Target Cue Research Articles

Buildup of implementation intention reduces anticipatory anxiety in a high-anxiety population

Previous research demonstrates that the cue–target paradigm is effective in inducing anticipatory anxiety, whereas the setup of implementation intention is effective in relieving anticipatory anxiety in a healthy sample. However, exploring whether this method can reduce anticipatory anxiety symptoms in high-anxiety individuals is necessary. The response to this question is of importance to clinical application. For this reason, this study applied the cue–target paradigm to induce anticipatory anxiety to potential negative pictures in subjects classified as high- vs. low-anxiety individuals. In addition, subjects were instructed to receive implementation intention or no-regulation instructions to examine the variation in the regulatory effects of implementation intention according to the severity of anxiety. The results demonstrated that high-anxiety participants exhibited increased anticipatory anxiety during uncertain and negative cues compared with those of low-anxiety subjects. In addition, anticipatory anxiety was reduced during implementation intention relative to the control condition. The size of this reduction was similar between the high- and low-anxiety groups. Third, the buildup of implementation intention reduced the anticipatory anxiety of high-anxiety individuals to a level similar to that of low-anxiety individuals in the control condition. These results suggest that setting up implementation intention can effectively down-regulate the symptoms of anticipatory anxiety in a high-anxiety population.

Distractor ignoring is as effective as target enhancement when incidentally learned but not when explicitly cued.

Explicit knowledge about upcoming target or distractor features can increase performance in tasks like visual search. However, explicit distractor cues generally result in smaller performance benefits than target cues, suggesting that suppressing irrelevant information is less effective than enhancing relevant information. Is this asymmetry a general principle of feature-based attention? Across four experiments (N = 75 each) we compared the efficiency of target selection and distractor ignoring through either incidental experience or explicit instructions. Participants searched for an orientation-defined target amidst seven distractors-three in the target color and four in another color. In Experiment 1, either targets (Exp. 1a) or distractors (Exp. 1b) were presented more often in a specific color than other possible search colors. Response times showed comparable benefits of learned attention towards (Exp. 1a) and away from (Exp. 1b) the frequent color, suggesting that learned target selection and distractor ignoring can be equally effective. In Experiment 2, participants completed a nearly identical task, only with explicit cues to the target (Exp. 2a) or distractor color (Exp. 2b), inducing voluntary attention. Both target and distractor cues were beneficial for search performance, but distractor cues much less so than target cues, consistent with previous results. Cross-experiment analyses verified that the relative inefficiency of distractor ignoring versus target selection is a unique characteristic of voluntary attention that is not shared by incidentally learned attention, pointing to dissociable mechanisms of voluntary and learned attention to support distractor ignoring.

Top-down and bottom-up sources of eye-movement guidance during realistic scene search in Alzheimer's disease.

Visual search is a crucial task in daily life, but in Alzheimer's disease (AD) it has usually been investigated using simple arrays. Here, we used scenes depicting real environments and studied the time course of attentional guidance. We analyzed eye-movement differences between mild AD patients and age-matched healthy controls during search. We examined top-down guidance, manipulating the target template (precise picture vs. word cue) and the target-scene semantic consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent), and bottom-up guidance, manipulating the perceptual salience (high vs. low) of targets and distractors. During scene scanning, AD patients had longer search times, made more fixations before the first target fixation, and showed a greater probability of distractor selection, with longer distractor fixation. AD also led to longer target fixation. In patients and controls, picture cues and highly salient targets improved all search phases, whereas consistent targets only improved search initiation (first saccade). Moreover, top-down and bottom-up guidance interacted in initiation and scanning, and this did not differ between the two groups of participants. However, AD led to a smaller picture cue benefit in shortening distractor fixation and greater bottom-up search facilitation during scanning, where a high-salience target reduced the performance gap between patients and controls. Our study shows the importance of top-down and bottom-up guidance, and their integration, in improving search in AD patients. It suggests that precise target cues and, even more, highly salient targets may act as environmental supports that enhance attentional processing and search performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Visual Search in Augmented Reality: Effect of Target Cue Type and Location

The current experiment examined the relative benefit of different cueing aids during a visual target search task, and the tradeoff between reduced information access effort and increased overlay clutter. Using an augmented reality head-mounted display (AR-HMD), participants completed a 180-degree visual search task with three different cue types (world-referenced arrow, screen-referenced icon target image, and screen-referenced minimap) compared to a control condition (no cueing aid). Target cues differed in terms of display proximity and where they were presented on the AR-HMD (the central field of view or approximately 15 degrees downward from the center). We found an overall performance benefit when searching for an object in the far domain with a target cue compared to searching with no cue, and the arrow cue (highest display proximity) showed the greatest overall benefit. We also found a performance benefit for cues located at the center of the AR-HMD compared to the downward location, but this benefit was offset by the higher clutter of the icon image and the minimap. These findings suggest that target cues with higher display proximity that also reduce information access effort (scanning) may be more suitable cueing aids when searching for an object in the far domain.

The formation of the if–then contingency in implementation intention relieves anticipatory anxiety

Anxiety is characterized by anticipatory emotions as a response to potential threats. Despite knowledge of the effectivity of implementation intention in regulating emotion evoked by aversive stimuli, whether this method is effective in regulating anticipatory anxiety for potential threats remains unknown. To bridge this gap, this study applied a cue–target paradigm to induce anticipatory anxiety toward potential negative pictures among participants. Specifically, emotion feeling (no-regulation), goal intention, goal intention+response and implementation intention were administered to different groups to explore their regulatory effects on anticipatory anxiety. The results demonstrated a unique regulatory effect of implementation intention on anticipatory anxiety, regardless of the type of cue. However, this effect is absent under the goal intention and goal intention+response conditions. These findings suggest that implementation intention is effective in downregulating anticipatory anxiety. In addition, its regulatory effect cannot be attributed to a mere goal setup or the setup of goal and response combination, but should be accounted for by the setup of the situation–response contingency in addition to goal representation.

Probabilistic Learning of Cue-Outcome Associations is not Influenced by Autistic Traits.

According to Bayesian/predictive coding models of autism, autistic individuals may have difficulties learning probabilistic cue-outcome associations, but empirical evidence has been mixed. The target cues used in previous studies were often straightforward and might not reflect real-life learning of such associations which requires learners to infer which cue(s) among many to track. Across two experiments, we compared adult learners with varying levels of autistic traits on their ability to infer the correct cue to learn probabilistic cue-outcome associations when explicitly instructed to do so or when exposed implicitly. We found no evidence for the effect of autistic traits on probabilistic learning accuracy, contrary to the predictions of Bayesian/predictive coding models. Implications for the current Bayesian/predictive coding models are discussed.

Cues and categories: Revisiting paths to racial phenotypicality bias

AbstractWe conducted a targeted review of the literature exploring racial phenotypicality bias (RPB): perceivers' sensitivity to within‐race variation in facial target features in perceptions and judgment of others. This review revealed evidence that two distinct mechanisms underlying these effects, categorical and featural, tend to be conflated in the literature. The categorical route suggests that the pathway from target cues to stereotype application is mediated by category activation. The featural route suggests that the pathway from target cues to stereotype application is direct, bypassing category activation. The categorical route is more closely represented when researchers discuss RPB, and more often of empirical focus. With a focus on research exploring RPB toward African American people, we explain the two routes and evidence supporting their distinction. We next offer evidence estimating the degree to which they may be conflated in the empirical literature and discuss limitations to our approach. Next, we describe some potential implications of this conflation for theory, research, and applications concerning RPB. Finally, we end with some recommendations for future empirical research.

Grounding the Attentional Boost Effect in Events and the Efficient Brain.

Attention and memory for everyday experiences vary over time, wherein some moments are better attended and subsequently better remembered than others. These effects have been demonstrated in naturalistic viewing tasks with complex and relatively uncontrolled stimuli, as well as in more controlled laboratory tasks with simpler stimuli. For example, in the attentional boost effect (ABE), participants perform two tasks at once: memorizing a series of briefly presented stimuli (e.g., pictures of outdoor scenes) for a later memory test, and responding to other concurrently presented cues that meet pre-defined criteria (e.g., participants press a button for a blue target square and do nothing for a red distractor square). However, rather than increasing dual-task interference, attending to a target cue boosts, rather than impairs, subsequent memory for concurrently presented information. In this review we describe current data on the extent and limitations of the attentional boost effect and whether it may be related to activity in the locus coeruleus neuromodulatory system. We suggest that insight into the mechanisms that produce the attentional boost effect may be found in recent advances in the locus coeruleus literature and from understanding of how the neurocognitive system handles stability and change in everyday events. We consequently propose updates to an early account of the attentional boost effect, the dual-task interaction model, to better ground it in what is currently known about event cognition and the role that the LC plays in regulating brain states.

Signal detection analysis of contingency assessment: Associative interference and nonreinforcement impact cue-outcome contingency sensitivity, whereas cue density affects bias.

In a signal detection theory approach to associative learning, the perceived (i.e., subjective) contingency between a cue and an outcome is a random variable drawn from a Gaussian distribution. At the end of the sequence, participants report a positive cue-outcome contingency provided the subjective contingency is above some threshold. Some researchers have suggested that the mean of the subjective contingency distributions and the threshold are controlled by different variables. The present data provide empirical support for this claim. In three experiments, participants were exposed to rapid streams of trials at the end of which they had to indicate whether a target outcome O1 was more likely following a target cue X. Interfering treatments were incorporated in some streams to impend participants' ability to identify the objective X-O1 contingency: interference trials (X was paired with an irrelevant outcome O2), nonreinforced trials (X was presented alone), plus control trials (an irrelevant cue W was paired with O2). Overall, both interference and nonreinforced trials impaired participants' sensitivity to the contingencies as measured by signal detection theory's d', but they also enhanced detection of positive contingencies through a cue density effect, with nonreinforced trials being more susceptible to this effect than interference trials. These results are explicable if one assumes interference and nonreinforced trials impact the mean of the associative strength distribution, while the cue density influences the threshold. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The superior response speed of table tennis players is associated with proactive inhibitory control.

ObjectiveTo explore the mechanism behind the faster volitional reaction time (RT) of open skill sports athletes from the perspective of proactive inhibitory control, with the hypothesis that the superior response speed of athletes from open skill sports is related to their enhanced capacity for releasing inhibition.MethodsParticipants were divided into two groups, an experimental group of 27 table tennis players and a control group of 27 non-athletes. By manipulating cue–target onset asynchrony (CTOA) in a simple cue-target detection task, the timing of target presentation occurred in different phases of the disinhibition process. The time needed for disinhibition were compared between groups.ResultsFor the experimental group, RT varied with CTOA at delays less than 200 ms; for CTOAs greater than 200 ms, RTs were not significantly different. For the control group, RT varied with CTOA for delays as long as 300 ms.ConclusionsTable tennis players took less time (200 ms) than non-athletes (300 ms) to complete the disinhibition process, which might partly explain their rapid response speed measured in unpredictable contexts.SignificanceThe study provided evidence for disinhibition speed as a new index to assess the capacity of proactive inhibitory control, and provided a new perspective to explore the superior RT of athletes from open skill sports. We also offered support for the fundamental cognitive benefits of table tennis training.

Blocking is not 'pure' cue competition: Renewal-like effects in forward and backward blocking indicate contributions by associative cue interference.

Blocking (i.e., reduced responding to cue X following YX-outcome pairings in Phase 2 as a consequence of cue Y having been paired with the outcome in Phase 1) is one of the signature phenomena in Pavlovian conditioning. Its discovery promoted the development of multiple associative models, most of which viewed blocking as an instance of pure cue competition (i.e., a decrease in responding attributable to training two conditioned stimuli in compound). Two experiments are reported in which rats were examined in a fear conditioning paradigm (i.e., lick suppression), and context dependency of retrieval at test was used as an index of associative cue interference (i.e., a decrease in responding to a target cue as a result of training a second cue with the same outcome but without concurrent presentation of the two cues). Specifically, we observed renewal of forward-blocking which parallels renewal of proactive interference, and renewal of backward-blocking which parallels renewal of retroactive interference. Thus, both backward-blocking (Experiment 1, embedded in a sensory preconditioning design) and forward-blocking (Experiment 2, conducted in first-order conditioning) appear to be influenced by retroactive and proactive interference, respectively, as well as cue competition. Consequently, blocking, long regarded as a benchmark example of pure cue competition, is sometimes a hybrid of cue competition and associative interference. Finally, the Discussion considers whether stimulus competition and associative interference are two independent phenomena or products of a single underlying process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Are all real-world objects created equal? Estimating the "set-size" of the search target in visual working memory.

Are all real-world objects created equal? Visual search difficulty increases with the number of targets and as target-related visual working memory (VWM) load increases. Our goal was to investigate the load imposed by individual real-world objects held in VWM in the context of search. Measures of visual clutter attempt to quantify real-world set-size in the context of scenes. We applied one of these measures, the number of proto-objects, to individual real-world objects and used contralateral delay activity (CDA) to measure the resulting VWM load. The current study presented a real-world object as a target cue, followed by a delay where CDA was measured. This was followed by a four-object search array. We compared CDA and later search performance from target cues containing a high or low number of proto-objects. High proto-object target cues resulted in greater CDA, longer search RTs, target dwell times, and reduced search guidance, relative to low proto-object targets. These findings demonstrate that targets with more proto-objects result in a higher VWM load and reduced search performance. This shows that the number of proto-objects contained within individual objects produce set-size like effects in VWM and suggests proto-objects may be a viable unit of measure of real-world VWM load. Importantly, this demonstrates that not all real-world objects are created equal.

Listening in the Mix: Lead Vocals Robustly Attract Auditory Attention in Popular Music

Listeners can attend to and track instruments or singing voices in complex musical mixtures, even though the acoustical energy of sounds from individual instruments may overlap in time and frequency. In popular music, lead vocals are often accompanied by sound mixtures from a variety of instruments, such as drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars. However, little is known about how the perceptual organization of such musical scenes is affected by selective attention, and which acoustic features play the most important role. To investigate these questions, we explored the role of auditory attention in a realistic musical scenario. We conducted three online experiments in which participants detected single cued instruments or voices in multi-track musical mixtures. Stimuli consisted of 2-s multi-track excerpts of popular music. In one condition, the target cue preceded the mixture, allowing listeners to selectively attend to the target. In another condition, the target was presented after the mixture, requiring a more “global” mode of listening. Performance differences between these two conditions were interpreted as effects of selective attention. In Experiment 1, results showed that detection performance was generally dependent on the target’s instrument category, but listeners were more accurate when the target was presented prior to the mixture rather than the opposite. Lead vocals appeared to be nearly unaffected by this change in presentation order and achieved the highest accuracy compared with the other instruments, which suggested a particular salience of vocal signals in musical mixtures. In Experiment 2, filtering was used to avoid potential spectral masking of target sounds. Although detection accuracy increased for all instruments, a similar pattern of results was observed regarding the instrument-specific differences between presentation orders. In Experiment 3, adjusting the sound level differences between the targets reduced the effect of presentation order, but did not affect the differences between instruments. While both acoustic manipulations facilitated the detection of targets, vocal signals remained particularly salient, which suggest that the manipulated features did not contribute to vocal salience. These findings demonstrate that lead vocals serve as robust attractor points of auditory attention regardless of the manipulation of low-level acoustical cues.

Motion cues from the background influence associative color learning of honey bees in a virtual-reality scenario

Honey bees exhibit remarkable visual learning capacities, which can be studied using virtual reality (VR) landscapes in laboratory conditions. Existing VR environments for bees are imperfect as they provide either open-loop conditions or 2D displays. Here we achieved a true 3D environment in which walking bees learned to discriminate a rewarded from a punished virtual stimulus based on color differences. We included ventral or frontal background cues, which were also subjected to 3D updating based on the bee movements. We thus studied if and how the presence of such motion cues affected visual discrimination in our VR landscape. Our results showed that the presence of frontal, and to a lesser extent, of ventral background motion cues impaired the bees’ performance. Whenever these cues were suppressed, color discrimination learning became possible. We analyzed the specific contribution of foreground and background cues and discussed the role of attentional interference and differences in stimulus salience in the VR environment to account for these results. Overall, we show how background and target cues may interact at the perceptual level and influence associative learning in bees. In addition, we identify issues that may affect decision-making in VR landscapes, which require specific control by experimenters.

Interval timing and midfrontal delta oscillations are impaired in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait.

Gait abnormalities and cognitive dysfunction are common in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and get worse with disease progression. Recent evidence has suggested a strong relationship between gait abnormalities and cognitive dysfunction in PD patients and impaired cognitive control could be one of the causes for abnormal gait patterns. However, the pathophysiological mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in PD patients with gait problems are unclear. Here, we collected scalp electroencephalography (EEG) signals during a 7-s interval timing task to investigate the cortical mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in PD patients with (PDFOG +, n = 34) and without (PDFOG-, n = 37) freezing of gait, as well as control subjects (n = 37). Results showed that the PDFOG + group exhibited the lowest maximum response density at around 7s compared to PDFOG- and control groups, and this response density peak correlated with gait abnormalities as measured by FOG scores. EEG data demonstrated that PDFOG + had decreased midfrontal delta-band power at the onset of the target cue, which was also correlated with maximum response density and FOG scores. In addition, our classifier performed better at discriminating PDFOG + from PDFOG- and controls with an area under the curve of 0.93 when midfrontal delta power was chosen as a feature. These findings suggest that abnormal midfrontal activity in PDFOG + is related to cognitive dysfunction and describe the mechanistic relationship between cognitive and gait functions in PDFOG + . Overall, these results could advance the development of novel biosignatures and brain stimulation approaches for PDFOG + .

Reversing the relationship between a nontarget cue and the outcome facilitates subsequent human predictive learning

Two experiments were conducted to test the effect of experiencing associative interference on later learning. A predictive learning task was used in which human participants had to evaluate whether plants would grow or not (Outcome) after being watered with different fertilizers (Cues). Experiment 1 found that the increase in the prediction error produced by following a pre-exposed nontarget cue by the outcome, facilitated subsequent acquisition of the relationship between the pre-exposed target cue and the outcome. Experiment 2 compared whether learning about the target cue was differentially affected by experiencing two types of associative interference with the nontarget cue: Pairing the pre-exposed cue with the outcome and presenting the cue without outcome after being paired with it. The experience of associative interference with nontarget cues similarly facilitated subsequent learning about the target cue, regardless of the direction of the change in the nontarget cue-outcome relationship. It is suggested that the increase in prediction error produced by the experience of associative interference may lead to a general increase in attention that facilitates subsequent learning.

Inhibition of Return Decreases Early Audiovisual Integration: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Previous behavioral studies have found that inhibition of return decreases the audiovisual integration, while the underlying neural mechanisms are unknown. The current work utilized the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how audiovisual integration would be modulated by inhibition of return. We employed the cue-target paradigm and manipulated the target type and cue validity. Participants were required to perform the task of detection of visual (V), auditory (A), or audiovisual (AV) targets shown in the identical (valid cue) or opposed (invalid cue) side to be the preceding exogenous cue. The neural activities between AV targets and the sum of the A and V targets were compared, and their differences were calculated to present the audiovisual integration effect in different cue validity conditions (valid, invalid). The ERPs results showed that a significant super-additive audiovisual integration effect was observed on the P70 (60∼90 ms, frontal-central) only under the invalid cue condition. The significant audiovisual integration effects were observed on the N1 or P2 components (N1, 120∼180 ms, frontal-central-parietal; P2, 200∼260 ms, frontal-central-parietal) in both valid cue as well as invalid cue condition. And there were no significant differences on the later components between invalid cue and valid cue. The result offers the first neural demonstration that inhibition of return modulates the early audiovisual integration process.

Bumble bees show an induced preference for flowers when primed with caffeinated nectar and a target floral odor

Caffeine is a widely occurring plant defense chemical1,2 that occurs in the nectar of some plants, e.g., Coffea or Citrus spp., where it may influence pollinator behavior to enhance pollination.3,4 Honey bees fed caffeine form longer lasting olfactory memory associations,5 which could give plants with caffeinated nectar an adaptive advantage by inducing more visits to flowers. Caffeinated free-flying bees show enhanced learning performance6 and are more likely to revisit a caffeinated target feeder or artificial flower,7-9 although it is not clear whether improved memory of the target cues or the perception of caffeine as a reward is the cause. Here, we show that inexperienced bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) locate new food sources emitting a learned floral odor more consistently if they have been fed caffeine. In laboratory arena tests, we fed bees a caffeinated food alongside a floral odor blend (priming) and then used robotic experimental flowers10 to disentangle the effects of caffeine improving memory for learned food-associated cues versus caffeine as a reward. Inexperienced bees primed with caffeine made more initial visits to target robotic flowers emitting the target odor compared to control bees or those primed with odor alone. Caffeine-primed bees tended to improve their floral handling time faster. Although the effects of caffeine were short lived, we show that food-locating behaviors in free-flying bumble bees can be enhanced by caffeine provided in the nest. Consequently, there is potential to redesign commercial colonies to enhance bees' forage focus or even bias bees to forage on a specific crop.

Equivalent Behavioral Facilitation to Tactile Cues in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The alerting network, a subcomponent of attention, enables humans to respond to novel information. Children with ASD have shown equivalent alerting in response to visual and/or auditory stimuli compared to typically developing (TD) children. However, it is unclear whether children with ASD and TD show equivalent alerting to tactile stimuli. We examined (1) whether tactile cues affect accuracy and reaction times in children with ASD and TD, (2) whether the duration between touch-cues and auditory targets impacts performance, and (3) whether behavioral responses in the tactile cueing task are associated with ASD symptomatology. Six- to 12-year-olds with ASD and TD participated in a tactile-cueing task and were instructed to respond with a button press to a target sound /a/. Tactile cues were presented at 200, 400, and 800 ms (25% each) prior to the auditory target. The remaining trials (25%) were presented without tactile cues. Findings suggested that both groups showed equivalent alerting responses to tactile cues. Additionally, all children were faster to respond to auditory targets at longer cue–target intervals. Finally, there was an association between rate of facilitation and RRB scores in all children, suggesting that patterns of responding to transient phasic cues may be related to ASD symptomatology.

A finer-grained search reveals no evidence of the attentional capture by to-be-ignored features.

The contingent capture account of involuntary attention claims that it is guided by top-down factors, such as volitional goals or task instructions. The contrasting rapid disengagement account holds that the contingent capture account relies on the spatial precueing paradigm, which is vulnerable to the elimination of the cue-validity effect through rapid attentional disengagement. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to examine whether a spatial cue presented in a target-defining or distractor-defining color that predicted the location of a subsequently presented target at the chance level involuntarily captures attention by measuring the cue-validity effect. Additionally, to examine the influence of cue-target compatibility as an alternative indicator of attentional capture, an object identical to or different from the target object was presented at the cued location in the cue display in all experiments. The results showed that the cue-validity effect and the cue-target compatibility effect were present only when the target-color cue was presented. The object of the target display presented at the location cued by the target color was recognized even on invalid trials. By contrast, the distractor color cue did not show any indication of attentional capture or postattentive inhibition. These results imply that preattentive selection and postattentive inhibition depend on top-down attentional control setting. Furthermore, the absence of a cue-validity effect with a distractor feature is not due to the inhibition of the cued location after attentional disengagement.