Bodies capture attention when nothing is expected

Downing, Paul E.; Bray, David A.; Rogers, Jack C.; Childs, Claire

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.10.010

Cited by 150 publications

(105 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Previous work on inattentional blindness has shown that unexpected objects are more likely to be noticed if they are inherently or currently relevant to the observer (e.g., Calvillo & Jackson, 2014;Devue et al, 2009;Downing et al, 2004;Mack & Rock, 1998;Most et al, 2001). This is in line with a formal model of conscious perception that suggests that sensory input needs to overcome a certain threshold to enter awareness, which can be achieved by means of top-down amplification (Deheane et al, 2006;Ellis, 2001).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

“…It is often assumed that unexpected stimuli are processed on a preconscious level (Mack & Rock, 1998), and some of them succeed in overcoming the threshold of conscious perception due to an additional activating process (often described as "attentional capture"; Calvillo & Jackson, 2014;Devue, Laloyaux, Feyers, Theeuwes, & Brédart, 2009). This amplification is usually caused by the stimuli's current or general relevance, which is, for example, due to the observer's attentional set, the object's evolutionary relevance, its relevance to the observer's self, or its animacy (Calvillo & Jackson, 2014;Devue et al, 2009;Downing, Bray, Rogers, & Childs, 2004;Mack & Rock, 1998;Most et al, 2001;New & German, 2014). However, if an additional activation process causes unexpected objects to reach awareness (Deheane et al, 2006), it seems plausible that the consciousness threshold might be reached by processes other than the relevance-induced attentional capture.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Does semantic preactivation reduce inattentional blindness?

Kreitz

Schnuerch

Furley

et al. 2014

Atten Percept Psychophys

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We are susceptible to failures of awareness if a stimulus occurs unexpectedly and our attention is focused elsewhere. Such inattentional blindness is modulated by various parameters, including stimulus attributes, the observer's cognitive resources, and the observer's attentional set regarding the primary task. In three behavioral experiments with a total of 360 participants, we investigated whether mere semantic preactivation of the color of an unexpected object can reduce inattentional blindness. Neither explicitly mentioning the color several times before the occurrence of the unexpected stimulus nor priming the color more implicitly via colorrelated concepts could significantly reduce the susceptibility to inattentional blindness. Even putting the specific color concept in the main focus of the primary task did not lead to reduced inattentional blindness. Thus, we have shown that the failure to consciously perceive unexpected objects was not moderated by semantic preactivation of the objects' most prominent feature: its color. We suggest that this finding reflects the rather general principle that preactivations that are not motivationally relevant for one's current selection goals do not suffice to make an unexpected object overcome the threshold of awareness.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does semantic preactivation reduce inattentional blindness?

Kreitz

Schnuerch

Furley

et al. 2014

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…In particular, extrastriate body area (EBA) located at the posterior inferior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus (Downing et al, 2001) and the fusiform body area located at the ventro-medial temporal cortex (Peelen & Downing, 2007) display a highly selective activity for visual presentations of human bodies. These areas respond selectively to photorealistic depictions of whole human bodies or body parts, still images of human bodies or body parts extending to 'stick figures' and silhouettes, in preference to human faces, images of object parts and scenes (Downing et al, 2004;2006;Peelen & Downing, 2007;Urgesi, Berlucchi & Aglioti, 2004). Interestingly, recent findings have shown that visual body representations are crucially involved during esthetical appreciation of body stimuli (Freedberg & Gallese, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in the neural underpinning of perceiving and appreciating the beauty of the body

Cazzato

Mele

Urgesi

2014

Behavioural Brain Research

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Abstract:Although previous studies have suggested a certain degree of right hemisphere dominance for the response of extrastriate body area (EBA) during body perception, recent evidence suggests that this functional lateralization may differ between men and women. It is unknown, however, whether and how gender differences in body perception affect appreciating the beauty of the body conspecifics. Here, we applied five 10-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) pulses over left and right EBA and over the vertex to investigate the contribution of visual body representations in the two hemispheres on esthetic body perception. Female and male healthy volunteers were requested to judge how much they liked opposite-and same-gender virtual model bodies or to judge their weight, thus allowing us to compare the effects of right-and left-EBA rTMS on esthetic (liking) and perceptual (weight) judgments of human bodies. The analysis of the esthetic judgments provided by women revealed that right-EBA rTMS increased the liking judgments of opposite-vs. same-gender models, as compared to both vertex and left EBA stimulation.Conversely, in men the liking judgments of opposite-gender models decreased after virtual disruption of both right and left EBA as compared to vertex stimulation. Crucially, no significant effect was found for the perceptual task, showing that left-and right-EBA rTMS did not affect weight perception. Our results provide evidence of gender difference in the hemispheric asymmetry of EBA in the esthetic processing of human bodies, with women showing stronger right hemisphere dominance in comparison with men.

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“…Yet there has been comparatively little research into whether some semantic categories spontaneously recruit more attention than others, and whether such recruitment might be based on evolved prioritization. Most exceptions have studied attention and responses to highly social information such as faces (7,8), eye gaze (9), hand gestures (10), and stylized human outlines (stick drawings and silhouettes) (11).…”

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confidence: 99%

Category-specific attention for animals reflects ancestral priorities, not expertise

New

Cosmides

Tooby

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

529

448

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Visual attention mechanisms are known to select information to process based on current goals, personal relevance, and lowerlevel features. Here we present evidence that human visual attention also includes a high-level category-specialized system that monitors animals in an ongoing manner. Exposed to alternations between complex natural scenes and duplicates with a single change (a change-detection paradigm), subjects are substantially faster and more accurate at detecting changes in animals relative to changes in all tested categories of inanimate objects, even vehicles, which they have been trained for years to monitor for sudden life-or-death changes in trajectory. This animate monitoring bias could not be accounted for by differences in lower-level visual characteristics, how interesting the target objects were, experience, or expertise, implicating mechanisms that evolved to direct attention differentially to objects by virtue of their membership in ancestrally important categories, regardless of their current utility.animacy ͉ category specificity ͉ domain specificity ͉ evolutionary psychology ͉ visual attention V isual attention is an umbrella term for the set of operations that select some portions of a scene, rather than others, for more extensive processing. These operations evolved because some categories of information in the visual environment were likely to be more important or time-sensitive than others for activities that contributed to an organism's survival or reproduction. The selection criteria that direct visual attention can be categorized by their origin: (i) goal-derived: criteria activated volitionally in response to a transient internally represented goal; (ii) ancestrally derived: criteria so generally useful for a species, generation after generation, that natural selection favored mechanisms that cause them to develop in a species-typical manner; and (iii) expertise-derived: criteria extracted during ontogeny by evolved mechanisms specialized for detecting which perceptual cues predict information that enhances task performance.These three types of criteria may also interact; for example, differential experience or temporary goals could calibrate or elaborate ancestrally derived criteria built into the attentional architecture.The ways in which human attention can be affected by goals and expertise have been extensively investigated. Indeed, humans are zoologically unique in the extent to which we evolved to engage in behavior tailored to achieve situation-specific goals as a regular part of our subsistence and sociality (1, 2). Among our foraging ancestors, improvising solutions in response to the distinctive features of situations would have benefited from the existence of goal-driven voluntary attentional mechanisms. As predicted by such a view, otherwise arbitrary but task-relevant objects command more attention than task-irrelevant ones (3), and expertise in a task domain shifts attention to more tasksignificant objects (4), features (5), and locations (6).In contrast, attentio...

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Bodies capture attention when nothing is expected

Cited by 150 publications

References 32 publications

Does semantic preactivation reduce inattentional blindness?

Does semantic preactivation reduce inattentional blindness?

Gender differences in the neural underpinning of perceiving and appreciating the beauty of the body

Category-specific attention for animals reflects ancestral priorities, not expertise

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