ABSTRACT Visual working memory (VWM) relies on a distributed cortical network. Yet, the extent to which individual cortical areas, like early visual cortex and intraparietal sulcus, are essential to VWM storage remains debated. Here, we reanalyze key datasets from two independent labs to address three topics at the forefront of current-day VWM research: Resiliency of mnemonic representations against

ABSTRACT Chota, S., & Van der Stigchel, S. (2021). Dynamic and flexible transformation and reallocation of visual working memory representations (this issue); Iamshchinina, P., Christophel, T. B., Gayet, S., & Rademaker, R. L. (2021). Essential considerations for exploring visual working memory storage in the human brain (this issue); Lorenc, E. S., & Sreenivasa, K. K. (2021). Reframing the debate:

ABSTRACT Eye contact often elicits a smiling response. We investigated whether an individual’s awareness that the recipient perceives their direct gaze during eye contact has an influence on this smiling response. Participants wore glasses with either clear or dark lenses (preventing the other person from seeing their eyes). Measurements of electromyographic activity from the zygomatic and periocular

ABSTRACT We examined whether the perceived similarity between two individuals can shape social attention shifts during a joint-action task. Initially, a confederate was described to a naïve participant through a personality profile in order to manipulate the degree of attitude similarity between them, and they later performed a joint-action task involving alternated aiming movements towards peripheral

ABSTRACT One of the main challenges that our visual system must resolve is to judge the current position of an occluded moving object. This computation is known as motion extrapolation (ME), and it is required to perform several tasks: for example, judging when an occluded moving target collides with a given cue or whether it reappeared in time. These tasks may easily be encountered in more ecological

ABSTRACT Colour often has emotional connotations, with red associated with negativity and green with positivity. Some suggest that these associations automatically influence the categorization of affective stimuli presented in their context. If so, such effects should occur rapidly, remaining robust under temporal constraints. Here we examined whether these associations influence affective judgments

ABSTRACT Recent research on change blindness phenomenon revealed contradictory findings about scene-object relationship. These discrepant results might be stemming from procedure and task constraints. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effect of the type of paradigm on change blindness phenomenon during the natural scene viewing in the frame of high-level scene perception. For this purpose, we

ABSTRACT Previous studies have found a female advantage in face recognition ability. The present study sought to replicate this finding in a large sample of 343 Danish psychology students using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT). Furthermore, we examined whether a potential female advantage could be explained by more efficient holistic processing indexed

ABSTRACT Expert radiologists can quickly extract a basic “gist” understanding of a medical image following less than a second exposure, leading to above-chance diagnostic classification of images. It is currently unclear whether this pattern of results is applicable to pathology, another medical imaging domain demanding visual diagnostic interpretation. To further characterize the rapid interpretation

ABSTRACT Eye gaze is a fundamental element of social interaction. We investigated the role of gaze direction during video conversations between friends, colleagues or strangers. Participants watched short video cuts of a target person engaging in direct gaze, averted gaze or a mixture of both (gaze direction) while listening to another, invisible, person recounting a neutral or negative autobiographical

ABSTRACT Previous research raised the counterintuitive hypothesis that searching for multiple potential targets leads to increased incidental encoding of distractors. Are these previously reported findings due to increased visual working memory (VWM) engagement, or less precise target templates? In four experiments, we examined the effect of VWM load during visual search on incidental encoding of distractors

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to determine whether attentional prioritization of visual stimuli associated with punishment transfers across conceptual knowledge independently of physical features. Participants performed a Stroop task in which words were presented individually. These stimuli consisted of four pairs of synonyms selected such that the two words of each pair have both a strong semantic

ABSTRACT The contextual scene in which an object appears may allow it to be recognized with lower resolution. A contextual scene typically contains multiple potential sources of information that may facilitate such recognition including the contextual scene category, the location of the object within the scene and the relative size compared to nearby objects. Here, we assessed the contribution of different

ABSTRACT Eye contact enhances memory for spoken words. The present research examined if a similar effect occurs when one observes rather than experiences eye contact, and whether the effect extends to situations where physical presence is eliminated (i.e., video-conferencing). In two studies a live investigator read words aloud while making eye contact with a participant, their partner, or neither

ABSTRACT Cross-cultural psychologists have widely discussed “gaze avoidance” as a sociocultural norm to describe reduced mutual gaze in East Asians (EAs) compared to Western Caucasians (WCs). Supportive evidence is primarily based on self-reports and video recordings of face-to-face interactions, but more objective techniques that can investigate the micro-dynamics of gaze are scarce. The current study

ABSTRACT Group interactions influence human social and cognitive function. However, the non-verbal vehicles of that influence remain poorly understood. To address this question, here we present a taxonomy of interactive non-verbal attentional gaze behaviours – social referencing, participation, and mutual engagement – which we captured and characterized during live three-person interactions. Experiment

ABSTRACT Reading acquisition has been suggested to drive the lateralization of the face processing system to the right cerebral hemisphere. To investigate whether this developmental co-dependency has a behavioural cost, at least in the short run, we tested whether learning to read reduced face recognition ability. In a longitudinal design, 82 children (5–7 years) were tested twice, at the beginning

ABSTRACT Salient objects, such as abrupt-onsets, can capture attention even when nearly invisible. While the influence of explicit factors on such capture (e.g., task-goals) has been extensively investigated, the role of implicit control settings (e.g., probability cueing) is relatively unknown. We examined whether probability cueing affects attentional capture by masked onset cues. The target was

ABSTRACT Preview benefit refers to faster search for a target when a subset of distractors is seen prior to the search display. We investigated whether reward modulates this effect. Participants identified a target among non-targets on each trial. On “preview” trials, placeholders occupied half the search array positions prior to the onset of the full array. On “non-preview” trials, no placeholders

ABSTRACT The own-group bias (OGB) in face recognition refers to the finding that in-group faces are recognized with greater accuracy than out-group faces. Current literature emphasizes the importance of in-group characteristics for the OGB. Across two experiments we explored the importance of both in-group and out-group characteristics. Using an old/new task, Experiment 1 categorized faces by university

ABSTRACT In her recent Opinion, Xu argues that visual cortex is non-essential for visual working memory (WM) storage. In our response, we highlight some inconsistencies that undermine Xu’s claims and strengthen the notion that visual regions play a critical role in visual WM. Moreover, we contend that this framing of the debate ignores the larger point that WM storage is unlikely to be the purview

ABSTRACT The article by Luck, Gaspelin, Folk, Remington and Theeuwes (2021 Luck, S. J., Gaspelin, N., Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Theeuwes, J. (2021). Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition, 29(1), 1–21.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Visual Cognition, 29, 1–21) attempts to integrate the views currently defended by prominent

ABSTRACT Human unfamiliar face matching is error-prone, but some research suggests matching to multiple-image arrays instead of single images may yield improvements. Here, high or low variability arrays containing one, two, and three images, and a target image from the high and low variability image sets were displayed. Arrays were presented simultaneously or sequentially, and the target image was

ABSTRACT Research on facial attractiveness and face recognition has produced contradictory results that we believe are rooted in methodological limitations. Three experiments evaluated the hypothesis that facial attractiveness and face recognition are positively and linearly related. We also expected that social status would moderate the attractiveness effect. Attractive faces were recognized with

ABSTRACT Memory is facilitated by reflecting upon, or revisiting, the environment in which information was encoded. We investigated these “context reinstatement” (CR) techniques to improve the effectiveness of facial composites – visual likenesses of a perpetrator’s face constructed by eyewitnesses. Participant-constructors viewed a face and, after a one-day-delay, revisited (Physical CR) or recalled

ABSTRACT Spatial distractor processing is impacted by the availability of spatial attention. What is less clear is the extent to which temporal selection alters such spatial selection, when considering response selection. The attentional blink (AB) paradigm is well-suited for studying this question. In this study, we adapted the AB task to measure response times. In Experiment 1, participants identified

ABSTRACT In the target article, Luck et al. [2020. Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition. doi:10.1080/13506285.2020.1848949] argue for progress that has been made in the attentional capture debate, offering points of agreement in addition to highlighting specific outstanding issues that could contribute to further resolution. This commentary questions the most fundamental

ABSTRACT In their recent review, Xu critically assesses the role of early visual areas in VWM storage in the light of new fMRI-decoding studies that seemingly support the sensory storage account. We would like to extend the discussion by highlighting recent findings which suggest that early visual areas can dynamically transform active VWM representations e.g., to activity silent or long-term memory

ABSTRACT Previous research supports the categorical perception of faces on dimensions including emotion, identity, and gender. Two experiments using standard paradigms investigated whether facial disfigurement forms another perceptual category. In the Identification task, faces were presented in varying degrees of disfigurement for a simple disfigured / non-disfigured decision. As degree of disfigurement

ABSTRACT It is assumed that stimuli and responses to them are integrated in an event file and further when all or some of these features repeat the previous event-file will be retrieved. The Binding and Retrieval in Action Control framework (Frings, C., Hommel, B., Koch, I., Rothermund, K., Dignath, D., Giesen, C., Kiesel, A., Kunde, W., Mayr, S., Moeller, B., Möller, M., Pfister, R., & Philipp, A

ABSTRACT Attention can be oriented in both space and time in response to trial-variant cues when, say, their colour predicts the spatial location and their shape predicts cue-to-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), producing spatial and temporal cueing effects [faster response times (RTs) on validly- than invalidly-cued trials]. We investigated whether spatial and temporal cueing effects are found

ABSTRACT Studies suggest looming motion represents a special class of attentional capture stimulus due to behavioural urgency: the need to act upon objects moving toward us in an environment. In particular, one theory suggests that faster reaction times to targets cued by looming relative to receding motion are driven by post-attentional, motor-priming processes beyond the attentional capture effects

ABSTRACT Object substitution masking (OSM) involves reduced perceptibility by a briefly lingering mask despite no spatial target-mask overlap. Two primary accounts for this phenomenon posit differences in object representation in visual short-term memory (VSTM). In the object substitution account a single representation resides in VSTM: a lone mask when attention is not focused on the target, and a

ABSTRACT In her commentary, Xu [2020. Revisit once more the sensory storage account of visual working memory. Visual Cognition, 28(5–8), 433–446] admonishes the reader that “To have a full understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying VWM [visual working memory], both behavioral and neural evidence needs to be taken into account. This is a must, and not a choice, for any study that attempts

ABSTRACT Human unfamiliar face matching is error-prone, but some research suggests matching to multiple-image arrays instead of single images may yield improvements. Here, high or low variability arrays containing one, two, and three images, and a target image from the high and low variability image sets were displayed. Arrays were presented simultaneously or sequentially, and the target image was

ABSTRACT Debate centres on the difficulty to distinguish precisely whether cognitive or perceptual load determines performance in tasks such as the Halford Graphical Relational Complexity Task (HGRCT). In this task, visual information is presented, and participants are asked to perform a series of mental operations that require working memory (WM) to complete the task. This study compared performance

ABSTRACT Debate centres on the difficulty to distinguish precisely whether cognitive or perceptual load determines performance in tasks such as the Halford Graphical Relational Complexity Task (HGRCT). In this task, visual information is presented, and participants are asked to perform a series of mental operations that require working memory (WM) to complete the task. This study compared performance

ABSTRACT For over 25 years, researchers have debated whether physically salient stimuli capture attention in an automatic manner, independent of the observer’s goals, or whether the capture of attention depends on the match between a stimulus and the observer’s task set. Recent evidence suggests an intermediate position in which salient stimuli automatically produce a priority signal, but the capture

ABSTRACT Adults are slower to judge the number of dots they can see when an avatar sees a different number of dots. This consistency effect is interpreted as evidence of implicit mentalising – adults track others’ visual perspective even when it is task-irrelevant. The submentalising account, however, argues the effect reflects domain-general attentional orienting. In Experiment 1, using a real human

ABSTRACT Inhibition of return (IOR), an inhibitory aftereffect of attentional orienting, usually reveals itself in slower responses to targets appearing at previously attended locations in spatial cueing tasks. Many of the neural substrates underlying visual working memory are also closely linked to attention. The present study examined whether the contents held in working memory interfere with IOR

ABSTRACT Humans remember the faces of members of their own race more accurately than the faces of members of other races, in an effect known as the own-race bias. Previous studies indicate that patterns of eye fixations play an important role in this bias, but the exact nature of their influence on face memory is not clear. The present study examined the role of eye fixations on memory for racially

ABSTRACT We explored colour connotations in blind and sighted observers using the semantic differential technique. Participants rated colour terms on 17 semantic scales. At the group level, blind participants were similar to sighted on some scales, but had weaker colour associations on others, with significant individual differences. Two, in particular, produced ratings that were very similar to the

ABSTRACT It is assumed that stimuli and responses to them are integrated in an event file and further when all or some of these features repeat the previous event-file will be retrieved. The Binding and Retrieval in Action Control framework (Frings, C., Hommel, B., Koch, I., Rothermund, K., Dignath, D., Giesen, C., Kiesel, A., Kunde, W., Mayr, S., Moeller, B., Möller, M., Pfister, R., & Philipp, A

ABSTRACT Previous research supports the categorical perception of faces on dimensions including emotion, identity, and gender. Two experiments using standard paradigms investigated whether facial disfigurement forms another perceptual category. In the Identification task, faces were presented in varying degrees of disfigurement for a simple disfigured / non-disfigured decision. As degree of disfigurement

ABSTRACT The extent to which syntactic co-activation occurs during natural reading is currently unknown. Here, we measured the eye movements of Welsh-English bilinguals and English monolinguals as they read English sentences. Target words were manipulated to create nonwords that were consistent or inconsistent with the rules of Welsh soft mutation (a morphosyntactic process that alters the initial

ABSTRACT Serial dependence refers to the assimilative pull on a judgement response to a current stimulus from that given to the preceding stimulus and has been demonstrated in low- and higher-level perceptual judgements. We tested whether serial dependence in attractiveness judgements is limited by perceptual categorization by measuring serial dependence in within-category attractiveness judgements

ABSTRACT Previewing distractors facilitates efficient detection of a target appearing subsequently with any remaining distractors. Visual marking, specifically, top-down inhibition of old items, is induced by the inhibitory template that forms while previewing old items, and continues to be maintained during the target search. Extant studies have examined inhibitory template characteristics using additional

ABSTRACT In this study, we hypothesized that the emotional cues of conveyer’s body posture play a role in eliminating ambiguity of facial expressions. The participants were presented with faces with emotionally congruent and incongruent body posture or without a posture (no-context) for a brief time (33 ms) in Experiment 1. The results showed that congruent pairs led to higher accuracy of facial emotion

ABSTRACT Visual search and working memory (WM) are tightly linked cognitive processes. Theories of attentional selection assume that WM plays an important role in top-down guided visual search. However, computational models of visual search do not model WM. Here we show that an existing model of WM can utilize its mechanisms of rapid plasticity and pattern completion to perform visual search. In this

ABSTRACT Working memory (WM) is important for guiding behaviour, but not always for the next possible action. Here we define a WM item that is currently relevant for guiding behaviour as the functionally “active” item; whereas items maintained in WM, but not immediately relevant to behaviour, are defined as functionally “latent”. Traditional neurophysiological theories of WM proposed that content is

ABSTRACT Recent work has highlighted the role of early visual areas in visual working memory (VWM) storage and put forward a sensory storage account of VWM. Using a distractor interference paradigm, however, we previoulsy showed that the contribution of early visual areas to VWM storage may not be essential. Instead, higher cortical regions such as the posterior parietal cortex may play a more significant

ABSTRACT The multi-dimensional face-space metaphor has been a powerful explanatory force in face processing. Here, its predictive powers are considered for ratings of attractiveness, distinctiveness and sexual dimorphism using two different actualizations of face-space. One face-space was based on similarity ratings between pairs of faces and the other on facial feature eccentricity, both based on

ABSTRACT When people recognize faces, they normally move their eyes so that their first fixation is in the optimal location for efficient perceptual processing. This location is found just below the centre-point between the eyes. This type of attentional bias could be partly innate, but also an inevitable developmental process that aids our ability to recognize faces. We investigated whether a group

ABSTRACT The functioning of spatial attention and its effects on visual processing are typically studied using chronometric and accuracy measures of behaviour. However, a growing body of literature has studied the attentional repulsion effect (ARE). Simply put, when attention is focused on one location in the visual field, stimuli appearing nearby the attended location are perceived as being located

ABSTRACT Images of moving objects presented on computer screens may be perceived as animate or inanimate. A simple hypothesis, consistent with much research evidence, is that objects are perceived as inanimate if there is a visible external contact from another object immediately prior to the onset of motion, and as animate if that is not the case. Evidence is reported that is not consistent with that

ABSTRACT Mental chronometry has often been used to provide a temporal comparison between executed and imagined movements, with smaller discrepancies indicating more accurate image production and better imagery performance. In this study, we examined the importance of retinal and extra-retinal information in the performance of simple, sequential movements. After physical practice of four activities

ABSTRACT Whether colour information contributes to the process of face recognition remains controversial. We examine this question here by evaluating the face recognition performance of individuals who are colour blind. Specifically, we compared the performance profile of colour blind and matched control individuals on a colour face recognition task where shape information was progressively degraded

ABSTRACT This paper is a study of visual metaphor processing in political cartoons, while secondary task reaction time was used to assess resource allocation when processing three types of visual metaphors, namely juxtapositions, fusions and replacements. Participants viewed a series of visual metaphors. At various intervals, they were invited to push a button whenever a probe appeared. Reaction times

ABSTRACT When two motions appear to be causally related, the spatiotemporal features of motions are sometimes distorted in order to increase the consistency with causal impressions. Here, in four experiments, we tested if varying the speed of an object A could affect the judged speed of an object B that appeared to be causally related to A. Participants were presented with classic launching stimuli

ABSTRACT Humans are quick to notice if an object is unstable. Does that assessment require attention or can instability serve as a preattentive feature that can guide the deployment of attention? This paper describes a series of visual search experiments, designed to address this question. Experiment 1 shows that less stable images among more stable images are found more efficiently than more stable