Previous behavioral studies have suggested that the automaticity of face recognition depends on familiarity. We sought converging evidence for this claim using electrophysiological measures. In Experiment 1, participants first rated their familiarity with 6 male celebrities. They then performed dual tasks in which Task 1 required a tone/noise discrimination. For...
In rapid serial visual presentation, identification of the second of two targets is impaired when it closely follows the first target. This phenomenon is known as the attentional blink (AB) effect. Awh and his colleagues (2004) found that face discrimination was immune to AB when performed together with a digit...
In rapid serial visual presentation, identification of the second of two targets is impaired when it closely follows the first target. This attentional blink (AB) effect suggests limited capacity in processing successive visual stimuli in working memory. Awh et al. (2004) found that face identity Target 2 was immune to...
Perea, Vergara-Martínez, and Gomez (2015) claimed a late locus of case mixing in visual word recognition. In their masking priming study, participants performed a lexical-decision task on an uppercase target, which was preceded by an identity or unrelated prime (e.g., “plane” or “music” followed by “PLANE”, respectively) in lowercase or...
Visual working memory (VWM) allows us temporarily hold images in our minds and manipulate them. As an example, you can remember a face you just saw, or try to imagine how a room would look with a different arrangement of furniture. Previous studies have shown that individuals with low VWM...
Previous studies have suggested that negatively valenced faces (e.g., angry faces) automatically capture attention away from faces with other emotional valences (e.g., happy faces and neutral faces). The present study evaluated two experiments with age-related differences: the first assessed recognition memory for pictures of faces and how it is modulated...
Previous studies have shown that both younger and older adults exhibit similar brain activity while anticipating monetary gain but older adults exhibit less brain activity comparing to younger adults while anticipating monetary loss. In Anderson et al.’s (2011) study, they found that visual search was slower with a salient, task-irrelevant...
Alexithymia is a trait where individuals have difficulty identifying feeling and finding a word to express emotion. Some studies have suggested that this deficit is due to dissociation (repression), or an inability to perceive emotions, whereas others argued that the deficit is due to suppression of emotional information after it...
Previous studies have suggested that LEET words can automatically activate lexical information because of their physical similarity to real words (e.g., Perea, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2008). Lien, Allen, and Martin (in press) recently used electrophysiological measures (event-related brain potentials; ERPs) to show similar lexical/semantic activation (based on the N400 effect,...
Our responses are faster when the response key location is compatible with target location than when it is incompatible, even when target location was irrelevant to the task (the Simon effect). This effect is observed even when two people shared the task (e.g., one pressing the left key and the...
Lien, Ruthruff, and Johnston (2010) reported that the attentional control system is able to rapidly and fully switch between different search settings (e.g., red to green), with no carryover. The present study examined whether such impressive flexibility is possible even with more complicated switches, namely singleton search and the feature...
The present study examined whether semantic activation for words occurs by encoding whole word shape in addition to individual letters. We used LEET stimuli, where digits were used as parts of words, such as “R34DING” instead of “READING”. Previous studies have suggested that LEET stimuli are encoded in a letter-like...
Previous studies have suggested that negatively valenced faces (e.g., angry faces) automatically capture attention away from faces with other emotional valences (e.g., happy faces and neutral faces). The present study evaluated whether this attentional bias enhances memory of the negative emotional faces. Participants first performed a gender discrimination task on...
Lien, Ruthruff, and Johnston (2010) reported that the attentional control system is able to rapidly and fully switch between different search settings (e.g., red to green), with no carryover. The present study examined whether such impressive flexibility is possible even with more complicated switches, namely singleton search and the feature...
The present study examined whether semantic activation for words occurs by encoding whole word shape in addition to individual letters. We used LEET stimuli, where digits were used as parts of words, such as “R34DING” instead of “READING”. Previous studies have suggested that LEET stimuli are encoded in a letter-like...
Some studies have found that responses are faster when the orientation of an object’s graspable part corresponds with the response location than when it does not (i.e., the object-based correspondence effect). We examined Goslin et al.’s (2012) claim that the effect is the result of object-based attention (visual-action binding). As...
Stimuli signaling threat are often processed especially rapidly (e.g., Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002).
Similarly, some studies have suggested that expressions of fear have a strong pull on our attention
because they signal threat (e.g., Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006; Shaw, Lien, Ruthruff, & Allen, in press;
Vuilleumier & Schwartz,...
It has been claimed that stimuli signaling threat are processed rapidly and
draw our attention (e.g., Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002). Similarly, it has been
argued that expressions of fear have a strong pull on our attention because
they signal threat (e.g., Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006; Vuilleumier &
Schwartz,...