Visibility Of Cues Research Articles

Reward Value Enhances Sequence Monitoring Ramping Dynamics as Ending Rewards Approach in the Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex.

Many fundamental human behaviors contain multiple sequences performed to reach a desired outcome, such as cooking. Reward is inherently associated with sequence completion and has been shown to generally enhance cognitive control. However, the impact of reward on cognitive sequence processing remains unexplored. To address this key question, we focused on the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC). This area is necessary and exhibits increasing (“ramping”) activation during sequences, a dynamic that may be related to reward processing in other brain regions. To separate these dynamics, we designed a task where reward was only provided after multiple four-item sequences (“iterations”), rather than each individual sequence. Using fMRI in humans, we investigated three possible interactions of reward and sequential control signals in RLPFC: (1) with the visibility of sequential cues, i.e., memory; (2) equally across individual sequence iterations; and (3) differently across individual sequence iterations (e.g., increasing as reward approaches). Evidence from previous, nonsequential cognitive control experiments suggested that reward would uniformly change RLPFC activity across iterations and may depend on the visibility of cues. However, we found the influence of reward on RLPFC ramping increased across sequence iterations and did not interact with memory. These results suggest an active, predictive, and distinctive role for RLPFC in sequence monitoring and integration of reward information, consistent with extant literature demonstrating similar accelerating reward-related dopamine dynamics in regions connected to RLPFC. These results have implications for understanding sequential behavior in daily life, and when they go awry in disorders such as addiction.

Disentangling the Roles of Cue Visibility and Knowledge in Adjusting Cognitive Control: A Preregistered Direct Replication of the Farooqui and Manly (2015) Study

Recent research suggests that people can learn to link the control process of task switching to predictive cues so that switch costs are attenuated following informative precues of switch likelihood. However, the precise conditions that shape such contextual cuing of control are not well understood. Farooqui and Manly (2015) raised the possibility that cued task switching is more effective when cues of control demand are presented subliminally. In the current study, we aimed to replicate and extend these findings by more systematically manipulating whether cues of control demand are consciously perceived or are presented subliminally and whether participants have explicit prior knowledge of the cue meaning or acquire cue knowledge through experience. The direct replication was unsuccessful: We found no evidence for effective subliminal cuing but observed some evidence for participants reducing switch costs with explicit, supraliminal cues. Thus, cognitive control may be guided most effectively by explicitly understood and consciously perceived precues.

Dissociating emotion-induced blindness and hypervision.

Previous findings suggest that emotional stimuli sometimes improve (emotion-induced hypervision) and sometimes impair (emotion-induced blindness) the visual perception of subsequent neutral stimuli. We hypothesized that these differential carryover effects might be due to 2 distinct emotional influences in visual processing. On the one hand, emotional stimuli trigger a general enhancement in the efficiency of visual processing that can carry over onto other stimuli. On the other hand, emotional stimuli benefit from a stimulus-specific enhancement in later attentional processing at the expense of competing visual stimuli. We investigated whether detrimental (blindness) and beneficial (hypervision) carryover effects of emotion in perception can be dissociated within a single experimental paradigm. In 2 experiments, we manipulated the temporal competition for attention between an emotional cue word and a subsequent neutral target word by varying cue-target interstimulus interval (ISI) and cue visibility. Interestingly, emotional cues impaired target identification at short ISIs but improved target identification when competition was diminished by either increasing ISI or reducing cue visibility, suggesting that emotional significance of stimuli can improve and impair visual performance through distinct perceptual mechanisms.

Cue contrast modulates the effects of exogenous attention on appearance

Exogenous spatial attention can be automatically engaged by a cue presented in the visual periphery. To investigate the effects of exogenous attention, previous studies have generally used highly salient cues that reliably trigger attention. However, the cueing threshold of exogenous attention has been unexamined. We investigated whether the attentional effect varies with cue salience. We examined the magnitude of the attentional effect on apparent contrast [ Carrasco, M., Ling, S., & Read, S. (2004). Attention alters appearance. Nature Neuroscience, 7(3), 308–313. ] elicited by cues with negative Weber contrast between 6% and 100%. Cue contrast modulated the attentional effect, even at cue contrasts above the level at which observers can perfectly localize the cue; hence, the result is not due to an increase in cue visibility. No attentional effect is observed when the 100% contrast cue is presented after the stimuli, ruling out cue bias or sensory interaction between cues and stimuli as alternative explanations. A second experiment, using the same paradigm with high contrast motion stimuli gave similar results, providing further evidence against a sensory interaction explanation, as the stimuli and task were defined on a visual dimension independent from cue contrast. Although exogenous attention is triggered automatically and involuntarily, the attentional effect is gradual.

Neural Dynamics in Monkey Parietal Reach Region Reflect Context-Specific Sensorimotor Transformations

We investigated the neural dynamics of sensorimotor transformations in the parietal reach region (PRR) of monkeys. To dissociate sensory from motor goal representations, we used a memory-guided anti-reach task. The monkeys had to reach either to a visually instructed, memorized peripheral target position (pro-reach) or to a diametrically opposed position (anti) while keeping central ocular fixation. Pro- and anti-reaches were randomly interleaved and indicated by a color instruction from the beginning of each trial. We analyzed spatiotemporal single-cell tuning and performed time-resolved population decoding to quantify the dynamic representation of the spatial visual cue, the reach goal, and the currently valid task rule (pro/anti mapping). Sensory information regarding the visual cue position was represented weakly during a short period of cue visibility. PRR predominantly encoded the reach goal from the end of the cue period on. The representation of the reach goal in the memory task evolves later for the anti- compared with pro-reaches, consistent with a 40-50 ms difference in reaction time between the two task rules. The task rule could be decoded before the appearance of the spatial cue, which indicates that abstract rule information is present in PRR that is independent of spatial cue or motor goal representations. Our findings support the hypothesis that PRR immediately translates current sensory information into reach movement plans, rather than storing the memorized cue location in the instructed-delay task. This finding indicates that PRR represents integrated knowledge on spatial sensory information combined with abstract behavioral rules to encode the desired movement goal.

Hypnotizability and automaticity: Toward a parallel distributed processing model of hypnotic responding.

We tested a hypothesis from parallel distributed processing theory that highly hypnotizable subjects have greater connection strengths along verbal pathways and would show greater Stroop effects than low hypnotizable subjects. Using Cheesman & Merikle's (1986) paradigm, which varied cue visibility and probability, we assessed automatic and strategic effects on Stroop performance. Compared with 9 low and 9 moderately hypnotizable subjects, 9 highly hypnotizable ones showed significantly greater Stroop effects for both visible- and degraded-word trials. No strategic differences emerged for the 3 hypnotizability groups. These findings support the contention that highly hypnotizable persons have stronger verbal connection strengths than their moderately and low susceptible counterparts, and they may account for highly hypnotizable persons' propensity to disregard personal attributions and label their responses in hypnosis as being involuntary.

Discrimination facilitation as a function of differential choice-point delay

Sixty rats experienced differential delay contingencies to ascertain how cue visibility related to choice-point delay in a black-white discrimination problem. Ss experiencing no delay at the choice point took longer to learn the discrimination than Ss experiencing cue visibility during an enforced choice-point delay. Cue visibility during the whole 4-sec delay period, first half of the delay period, and last half of the delay period, produced similar learning rates. The data indicate that the delay vs “;stirred-up”; state controversy is more complex than would be suggested by an analysis based on cue visibility time or “;stirred-up”; state of an animal.