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- P-ISSN1226-9654
- E-ISSN2733-466X
- KCI
ISSN : 1226-9654
Vol.27 No.2
Abstract
Although the Stroop effect has been considered to be strong evidence of automatic recognition of word, some studies showed that the Stroop effect is modulated by visual attention. In this study, we investigated the role of visual attention in the involuntary word processing of the Stroop task. Three experiments examined whether the magnitude of the Stroop effect is modulated by the color-word’s ability to capture attention in a bottom-up fashion, namely, via an abrupt onset. The Stroop effect was found to be smaller when the color-word distractor appeared as a part of a pre-existing placeholder than when it appeared abruptly in a blank location around the color-patch target (Experiment 1). Furthermore, dilution of the Stroop effect in the presence of an additional, neutral word depended on which of the two words was presented more abruptly (Experiments 2 & 3), suggesting attentional competition between them. These results imply that the color word in the Stroop task is recognized when it captures attention.
Abstract
This study examined whether attention allocation to the emotional stimuli can be modulated. This study were performed an emotional picture and a neutral word were presented in succession at every trials. And secondary tone judgement task was simultaneously performed during encoding of emotional pictures and the difficulty of the task was manipulated in order to modulate the attention allocation. Recognition judgement results showed poorer memory of neutral words in emotional context than those in neutral context in the easy secondary task condition, but showed no emotional context effect in the difficult secondary task condition. LPC showed the similar pattern: lower amplitude by neutral words in the emotional context than those in the neutral context when the secondary task is easy, but no effect of emotional context when difficult. These results suggest that attention allocation to the emotional stimuli can be modulated.
Abstract
The perceptual load theory (Lavie & Tsal, 1994) and the dilution account (Tsal & Benoni, 2010) have been proposed to explain the phenomenon that the degree of irrelevant information processing decreases as the relevant stimulus-set size increases. The present study investigated the nature of the set-size effect on processing of task-irrelevant information. Under high perceptual load with a single distractor, no congruency effect was replicated in the present study. However, importantly, the congruency effect increased as the number (ratio) of distractor increased (Experiments 1 & 2). In dilution condition (Experiment 3), a larger congruency effect was found when a conflict distractor was located at the task-relevant array than at a task-irrelevant peripheral position, which is consistent with previous findings. However, an additional presentation of a distracting letter did not produce a larger congruency effect. These results indicate that the perceptual load effect by increasing the number of task-relevant items is a result of a reduced probability of attentional capture by a conflicting distractor. Furthermore, this selective processing occurs at a focused attention stage which implies that early-visual crosstalk is not an alternative explanation.
Abstract
It is investigated whether the visual pathway starting from retina could be separated and measured behaviorally. It could be possible to separate visual pathways with four combinations of left/right visual fields and viewing eyes. 12 spheral stimuli along two imagery concentric circles were presented against dark background, and then one of stimulus was shifted rightward or leftward. Since a stimulus shift occurred on one of two visual displays viewed exclusively by one of two eyes, an observer perceived it as shifted its depth position closer or further away. We manipulated the stimulus shifting conditions, consisting of viewing eyes, visual fields, stimulus shifting directions, and measured observers’ reaction time performance as promptness to its change. Several interaction effects among visual fields, viewing eyes, and shift directions were obtained to show that there could be a performance difference between contralateral and ipsilateral visual pathway of the 3-D related information processing. In addition, the interaction effect with response assignment might be caused by the natural human response tendency to the 3-D motion direction.
Abstract
The present study investigated the role of phonological relations between a character and its phonetic radical in learning novel Chinese characters, using Korean-Chinese and native Chinese children as participants. We found some commonalities and differences between the two groups. In both groups, regular characters were learned faster, and irregular characters were harder to learn than control characters. When the phonetic radical provided the correct tone, onset, or rime of a character, learning was facilitated. However, learning was impaired with the conflicting information from the radical. The rime apparently exerted more powerful influences than the tone and onset. However, Korean-Chinese participants appeared to be less skillful in manipulating the rime, especially in younger pupils. Based on the results, we discussed the role of phonological processing and native language in the learning of novel Chinese characters.
Abstract
The present study investigated the cognitive mechanism underlying L2 semantic integration during sentence comprehension in Korean by Chinese late L2 learners. Using the violation paradigm, ERP responses of 17 intermediate level L2 learners of Korean were recorded, to local semantic incongruence between an adjective and a noun (*broken soup (vs. sweet soup)), and to global semantic incongruence between an object noun and a verb (*to repair soup (vs. to cook soup)) respectively. No ERP components reflecting the detection of semantic anomaly were observed in the local incongruence condition, whereas a biphasic N400 & P600 ERP pattern was elicited by the critical verb of the global incongruence condition. These results imply that the L2 learners investigated in the present study have largely dismissed the local integration, and concentrated rather on the global integration, which is inevitable for the grasp of the verb argument structure and hence much more important to represent the core meaning of the unfolding sentence. Based on this evidence, we argue that L2 learners might well adopt reasonable strategies for maximizing processing efficiency, although they need not be identical to those of native speakers at every stage of L2 development.
Abstract
The success of an individual, a business and even a country depends on the accuracy of judgments and predictions about the future. Reasoners, however, often fail to search for additional pieces of information to make an accurate prediction. Moreover, they tend to neglect a relevant piece of information even if it is available. Thus, it is critical to understand the cognitive process behind the neglect phenomenon in order to increase the accuracy of predictions. The present study aimed to investigate the process that underlies neglect of relevant information based on a newly emerging normative model, the causal Bayes nets. In Experiment 1, we constructed a situation where the three boundary conditions of the causal Bayes nets were satisfied: the sufficiency of a causal structure, parameters, and the clarity of the functional form of causal structure. The results revealed that participants did not neglect a relevant piece of information when they made a predictive inference. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, except for the functional form of causal structure. The causal structure in Experiment 1 was activated by itself while the structure in Experiment 2 was activated only when it was intervened. With the intervention-based causal structure, participants showed neglect of a relevant piece of information to make a predictive inference. Our results suggest that neglect of a functional form of events in question is responsible for the failure to consider relevant information. Our results also suggest that the assumptions that the causal Bayes nets make about representations of causal relations may not be consistent with the actual representations of reasoners. Our results suggest that a future study is necessary to investigate how understanding of the functional form of causal structures influences prediction accuracy.
Abstract
Appreciation of art involves both cognitive and affective processes. However, the two processes and the neural underpinnings of them have not been differentiated clearly in the previous studies of neuroaesthetics. Moreover, aesthetic experience has often been confounded by positive emotional contents in artworks or positive emotion appraisal. Aesthetic appreciation and accompanying neural activity regarding artworks evoking negative emotion have not been studied extensively. In the current work using fMRI, we investigated whether brain areas involved in aesthetic judgment can be distinguished from those involved in emotion appraisal. We also explored neural correlates of artworks judged as beautiful yet inducing sad emotion. Our results identified brain regions differentially involved in aesthetic judgment and emotion appraisal, despite the widely shared network. Specifically, the medial prefrontal lobe showed greater activation for aesthetic judgment, while areas including the middle frontal gyrus, putamen, middle temporal gyrus, caudate nucleus, and precuneus showed greater activation for emotion appraisal. We also found increased neural activity in areas including the insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), pre-, and post-central gyri in association with perceiving and judging “sad but beautiful” artworks. These results suggest that the two core processes in experiencing art are closely related to each other, but not identical, and that beauty and positive emotion do not always go hand in hand.
Abstract
The nature of adaptive visual search was investigated using the distractor previewing effect (DPE). In a color oddball search task, search times increase for targets whose colors were previewed in a preceding target-absent display (TAD) compared to distractors whose colors being previewed in the TAD. Thus, target-color previewing (TP) trials are typically slower than distractor-color previewing (DP) trials, and this response time (RT) difference is the DPE. For the purpose of the study, color previewing history was varied to examine temporal integration of visual experience with trial-by-trial adjustments being simultaneously made, and task context were manipulated to induce (un)predictable target appearance times. TADs ranging from 0 to 5 (Exp. 1) or from 0 to 2 (Exp. 2) were presented prior to a target-present display, and the number of TADs was blocked (Exp. A) or randomized (Exp. B), resulting in four experiments 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B being conducted. All experiments similarly showed: (a) increased RTs for TP than for DP trials; (b) increased RTs with increasing TADs; and (c) different DPEs as a function of the TAD. In addition, Experiments 2A and 2B showed that search times depended on the colors of the TAD, immediately rather than remotely preceding the target display. Differences were also found between the block (predictable) and random (unpredictable) designs. Compared to no color previewing trials, all TP trials were slower in both designs, but DP trials differed in that RT was faster in all TADs in the unpredictable context but only in the 1TAD and 2TADs in the predictable context. Moreover, the unpredictable context did not showed a DPE after one TAD presentation unlike the predictable context. These results suggest that (a) visual experience leaves memory traces and is accumulated into memory while trial-by-trial adjustments are made; and further (b) depending on the demand that a given task requires humans exert their top-down control of attention accordingly.
Abstract
Baddeley’s study (1986, 2000) suggesting that phonological loop of working memory consists of phonological store and articulatory rehearsal system used the paradigm that articulation of memory items could be suppressed by rehearsing irrelevant syllables simultaneously in the immediate serial recall task. He did not consider seriously whether articulatory suppression should be covert or overt. Chung et al. (2013) obtained the result that covert articulatory suppression could be automatized and working memory performance could be influenced by this. From the viewpoint of verbal mediation theory (Vygotsky, 1962), repetitive performance could facilitate speech automatization in the covert articulatory suppression condition, but inhibit it in the overt condition. And the effect of speech automatization, if it happens, could be distributed over all the memory items. Experiment 1 probed phonological similarity effect at each serial position of memory items in the covert and overt articulatory suppression condition. The result showed that the covert condition observed generally more accurate responses, and phonological similarity effect at the middle position as well as the late (recent) positions. Experiment 2 probed the repetition effect of performing memory tasks, which showed that the covert condition resulted in generally better performance and the tendency of interaction between articulatory suppression condition and repetition. The results of both experiments could be explained roughly by the speech automatization hypothesis, which suggests that Baddeley’s model of phonological loop should be modified in consideration of automatization of articulatory suppression behaviors. Limitations of this study and suggestions for further study were discussed.
Abstract
The present study examined the effect of inter-items similarity on visual working memory (VWM) performance. A change detection task was used for testing memory performance, and the memory items consisted of two (in Experiment 1) or three (in Experiment 2) sequentially-displayed pairs of items, varying the level of similarity between the items in each pair. After the memory item, memory test was given according to either a whole or partial-report procedure. The two items in each first and second pair were manipulated to have colors from two different color categories or those from the same categories but made distinctive. The former manipulation was for lower inter-item similarity whereas the latter was for higher inter-item similarity. The results showed that change detection was accurate if the inter-item similarity of memory items was lower rather than higher, especially in the partial-probe condition. These results suggest that VWM performance can be improved if the similarity among the items in visual working memory is lower.
Abstract
Observers more rapidly detect and more accurately remember two identical targets than a single target, a phenomenon called the redundancy effect. To understand how the visual system deals with redundant information, the current experiment investigated the effect of redundant distractors on target responses. In a word-picture Stroop task, we measured response interference by a single or redundant distractors when the stimulus onset asynchrony varies between a target and the distrator(s). As results, two redundant distractors produced greater Stroop interference than a single distractor although overall response times remained constant. These findings are not compatible with a race model, which assumes separate processing of redundant stimuli, but support a coactivation model, which assumes that redundant stimuli form a single perceptual representation.