Irrelevant Dimension Research Articles

Limitations of cognitive control on emotional distraction \u2013 Congruency in the Color Stroop task does not modulate the Emotional Stroop effect

Emotional information receives prioritized processing over concurrent cognitive processes. This can lead to distraction if emotional information has to be ignored. In the cognitive domain, mechanisms have been described that allow control of (cognitive) distractions. However, whether similar cognitive control mechanisms also can attenuate emotional distraction is an active area of research. This study asked whether cognitive control (triggered in the Color Stroop task) attenuates emotional distraction in the Emotional Stroop task. Theoretical accounts of cognitive control, and the Emotional Stroop task alike, predict such an interaction for tasks that employ the same relevant (e.g., color-naming) and irrelevant (e.g., word-reading) dimension. In an alternating-runs design with Color and Emotional Stroop tasks changing from trial to trial, we analyzed the impact of proactive and reactive cognitive control on Emotional Stroop effects. Four experiments manipulated predictability of congruency and emotional stimuli. Overall, results showed congruency effects in Color Stroop tasks and Emotional Stroop effects. Moreover, we found a spillover of congruency effects and emotional distraction to the other task, indicating that processes specific to one task impacted to the other task. However, Bayesian analyses and a mini-meta-analysis across experiments weigh against the predicted interaction between cognitive control and emotional distraction. The results point out limitations of cognitive control to block off emotional distraction, questioning views that assume a close interaction between cognitive control and emotional processing.

Cognitive Control and Bilingualism: The Bilingual Advantage Through the Lens of Dimensional Overlap.

Past research shows that the bilingual experience may enhance cognitive executive function. In this experiment, we evaluated cognitive control in bilinguals relative to monolinguals by using a dimensional overlap model to predict performance in a task composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli. A group of 24 Spanish monolinguals and 24 bilinguals with differing first languages and all having Spanish as a second language (L2) did a picture naming task and a task composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli, where the effect of different overlap conditions (spatial/color) between stimuli and responses were examined. The tasks were performed in Spanish for both groups and performance was indexed with behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We hypothesized that the bilinguals’ daily language practice in L2 reflected overlap conditions similar to the Simon task. Both naming a picture in L2 and the Simon task would involve conflict at the response level. L2 picture naming entails interference between two potential oral responses, to name in L2 vs. L1 (correct vs. incorrect responses, respectively). Similarly, incongruent stimuli in the Simon task produce interference because the irrelevant dimension (spatial location) overlap with an incorrect response. In contrast, the manual Stroop task involves a different type of conflict between two overlapping stimulus dimensions (the ink color and the color meaning). We predicted for these reasons a superior performance in Simon tasks over Stroop tasks for bilinguals, while monolinguals were expected to have a similar performance in both tasks. We also expected to see a correlation between the performance on the picture naming task and the Simon task in bilinguals. However, the behavioral results did not confirm these hypotheses. In fact, both groups had similar congruency effects as measured by reaction times and error rates, and there was no correlation between the picture naming and Simon task in bilinguals. Despite this, the electrophysiological data suggested a relationship between the picture naming task and the P300 congruency effect in bilinguals. Our findings provide insights into the neurocognitive bases of language and serve as a research avenue for language behaviors in bilinguals.

Eriksen flanker delta plot shapes depend on the stimulus.

Several experimental paradigms are purported to measure response conflict, including the Stroop, Simon, and Eriksen flanker tasks. Although these tasks are often treated as being similar, delta plot analyses of response time distributions have revealed marked differences across them. Several theories have been proposed to explain these differences, however, assessing their veracity is difficult given the numerous differences across tasks. To explore what might cause delta plots to differ in a more controlled manner, here stimulus materials were manipulated across four Eriksen flanker tasks. The results reveal substantially different delta plot shapes for different stimuli: positive-going functions when color or motion served as the target and flankers, and delta plots with negative-going components when stimuli were arrows or orientated gratings. These results cast doubt on the proposal that negative-going delta plots occur only when spatial location serves as the interfering stimulus dimension. Moreover, because targets and flankers were always of the same stimulus type, the results also suggest that differences in materials across the relevant and irrelevant dimensions do not determine delta plot shapes. Instead, we propose that the delta plot shape is determined by several factors, including how early the interfering information is processed in the visual cortex.

Infants' discrimination of consonant contrasts in the presence and absence of talker variability.

To learn speech-sound categories, infants must identify the acoustic dimensions that differentiate categories and selectively attend to them as opposed to irrelevant dimensions. Variability on irrelevant acoustic dimensions can aid formation of robust categories in infants through adults in tasks such as word learning (e.g., Rost and McMurray, 2009) or speech-sound learning (e.g., Lively et al., 1993). At the same time, variability sometimes overwhelms learners, interfering with learning and processing. Two prior studies (Kuhl & Miller, 1982; Jusczyk, Pisoni, & Mullennix, 1992) found that irrelevant variability sometimes impaired early sound discrimination. We asked whether variability would impair or facilitate discrimination for older infants, comparing 7.5-month-old infants' discrimination of an early acquired native contrast, /p/ vs. /b/ (in the word forms /pIm/ vs. /bIm/), in Experiment 1, with an acoustically subtle, non-native contrast, /n/ vs. /ŋ/ (in /nIm/ vs. /ŋIm/), in Experiment 2. Words were spoken by one or four talkers. Infants discriminated the native but not the non-native contrast, and there were no significant effects of talker condition. We discuss implications for theories of phonological learning and avenues for future research.

Visual dimension analysis based on dimension subdivision

Visualization of multidimensional data has always been a research hotspot. Dimensional analysis is an efficient way to solve multidimensional problems. The current dimensional analysis methods mostly consider that all dimension correlations are at the same granularity, but actually the correlation between dimensions may be multi-scale. Multi-scale dimensions can also reflect the multi-scale data association mode, which is of certain value for analyzing the hidden information of multidimensional data. In this paper, we propose a method of dimension subdivision to resolve the multi-scale correlations between dimensions. To explore the multi-scale complex relationship between dimensions, we subdivide the original dimensions into finer sub-dimensions and build a graph-based data structure of the correlations to partition strongly relevant and irrelevant dimensions. We also proposed D-div, a visual dimension analysis system to support our method. In D-div, we provide visualization and interaction techniques to explore subdivided dimensions. Via case studies with two datasets, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method of dimension subdivision.

Nonparametric Regression Algorithm for Short-Term Traffic Flow Forecasting Based on Data Reduction and Support Vector Machine

Nonparametric regression is an important method for short-term traffic flow forecasting, but the traditional nonparametric regression method needs a large storage space and slow query speed when the data are large and the dimension is high. In this paper, an improved nonparametric regression traffic flow forecasting algorithm is proposed. Subtraction fuzzy clustering method is used to cluster historical data to reduce the amount of data in the pattern database. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce the dimension of the pattern to overcome the problems of slow matching speed and interference of irrelevant dimension caused by the high dimension of the pattern. The support vector machine method is used to estimate the value of the final predicted variables by searching the patterns. The operation efficiency and prediction accuracy of the algorithm are improved. An online simulation-based test shows that the algorithm exhibits better efficiency and accuracy compared with traditional methods.

Disentangling the effects of attentional weighting and associative mediation in perceptual learning reveals no evidence for associative mediation.

Learning to categorize perceptually similar stimuli can result in people becoming more sensitive to differences along perceptual dimensions that are relevant to category membership and/or less sensitive to equivalent differences along irrelevant perceptual dimensions. These effects of acquired distinctiveness and acquired equivalence may be caused by changes in the representations of stimuli which come about through adjustment to the relative attentional weighting of perceptual features or dimensions. Alternatively, the development of associations between individual stimuli and category labels could result in those labels being incorporated into the stimulus representation, hence increasing or decreasing generalization between the stimuli. For many categorization tasks, the expected effects of attentional weighting and associative mediation on stimulus similarity are the same. We report 3 experiments using complex category structures, which allowed us to assess the independent influence of each mechanism on stimulus similarity. The results suggest that, in these categorization tasks, attentional weighting affects perceptual similarity but associative mediation does not. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dimension reduction based on small sample entropy learning for hand-writing image

Since deep learning requires a large number of training samples, which is not conducive to its application in reality, small sample learning began to get a lot of attention recently. However, under the condition of small samples for training, high dimensional data still impede the efficiency of the general machine learning model. To solve this problem, we propose a dimension reduction method based on small sample entropy learning and apply it on hand-writing image. An index based on entropy is introduced to measure the importance of different features. Group entropy and labeled entropies are defined according to the distribution of the whole and labeled data on it respectively. And their estimating calculation forms are discussed separately in the case that feature is discrete and continuous. Finally, the index is approximated and prepared for dimension reduction. Numerical results on hand-writing image data sets are presented to verify that much irrelevant dimensions of hand-writing image are found and reduced. Average computational time of image classification computing is shortened. And classification accuracy is retained and even enhanced slightly on some labeled proportions. The case for one shot learning is validated as well. As a result, the proposed method is meaningful and has practical application value.

Facial identity influences facial expression recognition: A high-density ERP study

The relationship between facial identity and facial expression processing has long been debated. Although previous facial recognition models indicate that facial identity and facial expression processing are independent, psychological studies using the selective attention task (the Garner paradigm) have revealed an asymmetrical relationship between the perception of identity and emotional expressions in faces: while facial expression does not influence facial identity recognition, facial identity influences facial expression recognition. We used the Garner paradigm and recorded high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the influence of facial identity on facial expression recognition. Twenty participants judged the expression of faces, while the irrelevant dimension of identity was either held constant (control condition) or varied (orthogonal condition). We recorded 128-channel EEGs while participants completed the facial expression task. We analyzed the two major components of early visual stages: P1 and N170. ERP results revealed a significant main effect of condition on the N170 latency. These results suggest that facial identity influences facial expression recognition in the N170 that reflects the structural encoding of faces. Thus, information on facial expression might be computed based on the unique structure of individual faces.

Oculomotor capture by search-irrelevant features in visual working memory: on the crucial role of target\u2013distractor similarity

When searching for varying targets in the environment, a target template has to be maintained in visual working memory (VWM). Recently, we showed that search-irrelevant features of a VWM template bias attention in an object-based manner, so that objects sharing such features with a VWM template capture the eyes involuntarily. Here, we investigated whether target–distractor similarity modulates capture strength. Participants saccaded to a target accompanied by a distractor. A single feature (e.g., shape) defined the target in each trial indicated by a cue, and the cue also varied in one irrelevant feature (e.g., color). The distractor matched the cue’s irrelevant feature in half of the trials. Nine experiments showed that target–distractor similarity consistently influenced the degree of oculomotor capture. High target–distractor dissimilarity in the search-relevant feature reduced capture by the irrelevant feature (Experiments 1, 3, 6, 7). However, capture was reduced by high target–distractor similarity in the search-irrelevant feature (Experiments 1, 4, 5, 8). Strong oculomotor capture was observed if target–distractor similarity was reasonably low in the relevant and high in the irrelevant feature, irrespective of whether color or shape were relevant (Experiments 2 and 5). These findings argue for involuntary and object-based, top-down control by VWM templates, whereas its manifestation in oculomotor capture depends crucially on target–distractor similarity in relevant and irrelevant feature dimensions of the search object.

Low and high stimulation frequencies differentially affect automated response selection in the superior parietal cortex \u2013 implications for somatosensory area processes

Response inhibition as a central facet of executive functioning is no homogeneous construct. Interference inhibition constitutes a subcomponent of response inhibition and refers to inhibitory control over responses that are automatically triggered by irrelevant stimulus dimensions as measured by the Simon task. While there is evidence that the area-specific modulation of tactile information affects the act of action withholding, effects in the context of interference inhibition remain elusive. We conducted a tactile version of the Simon task with stimuli designed to be predominantly processed in the primary (40 Hz) or secondary (150 Hz) somatosensory cortex. On the basis of EEG recordings, we performed signal decomposition and source localization. Behavioral results reveal that response execution is more efficient when sensory information is mainly processed via SII, compared to SI sensory areas during non-conflicting trials. When accounting for intermingled coding levels by temporally decomposing EEG data, the results show that experimental variations depending on sensory area-specific processing differences specifically affect motor and not sensory processes. Modulations of motor-related processes are linked to activation differences in the superior parietal cortex (BA7). It is concluded that the SII cortical area supporting cognitive preprocessing of tactile input fosters automatic tactile information processing by facilitating stimulus-response mapping in posterior parietal regions.

Event-based encoding of biological motion and location in visual working memory.

We make use of discrete yet meaningful events to orient ourselves to the dynamic environment. Among these events, biological motion, referring to the movements of animate entities, is one of the most biologically salient. We usually encounter biological motions of multiple human beings taking place simultaneously at distinct locations. How we encode biological motions into visual working memory (VWM) to form a coherent experience of the external world and guide our social behaviour remains unclear. This study for the first time addressed the VWM encoding mechanism of biological motions and their corresponding locations. We tested an event-based encoding hypothesis for biological motion and location: When one element of an event is required to be memorised, the irrelevant element of an event will also be extracted into VWM. We presented participants with three biological motions at different locations and required them to memorise only the biological motions or their locations while ignoring the other dimension. We examined the event-based encoding by probing a distracting effect: If the event-based encoding took place, the change of irrelevant dimension in the probe would lead to a significant distraction and impair the performance of detecting target dimension. We found significant distracting effects, which lasted for 3 s but vanished at 6 s, regardless of the target dimension (biological motions vs. locations, Experiment 1) and the exposure time of memory array (1 s vs. 3 s, Experiment 2). These results together support an event-based encoding mechanism during VWM encoding of biological motions and their corresponding locations.

GSR-based distracted driving identification using discrete & continuous decomposition and wavelet packet transform

Abstract Distracted driving is considered as one of the main factors contributing to the fatalities on the road. Thus, detecting distraction early while driving and alerting the driver can help reduce accidents on the road. While previous studies like as camera-based systems show acceptable detection results, they suffer from distraction detection latency and risk of privacy violation. On the other hand, using physiological signals compensates for early and more secured detection of distraction. Although these technologies achieved high accuracy, they are expensive and extensively intrusive to the drivers. In this study, we propose a minimally intrusive wearable physiological sensor (available on smartwatches) to quantify skin conductance (SC) known as galvanic skin responses (GSR) to characterize and identify distraction during naturalistic driving. 15 driver subjects participated in our experiments, driving normally and then driving while engaged in a secondary task and their GSR data was recorded and labeled accordingly. We employ two deconvolution techniques i) Continuous Decomposition analysis (CDA) and ii) Discrete Decomposition Analysis (DDA) on the raw SC signal to decompose it into the phasic and tonic components. We train various classifiers on the resulted feature matrices in order to identify the data associated with normal driving from the distracted scenarios. Our results show that an averaged 10 fold cross-validation accuracy of 92.2% is achieved using Ensemble bagged classifier on the extracted 74 dimension feature space. The high dimensionality of the original feature space involves high computational cost and might also introduce the curse of dimensionality in the generalization phase. Therefore, we evaluate various types of feature selection methods to eliminate the irrelevant dimensions in the feature space and create a subspace relevant to the task of distraction identification. The improved accuracy of 92.9% and 93.5% is achieved by employing only 10-D and 15-D feature spaces using the embedded random forest feature selection and the ensemble bagged classifier, respectively.

Response Modality and the Stroop Task.

A long-standing debate in the Stroop literature concerns whether the way we respond to the color dimension determines how we process the irrelevant dimension, or whether word processing is purely stimulus driven. Models and findings in the Stroop literature differ in their predictions about how response modes (e.g., responding manually vs. vocally) affect how the irrelevant word is processed (i.e., phonologically, semantically) and the interference and facilitation that results, with some predicting qualitatively different Stroop effects. Here, we investigated whether response mode modifies phonological facilitation produced by the irrelevant word. In a fully within-subject design, we sought evidence for the use of a serial print-to-speech prelexical phonological processing route when using manual and vocal responses by testing for facilitating effects of phonological overlap between the irrelevant word and the color name at the initial and final phoneme positions. The results showed phoneme overlap leads to facilitation with both response modes, a result that is inconsistent with qualitative differences between the two response modes.

Occipitotemporal representations reflect individual differences in conceptual knowledge.

Through selective attention, decision-makers can learn to ignore behaviorally irrelevant stimulus dimensions. This can improve learning and increase the perceptual discriminability of relevant stimulus information. Across cognitive models of categorization, this is typically accomplished through the inclusion of attentional parameters, which provide information about the importance assigned to each stimulus dimension by each participant. The effect of these parameters on psychological representation is often described geometrically, such that perceptual differences over relevant psychological dimensions are accentuated (or stretched), and differences over irrelevant dimensions are down-weighted (or compressed). In sensory and association cortex, representations of stimulus features are known to covary with their behavioral relevance. Although this implies that neural representational space might closely resemble that hypothesized by formal categorization theory, to date, attentional effects in the brain have been demonstrated through powerful experimental manipulations (e.g., contrasts between relevant and irrelevant features). This approach sidesteps the role of idiosyncratic conceptual knowledge in guiding attention to useful information sources. To bridge this divide, we used formal categorization models, which were fit to behavioral data, to make inferences about the concepts and strategies used by individual participants during decision-making. We found that when greater attentional weight was devoted to a particular visual feature (e.g., “color”), its value (e.g., “red”) was more accurately decoded from occipitotemporal cortex. We also found that this effect was sufficiently sensitive to reflect individual differences in conceptual knowledge, indicating that occipitotemporal stimulus representations are embedded within a space closely resembling that formalized by classic categorization theory.

Evidence for the role of inhibition in numerical comparison: A negative priming study in 7- to 8-year-olds and adults

Adapting a numerical comparison task to a negative priming paradigm, we aimed to provide new evidence that inhibitory control processes are involved in numerical comparison. We observed negative priming effects in both 7- to 8-year-olds (n = 47, Mage = 7.92 years) and adults (n = 33, Mage = 27.86 years), confirming that inhibition of irrelevant dimensions of magnitude is needed in numerical estimation at both ages. In addition, the amplitude of the negative priming effect was larger in children, in line with recent accounts suggesting that numerical development is rooted in part in the improvement of inhibitory control abilities. Our findings have educational implications for the investigation of the predictive values of numerical intuitions and executive functions for math achievement.

Learning what to inhibit: The influence of repeated testing on the encoding of gender and age information.

Psychological research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the multiple category dimensions that can be extracted from faces. In the present studies, we investigated the role of experience and learning on the way the social perceiver deals with multiple category dimensions. Specifically, we tested whether learning which of 2 dimensions is the most relevant to the task at hand influences the encoding and retrieval of both task-relevant and irrelevant dimensions. In our studies, participants went through several cycles, each consisting of a study and a test phase. We manipulated the structure of the tests such that participants were probed on only 1 category dimension (age or gender), despite viewing faces of both category dimensions in all study phases. We hypothesized that when participants were repeatedly tested on 1 dimension, they would proactively control their attention toward that specific dimension and away from the nonrelevant dimension. Five studies demonstrated that: (a) participants learned which dimension was test-relevant such that they gradually became faster and more accurate on that dimension; (b) when the gender dimension was test-relevant, participants were faster and more accurate retrieving information concerning the target faces' gender than age, while the opposite did not happen when the age dimension was test-relevant; and (c) this dominance of the gender dimension is mainly caused by the inhibition of the age dimension. Implications about the importance of previous experience and control for research on social categorization in general and research examining the interplay between gender and age are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Categorization training changes the visual representation of face identity.

Previous research suggests that learning to categorize faces along a new dimension changes the perceptual representation of that dimension, but little is known about how the representation of specific face identities changes after such category learning. Here, we trained participants to categorize faces that varied along two morphing dimensions. One dimension was relevant to the categorization task and the other was irrelevant. We used reverse correlation to estimate the internal templates used to identify the two faces at the extremes of the relevant dimension, both before and after training, and at two different levels of the irrelevant dimension. Categorization training changed the internal templates used for face identification, even though identification and categorization tasks impose different demands on the observers. After categorization training, the internal templates became more invariant across changes in the irrelevant dimension. These results suggest that the representation of face identity can be modified by categorization experience.

Grasping and perception are both affected by irrelevant information and secondary tasks: new evidence from the Garner paradigm.

In their Perception-Action Model (PAM), Goodale and Milner (1992) proposed functionally independent and encapsulated processing of visual information for action and perception. In this context, they postulated that visual input for action is processed in an automatized and analytic manner, which renders visuomotor behaviour immune to perceptual interferences or multitasking costs due to sharing of cognitive resources. Here, we investigate the well-known Garner Interference effect under dual- and single-task conditions in its classic perceptual form as well as in grasping. Garner Interference arises when stimuli are classified along a relevant dimension (e.g., their length), while another irrelevant dimension (e.g., their width) has to be ignored. In the present study, participants were presented with differently sized rectangular objects and either grasped them or classified them as long or short via button presses. We found classical Garner Interference effects in perception as expressed in prolonged reaction times when variations occurred also in the irrelevant object dimension. While reaction times during grasping were not susceptible to Garner Interference, effects were observed in a number of measures that reflect grasping accuracy (i.e., poorer adjustment of grip aperture to object size, prolonged adjustment times, and increased variability of the maximum hand opening when irrelevant object dimensions were varied). In addition, multitasking costs occurred in both perception and action tasks. Thus, our findings challenge the assumption of automaticity in visuomotor behaviour as proposed by the PAM.

Human frontoparietal cortex represents behaviorally relevant target status based on abstract object features.

Searching for items that are useful given current goals, or "target" recognition, requires observers to flexibly attend to certain object properties at the expense of others. This could involve focusing on the identity of an object while ignoring identity-preserving transformations such as changes in viewpoint or focusing on its current viewpoint while ignoring its identity. To effectively filter out variation due to the irrelevant dimension, performing either type of task is likely to require high-level, abstract search templates. Past work has found target recognition signals in areas of ventral visual cortex and in subregions of parietal and frontal cortex. However, target status in these tasks is typically associated with the identity of an object, rather than identity-orthogonal properties such as object viewpoint. In this study, we used a task that required subjects to identify novel object stimuli as targets according to either identity or viewpoint, each of which was not predictable from low-level properties such as shape. We performed functional MRI in human subjects of both sexes and measured the strength of target-match signals in areas of visual, parietal, and frontal cortex. Our multivariate analyses suggest that the multiple-demand (MD) network, including subregions of parietal and frontal cortex, encodes information about an object's status as a target in the relevant dimension only, across changes in the irrelevant dimension. Furthermore, there was more target-related information in MD regions on correct compared with incorrect trials, suggesting a strong link between MD target signals and behavior. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Real-world target detection tasks, such as searching for a car in a crowded parking lot, require both flexibility and abstraction. We investigated the neural basis of these abilities using a task that required invariant representations of either object identity or viewpoint. Multivariate decoding analyses of our whole brain functional MRI data reveal that invariant target representations are most pronounced in frontal and parietal regions, and the strength of these representations is associated with behavioral performance.