Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 1071–1077 Thursday Evening
effects of positioning objects for action; and (3) whether the surface
properties of objects mediated performance. There was greater recovery
from extinction for objects used frequently together, along
with effects produced by objects that could be used together. There
were also positive effects of correctly positioning objects for action.
There were no effects of surface information on the benefit of reporting
both members of a pair. The results provide positive evidence
for an effect on attention of affordances based on objects falling in
plausible colocations for action. Such affordances may also be influenced
by the frequency with which objects are used together and can
be generated from edge-based representations of objects.
(1071)
Action Planning Effects in Visual Motion Perception. OLIVER
LINDEMANN & HAROLD BEKKERING, Radboud University Nijmegen—In
this study, we investigated the effects of action planning
on visual perception. Participants prepared to grasp an X-shaped object
along one of the two diagonals. Action execution was triggered
by a visual go-signal, which was either a dot or a bar in the same orientation
as the to-be-grasped diagonal (grip consistent) or orthogonal
to it (grip inconsistent). Experiment 1 showed shorter response latencies
for grip-consistent stimuli. In Experiment 2, an object manipulation
task was introduced. That is, participants prepared to grasp the
X-shaped object and to turn it afterward clockwise or counterclockwise.
Action execution was triggered by stable stimuli or by stimulus
rotations in different directions. Interestingly, in this experiment the
perception of visual motions consistent with the prepared object manipulation
was facilitated—that is, shorter response latencies toward
compatible stimulus rotations. These findings emphasize the anticipation
of sensory consequences in action planning and its effects on
visual perception.
(1072)
Action Affordances and Inhibition of Return. HELEN M. MORGAN
& STEVEN P. TIPPER, University of Wales, Bangor—In complex environments,
it is important that action is directed toward relevant information.
Inhibition of return (IOR) prevents attention from returning
to previously examined items, in order to encourage the examination
of new information. Research has shown that IOR can operate according
to an object-based frame of reference. In addition, viewing an
object can activate motor representations of the action associated with
that object (e.g., Tucker & Ellis, 1998). The present study focused on
whether action-related properties of task-irrelevant objects can influence
IOR. Attention was oriented to either the affording or the nonaffording
side of an object via an exogenous cue. Then a target requiring
a rapid localization response appeared at the cued or the
uncued location. IOR was greater when the response was compatible
with the action afforded by the object. This provides further evidence
for the idea that IOR acts on object-based representations.
(1073)
Inhibition of Return Following Response Execution and Observation.
TIMOTHY N. WELSH, University of Calgary, JIM LYONS, McMaster
University, DANIEL J. WEEKS, Simon Fraser University, J. GREG
ANSON, University of Otago, ROMEO CHUA, University of British
Columbia, & DIGBY ELLIOTT, McMaster University—Inhibition of
return (IOR) refers to the slowing of a response to a target that appears
at the same location as a preceding event. Studies of IOR have generally
investigated the behavior of a single individual responding to the
location of a target that appears at the same location as the previous
target or an unrelated cue (within-person IOR). Recently, we found
that IOR is also present when participants move to the location to
which their partner has just moved (between-person IOR) (Welsh
et al., in press). In agreement with the idea that observation of any part
of the response can cause between-person IOR, the present research
revealed that between-person IOR was evoked when the observer’s
view of their partner’s response was limited to the end point (Experiment
1) or a middle section (Experiment 2) of the movement trajec-
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tory. Implications for interactive behavior and possible underlying
neural mechanisms will be discussed.
(1074)
The Time Course of Object- and Location-Based IOR in Static
Displays. JIM E. MCAULIFFE, ANNAMARIA T. SOVIERO, &
MICHELLE WINDSOR, Lakehead University—People react more
slowly to targets at cued rather than uncued locations when the time
between the cue and target (SOA) is greater than 300 msec. This phenomenon
is known as inhibition of return (IOR). Greater IOR effects
have been found when an object is cued at a location than when only
a location is cued. This result has been used to support the notion that
IOR operates on separate object- and location-based frames of reference.
To dissociate the two frames of reference, we examined the time
course of each component using five different SOAs (400, 700, 1,000,
2,000, and 3,500 msec). Although object- and location-based IOR declined
over the range of SOAs, we failed to find evidence for separate
time courses for object- and location-based IOR. The results further
define the boundary conditions for realizing separate object- and
location-based IOR in static displays.
(1075)
The Semantic Attentional Blink in Bilingual Individuals. GUY L.
LACROIX, NORMAN SEGALOWITZ, & JENELLE JOB, Concordia
University—The mechanisms underlying the semantic attentional blink
(SAB; Barnard et al., 2004) were explored in two RSVP experiments
involving bilingual participants (L1, English; L2, French) and sets of
English and French words. In Experiment 1, participants identified a
single categorically defined target embedded in filler words. On experimental
trials, a distractor from a related category preceded the target.
The results revealed an SAB, but paradoxically, it was smaller for
L2 than for L1. Follow-up regression analyses revealed that magnitude
of the L2 SAB was related to the efficiency of L2 lexical access.
Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, except that participants
had to identify a first target from one category and determine whether
a second target from a related category was present or absent. The preliminary
results are similar to those of Experiment 1. Our experiments
suggest that ballistic word meaning processing may play an important
role in generating SABs.
(1076)
Negative Priming Is Dependent Upon the Preceding Trial. TODD A.
KAHAN, Bates College, JAMES H. NEELY, SUNY, Albany, & KEITH
B. HENGEN, Bates College—In negative priming, RTs are slower to
stimuli if the stimuli were previously ignored. However, in the Stroop
paradigm, when a large proportion of trials contain Stroop-congruent
stimuli, Neumann, Schooler, Caplan, and Roberts (2002, this meeting)
found positive rather than negative priming. To determine
whether this reversal reflects global-list or trial-by-trial processing
changes, we used prime–probe couplets and put list-context and priortrial
effects “in opposition.” In a list with a small percentage of
Stroop-congruent trials (which should yield negative priming), when
the probe on the immediately preceding trial was Stroop-congruent,
positive priming was now obtained; when it was Stroop-incongruent,
negative priming occurred. This result disfavors explanations based
on global-list processing changes.
(1077)
Perceptual and Working Memory Load Effects on Flanker Task
Distractor Processing. DAVID GILSDORF & PAUL HAERICH, Loma
Linda University—Perceptual loading and working memory loading are
suggested to have different effects on attentional selectivity and the
likelihood of processing a distracting stimulus. In this theory, increasing
perceptual load is associated with a decrease in distractor processing,
whereas increasing working memory load is associated with the opposite,
an increase in distractor processing. An experiment was conducted
using an orthogonal design in which three levels of working memory
load and three levels of perceptual load were varied within subjects. Par-