Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Research Articles

Animals Do Not Induce or Reduce Attentional Blinking, But They Are Reported More Accurately in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Task.

Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that modern humans have evolved to automatically direct their attention toward animal stimuli. Although this suggestion has found support in several attentional paradigms, it is not without controversy. Recently, a study employing methods customary to studying the attentional blink has shown inconclusive support for the prioritization of animals in attention. This showed an advantage for reporting animals as second targets within the typical window of the attentional blink, but it remained unclear whether this advantage was really due to a reduction of the attentional blink. We reassessed for the presence of a reduced attentional blink for animals compared with artifacts by using three disparate stimuli sets. A general advantage for animals was found but no indication of a reduction of the attentional blink for animals. There was no support for the prediction that animal distractors should lead to spontaneous inductions of attentional blinks when presented as critical distractors before single targets. Another experiment with single targets still showed that animals were reported more accurately than artifacts. A final experiment showed that when animals were first target, they did not generate stronger attentional blinks. In summary, we did find a general advantage for animal images in the rapid serial visual presentation task, but animal images did not either induce or reduce attentional blinks. This set of results is in line with conclusions from previous research showing no evidence for a special role of animals in attention.

Non-singleton colors are not attended faster than categories, but they are encoded faster: A combined approach of behavior, modeling and ERPs

The visual system is able to detect targets according to a variety of criteria, such as by categorical (letter vs digit) or featural attributes (color). These criteria are often used interchangeably in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) studies but little is known about how rapidly they are processed. The aim of this work was to compare the time course of attentional selection and memory encoding for different types of target criteria. We conducted two experiments where participants reported one or two targets (T1, T2) presented in lateral RSVP streams. Targets were marked either by being a singleton color (red letter among black letters), being categorically distinct (digits among letters) or non-singleton color (target color letter among heterogeneously colored letters). Using event related potential (ERPs) associated with attention and memory encoding (the N2pc and the P3 respectively), we compared the relative latency of these two processing stages for these three kinds of targets. In addition to these ERP measures, we obtained convergent behavioral measures for attention and memory encoding by presenting two targets in immediate sequence and comparing their relative accuracy and proportion of temporal order errors. Both behavioral and EEG measures revealed that singleton color targets were attended much more quickly than either non-singleton color or categorical targets, and there was very little difference between attention latencies to non-singleton color and categorical targets. There was however a difference in the speed of memory encoding for non-singleton color and category latencies in both behavioral and EEG measures, which shows that encoding latency differences do not always mirror attention latency differences.

Adaptability and specificity of inhibition processes in distractor-induced blindness.

In a rapid serial visual presentation task, inhibition processes cumulatively impair processing of a target possessing distractor properties. This phenomenon-known as distractor-induced blindness-has thus far only been elicited using dynamic visual features, such as motion and orientation changes. In three ERP experiments, we used a visual object feature-color-to test for the adaptability and specificity of the effect. In Experiment I, participants responded to a color change (target) in the periphery whose onset was signaled by a central cue. Presentation of irrelevant color changes prior to the cue (distractors) led to reduced target detection, accompanied by a frontal ERP negativity that increased with increasing number of distractors, similar to the effects previously found for dynamic targets. This suggests that distractor-induced blindness is adaptable to color features. In Experiment II, the target consisted of coherent motion contrasting the color distractors. Correlates of distractor-induced blindness were found neither in the behavioral nor in the ERP data, indicating a feature specificity of the process. Experiment III confirmed the strict distinction between congruent and incongruent distractors: A single color distractor was embedded in a stream of motion distractors with the target consisting of a coherent motion. While behavioral performance was affected by the distractors, the color distractor did not elicit a frontal negativity. The experiments show that distractor-induced blindness is also triggered by visual stimuli predominantly processed in the ventral stream. The strict specificity of the central inhibition process also applies to these stimulus features.

Reading time allocation strategies and working memory using rapid serial visual presentation.

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is a useful method for controlling the timing of text presentations and studying how readers' characteristics, such as working memory (WM) and reading strategies for time allocation, influence text recall. In the current study, a modified version of RSVP (Moving Window RSVP [MW-RSVP]) was used to induce longer pauses at the ends of clauses and ends of sentences when reading texts with multiple embedded clauses. We studied if WM relates to allocation of time at end of clauses or sentences in a self-paced reading task and in 2 MW-RSVP reading conditions (Constant MW-RSVP and Paused MW-RSVP) in which the reading rate was kept constant or pauses were induced. Higher WM span readers were more affected by the restriction of time allocation in the MW-RSVP conditions. In addition, the recall of both higher and lower WM-span readers benefited from the paused MW-RSVP presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Ensemble Representation of Facial Attractiveness Adaptation by Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Ensemble Representation of Facial Attractiveness Adaptation by Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Attention enhances apparent perceptual organization.

Perceptual organization and selective attention are two crucial processes that influence how we perceive visual information. The former structures complex visual inputs into coherent units, whereas the later selects relevant information. Attention and perceptual organization can modulate each other, affecting visual processing and performance in various tasks and conditions. Here, we tested whether attention can alter the way multiple elements appear to be perceptually organized. We manipulated covert spatial attention using a rapid serial visual presentation task, and measured perceptual organization of two multielements arrays organized by luminance similarity as rows or columns, at both the attended and unattended locations. We found that the apparent perceptual organization of the multielement arrays is intensified when attended and attenuated when unattended. We ruled out response bias as an alternative explanation. These findings reveal that attention enhances the appearance of perceptual organization, a midlevel vision process, altering the way we perceive our visual environment.

The processing of images of biological threats in visual short-term memory.

The idea that there is enhanced memory for negatively, emotionally charged pictures was examined. Performance was measured under rapid, serial visual presentation (RSVP) conditions in which, on every trial, a sequence of six photo-images was presented. Briefly after the offset of the sequence, two alternative images (a target and a foil) were presented and participants attempted to choose which image had occurred in the sequence. Images were of threatening and non-threatening cats and dogs. The target depicted either an animal expressing an emotion distinct from the other images, or the sequences contained only images depicting the same emotional valence. Enhanced memory was found for targets that differed in emotional valence from the other sequence images, compared to targets that expressed the same emotional valence. Further controls in stimulus selection were then introduced and the same emotional distinctiveness effect obtained. In ruling out possible visual and attentional accounts of the data, an informal dual route topic model is discussed. This places emphasis on how visual short-term memory reveals a sensitivity to the emotional content of the input as it unfolds over time. Items that present with a distinctive emotional content stand out in memory.

Motion-Based Rapid Serial Visual Presentation for Gaze-Independent Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Most event-related potential (ERP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) spellers primarily use matrix layouts and generally require moderate eye movement for successful operation. The fundamental objective of this paper is to enhance the perceptibility of target characters by introducing motion stimuli to classical rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) spellers that do not require any eye movement, thereby applying them to paralyzed patients with oculomotor dysfunctions. To test the feasibility of the proposed motion-based RSVP paradigm, we implemented three RSVP spellers: 1) fixed-direction motion (FM-RSVP); 2) random-direction motion (RM-RSVP); and 3) (the conventional) non-motion stimulation (NM-RSVP), and evaluated the effect of the three different stimulation methods on spelling performance. The two motion-based stimulation methods, FM- and RM-RSVP, showed shorter P300 latency and higher P300 amplitudes (i.e., 360.4-379.6 ms; 5.5867- ) than the NM-RSVP (i.e., 480.4 ms; ). This led to higher and more stable performances for FM- and RM-RSVP spellers than NM-RSVP speller (i.e., 79.06±6.45% for NM-RSVP, 90.60±2.98% for RM-RSVP, and 92.74±2.55% for FM-RSVP). In particular, the proposed motion-based RSVP paradigm was significantly beneficial for about half of the subjects who might not accurately perceive rapidly presented static stimuli. These results indicate that the use of proposed motion-based RSVP paradigm is more beneficial for target recognition when developing BCI applications for severely paralyzed patients with complex ocular dysfunctions.

A Novel Computer Oculomotor Rehabilitation (COR) Program for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI).

Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) manifest a wide range of visual dysfunctions. One of the most prevalent involves the oculomotor system, which includes version, vergence, and accommodation. However, until recently, there has been no comprehensive, computer-based program for remediation of these oculomotor deficits. We present such an oculomotor rehabilitation program that has been tested in a clinical trial in patients having TBI with a high degree of success based on before-and-after objective system recordings, performance measures, and related visual symptomotology. The basic program components include a versatile stimulus package incorporating the attentional paradigm of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the ability to add a visual and/or auditory distractor to the training to increase difficulty level (“task loading”), automated assessment of RSVP errors, and automated assessment of visual performance over the training period. Program limitations and future directions are also considered.

Lateralization of spatial rather than temporal attention underlies the left hemifield advantage in rapid serial visual presentation

In bilateral rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the second of two targets, T1 and T2, is better identified in the left visual field (LVF) than in the right visual field (RVF). This LVF advantage may reflect hemispheric asymmetry in temporal attention or/and in spatial orienting of attention. Participants performed two tasks: the “standard” bilateral RSVP task (Exp.1) and its unilateral variant (Exp.1 & 2). In the bilateral task, spatial location was uncertain, thus target identification involved stimulus-driven spatial orienting. In the unilateral task, the targets were presented block-wise in the LVF or RVF only, such that no spatial orienting was needed for target identification. Temporal attention was manipulated in both tasks by varying the T1-T2 lag. The results showed that the LVF advantage disappeared when involvement of stimulus-driven spatial orienting was eliminated, whereas the manipulation of temporal attention had no effect on the asymmetry. In conclusion, the results do not support the hypothesis of hemispheric asymmetry in temporal attention, and provide further evidence that the LVF advantage reflects right hemisphere predominance in stimulus-driven orienting of spatial attention. These conclusions fit evidence that temporal attention is implemented by bilateral parietal areas and spatial attention by the right-lateralized ventral frontoparietal network.

Developmental changes in feature detection across time: Evidence from the attentional blink

The ability to select targets from an ongoing stream of visual information is critical to the successful management of visual attention. The attentional blink (AB), a phenomenon elicited using rapid serial visual presentation, allows for the assessment of the limits of the temporal visual system, and is reflected in a decrease in accuracy in the detection of the second of two targets when it occurs within 200–500ms of a first target. Evidence regarding the development of the AB is mixed and appears to be dependent on the task demands. Here we present data examining the AB across middle childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood using a feature binding task. Participants were asked to detect and report the identity of two purple letters presented in a stream of black letters at a rate of 135ms/item. On this feature binding task, the depth of the AB was invariant across development but AB recovery occurred earlier with increasing age. Furthermore, the error data suggested important developments in temporal binding that were reflected both in a decrease in the number of swaps (where participants reverse the order of the targets but identify them correctly) and in the spread of temporal binding errors with age. These findings suggest that the characteristics of the AB and its development are task dependent and also suggest that the development of binding abilities in visual search tasks mirrors the time course of multisensory binding effects, perhaps suggesting a common mechanism.

Heightened attentional capture by visual food stimuli in anorexia nervosa.

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa (AN) patients are relatively insensitive to the attentional capture of visual food stimuli. Attentional avoidance of food might help AN patients to prevent more elaborate processing of food stimuli and the subsequent generation of craving, which might enable AN patients to maintain their strict diet. Participants were 66 restrictive AN spectrum patients and 55 healthy controls. A single-target rapid serial visual presentation task was used with food and disorder-neutral cues as critical distracter stimuli and disorder-neutral pictures as target stimuli. AN spectrum patients showed diminished task performance when visual food cues were presented in close temporal proximity of the to-be-identified target. In contrast to our hypothesis, results indicate that food cues automatically capture AN spectrum patients' attention. One explanation could be that the enhanced attentional capture of food cues in AN is driven by the relatively high threat value of food items in AN. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Training peripheral vision to read: Boosting the speed of letter processing

Central-field loss necessitates the use of peripheral vision which makes reading slow and difficult. Slower temporal processing of letter recognition has been shown to be a limiting factor in peripheral letter recognition and reading. Previous studies showed that perceptual learning can increase the number of letters recognized on each fixation and is accompanied by an increase in reading speed. We hypothesized that improvement in temporal processing speed underlies the observed training effects. Here, we proposed an adaptive training procedure to focus on boosting the speed of letter recognition, and investigated whether peripheral reading would be enhanced by this training method. Seven normally-sighted subjects were trained with four daily one-hour sessions of a letter recognition task at 10° in the lower visual field in a pre/post design. During training, we adjusted stimulus duration on a block by block basis to maintain task difficulty near a pre-defined level of 80% performance accuracy. Stimulus duration progressively decreased with training, indicative of faster letter recognition at the 80% criterion. Following training, reading speed measured using a rapid serial visual presentation showed a substantial improvement in the trained (lower) field (41%) and the untrained (upper) field (27%), similar to the improvements observed from the training with a fixed stimulus duration. Despite being no more effective than the previous training, the adaptive temporal training method may allow individualized training, and may have advantages for clinical populations.

An Active RBSE Framework to Generate Optimal Stimulus Sequences in a BCI for Spelling.

A class of brain computer interfaces (BCIs) employs noninvasive recordings of electroencephalography (EEG) signals to enable users with severe speech and motor impairments to interact with their environment and social network. For example, EEG based BCIs for typing popularly utilize event related potentials (ERPs) for inference. Presentation paradigm design in current ERP-based letter by letter typing BCIs typically query the user with an arbitrary subset characters. However, the typing accuracy and also typing speed can potentially be enhanced with more informed subset selection and flash assignment. In this manuscript, we introduce the active recursive Bayesian state estimation (active-RBSE) framework for inference and sequence optimization. Prior to presentation in each iteration, rather than showing a subset of randomly selected characters, the developed framework optimally selects a subset based on a query function. Selected queries are made adaptively specialized for users during each intent detection. Through a simulation-based study, we assess the effect of active-RBSE on the performance of a language-model assisted typing BCI in terms of typing speed and accuracy. To provide a baseline for comparison, we also utilize standard presentation paradigms namely, row and column matrix presentation paradigm and also random rapid serial visual presentation paradigms. The results show that utilization of active-RBSE can enhance the online performance of the system, both in terms of typing accuracy and speed. Moreover, we conduct real time experiments with human participants to study the human-in-the-loop effect on the performance of the proposed active-RBSE framework and consistent with the simulation results, the results of these experiments show improvement both in typing speed and accuracy.

Prioritized Identification of Attractive and Romantic Partner Faces in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.

People are sensitive to facial attractiveness because it is an important biological and social signal. As such, our perceptual and attentional system seems biased toward attractive faces. We tested whether attractive faces capture attention and enhance memory access in an involuntary manner using a dual-task rapid serial visual presentation (dtRSVP) paradigm, wherein multiple faces were successively presented for 120ms. In Experiment 1, participants (N=26) were required to identify two female faces embedded in a stream of animal faces as distractors. The results revealed that identification of the second female target (T2) was better when it was attractive compared to neutral or unattractive. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether perceived attractiveness affects T2 identification (N=27). To this end, we performed another dtRSVP task involving participants in a romantic partnership with the opposite sex, wherein T2 was their romantic partner's face. The results demonstrated that a romantic partner's face was correctly identified more often than was the face of a friend or unknown person. Furthermore, the greater the intensity of passionate love participants felt for their partner (as measured by the Passionate Love Scale), the more often they correctly identified their partner's face. Our experiments indicate that attractive and romantic partners' faces facilitate the identification of the faces in an involuntary manner.

Autism, Attention, and Alpha Oscillations: An Electrophysiological Study of Attentional Capture

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with deficits in adaptively orienting attention to behaviorally relevant information. Neural oscillatory activity plays a key role in brain function and provides a high-resolution temporal marker of attention dynamics. Alpha-band (8–12 Hz) activity is associated with both selecting task-relevant stimuli and filtering task-irrelevant information. MethodsThe present study used electroencephalography to examine alpha-band oscillatory activity associated with attentional capture in 19 children with ASD and 21 age- and IQ-matched typically developing children. Participants completed a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm designed to investigate responses to behaviorally relevant targets and contingent attention capture by task-irrelevant distractors, which either did or did not share a behaviorally relevant feature. Participants also completed 6 minutes of eyes-open resting electroencephalography. ResultsIn contrast to their typically developing peers, children with ASD did not evidence posterior alpha desynchronization to behaviorally relevant targets. Additionally, reduced target-related desynchronization and poorer target detection were associated with increased ASD symptomatology. Typically developing children also showed behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of contingent attention capture, whereas children with ASD showed no behavioral facilitation or alpha desynchronization to distractors that shared a task-relevant feature. Lastly, children with ASD had significantly decreased resting alpha power, and for all participants increased resting alpha levels were associated with greater task-related alpha desynchronization. ConclusionsThese results suggest that in ASD underresponsivity and impairments in orienting to salient events within their environment are reflected by atypical electroencephalography oscillatory neurodynamics, which may signify atypical arousal levels and/or an excitatory/inhibitory imbalance.

Modern Speed-Reading Apps Do Not Foster Reading Comprehension.

New computer apps are gaining popularity by suggesting that reading speeds can be drastically increased when eye movements that normally occur during reading are eliminated. This is done using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), where words are presented 1 at a time, thus preventing natural eye movements such as saccades, fixations, and regressions from occurring. Al- though the companies producing these apps suggest that RSVP reading does not yield comprehension deficits, research investigating the role of eye movements in reading documents shows the necessity of natural eye movements for accurate comprehension. The current study explored variables that may affect reading comprehension during RSVP reading, including text difficulty (6th grade and 12th grade), text presentation speed (static, 700 wpm, and 1,000 wpm), and working memory capacity (WMC). Consistent with recent work showing a tenuous relationship between comprehension and WMC, participants' WMC did not predict comprehension scores. Instead, comprehension was most affected by reading speed: Static text was associated with superior performance, relative to either RSVP reading condition. Furthermore, slower RSVP speeds yielded better verbatim comprehension, and faster speeds benefited inferential comprehension.

Design of deep convolutional networks for prediction of image rapid serial visual presentation events.

We report in this paper an investigation of convolutional neural network (CNN) models for target prediction in time-locked image rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiment. We investigated CNN models with 11 different designs of convolution filters in capturing spatial and temporal correlations in EEG data. We showed that for both within-subject and cross-subject predictions, the CNN models outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms: Bayesian linear discriminant analysis (BLDA) and xDAWN spatial filtering and achieved >6% improvement. Among the 11 different CNN models, the global spatial filter and our proposed region of interest (ROI) achieved best performance. We also implemented the deconvolution network to show how we can visualize from activated hidden units for target/nontarget events learned by the ROI-CNN. Our study suggests that deep learning is a powerful tool for RSVP target prediction and the proposed model is applicable for general EEG-based classifications in brain computer interaction research. The code of this project is available at https://github.com/ZijingMao/ROICNN.

Word and face processing engage overlapping distributed networks: Evidence from RSVP and EEG investigations.

Words and faces have vastly different visual properties, but increasing evidence suggests that word and face processing engage overlapping distributed networks. For instance, fMRI studies have shown overlapping activity for face and word processing in the fusiform gyrus despite well-characterized lateralization of these objects to the left and right hemispheres, respectively. To investigate whether face and word perception influences perception of the other stimulus class and elucidate the mechanisms underlying such interactions, we presented images using rapid serial visual presentations. Across 3 experiments, participants discriminated 2 face, word, and glasses targets (T1 and T2) embedded in a stream of images. As expected, T2 discrimination was impaired when it followed T1 by 200 to 300 ms relative to longer intertarget lags, the so-called attentional blink. Interestingly, T2 discrimination accuracy was significantly reduced at short intertarget lags when a face was followed by a word (face-word) compared with glasses-word and word-word combinations, indicating that face processing interfered with word perception. The reverse effect was not observed; that is, word-face performance was no different than the other object combinations. EEG results indicated the left N170 to T1 was correlated with the word decrement for face-word trials, but not for other object combinations. Taken together, the results suggest face processing interferes with word processing, providing evidence for overlapping neural mechanisms of these 2 object types. Furthermore, asymmetrical face-word interference points to greater overlap of face and word representations in the left than the right hemisphere. (PsycINFO Database Record

다중신속순차제시아래 자극의 명암대비 및 색상이 표적 탐지에 미치는 영향

다중신속순차제시아래 자극의 명암대비 및 색상이 표적 탐지에 미치는 영향