Compatible and incompatible representations in visual sensory storage

Abstract

Sensory storage shows a short-lived part-report advantage that survives an aftercoming visual noise pattern (Smithson & Mollon, 2006). We tested whether such an advantage survives different types of high-contrast mask. The target was a 3 × 4 array of digits. The mask could be (a) a noise pattern, (b) an array of eights, or (c) an array of random digits. In a preliminary experiment, target and mask were interleaved (at 140 Hz) and target contrast was varied to determine the level at which performance fell to chance. In the main experiment, target and mask were separated by an inter-stimulus-interval (ISI) of 100, 150, or 200 ms. An auditory part-report cue that was presented 240 ms after target offset supported a part-report advantage at all ISIs for noise masks, at ISIs greater than 100 ms for digit-8 masks, but not at any ISI for random-number masks. Increasing cue delay, in the range 240 to 730 ms, produced a decline in the advantages we measured. The differences in part-report superiority with different types of mask call for revision of the model of visual sensory storage as a single canvas on which successive items are superposed. When mask and target are sufficiently different, a representation of low-contrast target digits can be maintained independently of the representation of an aftercoming, high-contrast mask. However, when the same target is followed by a mask composed of high-contrast random digits, an independent representation of the target does not remain available for access.

Spatial Frequency Tuning during the Conscious and Non-Conscious Perception of Emotional Facial Expressions – An Intracranial ERP Study

“…In the visible face condition, a static face was presented to both eyes, whereas in the invisible face condition, dynamic high-contrast noise replaced the face presented to one eye. This has the disadvantage that we do not know to what extent and how the flashing of the noise patterns influenced our SF results (see Yang and Blake, 2012). We chose suppression noise that was used in several previous studies and found to be very effective (i.e., high-contrast Mondrian patterns; e.g., Tsuchiya and Koch, 2005; Jiang and He, 2006; Jiang et al, 2009).…”

Affective salience can reverse the effects of stimulus-driven salience on eye movements in complex scenes

“…When semantic meaning is further associated with emotional arousal, commonly feared, or pleasant stimuli (e.g., a murder scene, erotica) can prioritize attention relative to neutral stimuli (LaBar et al, 2000; Nummenmaa et al, 2006, 2009). Only two other studies to date have examined the competition between visual salience and affective salience within a single complex scene: One study found that, when neutral background pictures were edited to contain a single affectively salient and a single visually salient object, fixations were more likely to be on affectively salient objects (Humphrey et al, 2012). …”

“…Affective salience has also been found to increase viewing duration for both pleasant and unpleasant scenes (Lang et al, 1993) and to capture greater initial attention as well as inhibit subsequent disengagement from a stimulus location (Mogg and Bradley, 1999; Fox et al, 2002). In a recent study, when neutral background scenes were edited to contain a single emotionally salient object and a single visually salient object (Humphrey et al, 2012), more fixations were allocated to affectively salient than visually salient objects. Another recent study found tradeoffs between the influence of visual salience and the reward-punishment value of saccade locations, with value overriding visual salience in attracting saccades at latencies over 184 ms (Schutz et al, 2012).…”

New Percepts via Mental Imagery?

“…For example, we can discover a new figure when we rotate a previously seen image in our mind. However, such discoveries are not “really” new but just new “interpretations.” In two recent publications, we have shown that mental imagery can lead to perceptual learning (Tartaglia et al, 2009, 2012). Observers imagined the central line of a bisection stimulus for thousands of trials.…”