Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 4071–4078 Saturday Noon
of de Fockert et al., if a nontarget famous face matched the target
name of that celebrity on the subsequent trial, a significant negative
priming effect was obtained, irrespective of whether the concurrent
memory load was low or high.
(4071)
Strategy Effects Counteract Distractor Inhibition: Negative Priming
With Constantly Absent Probe Distractors. CHRISTIAN FRINGS,
DIRK WENTURA, & HUBERT D. ZIMMER, Saarland University—
It is an accepted, albeit puzzling, finding that negative priming (NP)
hinges on the presence of distractors in probe displays. In three experiments
without probe distractors, we found evidence that responsebiasing
processes based on the contingency between prime and probe
displays may have caused this finding. It is argued that it is of help,
in standard NP experiments, to process the prime distractor for
preparing the response to the probe target. If this contingency was removed
(Experiments 2 and 3), NP without probe distractors was reliably
observed, whereas no NP emerged if the design comprised the
typical contingency (Experiment 1). Hence, the data suggest that the
absence of NP, which is usually observed under these conditions, may
have been due to a contingency-based component.
(4072)
The Time Course of Visual Attention Triggered by Temporal Expectation.
KEN KIHARA & NAOYUKI OSAKA, Kyoto University—The
purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that an expectation of
a target onset triggers visual attention before its appearance. Using an
attentional blink paradigm, we investigated whether processing of a
following target (T2) interferes with that of a preceding target (T1)
when the time of T2 onset can be expected. Experiment 1, in which
T1 and T2 tasks were different, did not show the interference. Experiment
2, however, in which both tasks were the same, showed the interference
within 280 msec before T2 onset. Experiment 3 indicated
that even if subjects learned the timing of T2 onset only implicitly, the
interference occurred. In Experiment 4, the processing of an auditory
T1 was not interfered with by a visual T2. These results suggest that
the expectation of target onset triggers attentional processing in a
task- and modality-specific manner about 300 msec prior to target
onset.
(4073)
Age Effects on Task-Switching Over the Telephone. PATRICIA A.
TUN & MARGIE E. LACHMAN, Brandeis University—We have developed
a version of a task-switching test that can be administered
over the telephone, allowing for testing of a wide range of participants,
including those who are unable or unwilling to come into the laboratory.
Data are presented from a large sample of over 900 adults ranging
in age from 30 to 85 years. In accord with testing by computer in
the lab, response latencies reveal significant age-related increases in
reaction time for task-homogeneous blocks of baseline trials, for taskheterogeneous
blocks that require task-switching, and for task-switching
costs.
(4074)
Spatial Attention Can Enhance or Impair Visual Temporal Resolution.
JONGSOO BAEK, KEETAEK KHAM, & MIN-SHIK KIM,
Yonsei University—Transient attention impairs observers’ temporal
resolution at a cued location. This detrimental effect of attention was
ascribed to inhibitory connections from parvocellular to magnocellular
neurons (Yeshurun & Levy, 2003). Alternatively, the difficulty
might arise because attention facilitates the temporal summation of
two successive stimuli. The present study examined this hypothesis by
manipulating the luminance polarity of the stimuli against a background.
Attention should not modulate temporal summation of two
antipolar stimuli, because these are processed in separate channels. Indeed,
observers judged the temporal order of two successive stimuli
better for the cued location than for the uncued location when the
stimuli were opposite in polarity, but temporal resolution was worse
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for the cued location when the stimuli had the same polarity. Thus, attentional
effects on temporal resolution may be attributed to temporal
summation, rather than to parvocellular inhibition of magnocellular
activity.
(4075)
Perceptual Load Effects Inside and Outside the Focus of Attention.
DONALD J. TELLINGHUISEN, Calvin College—Studies (e.g., Lavie
& Cox, 1997) have shown that one irrelevant peripheral distractor presented
in a response competition paradigm could be ignored if a letter–
circle search array contained perceptually similar nontargets (high
perceptual load), but not if it contained dissimilar nontargets (low perceptual
load). I investigated the effects of two distractors, either response
compatible or response incompatible, presented either outside
the search array (one each to the left and right of the array) or inside
the search array (one each to the left and right of a central fixation).
Reaction time data indicated minimal effects of response-incompatible
distractors presented outside, regardless of perceptual load. Responseincompatible
distractors presented inside, however, yielded large interference
effects for low load searches, but not for high load searches.
Thus, two peripheral distractors were more readily ignored than one,
regardless of perceptual load. In addition, perceptual load modulated
the ability to ignore information, even within the focus of attention.
(4076)
Bottom-Up Priming of Top-Down Attentional Control Settings.
CHARLES L. FOLK, Villanova University, & ROGER W. REMING-
TON, Johns Hopkins University—According to the contingent attentional
capture hypothesis, the degree to which a stimulus produces involuntary
shifts of spatial attention depends on whether the defining
properties of the stimulus match top-down attentional control settings.
It has been assumed that these control settings reflect the voluntary
establishment and maintenance of a target “template” based on task
instructions. Here, we show that attentional control settings can be influenced
by stimulus-driven trial-to-trial priming. Subjects searched
for red or green color-singleton targets preceded by uninformative red
or green color-singleton cues. Although all cues produced evidence
of attentional capture (i.e., cuing effects), the magnitude of capture
was significantly greater when the color of the cue on trial n matched
the color of the target on trial n�1. These intertrial priming effects
suggest a stimulus-driven component to the establishment of topdown
attentional control settings.
(4077)
To See or Not to See: Attention Leads to Selection. ZHE CHEN, University
of Canterbury, & KYLE R. CAVE, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst—Object-based attention assumes that attending to an object
results in its selection, such that all its feature dimensions are
processed regardless of whether they are relevant or not. This view
was recently challenged by the finding that the extent of processing
of an irrelevant dimension depends on the status of the attended object.
When it is a target, the irrelevant dimensions are encoded. However,
when it is a distractor, only the relevant dimension is processed.
In several experiments, we employed a singleton paradigm to investigate
the relationship between attention and selection. Our results show
that attention and selection cannot be dissociated. The irrelevant dimension
of the singleton distractor was processed even when the location
of the target was invariant. We suggest that the discrepancies
between our results and those of prior research can be resolved by the
nature of the specific feature dimension that receives attention.
(4078)
Letter Processing in the Absence of Attention. JOEL LACHTER,
NASA Ames Research Center, & ERIC RUTHRUFF, University of New
Mexico—One of the most central, and most hotly debated, issues in
attention research concerns the depth to which unattended objects are
processed. Numerous studies have shown that irrelevant flanking
stimuli speed responses to compatible targets and slow responses to