Automatic Attention Allocation Research Articles

Exploring reward-related\xa0attention selectivity deficits in Parkinson\u2019s disease

An important aspect of managing a limited cognitive resource like attention is to use the reward value of stimuli to prioritize the allocation of attention to higher-value over lower-value stimuli. Recent evidence suggests this depends on dopaminergic signaling of reward. In Parkinson’s disease, both reward sensitivity and attention are impaired, but whether these deficits are directly related to one another is unknown. We tested whether Parkinson’s patients use reward information when automatically allocating their attention and whether this is modulated by dopamine replacement. We compared patients, tested both ON and OFF dopamine replacement medication, to older controls using a standard attention capture task. First, participants learned the different reward values of stimuli. Then, these reward-associated stimuli were used as distractors in a visual search task. We found that patients were generally distracted by the presence of the distractors but that the degree of distraction caused by the high-value and low-value distractors was similar. Furthermore, we found no evidence to support the possibility that dopamine replacement modulates the effect of reward on automatic attention allocation. Our results suggest a possible inability in Parkinson’s patients to use the reward value of stimuli when automatically allocating their attention, and raise the possibility that reward-driven allocation of resources may affect the adaptive modulation of other cognitive processes.

Placebos can change affective contexts: An event-related potential study

An unpleasant context (bitter aftertaste) is able to reduce the late positive potential (LPP) elicited by affective pictures. This study attempted to influence this context with a placebo. Sixty-eight women were randomly assigned to three groups: Water, Bitter/No-Placebo, Bitter/Placebo. Participants in the ‘bitter groups’ first rinsed their mouth with wormwood tea that caused a bitter aftertaste. Subsequently, the placebo group received sham light therapy on the tongue to ‘reduce the sensitivity of the taste buds’. All groups viewed disgusting and non-disgusting pictures while their electroencephalogram was recorded. The Bitter/Placebo group reported reduced bitterness and disgust for the aftertaste after the sham treatment. The LPP reduction (300−600 ms after picture onset) associated with the bitter aftertaste (as shown by the Bitter/No-Placebo group) was attenuated due to the placebo treatment. This is the first EEG study to demonstrate that a context-targeting placebo is able to change automatic attention allocation.

The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Attention is a process that alters how cognitive resources are allocated, and it allows individuals to efficiently process information at the attended location. The presence of visual or auditory cues in the environment can direct the focus of attention toward certain stimuli even if the cued stimuli are not the individual’s primary target. Samson et al. demonstrated that seeing another person in the scene (i.e., a person-like cue) caused a delay in responding to target stimuli not visible to that person: “alter-centric intrusion.” This phenomenon, they argue, is dependent upon the fact that the cue used resembled a person as opposed to a more generic directional indicator. The characteristics of the cue are the core of the debate of this special issue. Some maintain that the perceptual-directional characteristics of the cue are sufficient to generate the bias while others argue that the cuing is stronger when the cue has social characteristics (relates to what another individual can perceive). The research contained in this issue confirms that human attention is biased by the presence of a directional cue. We discuss and compare the different studies. The pattern that emerges seems to suggest that the social relevance of the cue is necessary in some contexts but not in others, depending on the cognitive demand of the experimental task. One possibility is that the social mechanisms are involved in perspective taking when the task is cognitively demanding, while they may not play a role in automatic attention allocation.

P25. Time specific neuronal activation and its association with cognitive control over emotions

Introduction Successful cognitive control over emotions (CCE) can impede a biased attention towards negative valenced information (‘Negativity Bias’, NB) which can be observed in various psychiatric disorders. On a neurophysiological level CCE and the NB can be investigated with event related potentials (ERPs). The goal of the current study is to investigate the NB and CCE with ERPs on feedback as its emotional valence is largely based on the interpretation by the participant. Methods Healthy participants (n = 24) performed an adaptive version of a 2-back Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT), a difficult working memory task, that challenges CCE and which is linked to increases of negative feelings. Feedback was given by presenting green (red) light after correct (incorrect) responses. Simultaneously continuous EEG was recorded. Since we were interested in the ERP elicited by the emotional meaning of red and green feedback as opposed to a differential neuronal activation to red and green light per se, we conducted a control task which comprised the mere presentation of red and green light. The stimulus locked ERPs from that task were subtracted from the PASAT ERPs. Results For the feedback related negativity (FRN, 200–300 ms post-feedback), an ERP linked to feedback processing and affective reactions to feedback we could find a bigger negativity for negative (red) compared to positive (green) feedback. Furthermore, we could find a significant correlation of this difference and the PASAT performance. A smaller FRN (negative-positive feedback) was associated with a better performance. For the P300 (300–400 ms post-feedback), an ERP associated with attention allocation, we could not find a difference between negative and positive feedback. However, we observed that a larger P300 by negative as compared to positive feedback is linked with better performance. For the Late Positive Potential (LPP, 400–1000 ms post-feedback), an event related potential which captures attention shifts towards emotional information, we could find a bigger positivity for negative feedback compared to positive feedback but no significant correlation of this difference with the PASAT performance. However, we could find a correlation of Δ LPP (negative-positive feedback) with the percentage of consecutive correct trials, another indicator for successful cognitive control. Conclusion These results indicate that in early phases, of feedback processing, which are more driven by the emotional salience of the feedback, less automatic attention allocation towards negative as compared to positive feedback is associated with a better CCE. In contrast, in later phases, it seems as if a bigger cognitive effort and therefore bigger feedback specific neuronal activation is linked to an increased CCE. Further implications of the study will be discussed.

Implicit attentional bias for facial emotion in dissociative seizures: Additional evidence

This study sought to extend knowledge about the previously reported preconscious attentional bias (AB) for facial emotion in patients with dissociative seizures (DS) by exploring whether the finding could be replicated, while controlling for concurrent anxiety, depression, and potentially relevant cognitive impairments. Patients diagnosed with DS (n=38) were compared with healthy controls (n=43) on a pictorial emotional Stroop test, in which backwardly masked emotional faces (angry, happy, neutral) were processed implicitly. The group with DS displayed a significantly greater AB to facial emotion relative to controls; however, the bias was not specific to negative or positive emotions. The group effect could not be explained by performance on standardized cognitive tests or self-reported depression/anxiety. The study provides additional evidence of a disproportionate and automatic allocation of attention to facial affect in patients with DS, including both positive and negative facial expressions. Such a tendency could act as a predisposing factor for developing DS initially, or may contribute to triggering individuals' seizures on an ongoing basis. Psychological interventions such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or AB modification might be suitable approaches to target this bias in clinical practice.

Early ERP modulation during mood adjectives processing in patients with affective disorders

Attentional bias is considered a key feature in mood disorders, and yet little is known of its neural correlates within the early stream of information processing in manic and depressed patients. The study aimed to capture and detail attentional bias during emotional word processing in patients within the first 500ms of stimulus exposition. 28 mood adjectives (14 positive and 14 negative) were used as stimuli. We expected differences in adjective encoding between groups during lexico-semantic analysis based on varying attentional resource allocation. Differences were evidenced within the first 100ms after stimulus onset with higher amplitudes for both patient groups than controls, possibly indicating more automatic attention allocation to stimuli during sensory analysis stages. Between 200–290ms after the words' onset, a specific valence mood-word mismatch was registered which approached significance, with higher responses evoked to negative than positive words in manic patients, and the opposite pattern of activity observed in depressed patients, suggesting cognitive bias based on mood incongruence during the lexico-semantic analysis stage. There was also a lateralized pattern of activity, with higher amplitudes over the right hemisphere posteriorly, and higher over the left frontally in the patient groups, especially in the manic individuals. The study points to attentional bias based on mood incongruence processing during crucial stages of meaning encoding within the early stream of information processing.

Effect of Vocal-Pitch Difference on Automatic Attention to Voice Changes in Audio Messages

Listeners exhibit orienting responses to voice changes in audio messages. However, the impact of pitch similarity between voices on the nature of the OR has not been explored. We conducted a 3 (Vocal Pitch) × 2 (Location of Change in Message) × 2 (Repetition) within-subjects experiment to address this question. Four non-professional announcers were selected based on differences in vocal pitch. Twelve radio commercials were produced using these announcers to include a single voice change—with either Low-, Medium-, or High-Pitch Differences. The voice changes occurred either within the first or last 20 seconds of the commercial. Heart rate and recognition memory data were collected from 41 subjects. Results show that vocal-pitch difference between speakers impacts automatic attention allocation via the orienting response, and recognition memory for the message is thereby affected. Furthermore, results suggest that having voice changes occur early in an audio message produces the best attentional result.

Automatic processing of facial affects in patients with borderline personality disorder: associations with symptomatology and comorbid disorders.

BackgroundInstability of affects and interpersonal relations are important features of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Interpersonal problems of individuals suffering from BPD might develop based on abnormalities in the processing of facial affects and high sensitivity to negative affective expressions. The aims of the present study were to examine automatic evaluative shifts and latencies as a function of masked facial affects in patients with BPD compared to healthy individuals. As BPD comorbidity rates for mental and personality disorders are high, we investigated also the relationships of affective processing characteristics with specific borderline symptoms and comorbidity.MethodsTwenty-nine women with BPD and 38 healthy women participated in the study. The majority of patients suffered from additional Axis I disorders and/or additional personality disorders. In the priming experiment, angry, happy, neutral, or no facial expression was briefly presented (for 33 ms) and masked by neutral faces that had to be evaluated. Evaluative decisions and response latencies were registered. Borderline-typical symptomatology was assessed with the Borderline Symptom List.ResultsIn the total sample, valence-congruent evaluative shifts and delays of evaluative decision due to facial affect were observed. No between-group differences were obtained for evaluative decisions and latencies. The presence of comorbid anxiety disorders was found to be positively correlated with evaluative shifting owing to masked happy primes, regardless of baseline—neutral or no facial expression condition. The presence of comorbid depressive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, and symptoms of social isolation and self-aggression were significantly correlated with response delay due to masked angry faces, regardless of baseline.ConclusionsIn the present affective priming study, no abnormalities in the automatic recognition and processing of facial affects were observed in BPD patients compared to healthy individuals. The presence of comorbid anxiety disorders could make patients more susceptible to the influence of a happy expression on judgment processes at an automatic processing level. Comorbid depressive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, and symptoms of social isolation and self-aggression may enhance automatic attention allocation to threatening facial expressions in BPD. Increased automatic vigilance for social threat stimuli might contribute to affective instability and interpersonal problems in specific patients with BPD.

I've Heard That Before: Habituation of the Orienting Response Follows Repeated Presentation of Auditory Structural Features in Radio

Research has used the cardiac orienting response (OR) to show that structural changes in the auditory environment cause people to briefly but automatically pay attention to messages such as radio broadcasts, podcasts, and web streaming. The voice change—an example of an auditory structural feature—elicits orienting across multiple repetitions. This article reports two experiments designed to investigate whether automatic attention allocation to repeated instances of other auditory structural features—namely production effects, jingles, and silence—is a robust phenomenon or if repetition leads to habituation. In Study 1 we show that listeners of a simulated radio broadcast exhibit ORs following the onset of auditory structural features that differ in semantic content. The prediction that listeners would not habituate to feature repetition was not supported. Instead, both jingles and synthesized production effects result in more iconic ORs to the second repetition compared with the first. However, orienting significantly diminished following the third repetition of both. Study 2 replicates this result using multiple repetitions of structural features containing identical semantic content.

Do social utility judgments influence attentional processing?

Research shows that social judgments influence decision-making in social environments. For example, judgments about an interaction partners’ trustworthiness affect a variety of social behaviors and decisions. One mechanism by which social judgments may influence social decisions is by biasing the automatic allocation of attention toward certain social partners, thereby shaping the information people acquire. Using an attentional blink paradigm, we investigate how trustworthiness judgments alter the allocation of attention to social stimuli in a set of two experiments. The first experiment investigates trustworthiness judgments based solely on a social partner’s facial appearance. The second experiment examines the effect of trustworthiness judgments based on experienced behavior. In the first, strong appearance-based judgments (positive and negative) enhanced stimulus recognizability but did not alter the size of the attentional blink, suggesting that appearance-based social judgments enhance face memory but do not affect pre-attentive processing. However, in the second experiment, in which judgments were based on behavioral experience rather than appearance, positive judgments enhanced pre-attentive processing of trustworthy faces. This suggests that a stimulus’s potential benefits, rather than its disadvantages, shape the automatic distribution of attentional resources. These results have implications for understanding how appearance- and behavior-based social cues shape attention distribution in social environments.

Deviance detection by a P3-like response in rat posterior parietal cortex

To better understand sensory processing in frontal and parietal cortex of the rat, and to further assess the rat as a model of human frontal-parietal processing, we recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from microelectrode arrays implanted in medio-dorsal frontal, and posterior parietal cortex of awake rats as they were presented with a succession of frequent “standard” tones and infrequent “oddball” tones. Extending previous results from surface recordings we found, after controlling for the frequencies of the standard and oddball tones, that rat frontal and parietal-evoked LFPs (eLFPs) exhibit significantly larger N1 (~40 ms latency), P2 (~100 ms), N2 (~160 ms), P3E (~200–240 ms), and P3L (~300–500 ms) amplitudes after an oddball tone. These neural oddball effects could contribute to the automatic allocation of attention to rare stimuli. To determine whether these enhanced responses to rare stimuli could be accounted for in terms of stimulus-specific neural adaptation (SSA), we also recorded during single-tone control sessions involving frequent standard, or infrequent oddball beeps alone. We compared the difference between rare-tone and frequent-tone response amplitudes in the two-tone context (oddball effect) or single-tone context which isolates the contribution of SSA (SSA effect). An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect of tone context on rare-tone response enhancements, showing that the rare-tone enhancements were stronger in the two-tone context than the single-tone context. This difference between tone contexts was greatest at the early P3E peak (200–240 ms post-beep) in parietal cortex, suggesting true deviance detection by this evoked response component, which cannot be accounted for in terms of simple models of SSA.

Counter-regulation triggered by emotions: Positive/negative affective states elicit opposite valence biases in affective processing

The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.

Investigating phobic specificity with standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA)

The current study investigated differential sources of late event-related potentials (ERPs) in two subtypes of specific phobia using sLORETA (standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography). In two experiments, 14 spider-phobic patients (and controls), and 14 dentophobic patients (and controls) were confronted with disorder-relevant and affectively neutral pictures while an electroencephalogram was recorded. Mean ERP amplitudes were extracted in the time windows of 300–450ms (P300) and 450–800ms (late positive potential, LPP). Analyses revealed that both spider phobics and dental phobics showed enhanced current density in parietal regions (i.e., cuneus, precuneus) for the P300 time frame when exposed to disorder-specific contents. This result can be interpreted to reflect automatic attention allocation. Spider phobics additionally displayed greater current density in the insula and the anterior/posterior cingulate cortex in the LPP time window relative to controls. Most likely, the phylogentically based spider phobia is characterized by a deeper and more prolonged attention engagement than dental phobia. Our findings are in good accordance with existing brain imaging studies and underline that source localization is a useful alternative for identifying relevant cortical regions in subtypes of specific phobia.

Orbitofrontal cortex biases attention to emotional events

We examined the role of orbitofrontal (OF) cortex in regulating emotion–attention interaction and the balance between involuntary and voluntary attention allocation. We studied patients with OF lesion applying reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures in a lateralized visual discrimination task with novel task-irrelevant affective pictures (unpleasant, pleasant, or neutral) preceding a neutral target. This allowed for comparing the effects of automatic attention allocation to emotional versus neutral stimuli on subsequent voluntary attention allocation to target stimuli. N2–P3a and N2–P3b ERP components served as measures of involuntary and voluntary attention allocation correspondingly. Enhanced N2–P3a amplitudes to emotional distractors and reduced N2–P3b amplitudes to targets preceded by emotional distractors were observed in healthy subjects, suggesting automatic emotional orienting interfered with subsequent voluntary orienting. OF patients showed an opposite pattern with tendency towards reduced N2–P3a responses to emotional distractors, suggesting impaired automatic orienting to emotional stimuli due to orbitofrontal damage. Enhanced N2–P3b responses to targets preceded by any affective distractor were observed in OF patients, suggesting bias towards voluntary target-related attention allocation due to orbitofrontal lesion. Behavioral evidence indicated that left visual field (LVF) attention performance was modulated by emotional stimuli. Specifically, OF patients responded faster to LVF targets subsequent to pleasant emotional distractors. We suggest that damage to the orbitofrontal circuitry leads to dysbalance between voluntary and involuntary attention allocation in the context of affective distractors with predisposition to posterior target-related processing over frontal novelty and affect-related processing. Furthermore, we suggest that orbitofrontal influence on emotion–attention interaction is valence and hemisphere dependent.

Interactive Self-Regulation During Mate Searching

The present research analyzed automatic self-regulation during mate searching. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that in a dating context, individuals who are currently looking for a mate show increased automatic attention allocation (focusing effect) to faces of opposite-sex others who display signs of reciprocal romantic interest. We tested this hypothesis in a longitudinal dating study by analyzing intra-individual change in attention allocation to romantic reciprocators and non-reciprocators. Attention allocation was assessed using a visual cueing paradigm prior to and after the announcement of mutual interest in a date between two participants of the study. In line with our hypothesis, focusing effects were obtained selectively for romantic reciprocators. This focusing effect was restricted to participants with a secure attachment style, indicating interindividual differences in adaptive automatic self-regulation processes during mate searching.

P03-98 - Effects of antipsychotics on cognitive functions: an ERP study in healthy controls

IntroductionClinical studies on cognitive effects of second generation antipsychotics produced disappointing findings probably due to the heterogeneity of the clinical populations under investigation, as well as to poor sensitivity of neurocognitive indices. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) provide a functional measure of electrical brain activity time-locked to discrete stages of information processing. They have been widely used as putative biological markers of cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia and represent useful indices in the investigation of the cognitive effects of psychotropic drugs.ObjectivesThe present study investigated the effect of risperidone, haloperidol and placebo on N1 and P3 in male healthy subjects.MethodsERPs were recorded during a three-tone oddball task in which target, standard and rare-nontarget tones were randomly presented. Subjects had to press a button when hearing a target tone. Amplitude and topography of the ERP component maps at peak latencies were compared across conditions. If a significant drug effect was obtained, changes in the cortical sources of the corresponding ERP component were analyzed using Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA).ResultsThe amplitude of N1 for attended stimuli and of P3 for rare-nontargets (P3a) was significantly increased only by risperidone. No significant change was observed in overall topographic features and in LORETA cortical sources of the same components. No significant drug effect was demonstrated for the latency of all the investigated components and for P3b amplitude.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that risperidone has a favorable effect on early attention processes and automatic attention allocation.

The automatic orienting of attention to goal-relevant stimuli

It is often assumed that attention is automatically allocated to stimuli relevant to one’s actual goals. However, the existing evidence for this idea is limited in several ways. We investigated whether words relevant to a person’s current goal influence the orienting of attention even when an intention to attend to the goal-relevant stimuli is not present. In two experiments, participants performed a modified spatial cueing paradigm combined with a second task that induced a goal. The results of the experiments showed that the induced goal led to the orientation of attention to goal-relevant words in the spatial cueing task. This effect was not found for words semantically related to the goal-relevant words. The results provide evidence for motivational accounts of attention, which state that the automatic allocation of attention is guided by the current goals of a person.

Decomposing the emotional Stroop effect

The emotional Stroop effect refers to the phenomenon that participants are faster in responding to the ink colour of neutral than of negative word stimuli, possibly reflecting fast and automatic allocation of attention towards negative stimuli. However, this interpretation was challenged by McKenna and Sharma (2004) who found that the emotional Stroop effect reflected a generic slowdown after negative stimuli. In fact, they even found reversed effects in a design in which neutral stimuli more often followed negative stimuli and vice versa. Yet, besides reversing the emotional Stroop effect this contingency might in fact have counteracted the fast effect, which was usually interpreted as the emotional Stroop effect. To decompose the emotional Stroop effect we used a design in which the foregoing and the current valence were uncorrelated and in which the fast and slow effects could be computed independently from each other. We found evidence for both fast and slow effects and discuss the practical implications for researchers using the emotional Stroop task as a measurement and the theoretical implications for researchers interested in the underlying cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the emotional Stroop effect.

Capture of Attention to Threatening Stimuli without Perceptual Awareness

Visual images that convey threatening information can automatically capture attention. One example is an object looming in the direction of the observer-presumably because such a stimulus signals an impending collision. A critical question for understanding the relationship between attention and conscious awareness is whether awareness is required for this type of prioritized attentional selection. Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously perceived events, we show that automatic allocation of attention can occur even without conscious awareness of impending threat. We used a visual search task to show that a looming stimulus on a collision path with an observer captures attention but a looming stimulus on a near-miss path does not. Critically, observers were unaware of any difference between collision and near-miss stimuli even when explicitly asked to discriminate between them in separate experiments. These results counter traditional salience-based models of attentional capture, demonstrating that in the absence of perceptual awareness, the visual system can extract behaviorally relevant details from a visual scene and automatically categorize threatening versus nonthreatening images at a level of precision beyond our conscious perceptual capabilities.

Fast measurement of auditory event-related potential profiles in 2-3-year-olds

Event Abstract Back to Event Fast measurement of auditory event-related potential profiles in 2-3-year-olds Vesa Putkinen1, 2*, R. Niinikuru1, 2, M. Tervaniemi1, 2 and Minna Huotilainen1, 2 1 Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland 2 Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä , Finland Children’s sensitivity to regularities and changes in different auditory features can be studied noninvasively with event-related potentials (ERPs). The mismatch negativity (MMN) ERP response reflects the accuracy of the auditory change-detection mechanism. The P3a response, in turn, reflects the functioning of the automatic attention allocation system. Due to the lack of a suitable paradigm, very few studies have used these responses to examine children’s ability to detect to changes in multiple auditory features. Recently, a fast multi-feature paradigm (MFP) was developed by Näätänen et al. for obtaining MMN responses to multiple auditory change types (“deviant tones”) in a single recording of a relatively short duration. The deviant tones differed from the standard tones in one of five features, namely, in frequency, duration, intensity, perceived spatial origin or by having a silent gap in the middle of the sound. We added attention-catching sounds (“novel sounds”) to the paradigm for obtaining P3a responses. We recorded MMN and P3a responses from 14 children aged 2-3-years in the modified MFP. In addition to the traditional group level analysis, the responses of each individual subject were also examined. We found that the modified MFP is well suited for recording individual ERP profiles reflecting auditory change-detection, auditory memory and attentional functions in young children. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Presentations Citation: Putkinen V, Niinikuru R, Tervaniemi M and Huotilainen M (2009). Fast measurement of auditory event-related potential profiles in 2-3-year-olds. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.069 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Mar 2009; Published Online: 24 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: Vesa Putkinen, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, vesa.putkinen@helsinki.fi Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Vesa Putkinen R. Niinikuru M. Tervaniemi Minna Huotilainen Google Vesa Putkinen R. Niinikuru M. Tervaniemi Minna Huotilainen Google Scholar Vesa Putkinen R. Niinikuru M. Tervaniemi Minna Huotilainen PubMed Vesa Putkinen R. Niinikuru M. Tervaniemi Minna Huotilainen Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.