Role Of Salience Research Articles

Evidence against the low-salience account of attentional suppression.

Do salient distractors have the power to automatically capture attention? This question has led to a heated debate concerning the role of salience in attentional control. A potential resolution, called the signal suppression hypothesis, has proposed that salient items produce a bottom-up signal that vies for attention, but that salient stimuli can be suppressed via top-down control to prevent the capture of attention. This hypothesis, however, has been criticized on the grounds that the distractors used in initial studies of support were weakly salient. It has been difficult to know how seriously to take this low-salience criticism because assertions about high and low salience were made in the absence of a common (or any) measure of salience. The current study used a recently developed psychophysical technique to compare the salience of distractors from two previous studies at the center of this debate. Surprisingly, we found that the original stimuli criticized as having low salience were, if anything, more salient than stimuli from the later studies that purported to increase salience. Follow-up experiments determined exactly why the original stimuli were more salient and tested whether further improving salience could cause attentional capture as predicted by the low-salience account. Ultimately, these findings challenge purely stimulus-driven accounts of attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Role of Salience and Memory in Fertility Decisions: Experimental Evidence

Public policies use communication campaigns to affect individual behavior. We analyze how providing women with information on the beneficial effects of using formal childcare may affect their realized fertility. We argue that cues in the messages are particularly salient for mothers and women with fertility intensions, since they activate these women’s past memories. Hence, cues induce these women to create mental representations of future actions, such as realized fertility. We exploit a randomized survey experiment run in 2011, which provides information on the positive effects that attending daycare may have on the children’ future cognitive development. Using a follow-up survey run six-year later we show that the treatment increases realized fertility among mothers and women with declared fertility intentions, for whom the communication was more salient. Yet, the treatment did not affect the individual knowledge nor recall of the information provided in the message. Our results carry important policy implications: persuading individuals is difficult, but communication can be effective if salient.

When and how does decoy effect work? The roles of salience and risk aversion in the consumer decision-making process

The decoy effect has attracted much attention in the field of marketing and indicates that consumers’ preferences between two options will change after adding a third asymmetrically decoy option. Marketers usually hope for the decoy strategy to help improve a consumer’s preference for a target product. However, both empirical evidence and real-world examples show that the effectiveness of the decoy effect is not uniform. This paper proposes an adjusted consumer decision model based on salience theory and presents the results of an eye-tracking experiment to provide empirical evidence for it. The results show that risk aversion can moderate the effect of a decoy on salience and further impact preferences for a target product. Our study makes theoretical contributions that extend salience-based explanations for the decoy effect and have practical implications for marketers seeking to formulate effective decoy strategies, especially in the electronic commerce environment.

Social investigation and social novelty in zebrafish: Roles of salience and novelty

Social preference tests can be used to analyze variables that influence and modify social behaviors, and to investigate effects of substances such as medications, drugs, and hormones. They may become important tools for finding a valid model to study neuropsychiatric changes and to study human neurodevelopmental processes that have been impaired by social events. While a preference for conspecifics has been shown for different species, social novelty has been used as a model for anxiety-like behavior in rodents. The goal of this research was to understand the roles of stimulus salience (numerousness) and novelty in social investigation and social novelty tests in zebrafish (Danio rerio Hamilton 1822). We used a sequential design, in which animals are exposed first to a social investigation test (with dichotomous presentation of novel conspecifics vs. empty tank) and then to a social novelty test (with dichotomous presentation of the already known conspecific and a novel conspecific). In experiment 1, animals were presented to either 1 or 3 (vs. an empty tank) conspecifics as stimuli. In experiment 2, animals were presented to 1 vs. 3 conspecifics as stimuli. In experiment 3, animals were observed in the social investigation and social novelty tests for 3 consecutive days. The results showed equivalence between 1 or 3 conspecifics in the social investigation and social novelty tests, although animals were able to discriminate between different shoal sizes. These preferences do not change with repeated test exposure, suggesting novelty to be a minor contributor to social investigation and social novelty in zebrafish.

The role of salience in the suppression of distracting stimuli.

Researchers have long debated whether salient distractors have the power to automatically capture attention. Recent research has suggested a potential resolution, called the signal suppression hypothesis, whereby salient distractors produce a bottom-up salience signal, but can be suppressed to prevent visual distraction. This account, however, has been criticized on the grounds that previous studies may have used distractors that were only weakly salient. This claim has been difficult to empirically test because there are currently no well-established measures of salience. The current study addresses this by introducing a psychophysical technique to measure salience. First, we generated displays that aimed to manipulate the salience of two color singletons via color contrast. We then verified that this manipulation was successful using a psychophysical technique to determine the minimum exposure duration required to detect each color singleton. The key finding was that high-contrast singletons were detected at briefer exposure thresholds than low-contrast singletons, suggesting that high-contrast singletons were more salient. Next, we evaluated the participants' ability to ignore these singletons in a task in which they were task irrelevant. The results showed that, if anything, high-salience singletons were more strongly suppressed than low-salience singletons. These results generally support the signal suppression hypothesis and refute claims that highly salient singletons cannot be ignored.

Price promotions, beneficiary framing, and mental accounting

We introduce the idea of beneficiary framing to the promotion response literature. Two large-scale field experiments (total N = 73,010) in the context of print-at-home coupons show that framing a savings message as affecting a beneficiary (i.e., “save for X”) increases coupon printing and redemptions. This beneficiary framing effect is equivalent to an incremental $0.05 (3.4%) of coupon value. We report eight additional studies (total N = 3,052) to investigate the mechanism, replicability, and role of salience. We find evidence supporting a mental accounting explanation: participants with beneficiary-related budget categories rate beneficiary-framed coupons as more account-relevant and more valuable than non-beneficiary-framed coupons. The experiments further suggest that the beneficiary framing effect (i) holds across multiple common budgeting domains, (ii) cannot be fully explained by an affect transfer mechanism, (iii) is not solely attributable to the visual salience of the beneficiary framing treatment, and (iv) exhibits a boundary condition in which beneficiary framing may reduce promotion response when the recipient does not have a relevant beneficiary. Overall, the results suggest a low-cost approach that some marketers can use to increase promotion uptake.

The Role of Salience and Common Grounds in Intercultural Communication: A Descriptive Study

Jokes are specific discourses that contain cultural, historical and region-specific references. In order to understand the salience of these discourses, the common ground of interlocutors is significantly important. The current study explores how non-natives English speakers comprehend English jokes. In addition, it aims to know the difficulties and the lexical issues encountered by Pakhtoon and Sindhi participants in interpreting English jokes. The researchers used a mixed-method approach for this study. The population of this study includes Pakhtoon and Sindhi undergraduate students.A sample of 20 students was selected and two types of tools were used to check the English jokes comprehension skills of participants. The socio-cognitive approach is used as a theoretical framework and the results of quantitative data were presented with the help of pie charts. Results of this study show that ethnic, religious, racial, and jokes having historic references are difficult to understand. Individuals' social knowledge of English culture is important for comprehending English jokes. Knowledge of semantic expressions, ample knowledge and wisdom of culture-specific words and idioms are important for identifying the salience aspects of English jokes.

The Roles of Salience and Value in Inattention Among Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Investigation.

Although inattention is a key symptom subdomain of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the mechanisms underlying this subdomain and related symptoms remain unclear. There is a need for more granular approaches that allow for greater specificity in linking disruptions in specific domains of cognitive performance (e.g., executive function and reward processing) with behavioral manifestations of ADHD. Such approaches may inform the development of more targeted therapeutic interventions. Here, we describe the results of a pilot study of elementary-aged children (ages 6–12years) with ADHD (n=50) and typically developing children (n=48) utilizing a cognitive science task designed to target two dissociable mechanisms of attentional selection: a goal-driven mechanism (i.e., reward/value-driven) and a salience-driven mechanism. Participants were asked to optimally extract and combine information about stimulus salience and value to maximize rewards. While results of this pilot study are ambiguous due to the small sample size and limited number of task trials, data suggest that neither participants with ADHD nor typically developing participants performed optimally to maximize rewards, though typically developing participants were somewhat more successful at the task (i.e., more likely to report high-value targets) regardless of task condition. Further, the manuscript examines several follow-up questions regarding group differences in task response times and group differences in task performance as related to sustained attention across the duration of the task. Finally, the manuscript examines follow-up questions related to heterogeneity in the ADHD group (i.e., age, DSM 5 presentation, and comorbid diagnosis) in predicting task performance.

Common neurobiological correlates of resilience and personality traits within the triple resting-state brain networks assessed by 7-Tesla ultra-high field MRI

Despite numerous studies investigating resilience and personality trials, a paucity of information regarding their neurobiological commonalities at the level of the large resting-state networks (rsNWs) remains. Here we address this topic using the advantages of ultra-high-field (UHF) 7T-MRI, characterized by higher signal-to-noise ratio and increased sensitivity. The association between resilience, personality traits and three fMRI measures (fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), degree centrality (DC) and regional homogeneity (ReHo)) determined for three core rsNWs (default mode (DMN), salience (SN), and central executive network (CEN)) were examined in 32 healthy volunteers. The investigation revealed a significant role of SN in both resilience and personality traits and a tight association of the DMN with resilience. DC in CEN emerged as a significant moderator for the correlations of resilience with the personality traits of neuroticism and extraversion. Our results indicate that the common neurobiological basis of resilience and the Big Five personality traits may be reflected at the level of the core rsNWs.

Crowding and attention in a framework of neural network model.

In this article, I present a framework that would accommodate the classic ideas of visual information processing together with more recent computational approaches. I used the current knowledge about visual crowding, capacity limitations, attention, and saliency to place these phenomena within a standard neural network model. I suggest some revisions to traditional mechanisms of attention and feature integration that are required to fit better into this framework. The results allow us to explain some apparent theoretical controversies in vision research, suggesting a rationale for the limited spatial extent of crowding, a role of saliency in crowding experiments, and several amendments to the feature integration theory. The scheme can be elaborated or modified by future research.

Cue reliability, salience and early comprehension of agreement: Evidence from Greek.

Previous studies across languages (English, Spanish, French) have argued that perceptual salience and cue reliability can explain cross-linguistic differences in early comprehension of verbal agreement. Here we tested this hypothesis further by investigating early comprehension in Greek, where markers have high salience and reliability (compared to Spanish and English) predicting early comprehension, as in French. We investigated two and three-year-old Greek-speaking children's ability to distinguish third person singular and plural agreement in a picture-selection task. We also examined the frequency of these morphemes in child-directed speech to address input effects. Results showed that three-year-olds are sensitive to both singular and plural agreement, earlier than children acquiring English and Spanish, but later than French, and despite singular agreement being more frequent than plural agreement in the child corpus. These findings provide further support for the role of salience and reliability during early acquisition, while highlighting a potential effect of morpheme position.

The role of saliency for visual working memory in complex visual scenes

The role of saliency for visual working memory in complex visual scenes

Positive affect is inversely related to the salience and emotion network\u2019s connectivity

Increasing evidence has shown that positive affect enhances many aspects of daily functioning. Yet, how dispositional positive affect is represented in the intrinsic brain networks remains unclear. Here, we used resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to test how trait positive and negative affect of an individual were associated with the intrinsic connectivity of brain regions within the salience and emotion network and the default mode network in 70 healthy young adults. We observed that positive affect was negatively associated with connectivity within the salience and emotion network, particularly with the bidirectional connections spanning the left anterior insula and left nucleus accumbens. For connections between the salience and emotion network and the rest of the brain, we observed that positive affect was negatively related to the connectivity between the right amygdala and the right middle temporal gyrus. Affect-based modulations of connectivity were specific to positive affect and to the salience and emotion network. Our findings highlight the critical role of salience and emotion network in the neural relations of positive affect, and lay the groundwork for future studies on modeling the connectivity of salience and emotion network to predict mental well-being.

Distinct signals in medial and lateral VTA dopamine neurons modulate fear extinction at different times.

Dopamine (DA) neurons are to encode reward prediction error (RPE), in addition to other signals, such as salience. While RPE is known to support learning, the role of salience in learning remains less clear. To address this, we recorded and manipulated VTA DA neurons in mice during fear extinction. We applied deep learning to classify mouse freezing behavior, eliminating the need for human scoring. Our fiber photometry recordings showed DA neurons in medial and lateral VTA have distinct activity profiles during fear extinction: medial VTA activity more closely reflected RPE, while lateral VTA activity more closely reflected a salience-like signal. Optogenetic inhibition of DA neurons in either region slowed fear extinction, with the relevant time period for inhibition differing across regions. Our results indicate salience-like signals can have similar downstream consequences to RPE-like signals, although with different temporal dependencies.

Comparing the roles of landmark visual salience and semantic salience in visual guidance during indoor wayfinding

ABSTRACTLandmark visual salience (characterized by features that contrast with their surroundings and visual peculiarities) and semantic salience (characterized by features with unusual or important meaning and content in the environment) are two important factors that affect an individual’s visual attention during wayfinding. However, empirical evidence regarding which factor dominates visual guidance during indoor wayfinding is rare, especially in real-world environments. In this study, we assumed that semantic salience dominates the guidance of visual attention, which means that semantic salience will correlate with participants’ fixations more significantly than visual salience. Notably, in previous studies, semantic salience was shown to guide visual attention in static images or familiar scenes in a laboratory environment. To validate this assumption, first, we collected the eye movement data of 22 participants as they found their way through a building. We then computed the landmark visual and semantic salience using computer vision models and questionnaires, respectively. Finally, we conducted correlation tests to verify our assumption. The results failed to validate our assumption and show that the role of salience in visual guidance in a real-world wayfinding process is different from the role of salience in perceiving static images or scenes in a laboratory. Visual salience dominates visual attention during indoor wayfinding, but the roles of salience in visual guidance are mixed across different landmark classes and tasks. The results provide new evidence for understanding how pedestrians visually interpret landmark information during real-world indoor wayfinding.

The role of salience in young children’s processing of ad hoc implicatures

Language comprehension often requires making implicatures. For example, inferring that “I ate some of the cookies” implicates that the speaker ate some but not all (scalar implicatures), and “I ate the chocolate chip cookies” where there are both chocolate chip cookies and raisin cookies in the context implicates that the speaker ate the chocolate chip cookies but not both the chocolate chip and raisin cookies (ad hoc implicatures). Children’s ability to make scalar implicatures develops at around 5 years of age, with ad hoc implicatures emerging somewhat earlier. In the current work, using a time-sensitive tablet paradigm, we examined developmental gains in children’s ad hoc implicature processing and found evidence for successful pragmatic inferences by children as young as 3 years in a supportive context and substantial developmental gains in inference computation from 2 to 5 years. We also tested whether one cause of younger children’s (2-year-olds) consistent failure to make pragmatic inferences is their difficulty in inhibiting an alternative interpretation that is more salient than the target meaning (the salience hypothesis). Our findings support this hypothesis; younger children’s failures with pragmatic inferences were related to effects of the salience mismatch between possible interpretations.

The Role of Salience and Attention in Choice under Risk: An Experimental Investigation

We conduct two experiments that test a recently proposed theory of context-dependent choice under risk called salience theory. The theory predicts that a decision maker’s attention is drawn to precisely defined salient payoffs, and these payoffs are overweighted in the choice process. In our first experiment, subjects make a series of highly incentivized choices between a risky lottery and a certain option while their eye-movements are recorded. In the second experiment, subjects choose between a risky lottery and a certain option, but we exogenously manipulate the visual salience of the risky lottery. We find three main results. First, the data on lottery choices is broadly consistent with salience theory as risk-taking increases when the upside of the risky lottery becomes more salient. Second, using eye-tracking data, we find that subjects do not pay more attention to the state that is theoretically salient, which is inconsistent with the theory; instead, subjects pay more attention to the risky lottery compared to the certain option when the risky lottery’s upside is salient. Third, risk taking is reduced when a lottery’s downside becomes visually salient. More generally, our results provide evidence that attention is an important and causal factor in determining choice under risk.

Income Tax Withholding and Reference-Dependence: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Salience

It is recognised in the existing economic literature that income tax withholding arrangements, near-universally adopted in higher-income economies, reduce the salience (or visibility) of tax payments, compared with self-reporting arrangements in which individuals file a tax return directly. However, traditional economic models, and existing reference-dependent preference models, fail to account for this effect. This paper exploits an individual’s labour choice decision to model this phenomenon via reference-dependent preferences, varying the reference point across the respective systems. Withholding is framed as a gain in net income, whereas self-reporting is framed as a loss against gross income. A survey experiment, adapting a design by Abeler et al. (Am Econ Rev, 101(2): 470-492, 2011), is then utilised, in which subjects choose between rewards framed as above, to examine the existence of this effect. For the same net reward, subjects state a higher mean effort under self-reporting, and effort appears to cluster according to the predicted use of reference-dependent preferences. Thus salience appears to play a significant role in labour responses to tax remittance methods.

Learning of salient prey traits explains Batesian mimicry evolution.

Batesian mimicry evolution involves an initial major mutation that produces a rough resemblance to the model, followed by smaller improving changes. To examine the learning psychology of this process, we applied established ideas about mimicry in Papilio polyxenes asterius of the model Battus philenor. We performed experiments with wild birds as predators and butterfly wings as semiartificial prey. Wings of hybrids of P. p. asterius and Papilio machaon were used to approximate the first mutant, with melanism as the hypothesized first mimetic trait. Based on previous results about learning psychology and imperfect mimicry, we predicted that: melanism should have high salience (i.e., being noticeable and prominent), meaning that predators readily discriminate a melanistic mutant from appearances similar to P. machaon; the difference between the first mutant and the model should have intermediate salience to allow further improvement of mimicry; and the final difference in appearance between P. p. asterius and B. philenor should have very low salience, causing improvement to level off. Our results supported both the traditional hypothesis and all our predictions about relative salience. We conclude that there is good agreement between long-held ideas about how Batesian mimicry evolves and recent insights from learning psychology about the role of salience in mimicry evolution.

Merger and Reversal of the Bären and Beeren Vowels: The Role of Salience

AbstractThe Bären vowel in German is known to be subject to extensive variation, including, for some speakers, a merger with the Beeren vowel. This article investigates the behaviour of the Bären and Beeren vowels in Standard German in Switzerland and Austria. We observe an ongoing merger in Swiss Standard German but an ongoing reversal of such a merger in Austrian Standard German. Independent evidence shows that both varieties (Swiss and Austrian German) accommodate toward the prestige variety in northern Germany. This presents a kind of paradox: why should merger and reversal occur side by side? We attribute these opposite tendencies of merger and reversal to perceptual salience. In the prestige variety, much variation between these two vowels occurs, so Swiss and Austrian speakers are exposed to variable input for both vowels. This paper argues that the vowel that is different from the own variety is perceptually most salient and therefore accommodated to. As for the Swiss speakers, the merger of the Bären and the Beeren vowel is unexpected, therefore salient, hence accommodated to. As for the Austrian speakers, the distinction between the Bären and the Beeren vowel is unexpected, therefore salient, and accommodated to. This leads to the observed, opposite, patterns of change.