Visual search usually improves with repeated exposure to a search display. Previous research suggests that such a \"contextual cueing\" effect may be supported even by aspects of the search display that participants have been explicitly asked to ignore. Based on this evidence, it has been suggested that the development of contextual cueing over trials does not depend on selective attention. In the present series of experiments, we show that the most common strategy used to prevent participants from paying attention to task-irrelevant distractors often results in suboptimal selection. Specifically, we show that visual search is slower when search displays include many irrelevant distractors. Eye-tracking data show that this happens, at least in part, because participants fixate on them. These results cast doubts on previous demonstrations that contextual cueing is independent of selective attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

It is well known that attention is captured by salient objects or events. The notion that attention is attracted by salience information present in the visual field is also at the heart of many influential models of attention. These models typically posit a hierarchy of saliency, suggesting that attention progresses from the most to the least salient item in the visual field. However, despite the significance of this claim in various models, research on eye movements challenges the idea that search strictly follows this saliency hierarchy. Instead, eye-tracking studies have suggested that saliency information has a transient impact, only influencing the initial saccade toward the most salient object, and only if executed swiftly after display onset. While these findings on overt eye movements are important, they do not address covert attentional processes occurring before a saccade is initiated. In the current series of experiments, we explored whether there was evidence for secondary capture-whether attention could be captured by another salient item after the initial capture episode. To explore this, we utilized displays with multiple distractors of varying levels of saliency. Our primary question was whether two distractors with different saliency levels would disrupt search more than a single, highly salient distractor. Across three experiments, clear evidence emerged indicating that two distractors interfered more with search than a single salient distractor. This observation suggests that following initial capture, secondary capture by the next most salient distractor occurred. These findings collectively support the idea that covert attention traverses the saliency hierarchy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

UNASSIGNED: Enhancing reading efficiency is of paramount importance in various academic, professional and clinical domains. Previous research, mostly from a single laboratory, has shown that externally imposed time constraints by means of text fading can enhance reading fluency in children and adults with varying reading abilities and in different languages.
UNASSIGNED: In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending previous results in Italian readers. Three experiments (N = 90) were conducted: (i) to investigate the effects of continuous fading compared to character-wise fading, (ii) to investigate the influence of enlarged inter-letter spacing on reading acceleration outcomes, and (iii) to probe whether reading gains can be reliably observed off-line (after the acceleration) by comparing accelerated reading with an analog non-accelerated procedure.
UNASSIGNED: Overall, results corroborate previous findings revealing that participants read 40% faster during the reading acceleration procedure, while maintaining the same accuracy levels. Continuous fading proved to be more effective than character-wise fading in enhancing reading speed, while larger inter-letter spacing did not significantly affect the reading speed gain. Albeit the non-clinical nature of our sample and its numerosity circumscribe the potential generalization, taking into account individual differences in the initial reading time, data suggests that reading acceleration leads to larger off-line speed increments with respect to non-accelerated reading.
UNASSIGNED: Taken together, these findings offer valuable insights for the future application of reading acceleration procedures as part of multisession training programs for improving reading proficiency in a diverse range of clinical and non-clinical populations.

Visual recognition is largely realized through neurons in the ventral stream, though recently, studies have suggested that ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) is also important for visual processing. While it is hypothesized that sensory and cognitive processes are integrated in vlPFC neurons, it is not clear how this mechanism benefits vision, or even if vlPFC neurons have properties essential for computations in visual cortex implemented via recurrence. Here, we investigated if vlPFC neurons in two male monkeys had functions comparable to visual cortex, including receptive fields, image selectivity, and the capacity to synthesize highly activating stimuli using generative networks. We found a subset of vlPFC sites show all properties, suggesting subpopulations of vlPFC neurons encode statistics about the world. Further, these vlPFC sites may be anatomically clustered, consistent with fMRI-identified functional organization. Our findings suggest that stable visual encoding in vlPFC may be a necessary condition for local and brain-wide computations.

Previous research suggests that noise sensitivity is related to inefficient auditory processing that might increase the mental load of noise and affect noise evaluation. This assumption was tested in an experiment using a dual-task paradigm with a visual primary task and an auditory secondary task. Results showed that participants\' noise sensitivity was positively correlated with mental effort. Furthermore, mental effort mediated the effect of noise sensitivity on loudness and unpleasantness ratings. The results thus support the idea that noise sensitivity is related to increased mental effort and difficulties in filtering auditory information and that situational factors should be considered.

Motor contagions refer to implicit effects induced by the observation of actions made by others on one\'s own actions. A plethora of studies conducted over the last two decades have demonstrated that both observed and predicted actions can induce various kinds of motor contagions in a human observer. However, motor contagions have always been investigated with regard to different features of an observed action, and it remains unclear whether the background environment in which an observed action takes place modulates motor contagions as well. Here, we investigated participant movements in an empirical hand steering task during which the participants were required to move a cursor through a visual channel after being presented with videos of an actor performing the same task. We manipulated the congruency between the actions shown in the video and the background channels and examined whether and how they affected the participants\' own movements. We observed a clear interaction between the observed action and its background. The movement time of the participants\' actions tended to increase or decrease depending on whether they observed a faster or slower movement, respectively, and these changes were amplified if the background was not congruent with the action contained within it. These results suggest that background information can modulate motor contagions in humans.

Many animals rely on visual camouflage to avoid detection and increase their chances of survival. Edge disruption is commonly seen in the natural world, with animals evolving high-contrast markings that are incongruent with their real body outline in order to avoid recognition. While many studies have investigated how camouflage properties influence viewer performance and eye movement in predation search tasks, researchers in the field have yet to consider how camouflage may directly modulate visual attention and object processing. To examine how disruptive coloration modulates attention, we use a visual object recognition model to quantify object saliency. We determine if object saliency is predictive of human behavioural performance and subjective certainty, as well as neural signatures of attention and decision-making. We show that increasing edge disruption not only reduces detection and identification performance but is also associated with a dampening of neurophysiological signatures of attentional filtering. Increased self-reported certainty regarding decisions corresponds with neurophysiological signatures of evidence accumulation and decision-making. In summary, we have demonstrated a potential mechanism by which edge disruption increases the evolutionary fitness of animals by reducing the brain\'s ability to distinguish signal from noise, and hence to detect and identify the camouflaged animal.

Recent research suggests that socio-ecological factors such as dietary specialization and social complexity may be drivers of advanced cognitive skills among primates. Therefore, we assessed the ability of 12 black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), a highly frugivorous platyrrhine primate with strong fission-fusion dynamics, to succeed in a serial visual reversal learning task. Using a two-alternative choice paradigm we first trained the animals to reliably choose a rewarded visual stimulus over a non-rewarded one. Upon reaching a pre-set learning criterion we then switched the reward values of the two stimuli and assessed if and how quickly the animals learned to reverse their choices, again to a pre-set learning criterion. This stimulus reversal procedure was then continued for a total of 80 sessions of 10 trials each. We found that the spider monkeys quickly learned to reliably discriminate between two simultaneously presented visual stimuli, that they succeeded in a visual reversal learning task, and that they displayed an increase in learning speed across consecutive reversals, suggesting that they are capable of serial reversal learning-set formation with visual cues. The fastest-learning individual completed five reversals within the 80 sessions. The spider monkeys outperformed most other primate and nonprimate mammal species tested so far on this type of cognitive task, including chimpanzees, with regard to their learning speed in both the initial learning task and in the first reversal task, suggesting a high degree of behavioral flexibility and inhibitory control. Our findings support the notion that socio-ecological factors such as dietary specialization and social complexity foster advanced cognitive skills in primates.

A neural signature of serial dependence has been found, which mirrors the attractive bias of visual information seen in behavioral experiments.

When multiple visual stimuli are presented simultaneously in the receptive field, the neural response is suppressed compared to presenting the same stimuli sequentially. The prevailing hypothesis suggests that this suppression is due to competition among multiple stimuli for limited resources within receptive fields, governed by task demands. However, it is unknown how stimulus-driven computations may give rise to simultaneous suppression. Using fMRI, we find simultaneous suppression in single voxels, which varies with both stimulus size and timing, and progressively increases up the visual hierarchy. Using population receptive field (pRF) models, we find that compressive spatiotemporal summation rather than compressive spatial summation predicts simultaneous suppression, and that increased simultaneous suppression is linked to larger pRF sizes and stronger compressive nonlinearities. These results necessitate a rethinking of simultaneous suppression as the outcome of stimulus-driven compressive spatiotemporal computations within pRFs, and open new opportunities to study visual processing capacity across space and time.