Research – Page 2 – MSense Lab

06May 2021 by strongway

Temporal bisection is influenced by ensemble statistics of the stimulus set

Zhu, X., Baykan, C., Müller, H. J., & Shi, Z. (2020). Temporal bisection is influenced by ensemble statistics of the stimulus set. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02202-z AbstractAlthough humans are well capable of precise time measurement, their duration judgments are nevertheless susceptible totemporal context. Previous research on temporal bisection has shown that duration comparisons are influenced by both stimulusspacing and ensemble statistics. However, theories proposed to account for bisection performance lack a plausible justification ofhow the effects of stimulus spacing and ensemble statistics are actually combined in temporal judgments. To explain the variouscontextual effects in temporal bisection, we develop a unifiedensemble-distribution account(EDA), which assumes that themean and variance of the duration set serve as a reference, rather than the short and long standards, in duration comparison. Tovalidate this account, we conducted…

06May 2021 by strongway

Statistical learning of frequent distractor locations in visual search involves regional signal suppression in early visual cortex

Featured, Research

Zhang, B., Weidner, R., Allenmark, F., Bertleff, S., Fink, G. R., Shi, Z., & Müller, H. J. (2021). Statistical learning of frequent distractor locations in visual search involves regional signal suppression in early visual cortex. In bioRxiv (p. 2021.04.16.440127). https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.16.440127 Abstract Observers can learn the locations where salient distractors appear frequently to reduce potential interference – an effect attributed to better suppression of distractors at frequent locations. But how distractor suppression is implemented in the visual cortex and frontoparietal attention networks remains unclear. We used fMRI and a regional distractor-location learning paradigm (Sauter et al. 2018, 2020) with two types of distractors defined in either the same (orientation) or a different (colour) dimension to the target to investigate this issue. fMRI results showed that BOLD signals in early visual cortex were significantly reduced…

06May 2021 by strongway

When visual distractors predict tactile search: The temporal profile of cross-modal spatial learning

Research

Chen, S., Shi, Z., Müller, H. J., & Geyer, T. (2021). When visual distractors predict tactile search: The temporal profile of cross-modal spatial learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000993 Abstract Contextual cueing refers to the guidance of search by associative learning of the location of task-relevant target items in relation to the consistent arrangement of distractor (“context”) items in the search display. The present study investigated whether such target-distractor associations could also be formed in a cross-modal search task in which the invariant distractor context is visual and the target is tactile. Each trial display consisted of 8 vibrotactile stimuli delivered to 4 fingers of each hand, with the target singled out by a vibrotactile feature difference relative to the homogeneous nontarget vibrations. In addition, there were…

06May 2021 by strongway

Multisensory visuo-tactile context learning enhances the guidance of unisensory visual search

Lab News, Research

Chen, S., Shi, Z., Müller, H. J., & Geyer, T. (2021). Multisensory visuo-tactile context learning enhances the guidance of unisensory visual search. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 9439. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88946-6 Abstract Does multisensory distractor-target context learning enhance visual search over and above unisensory learning? To address this, we had participants perform a visual search task under both uni- and multisensory conditions. Search arrays consisted of one Gabor target that differed from three homogeneous distractors in orientation; participants had to discriminate the target’s orientation. In the multisensory session, additional tactile (vibration-pattern) stimulation was delivered to two fingers of each hand, with the odd-one-out tactile target and the distractors co-located with the corresponding visual items in half the trials; the other half presented the visual array only. In both sessions, the visual target was embedded within identical…

27Oct 2018 by strongway

Probability cueing of singleton-distractor locations in visual search

Research

Observers can learn the likely locations of salient distractors in visual search, reducing their potential to capture attention (Ferrante et al., 2018; Sauter et al., 2018a; Wang & Theeuwes, 2018a). While there is agreement that this involves positional suppression of the likely distractor location(s), it is contentious at which stage of search guidance the suppression operates: the supra-dimensional priority map or feature-contrast signals within the distractor dimension. On the latter account, advocated by Sauter et al., target processing should be unaffected by distractor suppression when the target is defined in a different (non-suppressed) dimension to the target. At odds with this, Wang and Theeuwes found strong suppression not only of the (color) distractor, but also of the (shape) target when it appeared at the likely distractor location. Adopting their paradigm,…

26Oct 2018 by strongway

Sequential dependence and Vierordt’s law

Featured, Research

Perceptual bias caused by sequential dependence has attracted lots of attention recently. The phenomenon is not new. For example, 150 years ago Vierordt has found a classic central tendency effect using duration reproduction. However, recently Stefan Glasauer and me looked into the original study conducted by Vierordt (1868), and found actually Vierordt wrongly used the method developed by Fechner (1860). That is, Vieordt introduced randomization in the 'method of average error' that Fechner invented. Using iterative Bayesian updating we are able to replicate the original Vierordt's results. More interestingly, we found that the randomization is the main factor that causes the classic Vierordt's law. That is, the short duration is often overestimated and long duration underestimated. We conducted a new study with two different sequences, sampled from the same distribution,…

26Oct 2018 by strongway

What you see depends on what you hear: temporal averaging and crossmodal integration

Featured, Research

In our multisensory world, we often rely more on auditory information than on visual input for temporal processing. One typical demonstration of this is that the rate of auditory flutter assimilates the rate of concurrent visual flicker. To date, however, this auditory dominance effect has largely been studied using regular auditory rhythms. It thus remains unclear whether irregular rhythms would have a similar impact on visual temporal processing, what information is extracted from the auditory sequence that comes to influence visual timing, and how the auditory and visual temporal rates are integrated together in quantitative terms. We investigated these questions by assessing, and modeling, the influence of a task-irrelevant auditory sequence on the type of "Ternus apparent motion": group motion versus element motion. The type of motion seen critically depends…

26Oct 2018 by strongway

Inter-trial effects in visual search

Featured, Research

Many previous studies on visual search have reported inter-trial effects, that is, observers respond faster when some target property, such as a defining feature or dimension, or the response associated with the target repeats versus changes across consecutive trial episodes. However, what processes drive these inter-trial effects is still controversial. Here, we investigated this question using a combination of Bayesian modeling of belief updating and evidence accumulation modeling in perceptual decision-making. In three visual singleton ('pop-out') search experiments, we explored how the probability of the response-critical states of the search display (e.g., target presence/absence) and the repetition/switch of the target-defining dimension (color/ orientation) affect reaction time distributions. The results replicated the mean reaction time (RT) inter-trial and dimension repetition/switch effects that have been reported in previous studies. Going beyond this,…

07Oct 2016 by linda

Reference Guide: Contextual cueing

Research

This page gathers published work employing the contextual cueing paradigm. The contextual cuing paradigm tests how repeated exposure to target/distractors arrangements affects search, and learned “contexts” lead to improved search efficiency. The contextual cueing paradigm is an important tool for our understanding about roles of environmental regularities, processes involved in learning and retrieving these features in search. Since its debut in 1998 the paradigm has been used in its original and modified forms, combined with brain imaging techniques, used in developmental, patient and animal studies, and also in cross-modal studies. Since our research group (Experimental Psychology at LMU Munich) have been conducting studies employing this paradigm for several years, we have accumulated this list. And why not share it! In addition, we've got inspiration from a similar initiative by the Yale Perception & Cognition Lab. Feel free to inform us about…