and intentions. To examine age-related changes in ProMP, younger and older participants made decisions about simple stimuli (ongoing task) and at the same time were required to respond to a ProM cue, either a picture (visually cued ProM test) or a sound (auditorily cued ProM test), embedded in a simultaneously presented series of similar stimuli (either pictures or sounds). The cue display size or loudness increased across trials until a response was made. The cue size and cue loudness at the time of response indexed ProMP. The main results showed that both visual and auditory ProMP declined with age, and that such declines were mediated by age declines in sensory functions (visual acuity and hearing level), processing resources, working memory, intelligence, and ongoing task resource allocation.

Deployment of spatial attention to words in central and peripheral vision.

PubMed

Ducrot, Stéphanie; Grainger, Jonathan

2007-05-01

Four perceptual identification experiments examined the influence of spatial cues on the recognition of words presented in central vision (with fixation on either the first or last letter of the target word) and in peripheral vision (displaced left or right of a central fixation point). Stimulus location had a strong effect on word identification accuracy in both central and peripheral vision, showing a strong right visual field superiority that did not depend on eccentricity. Valid spatial cues improved word identification for peripherally presented targets but were largely ineffective for centrally presented targets. Effects of spatial cuing interacted with visual field effects in Experiment 1, with valid cues reducing the right visual field superiority for peripherally located targets, but this interaction was shown to depend on the type of neutral cue. These results provide further support for the role of attentional factors in visual field asymmetries obtained with targets in peripheral vision but not with centrally presented targets.

Female face preference in 4-month-olds: the importance of hairline.

PubMed

Hillairet de Boisferon, Anne; Uttley, Lesley; Quinn, Paul C; Lee, Kang; Pascalis, Olivier

2014-11-01

At 3-4 months of age, infants respond to gender information in human faces. Specifically, young infants display a visual preference toward female over male faces. In three experiments, using a visual preference task, we investigated the role of hairline information in this bias. In Experiment 1, we presented male and female composite faces with similar hairstyles to 4-month-olds and observed a preference for female faces. In Experiment 2, the faces were presented, but in this instance, without hairline cues, and the preference was eliminated. In Experiment 3, using the same cropping to eliminate hairline cues, but with feminized female faces and masculinized male faces, infants' preference toward female faces was still not in evidence. The findings show that hairline information is important in young infants' preferential orientation toward female faces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Setting and changing feature priorities in visual short-term memory.

PubMed

Kalogeropoulou, Zampeta; Jagadeesh, Akshay V; Ohl, Sven; Rolfs, Martin

2017-04-01

Many everyday tasks require prioritizing some visual features over competing ones, both during the selection from the rich sensory input and while maintaining information in visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here, we show that observers can change priorities in VSTM when, initially, they attended to a different feature. Observers reported from memory the orientation of one of two spatially interspersed groups of black and white gratings. Using colored pre-cues (presented before stimulus onset) and retro-cues (presented after stimulus offset) predicting the to-be-reported group, we manipulated observers' feature priorities independently during stimulus encoding and maintenance, respectively. Valid pre-cues reliably increased observers' performance (reduced guessing, increased report precision) as compared to neutral ones; invalid pre-cues had the opposite effect. Valid retro-cues also consistently improved performance (by reducing random guesses), even if the unexpected group suddenly became relevant (invalid-valid condition). Thus, feature-based attention can reshape priorities in VSTM protecting information that would otherwise be forgotten.

What You Don't Notice Can Harm You: Age-Related Differences in Detecting Concurrent Visual, Auditory, and Tactile Cues.

PubMed

Pitts, Brandon J; Sarter, Nadine

2018-06-01

Objective This research sought to determine whether people can perceive and process three nonredundant (and unrelated) signals in vision, hearing, and touch at the same time and how aging and concurrent task demands affect this ability. Background Multimodal displays have been shown to improve multitasking and attention management; however, their potential limitations are not well understood. The majority of studies on multimodal information presentation have focused on the processing of only two concurrent and, most often, redundant cues by younger participants. Method Two experiments were conducted in which younger and older adults detected and responded to a series of singles, pairs, and triplets of visual, auditory, and tactile cues in the absence (Experiment 1) and presence (Experiment 2) of an ongoing simulated driving task. Detection rates, response times, and driving task performance were measured. Results Compared to younger participants, older adults showed longer response times and higher error rates in response to cues/cue combinations. Older participants often missed the tactile cue when three cues were combined. They sometimes falsely reported the presence of a visual cue when presented with a pair of auditory and tactile signals. Driving performance suffered most in the presence of cue triplets. Conclusion People are more likely to miss information if more than two concurrent nonredundant signals are presented to different sensory channels. Application The findings from this work help inform the design of multimodal displays and ensure their usefulness across different age groups and in various application domains.

Neural coding underlying the cue preference for celestial orientation

PubMed Central

el Jundi, Basil; Warrant, Eric J.; Byrne, Marcus J.; Khaldy, Lana; Baird, Emily; Smolka, Jochen; Dacke, Marie

2015-01-01

Diurnal and nocturnal African dung beetles use celestial cues, such as the sun, the moon, and the polarization pattern, to roll dung balls along straight paths across the savanna. Although nocturnal beetles move in the same manner through the same environment as their diurnal relatives, they do so when light conditions are at least 1 million-fold dimmer. Here, we show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the celestial cue preference differs between nocturnal and diurnal beetles in a manner that reflects their contrasting visual ecologies. We also demonstrate how these cue preferences are reflected in the activity of compass neurons in the brain. At night, polarized skylight is the dominant orientation cue for nocturnal beetles. However, if we coerce them to roll during the day, they instead use a celestial body (the sun) as their primary orientation cue. Diurnal beetles, however, persist in using a celestial body for their compass, day or night. Compass neurons in the central complex of diurnal beetles are tuned only to the sun, whereas the same neurons in the nocturnal species switch exclusively to polarized light at lunar light intensities. Thus, these neurons encode the preferences for particular celestial cues and alter their weighting according to ambient light conditions. This flexible encoding of celestial cue preferences relative to the prevailing visual scenery provides a simple, yet effective, mechanism for enabling visual orientation at any light intensity. PMID:26305929

Neural coding underlying the cue preference for celestial orientation.

PubMed

el Jundi, Basil; Warrant, Eric J; Byrne, Marcus J; Khaldy, Lana; Baird, Emily; Smolka, Jochen; Dacke, Marie

2015-09-08

Diurnal and nocturnal African dung beetles use celestial cues, such as the sun, the moon, and the polarization pattern, to roll dung balls along straight paths across the savanna. Although nocturnal beetles move in the same manner through the same environment as their diurnal relatives, they do so when light conditions are at least 1 million-fold dimmer. Here, we show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the celestial cue preference differs between nocturnal and diurnal beetles in a manner that reflects their contrasting visual ecologies. We also demonstrate how these cue preferences are reflected in the activity of compass neurons in the brain. At night, polarized skylight is the dominant orientation cue for nocturnal beetles. However, if we coerce them to roll during the day, they instead use a celestial body (the sun) as their primary orientation cue. Diurnal beetles, however, persist in using a celestial body for their compass, day or night. Compass neurons in the central complex of diurnal beetles are tuned only to the sun, whereas the same neurons in the nocturnal species switch exclusively to polarized light at lunar light intensities. Thus, these neurons encode the preferences for particular celestial cues and alter their weighting according to ambient light conditions. This flexible encoding of celestial cue preferences relative to the prevailing visual scenery provides a simple, yet effective, mechanism for enabling visual orientation at any light intensity.

Cognitive processes facilitated by contextual cueing: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

PubMed

Schankin, Andrea; Schubö, Anna

2009-05-01

Finding a target in repeated search displays is faster than finding the same target in novel ones (contextual cueing). It is assumed that the visual context (the arrangement of the distracting objects) is used to guide attention efficiently to the target location. Alternatively, other factors, e.g., facilitation in early visual processing or in response selection, may play a role as well. In a contextual cueing experiment, participant's electrophysiological brain activity was recorded. Participants identified the target faster and more accurately in repeatedly presented displays. In this condition, the N2pc, a component reflecting the allocation of visual-spatial attention, was enhanced, indicating that attention was allocated more efficiently to those targets. However, also response-related processes, reflected by the LRP, were facilitated, indicating that guidance of attention cannot account for the entire contextual cueing benefit.

Captive Bottlenose Dolphins Do Discriminate Human-Made Sounds Both Underwater and in the Air.

PubMed

Lima, Alice; Sébilleau, Mélissa; Boye, Martin; Durand, Candice; Hausberger, Martine; Lemasson, Alban

2018-01-01

Bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) spontaneously emit individual acoustic signals that identify them to group members. We tested whether these cetaceans could learn artificial individual sound cues played underwater and whether they would generalize this learning to airborne sounds. Dolphins are thought to perceive only underwater sounds and their training depends largely on visual signals. We investigated the behavioral responses of seven dolphins in a group to learned human-made individual sound cues, played underwater and in the air. Dolphins recognized their own sound cue after hearing it underwater as they immediately moved toward the source, whereas when it was airborne they gazed more at the source of their own sound cue but did not approach it. We hypothesize that they perhaps detected modifications of the sound induced by air or were confused by the novelty of the situation, but nevertheless recognized they were being "targeted." They did not respond when hearing another group member's cue in either situation. This study provides further evidence that dolphins respond to individual-specific sounds and that these marine mammals possess some capacity for processing airborne acoustic signals.

Women Inmate Substance Abusers’ Reactivity to Visual Alcohol, Cigarette, Marijuana, and Crack-Cocaine Cues: Approach and Avoidance as Separate Dimensions of Reactivity

PubMed Central

Schlauch, Robert C.; Breiner, Mary J.; Stasiewicz, Paul R.; Christensen, Rita L.; Lang, Alan R.

2012-01-01

Despite the growing recognition for multidimensional assessments of cue-elicited craving, few studies have attempted to measure multiple response domains associated with craving. The present study evaluated the Ambivalence Model of Craving (Breiner et al., 1999; Stritzke et al., 2007) using a unique cue reactivity methodology designed to capture both the desire to use (approach inclination) and desire to not consume (avoidance inclination) in a clinical sample of incarcerated female substance abusers. Participants were 155 incarcerated women who were participating in or waiting to begin participation in a nine-month drug treatment program. Results indicated that all four substance cue-types (alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, and crack cocaine) had good reliability and showed high specificity. Also, the validity of measuring approach and avoidance as separate dimensions was supported, as demonstrated by meaningful clinical distinctions between groups evincing different reactivity patterns and incremental prediction of avoidance inclinations on measures of stages of change readiness. Taken together, results continue to highlight the importance of measuring both approach and avoidance inclinations in the study of cue-elicited craving. PMID:23543075

Central and peripheral vision loss differentially affects contextual cueing in visual search.

PubMed

Geringswald, Franziska; Pollmann, Stefan

2015-09-01

Visual search for targets in repeated displays is more efficient than search for the same targets in random distractor layouts. Previous work has shown that this contextual cueing is severely impaired under central vision loss. Here, we investigated whether central vision loss, simulated with gaze-contingent displays, prevents the incidental learning of contextual cues or the expression of learning, that is, the guidance of search by learned target-distractor configurations. Visual search with a central scotoma reduced contextual cueing both with respect to search times and gaze parameters. However, when the scotoma was subsequently removed, contextual cueing was observed in a comparable magnitude as for controls who had searched without scotoma simulation throughout the experiment. This indicated that search with a central scotoma did not prevent incidental context learning, but interfered with search guidance by learned contexts. We discuss the role of visuospatial working memory load as source of this interference. In contrast to central vision loss, peripheral vision loss was expected to prevent spatial configuration learning itself, because the restricted search window did not allow the integration of invariant local configurations with the global display layout. This expectation was confirmed in that visual search with a simulated peripheral scotoma eliminated contextual cueing not only in the initial learning phase with scotoma, but also in the subsequent test phase without scotoma. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Modeling the Development of Audiovisual Cue Integration in Speech Perception

PubMed Central

Getz, Laura M.; Nordeen, Elke R.; Vrabic, Sarah C.; Toscano, Joseph C.

2017-01-01

Adult speech perception is generally enhanced when information is provided from multiple modalities. In contrast, infants do not appear to benefit from combining auditory and visual speech information early in development. This is true despite the fact that both modalities are important to speech comprehension even at early stages of language acquisition. How then do listeners learn how to process auditory and visual information as part of a unified signal? In the auditory domain, statistical learning processes provide an excellent mechanism for acquiring phonological categories. Is this also true for the more complex problem of acquiring audiovisual correspondences, which require the learner to integrate information from multiple modalities? In this paper, we present simulations using Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) that learn cue weights and combine cues on the basis of their distributional statistics. First, we simulate the developmental process of acquiring phonological categories from auditory and visual cues, asking whether simple statistical learning approaches are sufficient for learning multi-modal representations. Second, we use this time course information to explain audiovisual speech perception in adult perceivers, including cases where auditory and visual input are mismatched. Overall, we find that domain-general statistical learning techniques allow us to model the developmental trajectory of audiovisual cue integration in speech, and in turn, allow us to better understand the mechanisms that give rise to unified percepts based on multiple cues. PMID:28335558

Modeling the Development of Audiovisual Cue Integration in Speech Perception.

PubMed

Getz, Laura M; Nordeen, Elke R; Vrabic, Sarah C; Toscano, Joseph C

2017-03-21

Adult speech perception is generally enhanced when information is provided from multiple modalities. In contrast, infants do not appear to benefit from combining auditory and visual speech information early in development. This is true despite the fact that both modalities are important to speech comprehension even at early stages of language acquisition. How then do listeners learn how to process auditory and visual information as part of a unified signal? In the auditory domain, statistical learning processes provide an excellent mechanism for acquiring phonological categories. Is this also true for the more complex problem of acquiring audiovisual correspondences, which require the learner to integrate information from multiple modalities? In this paper, we present simulations using Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) that learn cue weights and combine cues on the basis of their distributional statistics. First, we simulate the developmental process of acquiring phonological categories from auditory and visual cues, asking whether simple statistical learning approaches are sufficient for learning multi-modal representations. Second, we use this time course information to explain audiovisual speech perception in adult perceivers, including cases where auditory and visual input are mismatched. Overall, we find that domain-general statistical learning techniques allow us to model the developmental trajectory of audiovisual cue integration in speech, and in turn, allow us to better understand the mechanisms that give rise to unified percepts based on multiple cues.

Effect of allocentric landmarks on primate gaze behavior in a cue conflict task.

PubMed

Li, Jirui; Sajad, Amirsaman; Marino, Robert; Yan, Xiaogang; Sun, Saihong; Wang, Hongying; Crawford, J Douglas

2017-05-01

The relative contributions of egocentric versus allocentric cues on goal-directed behavior have been examined for reaches, but not saccades. Here, we used a cue conflict task to assess the effect of allocentric landmarks on gaze behavior. Two head-unrestrained macaques maintained central fixation while a target flashed in one of eight radial directions, set against a continuously present visual landmark (two horizontal/vertical lines spanning the visual field, intersecting at one of four oblique locations 11° from the target). After a 100-ms delay followed by a 100-ms mask, the landmark was displaced by 8° in one of eight radial directions. After a second delay (300-700 ms), the fixation point extinguished, signaling for a saccade toward the remembered target. When the landmark was stable, saccades showed a significant but small (mean 15%) pull toward the landmark intersection, and endpoint variability was significantly reduced. When the landmark was displaced, gaze endpoints shifted significantly, not toward the landmark, but partially (mean 25%) toward a virtual target displaced like the landmark. The landmark had a larger influence when it was closer to initial fixation, and when it shifted away from the target, especially in saccade direction. These findings suggest that internal representations of gaze targets are weighted between egocentric and allocentric cues, and this weighting is further modulated by specific spatial parameters.

Lower region: a new cue for figure-ground assignment.

PubMed

Vecera, Shaun P; Vogel, Edward K; Woodman, Geoffrey F

2002-06-01

Figure-ground assignment is an important visual process; humans recognize, attend to, and act on figures, not backgrounds. There are many visual cues for figure-ground assignment. A new cue to figure-ground assignment, called lower region, is presented: Regions in the lower portion of a stimulus array appear more figurelike than regions in the upper portion of the display. This phenomenon was explored, and it was demonstrated that the lower-region preference is not influenced by contrast, eye movements, or voluntary spatial attention. It was found that the lower region is defined relative to the stimulus display, linking the lower-region preference to pictorial depth perception cues. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental regularities that this new figure-ground cue may reflect.

The Gaze-Cueing Effect in the United States and Japan: Influence of Cultural Differences in Cognitive Strategies on Control of Attention

PubMed Central

Takao, Saki; Yamani, Yusuke; Ariga, Atsunori

2018-01-01

The direction of gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect. Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research has examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would not demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs because they are more sensitive to contextual information, such as the knowledge that the direction of a gaze is not predictive. Furthermore, we hypothesized that American participants would demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOAs because they tend to follow gaze direction whether it is predictive or not. In Experiment 1, American participants demonstrated the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, indicating that their attention was driven by the central non-predictive gaze direction regardless of the SOAs. In Experiment 2, Japanese participants demonstrated no gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, suggesting that the Japanese participants exercised voluntary control of their attention, which inhibited the gaze-cueing effect with the long SOA. Our findings suggest that the control of visual spatial attention elicited by social stimuli systematically differs between American and Japanese individuals. PMID:29379457

The Gaze-Cueing Effect in the United States and Japan: Influence of Cultural Differences in Cognitive Strategies on Control of Attention.

PubMed

Takao, Saki; Yamani, Yusuke; Ariga, Atsunori

2017-01-01

The direction of gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect . Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research has examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would not demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs because they are more sensitive to contextual information, such as the knowledge that the direction of a gaze is not predictive. Furthermore, we hypothesized that American participants would demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOAs because they tend to follow gaze direction whether it is predictive or not. In Experiment 1, American participants demonstrated the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, indicating that their attention was driven by the central non-predictive gaze direction regardless of the SOAs. In Experiment 2, Japanese participants demonstrated no gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, suggesting that the Japanese participants exercised voluntary control of their attention, which inhibited the gaze-cueing effect with the long SOA. Our findings suggest that the control of visual spatial attention elicited by social stimuli systematically differs between American and Japanese individuals.

Visual-vestibular cue integration for heading perception: applications of optimal cue integration theory.

PubMed

Fetsch, Christopher R; Deangelis, Gregory C; Angelaki, Dora E

2010-05-01

The perception of self-motion is crucial for navigation, spatial orientation and motor control. In particular, estimation of one's direction of translation, or heading, relies heavily on multisensory integration in most natural situations. Visual and nonvisual (e.g., vestibular) information can be used to judge heading, but each modality alone is often insufficient for accurate performance. It is not surprising, then, that visual and vestibular signals converge frequently in the nervous system, and that these signals interact in powerful ways at the level of behavior and perception. Early behavioral studies of visual-vestibular interactions consisted mainly of descriptive accounts of perceptual illusions and qualitative estimation tasks, often with conflicting results. In contrast, cue integration research in other modalities has benefited from the application of rigorous psychophysical techniques, guided by normative models that rest on the foundation of ideal-observer analysis and Bayesian decision theory. Here we review recent experiments that have attempted to harness these so-called optimal cue integration models for the study of self-motion perception. Some of these studies used nonhuman primate subjects, enabling direct comparisons between behavioral performance and simultaneously recorded neuronal activity. The results indicate that humans and monkeys can integrate visual and vestibular heading cues in a manner consistent with optimal integration theory, and that single neurons in the dorsal medial superior temporal area show striking correlates of the behavioral effects. This line of research and other applications of normative cue combination models should continue to shed light on mechanisms of self-motion perception and the neuronal basis of multisensory integration.

Cross-modal links among vision, audition, and touch in complex environments.

PubMed

Ferris, Thomas K; Sarter, Nadine B

2008-02-01

This study sought to determine whether performance effects of cross-modal spatial links that were observed in earlier laboratory studies scale to more complex environments and need to be considered in multimodal interface design. It also revisits the unresolved issue of cross-modal cuing asymmetries. Previous laboratory studies employing simple cues, tasks, and/or targets have demonstrated that the efficiency of processing visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli is affected by the modality, lateralization, and timing of surrounding cues. Very few studies have investigated these cross-modal constraints in the context of more complex environments to determine whether they scale and how complexity affects the nature of cross-modal cuing asymmetries. Amicroworld simulation of battlefield operations with a complex task set and meaningful visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli was used to investigate cuing effects for all cross-modal pairings. Significant asymmetric performance effects of cross-modal spatial links were observed. Auditory cues shortened response latencies for collocated visual targets but visual cues did not do the same for collocated auditory targets. Responses to contralateral (rather than ipsilateral) targets were faster for tactually cued auditory targets and each visual-tactile cue-target combination, suggesting an inhibition-of-return effect. The spatial relationships between multimodal cues and targets significantly affect target response times in complex environments. The performance effects of cross-modal links and the observed cross-modal cuing asymmetries need to be examined in more detail and considered in future interface design. The findings from this study have implications for the design of multimodal and adaptive interfaces and for supporting attention management in complex, data-rich domains.

Parallel processing of general and specific threat during early stages of perception

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Differential processing of threat can consummate as early as 100 ms post-stimulus. Moreover, early perception not only differentiates threat from non-threat stimuli but also distinguishes among discrete threat subtypes (e.g. fear, disgust and anger). Combining spatial-frequency-filtered images of fear, disgust and neutral scenes with high-density event-related potentials and intracranial source estimation, we investigated the neural underpinnings of general and specific threat processing in early stages of perception. Conveyed in low spatial frequencies, fear and disgust images evoked convergent visual responses with similarly enhanced N1 potentials and dorsal visual (middle temporal gyrus) cortical activity (relative to neutral cues; peaking at 156 ms). Nevertheless, conveyed in high spatial frequencies, fear and disgust elicited divergent visual responses, with fear enhancing and disgust suppressing P1 potentials and ventral visual (occipital fusiform) cortical activity (peaking at 121 ms). Therefore, general and specific threat processing operates in parallel in early perception, with the ventral visual pathway engaged in specific processing of discrete threats and the dorsal visual pathway in general threat processing. Furthermore, selectively tuned to distinctive spatial-frequency channels and visual pathways, these parallel processes underpin dimensional and categorical threat characterization, promoting efficient threat response. These findings thus lend support to hybrid models of emotion. PMID:26412811

The Time Course of Segmentation and Cue-Selectivity in the Human Visual Cortex

PubMed Central

Appelbaum, Lawrence G.; Ales, Justin M.; Norcia, Anthony M.

2012-01-01

Texture discontinuities are a fundamental cue by which the visual system segments objects from their background. The neural mechanisms supporting texture-based segmentation are therefore critical to visual perception and cognition. In the present experiment we employ an EEG source-imaging approach in order to study the time course of texture-based segmentation in the human brain. Visual Evoked Potentials were recorded to four types of stimuli in which periodic temporal modulation of a central 3° figure region could either support figure-ground segmentation, or have identical local texture modulations but not produce changes in global image segmentation. The image discontinuities were defined either by orientation or phase differences across image regions. Evoked responses to these four stimuli were analyzed both at the scalp and on the cortical surface in retinotopic and functional regions-of-interest (ROIs) defined separately using fMRI on a subject-by-subject basis. Texture segmentation (tsVEP: segmenting versus non-segmenting) and cue-specific (csVEP: orientation versus phase) responses exhibited distinctive patterns of activity. Alternations between uniform and segmented images produced highly asymmetric responses that were larger after transitions from the uniform to the segmented state. Texture modulations that signaled the appearance of a figure evoked a pattern of increased activity starting at ∼143 ms that was larger in V1 and LOC ROIs, relative to identical modulations that didn't signal figure-ground segmentation. This segmentation-related activity occurred after an initial response phase that did not depend on the global segmentation structure of the image. The two cue types evoked similar tsVEPs up to 230 ms when they differed in the V4 and LOC ROIs. The evolution of the response proceeded largely in the feed-forward direction, with only weak evidence for feedback-related activity. PMID:22479566

Short-term visual memory for location in depth: A U-shaped function of time.

PubMed

Reeves, Adam; Lei, Quan

2017-10-01

Short-term visual memory was studied by displaying arrays of four or five numerals, each numeral in its own depth plane, followed after various delays by an arrow cue shown in one of the depth planes. Subjects reported the numeral at the depth cued by the arrow. Accuracy fell with increasing cue delay for the first 500 ms or so, and then recovered almost fully. This dipping pattern contrasts with the usual iconic decay observed for memory traces. The dip occurred with or without a verbal or color-shape retention load on working memory. In contrast, accuracy did not change with delay when a tonal cue replaced the arrow cue. We hypothesized that information concerning the depths of the numerals decays over time in sensory memory, but that cued recall is aided later on by transfer to a visual memory specialized for depth. This transfer is sufficiently rapid with a tonal cue to compensate for the sensory decay, but it is slowed by the need to tag the arrow cue's depth relative to the depths of the numerals, exposing a dip when sensation has decayed and transfer is not yet complete. A model with a fixed rate of sensory decay and varied transfer rates across individuals captures the dip as well as the cue modality effect.

Pigeons exhibit contextual cueing to both simple and complex backgrounds.

PubMed

Wasserman, Edward A; Teng, Yuejia; Castro, Leyre

2014-05-01

Repeated pairings of a particular visual context with a specific location of a target stimulus facilitate target search in humans. We explored an animal model of this contextual cueing effect using a novel Cueing-Miscueing design. Pigeons had to peck a target which could appear in one of four possible locations on four possible color backgrounds or four possible color photographs of real-world scenes. On 80% of the trials, each of the contexts was uniquely paired with one of the target locations; on the other 20% of the trials, each of the contexts was randomly paired with the remaining target locations. Pigeons came to exhibit robust contextual cueing when the context preceded the target by 2s, with reaction times to the target being shorter on correctly-cued trials than on incorrectly-cued trials. Contextual cueing proved to be more robust with photographic backgrounds than with uniformly colored backgrounds. In addition, during the context-target delay, pigeons predominately pecked toward the location of the upcoming target, suggesting that attentional guidance contributes to contextual cueing. These findings confirm the effectiveness of animal models of contextual cueing and underscore the important part played by associative learning in producing the effect. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: SQAB 2013: Contextual Con. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Eye Contact Is Crucial for Referential Communication in Pet Dogs.

PubMed

Savalli, Carine; Resende, Briseida; Gaunet, Florence

2016-01-01

Dogs discriminate human direction of attention cues, such as body, gaze, head and eye orientation, in several circumstances. Eye contact particularly seems to provide information on human readiness to communicate; when there is such an ostensive cue, dogs tend to follow human communicative gestures more often. However, little is known about how such cues influence the production of communicative signals (e.g. gaze alternation and sustained gaze) in dogs. In the current study, in order to get an unreachable food, dogs needed to communicate with their owners in several conditions that differ according to the direction of owners' visual cues, namely gaze, head, eyes, and availability to make eye contact. Results provided evidence that pet dogs did not rely on details of owners' direction of visual attention. Instead, they relied on the whole combination of visual cues and especially on the owners' availability to make eye contact. Dogs increased visual communicative behaviors when they established eye contact with their owners, a different strategy compared to apes and baboons, that intensify vocalizations and gestures when human is not visually attending. The difference in strategy is possibly due to distinct status: domesticated vs wild. Results are discussed taking into account the ecological relevance of the task since pet dogs live in human environment and face similar situations on a daily basis during their lives.

Social Beliefs and Visual Attention: How the Social Relevance of a Cue Influences Spatial Orienting.

PubMed

Gobel, Matthias S; Tufft, Miles R A; Richardson, Daniel C

2018-05-01

We are highly tuned to each other's visual attention. Perceiving the eye or hand movements of another person can influence the timing of a saccade or the reach of our own. However, the explanation for such spatial orienting in interpersonal contexts remains disputed. Is it due to the social appearance of the cue-a hand or an eye-or due to its social relevance-a cue that is connected to another person with attentional and intentional states? We developed an interpersonal version of the Posner spatial cueing paradigm. Participants saw a cue and detected a target at the same or a different location, while interacting with an unseen partner. Participants were led to believe that the cue was either connected to the gaze location of their partner or was generated randomly by a computer (Experiment 1), and that their partner had higher or lower social rank while engaged in the same or a different task (Experiment 2). We found that spatial cue-target compatibility effects were greater when the cue related to a partner's gaze. This effect was amplified by the partner's social rank, but only when participants believed their partner was engaged in the same task. Taken together, this is strong evidence in support of the idea that spatial orienting is interpersonally attuned to the social relevance of the cue-whether the cue is connected to another person, who this person is, and what this person is doing-and does not exclusively rely on the social appearance of the cue. Visual attention is not only guided by the physical salience of one's environment but also by the mental representation of its social relevance. © 2017 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society.

Magnitude and duration of cue-induced craving for marijuana in volunteers with cannabis use disorder

PubMed Central

Lundahl, Leslie H.; Greenwald, Mark K.

2016-01-01

Aims Evaluate magnitude and duration of subjective and physiologic responses to neutral and marijuana (MJ)–related cues in cannabis dependent volunteers. Methods 33 volunteers (17 male) who met DSM-IV criteria for Cannabis Abuse or Dependence were exposed to neutral (first) then MJ-related visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile cues. Mood, drug craving and physiology were assessed at baseline, post-neutral, post-MJ and 15-min post MJ cue exposure to determine magnitude of cue- responses. For a subset of participants (n=15; 9 male), measures of craving and physiology were collected also at 30-, 90-, and 150-min post-MJ cue to examine duration of cue-effects. Results In cue-response magnitude analyses, visual analog scale (VAS) items craving for, urge to use, and desire to smoke MJ, Total and Compulsivity subscale scores of the Marijuana Craving Questionnaire, anxiety ratings, and diastolic blood pressure (BP) were significantly elevated following MJ vs. neutral cue exposure. In cue-response duration analyses, desire and urge to use MJ remained significantly elevated at 30-, 90- and 150-min post MJ-cue exposure, relative to baseline and neutral cues. Conclusions Presentation of polysensory MJ cues increased MJ craving, anxiety and diastolic BP relative to baseline and neutral cues. MJ craving remained elevated up to 150-min after MJ cue presentation. This finding confirms that carry-over effects from drug cue presentation must be considered in cue reactivity studies. PMID:27436749

Magnitude and duration of cue-induced craving for marijuana in volunteers with cannabis use disorder.

PubMed

Lundahl, Leslie H; Greenwald, Mark K

2016-09-01

Evaluate magnitude and duration of subjective and physiologic responses to neutral and marijuana (MJ)-related cues in cannabis dependent volunteers. 33 volunteers (17 male) who met DSM-IV criteria for Cannabis Abuse or Dependence were exposed to neutral (first) then MJ-related visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile cues. Mood, drug craving and physiology were assessed at baseline, post-neutral, post-MJ and 15-min post MJ cue exposure to determine magnitude of cue- responses. For a subset of participants (n=15; 9 male), measures of craving and physiology were collected also at 30-, 90-, and 150-min post-MJ cue to examine duration of cue-effects. In cue-response magnitude analyses, visual analog scale (VAS) items craving for, urge to use, and desire to smoke MJ, Total and Compulsivity subscale scores of the Marijuana Craving Questionnaire, anxiety ratings, and diastolic blood pressure (BP) were significantly elevated following MJ vs. neutral cue exposure. In cue-response duration analyses, desire and urge to use MJ remained significantly elevated at 30-, 90- and 150-min post MJ-cue exposure, relative to baseline and neutral cues. Presentation of polysensory MJ cues increased MJ craving, anxiety and diastolic BP relative to baseline and neutral cues. MJ craving remained elevated up to 150-min after MJ cue presentation. This finding confirms that carry-over effects from drug cue presentation must be considered in cue reactivity studies. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Some lessons learned in three years with ADS-33C. [rotorcraft handling qualities specification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Key, David L.; Blanken, Chris L.; Hoh, Roger H.

1993-01-01

Three years of using the U.S. Army's rotorcraft handling qualities specification, Aeronautical Design Standard - 33, has shown it to be surprisingly robust. It appears to provide an excellent basis for design and for assessment, however, as the subtleties become more well understood, several areas needing refinement became apparent. Three responses to these needs have been documented in this paper: (1) The yaw-axis attitude quickness for hover target acquisition and tracking can be relaxed slightly. (2) Understanding and application of criteria for degraded visual environments needed elaboration. This and some guidelines for testing to obtain visual cue ratings have been documented. (3) The flight test maneuvers were an innovation that turned out to be very valuable. Their extensive use has made it necessary to tighten definitions and testing guidance. This was accomplished for a good visual environment and is underway for degraded visual environments.

Attentional modulation of cell-class specific gamma-band synchronization in awake monkey area V4

PubMed Central

Vinck, Martin; Womelsdorf, Thilo; Buffalo, Elizabeth A.; Desimone, Robert; Fries, Pascal

2013-01-01

Summary Selective visual attention is subserved by selective neuronal synchronization, entailing precise orchestration among excitatory and inhibitory cells. We tentatively identified these as broad (BS) and narrow spiking (NS) cells and analyzed their synchronization to the local field potential in two macaque monkeys performing a selective visual attention task. Across cells, gamma phases scattered widely but were unaffected by stimulation or attention. During stimulation, NS cells lagged BS cells on average by ~60° and gamma synchronized twice as strongly. Attention enhanced and reduced the gamma locking of strongly and weakly activated cells, respectively. During a pre-stimulus attentional cue period, BS cells showed weak gamma synchronization, while NS cells gamma synchronized as strongly as with visual stimulation. These analyses reveal the cell-type specific dynamics of the gamma cycle in macaque visual cortex and suggest that attention affects neurons differentially depending on cell type and activation level. PMID:24267656

Search guidance is proportional to the categorical specificity of a target cue.

PubMed

Schmidt, Joseph; Zelinsky, Gregory J

2009-10-01

Visual search studies typically assume the availability of precise target information to guide search, often a picture of the exact target. However, search targets in the real world are often defined categorically and with varying degrees of visual specificity. In five target preview conditions we manipulated the availability of target visual information in a search task for common real-world objects. Previews were: a picture of the target, an abstract textual description of the target, a precise textual description, an abstract + colour textual description, or a precise + colour textual description. Guidance generally increased as information was added to the target preview. We conclude that the information used for search guidance need not be limited to a picture of the target. Although generally less precise, to the extent that visual information can be extracted from a target label and loaded into working memory, this information too can be used to guide search.

Common Neural Representations for Visually Guided Reorientation and Spatial Imagery

PubMed Central

Vass, Lindsay K.; Epstein, Russell A.

2017-01-01

Abstract Spatial knowledge about an environment can be cued from memory by perception of a visual scene during active navigation or by imagination of the relationships between nonvisible landmarks, such as when providing directions. It is not known whether these different ways of accessing spatial knowledge elicit the same representations in the brain. To address this issue, we scanned participants with fMRI, while they performed a judgment of relative direction (JRD) task that required them to retrieve real-world spatial relationships in response to either pictorial or verbal cues. Multivoxel pattern analyses revealed several brain regions that exhibited representations that were independent of the cues to access spatial memory. Specifically, entorhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe and the retrosplenial complex (RSC) in the medial parietal lobe coded for the heading assumed on a particular trial, whereas the parahippocampal place area (PPA) contained information about the starting location of the JRD. These results demonstrate the existence of spatial representations in RSC, ERC, and PPA that are common to visually guided navigation and spatial imagery. PMID:26759482

Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's Disease: An Overload Problem?

PubMed

Beck, Eric N; Ehgoetz Martens, Kaylena A; Almeida, Quincy J

2015-01-01

Freezing of gait (FOG) is arguably the most severe symptom associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), and often occurs while performing dual tasks or approaching narrowed and cluttered spaces. While it is well known that visual cues alleviate FOG, it is not clear if this effect may be the result of cognitive or sensorimotor mechanisms. Nevertheless, the role of vision may be a critical link that might allow us to disentangle this question. Gaze behaviour has yet to be carefully investigated while freezers approach narrow spaces, thus the overall objective of this study was to explore the interaction between cognitive and sensory-perceptual influences on FOG. In experiment #1, if cognitive load is the underlying factor leading to FOG, then one might expect that a dual-task would elicit FOG episodes even in the presence of visual cues, since the load on attention would interfere with utilization of visual cues. Alternatively, if visual cues alleviate gait despite performance of a dual-task, then it may be more probable that sensory mechanisms are at play. In compliment to this, the aim of experiment#2 was to further challenge the sensory systems, by removing vision of the lower-limbs and thereby forcing participants to rely on other forms of sensory feedback rather than vision while walking toward the narrow space. Spatiotemporal aspects of gait, percentage of gaze fixation frequency and duration, as well as skin conductance levels were measured in freezers and non-freezers across both experiments. Results from experiment#1 indicated that although freezers and non-freezers both walked with worse gait while performing the dual-task, in freezers, gait was relieved by visual cues regardless of whether the cognitive demands of the dual-task were present. At baseline and while dual-tasking, freezers demonstrated a gaze behaviour that neglected the doorway and instead focused primarily on the pathway, a strategy that non-freezers adopted only when performing the dual-task. Interestingly, with the combination of visual cues and dual-task, freezers increased the frequency and duration of fixations toward the doorway, compared to non-freezers. These results suggest that although increasing demand on attention does significantly deteriorate gait in freezers, an increase in cognitive demand is not exclusively responsible for freezing (since visual cues were able to overcome any interference elicited by the dual-task). When vision of the lower limbs was removed in experiment#2, only the freezers' gait was affected. However, when visual cues were present, freezers' gait improved regardless of the dual-task. This gait behaviour was accompanied by greater amount of time spent looking at the visual cues irrespective of the dual-task. Since removing vision of the lower-limbs hindered gait even under low attentional demand, restricted sensory feedback may be an important factor to the mechanisms underlying FOG.

Freezing of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease: An Overload Problem?

PubMed Central

Beck, Eric N.; Ehgoetz Martens, Kaylena A.; Almeida, Quincy J.

2015-01-01

Freezing of gait (FOG) is arguably the most severe symptom associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD), and often occurs while performing dual tasks or approaching narrowed and cluttered spaces. While it is well known that visual cues alleviate FOG, it is not clear if this effect may be the result of cognitive or sensorimotor mechanisms. Nevertheless, the role of vision may be a critical link that might allow us to disentangle this question. Gaze behaviour has yet to be carefully investigated while freezers approach narrow spaces, thus the overall objective of this study was to explore the interaction between cognitive and sensory-perceptual influences on FOG. In experiment #1, if cognitive load is the underlying factor leading to FOG, then one might expect that a dual-task would elicit FOG episodes even in the presence of visual cues, since the load on attention would interfere with utilization of visual cues. Alternatively, if visual cues alleviate gait despite performance of a dual-task, then it may be more probable that sensory mechanisms are at play. In compliment to this, the aim of experiment#2 was to further challenge the sensory systems, by removing vision of the lower-limbs and thereby forcing participants to rely on other forms of sensory feedback rather than vision while walking toward the narrow space. Spatiotemporal aspects of gait, percentage of gaze fixation frequency and duration, as well as skin conductance levels were measured in freezers and non-freezers across both experiments. Results from experiment#1 indicated that although freezers and non-freezers both walked with worse gait while performing the dual-task, in freezers, gait was relieved by visual cues regardless of whether the cognitive demands of the dual-task were present. At baseline and while dual-tasking, freezers demonstrated a gaze behaviour that neglected the doorway and instead focused primarily on the pathway, a strategy that non-freezers adopted only when performing the dual-task. Interestingly, with the combination of visual cues and dual-task, freezers increased the frequency and duration of fixations toward the doorway, compared to non-freezers. These results suggest that although increasing demand on attention does significantly deteriorate gait in freezers, an increase in cognitive demand is not exclusively responsible for freezing (since visual cues were able to overcome any interference elicited by the dual-task). When vision of the lower limbs was removed in experiment#2, only the freezers’ gait was affected. However, when visual cues were present, freezers’ gait improved regardless of the dual-task. This gait behaviour was accompanied by greater amount of time spent looking at the visual cues irrespective of the dual-task. Since removing vision of the lower-limbs hindered gait even under low attentional demand, restricted sensory feedback may be an important factor to the mechanisms underlying FOG. PMID:26678262

Evaluating the operations underlying multisensory integration in the cat superior colliculus.

PubMed

Stanford, Terrence R; Quessy, Stephan; Stein, Barry E

2005-07-13

It is well established that superior colliculus (SC) multisensory neurons integrate cues from different senses; however, the mechanisms responsible for producing multisensory responses are poorly understood. Previous studies have shown that spatially congruent cues from different modalities (e.g., auditory and visual) yield enhanced responses and that the greatest relative enhancements occur for combinations of the least effective modality-specific stimuli. Although these phenomena are well documented, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie them, because no study has systematically examined the operation that multisensory neurons perform on their modality-specific inputs. The goal of this study was to evaluate the computations that multisensory neurons perform in combining the influences of stimuli from two modalities. The extracellular activities of single neurons in the SC of the cat were recorded in response to visual, auditory, and bimodal visual-auditory stimulation. Each neuron was tested across a range of stimulus intensities and multisensory responses evaluated against the null hypothesis of simple summation of unisensory influences. We found that the multisensory response could be superadditive, additive, or subadditive but that the computation was strongly dictated by the efficacies of the modality-specific stimulus components. Superadditivity was most common within a restricted range of near-threshold stimulus efficacies, whereas for the majority of stimuli, response magnitudes were consistent with the linear summation of modality-specific influences. In addition to providing a constraint for developing models of multisensory integration, the relationship between response mode and stimulus efficacy emphasizes the importance of considering stimulus parameters when inducing or interpreting multisensory phenomena.

Relevance of visual cues for orientation at familiar sites by homing pigeons: an experiment in a circular arena.

PubMed Central

Gagliardo, A.; Odetti, F.; Ioalè, P.

2001-01-01

Whether pigeons use visual landmarks for orientation from familiar locations has been a subject of debate. By recording the directional choices of both anosmic and control pigeons while exiting from a circular arena we were able to assess the relevance of olfactory and visual cues for orientation from familiar sites. When the birds could see the surroundings, both anosmic and control pigeons were homeward oriented. When the view of the landscape was prevented by screens that surrounded the arena, the control pigeons exited from the arena approximately in the home direction, while the anosmic pigeons' distribution was not different from random. Our data suggest that olfactory and visual cues play a critical, but interchangeable, role for orientation at familiar sites. PMID:11571054

Social Cognition as Reinforcement Learning: Feedback Modulates Emotion Inference.

PubMed

Zaki, Jamil; Kallman, Seth; Wimmer, G Elliott; Ochsner, Kevin; Shohamy, Daphna

2016-09-01

Neuroscientific studies of social cognition typically employ paradigms in which perceivers draw single-shot inferences about the internal states of strangers. Real-world social inference features much different parameters: People often encounter and learn about particular social targets (e.g., friends) over time and receive feedback about whether their inferences are correct or incorrect. Here, we examined this process and, more broadly, the intersection between social cognition and reinforcement learning. Perceivers were scanned using fMRI while repeatedly encountering three social targets who produced conflicting visual and verbal emotional cues. Perceivers guessed how targets felt and received feedback about whether they had guessed correctly. Visual cues reliably predicted one target's emotion, verbal cues predicted a second target's emotion, and neither reliably predicted the third target's emotion. Perceivers successfully used this information to update their judgments over time. Furthermore, trial-by-trial learning signals-estimated using two reinforcement learning models-tracked activity in ventral striatum and ventromedial pFC, structures associated with reinforcement learning, and regions associated with updating social impressions, including TPJ. These data suggest that learning about others' emotions, like other forms of feedback learning, relies on domain-general reinforcement mechanisms as well as domain-specific social information processing.

Alcohol-cue exposure effects on craving and attentional bias in underage college-student drinkers.

PubMed

Ramirez, Jason J; Monti, Peter M; Colwill, Ruth M

2015-06-01

The effect of alcohol-cue exposure on eliciting craving has been well documented, and numerous theoretical models assert that craving is a clinically significant construct central to the motivation and maintenance of alcohol-seeking behavior. Furthermore, some theories propose a relationship between craving and attention, such that cue-induced increases in craving bias attention toward alcohol cues, which, in turn, perpetuates craving. This study examined the extent to which alcohol cues induce craving and bias attention toward alcohol cues among underage college-student drinkers. We designed within-subject cue-reactivity and visual-probe tasks to assess in vivo alcohol-cue exposure effects on craving and attentional bias on 39 undergraduate college drinkers (ages 18-20). Participants expressed greater subjective craving to drink alcohol following in vivo cue exposure to a commonly consumed beer compared with water exposure. Furthermore, following alcohol-cue exposure, participants exhibited greater attentional biases toward alcohol cues as measured by a visual-probe task. In addition to the cue-exposure effects on craving and attentional bias, within-subject differences in craving across sessions marginally predicted within-subject differences in attentional bias. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Phasic alertness enhances processing of face and non-face stimuli in congenital prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Tanzer, Michal; Weinbach, Noam; Mardo, Elite; Henik, Avishai; Avidan, Galia

2016-08-01

Congenital prosopagnosia (CP) is a severe face processing impairment that occurs in the absence of any obvious brain damage and has often been associated with a more general deficit in deriving holistic relations between facial features or even between non-face shape dimensions. Here we further characterized this deficit and examined a potential way to ameliorate it. To this end we manipulated phasic alertness using alerting cues previously shown to modulate attention and enhance global processing of visual stimuli in normal observers. Specifically, we first examined whether individuals with CP, similarly to controls, would show greater global processing when exposed to an alerting cue in the context of a non-facial task (Navon global/local task). We then explored the effect of an alerting cue on face processing (upright/inverted face discrimination). Confirming previous findings, in the absence of alerting cues, controls showed a typical global bias in the Navon task and an inversion effect indexing holistic processing in the upright/inverted task, while CP failed to show these effects. Critically, when alerting cues preceded the experimental trials, both groups showed enhanced global interference and a larger inversion effect. These results suggest that phasic alertness may modulate visual processing and consequently, affect global/holistic perception. Hence, these findings further reinforce the notion that global/holistic processing may serve as a possible mechanism underlying the face processing deficit in CP. Moreover, they imply a possible route for enhancing face processing in individuals with CP and thus shed new light on potential amelioration of this disorder. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DNA targeting of rhinal cortex D2 receptor protein reversibly blocks learning of cues that predict reward.

PubMed

Liu, Zheng; Richmond, Barry J; Murray, Elisabeth A; Saunders, Richard C; Steenrod, Sara; Stubblefield, Barbara K; Montague, Deidra M; Ginns, Edward I

2004-08-17

When schedules of several operant trials must be successfully completed to obtain a reward, monkeys quickly learn to adjust their behavioral performance by using visual cues that signal how many trials have been completed and how many remain in the current schedule. Bilateral rhinal (perirhinal and entorhinal) cortex ablations irreversibly prevent this learning. Here, we apply a recombinant DNA technique to investigate the role of dopamine D2 receptor in rhinal cortex for this type of learning. Rhinal cortex was injected with a DNA construct that significantly decreased D2 receptor ligand binding and temporarily produced the same profound learning deficit seen after ablation. However, unlike after ablation, the D2 receptor-targeted, DNA-treated monkeys recovered cue-related learning after 11-19 weeks. Injecting a DNA construct that decreased N-methyl-d-aspartate but not D2 receptor ligand binding did not interfere with learning associations between the cues and the schedules. A second D2 receptor-targeted DNA treatment administered after either recovery from a first D2 receptor-targeted DNA treatment (one monkey), after N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor-targeted DNA treatment (two monkeys), or after a vector control treatment (one monkey) also induced a learning deficit of similar duration. These results suggest that the D2 receptor in primate rhinal cortex is essential for learning to relate the visual cues to the schedules. The specificity of the receptor manipulation reported here suggests that this approach could be generalized in this or other brain pathways to relate molecular mechanisms to cognitive functions.

DNA targeting of rhinal cortex D2 receptor protein reversibly blocks learning of cues that predict reward

PubMed Central

Liu, Zheng; Richmond, Barry J.; Murray, Elisabeth A.; Saunders, Richard C.; Steenrod, Sara; Stubblefield, Barbara K.; Montague, Deidra M.; Ginns, Edward I.

2004-01-01

When schedules of several operant trials must be successfully completed to obtain a reward, monkeys quickly learn to adjust their behavioral performance by using visual cues that signal how many trials have been completed and how many remain in the current schedule. Bilateral rhinal (perirhinal and entorhinal) cortex ablations irreversibly prevent this learning. Here, we apply a recombinant DNA technique to investigate the role of dopamine D2 receptor in rhinal cortex for this type of learning. Rhinal cortex was injected with a DNA construct that significantly decreased D2 receptor ligand binding and temporarily produced the same profound learning deficit seen after ablation. However, unlike after ablation, the D2 receptor-targeted, DNA-treated monkeys recovered cue-related learning after 11–19 weeks. Injecting a DNA construct that decreased N-methyl-d-aspartate but not D2 receptor ligand binding did not interfere with learning associations between the cues and the schedules. A second D2 receptor-targeted DNA treatment administered after either recovery from a first D2 receptor-targeted DNA treatment (one monkey), after N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor-targeted DNA treatment (two monkeys), or after a vector control treatment (one monkey) also induced a learning deficit of similar duration. These results suggest that the D2 receptor in primate rhinal cortex is essential for learning to relate the visual cues to the schedules. The specificity of the receptor manipulation reported here suggests that this approach could be generalized in this or other brain pathways to relate molecular mechanisms to cognitive functions. PMID:15302926

Neural correlates of restrained eaters' high susceptibility to food cues: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Wang, Yu; Dong, Debo; Todd, Jackson; Du, Jie; Yang, Zhou; Lu, Hui; Chen, Hong

2016-09-19

Many studies have reported that specific susceptibility to food cues plays an important role in disordered eating behavior. However, whether restraint status modulates the neural bases of attentional bias to different types of food cues remains unknown. Thus, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted in individuals (12 restraint eaters, 12 unrestraint eaters) exposed to high/low-energy food and neutral images while performing a two-choice oddball task. The results indicated that restrained eaters responded more quickly to high-energy food images than to neutral and low-energy food images. More notably, compared with unrestrained eaters, restrained eaters showed faster reaction times, hyper-activation in a much wider array of reward (e.g., insula/orbitofrontal cortex), attention (superior frontal gyrus) and visual processing (e.g., superior temporal gyrus) regions, and hypo-activation in cognitive control areas (e.g., anterior cingulate) in response to high-energy food cues. Furthermore, among restrained eaters, the longest reaction times were found for low-energy food images, and activation of the attention and visual-related cortex (e.g., superior parietal gyrus) in the low-neutral contrast condition was significantly stronger than in unrestrained eaters. These findings contribute to our understanding of susceptibility to food cues: in addition to the special sensitivity (attentional bias) to high-energy food images, restrained eaters may also be more sensitive (allocate more attentional resources) to low-energy food images. These potential neural bases of restrained eaters may help clarify why dieting to lose or maintain weight is so often unsuccessful. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Late maturation of visual spatial integration in humans

PubMed Central

Kovács, Ilona; Kozma, Petra; Fehér, Ákos; Benedek, György

1999-01-01

Visual development is thought to be completed at an early age. We suggest that the maturation of the visual brain is not homogeneous: functions with greater need for early availability, such as visuomotor control, mature earlier, and the development of other visual functions may extend well into childhood. We found significant improvement in children between 5 and 14 years in visual spatial integration by using a contour-detection task. The data show that long-range spatial interactions—subserving the integration of orientational information across the visual field—span a shorter spatial range in children than in adults. Performance in the task improves in a cue-specific manner with practice, which indicates the participation of fairly low-level perceptual mechanisms. We interpret our findings in terms of a protracted development of ventral visual-stream function in humans. PMID:10518600

A bilateral advantage for maintaining objects in visual short term memory.

PubMed

Holt, Jessica L; Delvenne, Jean-François

2015-01-01

Research has shown that attentional pre-cues can subsequently influence the transfer of information into visual short term memory (VSTM) (Schmidt, B., Vogel, E., Woodman, G., & Luck, S. (2002). Voluntary and automatic attentional control of visual working memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 64(5), 754-763). However, studies also suggest that those effects are constrained by the hemifield alignment of the pre-cues (Holt, J. L., & Delvenne, J.-F. (2014). A bilateral advantage in controlling access to visual short-term memory. Experimental Psychology, 61(2), 127-133), revealing better recall when distributed across hemifields relative to within a single hemifield (otherwise known as a bilateral field advantage). By manipulating the duration of the retention interval in a colour change detection task (1s, 3s), we investigated whether selective pre-cues can also influence how information is later maintained in VSTM. The results revealed that the pre-cues influenced the maintenance of the colours in VSTM, promoting consistent performance across retention intervals (Experiments 1 & 4). However, those effects were only shown when the pre-cues were directed to stimuli displayed across hemifields relative to stimuli within a single hemifield. Importantly, the results were not replicated when participants were required to memorise colours (Experiment 2) or locations (Experiment 3) in the absence of spatial pre-cues. Those findings strongly suggest that attentional pre-cues have a strong influence on both the transfer of information in VSTM and its subsequent maintenance, allowing bilateral items to better survive decay. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dynamics of the spatial scale of visual attention revealed by brain event-related potentials

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Luo, Y. J.; Greenwood, P. M.; Parasuraman, R.

2001-01-01

The temporal dynamics of the spatial scaling of attention during visual search were examined by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). A total of 16 young participants performed a search task in which the search array was preceded by valid cues that varied in size and hence in precision of target localization. The effects of cue size on short-latency (P1 and N1) ERP components, and the time course of these effects with variation in cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), were examined. Reaction time (RT) to discriminate a target was prolonged as cue size increased. The amplitudes of the posterior P1 and N1 components of the ERP evoked by the search array were affected in opposite ways by the size of the precue: P1 amplitude increased whereas N1 amplitude decreased as cue size increased, particularly following the shortest SOA. The results show that when top-down information about the region to be searched is less precise (larger cues), RT is slowed and the neural generators of P1 become more active, reflecting the additional computations required in changing the spatial scale of attention to the appropriate element size to facilitate target discrimination. In contrast, the decrease in N1 amplitude with cue size may reflect a broadening of the spatial gradient of attention. The results provide electrophysiological evidence that changes in the spatial scale of attention modulate neural activity in early visual cortical areas and activate at least two temporally overlapping component processes during visual search.

Proximal versus distal cue utilization in spatial navigation: the role of visual acuity?

PubMed

Carman, Heidi M; Mactutus, Charles F

2002-09-01

Proximal versus distal cue use in the Morris water maze is a widely accepted strategy for the dissociation of various problems affecting spatial navigation in rats such as aging, head trauma, lesions, and pharmacological or hormonal agents. Of the limited number of ontogenetic rat studies conducted, the majority have approached the problem of preweanling spatial navigation through a similar proximal-distal dissociation. An implicit assumption among all of these studies has been that the animal's visual system is sufficient to permit robust spatial navigation. We challenged this assumption and have addressed the role of visual acuity in spatial navigation in the preweanling Fischer 344-N rat by training animals to locate a visible (proximal) or hidden (distal) platform using double or null extramaze cues within the testing environment. All pups demonstrated improved performance across training, but animals presented with a visible platform, regardless of extramaze cues, simultaneously reached asymptotic performance levels; animals presented with a hidden platform, dependent upon location of extramaze cues, differentially reached asymptotic performance levels. Probe trial performance, defined by quadrant time and platform crossings, revealed that distal-double-cue pups demonstrated spatial navigational ability superior to that of the remaining groups. These results suggest that a pup's ability to spatially navigate a hidden platform is dependent on not only its response repertoire and task parameters, but also its visual acuity, as determined by the extramaze cue location within the testing environment. The standard hidden versus visible platform dissociation may not be a satisfactory strategy for the control of potential sensory deficits.

Early and Late Inhibitions Elicited by a Peripheral Visual Cue on Manual Response to a Visual Target: Are They Based on Cartesian Coordinates?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gawryszewski, Luiz G.; Carreiro, Luiz Renato R.; Magalhaes, Fabio V.

2005-01-01

A non-informative cue (C) elicits an inhibition of manual reaction time (MRT) to a visual target (T). We report an experiment to examine if the spatial distribution of this inhibitory effect follows Polar or Cartesian coordinate systems. C appeared at one out of 8 isoeccentric (7[degrees]) positions, the C-T angular distances (in polar…

Visual attention to food cues in obesity: an eye-tracking study.

PubMed

Doolan, Katy J; Breslin, Gavin; Hanna, Donncha; Murphy, Kate; Gallagher, Alison M

2014-12-01

Based on the theory of incentive sensitization, the aim of this study was to investigate differences in attentional processing of food-related visual cues between normal-weight and overweight/obese males and females. Twenty-six normal-weight (14M, 12F) and 26 overweight/obese (14M, 12F) adults completed a visual probe task and an eye-tracking paradigm. Reaction times and eye movements to food and control images were collected during both a fasted and fed condition in a counterbalanced design. Participants had greater visual attention towards high-energy-density food images compared to low-energy-density food images regardless of hunger condition. This was most pronounced in overweight/obese males who had significantly greater maintained attention towards high-energy-density food images when compared with their normal-weight counterparts however no between weight group differences were observed for female participants. High-energy-density food images appear to capture visual attention more readily than low-energy-density food images. Results also suggest the possibility of an altered visual food cue-associated reward system in overweight/obese males. Attentional processing of food cues may play a role in eating behaviors thus should be taken into consideration as part of an integrated approach to curbing obesity. © 2014 The Obesity Society.

Nonlinear Y-Like Receptive Fields in the Early Visual Cortex: An Intermediate Stage for Building Cue-Invariant Receptive Fields from Subcortical Y Cells.

PubMed

Gharat, Amol; Baker, Curtis L

2017-01-25

Many of the neurons in early visual cortex are selective for the orientation of boundaries defined by first-order cues (luminance) as well as second-order cues (contrast, texture). The neural circuit mechanism underlying this selectivity is still unclear, but some studies have proposed that it emerges from spatial nonlinearities of subcortical Y cells. To understand how inputs from the Y-cell pathway might be pooled to generate cue-invariant receptive fields, we recorded visual responses from single neurons in cat Area 18 using linear multielectrode arrays. We measured responses to drifting and contrast-reversing luminance gratings as well as contrast modulation gratings. We found that a large fraction of these neurons have nonoriented responses to gratings, similar to those of subcortical Y cells: they respond at the second harmonic (F2) to high-spatial frequency contrast-reversing gratings and at the first harmonic (F1) to low-spatial frequency drifting gratings ("Y-cell signature"). For a given neuron, spatial frequency tuning for linear (F1) and nonlinear (F2) responses is quite distinct, similar to orientation-selective cue-invariant neurons. Also, these neurons respond to contrast modulation gratings with selectivity for the carrier (texture) spatial frequency and, in some cases, orientation. Their receptive field properties suggest that they could serve as building blocks for orientation-selective cue-invariant neurons. We propose a circuit model that combines ON- and OFF-center cortical Y-like cells in an unbalanced push-pull manner to generate orientation-selective, cue-invariant receptive fields. A significant fraction of neurons in early visual cortex have specialized receptive fields that allow them to selectively respond to the orientation of boundaries that are invariant to the cue (luminance, contrast, texture, motion) that defines them. However, the neural mechanism to construct such versatile receptive fields remains unclear. Using multielectrode recording, we found a large fraction of neurons in early visual cortex with receptive fields not selective for orientation that have spatial nonlinearities like those of subcortical Y cells. These are strong candidates for building cue-invariant orientation-selective neurons; we present a neural circuit model that pools such neurons in an imbalanced "push-pull" manner, to generate orientation-selective cue-invariant receptive fields. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/370998-16$15.00/0.

Crossmodal and Incremental Perception of Audiovisual Cues to Emotional Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barkhuysen, Pashiera; Krahmer, Emiel; Swerts, Marc

2010-01-01

In this article we report on two experiments about the perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech. The article addresses two questions: (1) how do visual cues from a speaker's face to emotion relate to auditory cues, and (2) what is the recognition speed for various facial cues to emotion? Both experiments reported below are based on tests…

A pilot study comparing opaque, weighted bottles with conventional, clear bottles for infant feeding.

PubMed

Ventura, Alison K; Pollack Golen, Rebecca

2015-02-01

It is hypothesized that the visual and weight cues afforded by bottle-feeding may lead mothers to overfeed in response to the amount of liquid in the bottle. The aim of the present pilot study was to test this hypothesis by comparing mothers' sensitivity and responsiveness to infant cues and infants' intakes when mothers use opaque, weighted bottles (that remove visual and weight cues) compared to conventional, clear bottles to feed their infants. We also tested the hypothesis that mothers' pressuring feeding style would moderate the effect of bottle type. Formula-feeding dyads (N = 25) visited our laboratory on two separate days. Mothers fed their infants from a clear bottle one day and an opaque, weighted bottle on the other; bottle-order was counterbalanced across the two days. Infant intake was assessed by weighing each bottle before and after the feeding. Maternal sensitivity and responsiveness to infant cues was objectively assessed using the Nursing Child Assessment Feeding Scale. Mothers were significantly more responsive to infant cues when they used opaque compared to clear bottles (p = .04). There was also a trend for infants to consume significantly less formula when fed from opaque compared to clear bottles (p = .08). Mothers' pressuring feeding style moderated the effect of bottle type on maternal responsiveness to infant cues (p = .02) and infant intake (p = .03). Specifically, mothers who reported higher levels of pressuring feeding were significantly more responsive to their infants' cues (p = .02) and fed their infants significantly less formula when using opaque versus clear bottles (p = .01); no differences were seen for mothers who reported lower levels of pressuring feeding. This study highlights a simple, yet effective intervention for improving the bottle-feeding practices of mothers who have pressuring feeding styles. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation.

PubMed

Azadi, Reza; Harwood, Mark R

2014-06-01

The accuracy of saccades, as maintained by saccade adaptation, has been shown to be context dependent: able to have different amplitude movements to the same retinal displacement dependent on motor contexts such as orbital starting location. There is conflicting evidence as to whether purely visual cues also effect contextual saccade adaptation and, if so, what function this might serve. We tested what visual cues might evoke contextual adaptation. Over 5 experiments, 78 naive subjects made saccades to circularly moving targets, which stepped outward or inward during the saccade depending on target movement direction, speed, or color and shape. To test if the movement or context postsaccade were critical, we stopped the postsaccade target motion (experiment 4) or neutralized the contexts by equating postsaccade target speed to an intermediate value (experiment 5). We found contextual adaptation in all conditions except those defined by color and shape. We conclude that some, but not all, visual cues before the saccade are sufficient for contextual adaptation. We conjecture that this visual contextuality functions to allow for different motor states for different coordinated movement patterns, such as coordinated saccade and pursuit motor planning. Copyright © 2014 the American Physiological Society.

Cognition and balance control: does processing of explicit contextual cues of impending perturbations modulate automatic postural responses?

PubMed

Coelho, Daniel Boari; Teixeira, Luis Augusto

2017-08-01

Processing of predictive contextual cues of an impending perturbation is thought to induce adaptive postural responses. Cueing in previous research has been provided through repeated perturbations with a constant foreperiod. This experimental strategy confounds explicit predictive cueing with adaptation and non-specific properties of temporal cueing. Two experiments were performed to assess those factors separately. To perturb upright balance, the base of support was suddenly displaced backwards in three amplitudes: 5, 10 and 15 cm. In Experiment 1, we tested the effect of cueing the amplitude of the impending postural perturbation by means of visual signals, and the effect of adaptation to repeated exposures by comparing block versus random sequences of perturbation. In Experiment 2, we evaluated separately the effects of cueing the characteristics of an impending balance perturbation and cueing the timing of perturbation onset. Results from Experiment 1 showed that the block sequence of perturbations led to increased stability of automatic postural responses, and modulation of magnitude and onset latency of muscular responses. Results from Experiment 2 showed that only the condition cueing timing of platform translation onset led to increased balance stability and modulation of onset latency of muscular responses. Conversely, cueing platform displacement amplitude failed to induce any effects on automatic postural responses in both experiments. Our findings support the interpretation of improved postural responses via optimized sensorimotor processes, at the same time that cast doubt on the notion that cognitive processing of explicit contextual cues advancing the magnitude of an impending perturbation can preset adaptive postural responses.

Inverse target- and cue-priming effects of masked stimuli.

PubMed

Mattler, Uwe

2007-02-01

The processing of a visual target that follows a briefly presented prime stimulus can be facilitated if prime and target stimuli are similar. In contrast to these positive priming effects, inverse priming effects (or negative compatibility effects) have been found when a mask follows prime stimuli before the target stimulus is presented: Responses are facilitated after dissimilar primes. Previous studies on inverse priming effects examined target-priming effects, which arise when the prime and the target stimuli share features that are critical for the response decision. In contrast, 3 experiments of the present study demonstrate inverse priming effects in a nonmotor cue-priming paradigm. Inverse cue-priming effects exhibited time courses comparable to inverse target-priming effects. Results suggest that inverse priming effects do not arise from specific processes of the response system but follow from operations that are more general.

Mouth and Voice: A Relationship between Visual and Auditory Preference in the Human Superior Temporal Sulcus

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Cortex in and around the human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is known to be critical for speech perception. The pSTS responds to both the visual modality (especially biological motion) and the auditory modality (especially human voices). Using fMRI in single subjects with no spatial smoothing, we show that visual and auditory selectivity are linked. Regions of the pSTS were identified that preferred visually presented moving mouths (presented in isolation or as part of a whole face) or moving eyes. Mouth-preferring regions responded strongly to voices and showed a significant preference for vocal compared with nonvocal sounds. In contrast, eye-preferring regions did not respond to either vocal or nonvocal sounds. The converse was also true: regions of the pSTS that showed a significant response to speech or preferred vocal to nonvocal sounds responded more strongly to visually presented mouths than eyes. These findings can be explained by environmental statistics. In natural environments, humans see visual mouth movements at the same time as they hear voices, while there is no auditory accompaniment to visual eye movements. The strength of a voxel's preference for visual mouth movements was strongly correlated with the magnitude of its auditory speech response and its preference for vocal sounds, suggesting that visual and auditory speech features are coded together in small populations of neurons within the pSTS. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans interacting face to face make use of auditory cues from the talker's voice and visual cues from the talker's mouth to understand speech. The human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a brain region known to be important for speech perception, is complex, with some regions responding to specific visual stimuli and others to specific auditory stimuli. Using BOLD fMRI, we show that the natural statistics of human speech, in which voices co-occur with mouth movements, are reflected in the neural architecture of the pSTS. Different pSTS regions prefer visually presented faces containing either a moving mouth or moving eyes, but only mouth-preferring regions respond strongly to voices. PMID:28179553

Mouth and Voice: A Relationship between Visual and Auditory Preference in the Human Superior Temporal Sulcus.

PubMed

Zhu, Lin L; Beauchamp, Michael S

2017-03-08

Cortex in and around the human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is known to be critical for speech perception. The pSTS responds to both the visual modality (especially biological motion) and the auditory modality (especially human voices). Using fMRI in single subjects with no spatial smoothing, we show that visual and auditory selectivity are linked. Regions of the pSTS were identified that preferred visually presented moving mouths (presented in isolation or as part of a whole face) or moving eyes. Mouth-preferring regions responded strongly to voices and showed a significant preference for vocal compared with nonvocal sounds. In contrast, eye-preferring regions did not respond to either vocal or nonvocal sounds. The converse was also true: regions of the pSTS that showed a significant response to speech or preferred vocal to nonvocal sounds responded more strongly to visually presented mouths than eyes. These findings can be explained by environmental statistics. In natural environments, humans see visual mouth movements at the same time as they hear voices, while there is no auditory accompaniment to visual eye movements. The strength of a voxel's preference for visual mouth movements was strongly correlated with the magnitude of its auditory speech response and its preference for vocal sounds, suggesting that visual and auditory speech features are coded together in small populations of neurons within the pSTS. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans interacting face to face make use of auditory cues from the talker's voice and visual cues from the talker's mouth to understand speech. The human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a brain region known to be important for speech perception, is complex, with some regions responding to specific visual stimuli and others to specific auditory stimuli. Using BOLD fMRI, we show that the natural statistics of human speech, in which voices co-occur with mouth movements, are reflected in the neural architecture of the pSTS. Different pSTS regions prefer visually presented faces containing either a moving mouth or moving eyes, but only mouth-preferring regions respond strongly to voices. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/372697-12$15.00/0.

ARI Basic Research Program FY 1999-2000

DTIC Science & Technology

1999-06-01

visual cues, reinforcement, and instruction concerning abstract , general rules. In our future research, we plan to examine the learning of novel...Watch, • Graduate student apprenticeship program - Consortium Research Fellows Program- with the Consortium of Metropolitan Washington Universities...do learn complex rules involving different levels of abstraction when given sufficient specific examples but that they also benefit from explicit