Effects Of Salience Research Articles

Relations Among Anhedonia, Reinforcement Learning, and Global Functioning in Help-seeking Youth.

Dysfunction in the neural circuits underlying salience signaling is implicated in symptoms of psychosis and may predict conversion to a psychotic disorder in youth at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Additionally, negative symptom severity, including consummatory and anticipatory aspects of anhedonia, may predict functional outcome in individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. However, it is unclear whether anhedonia is related to the ability to attribute incentive salience to stimuli (through reinforcement learning [RL]) and whether measures of anhedonia and RL predict functional outcome in a younger, help-seeking population. We administered the Salience Attribution Test (SAT) to 33 participants who met criteria for either CHR or a recent-onset psychotic disorder and 29 help-seeking youth with nonpsychotic disorders. In the SAT, participants must identify relevant and irrelevant stimulus dimensions and be sensitive to different reinforcement probabilities for the 2 levels of the relevant dimension ("adaptive salience"). Adaptive salience attribution was positively related to both consummatory pleasure and functioning in the full sample. Analyses also revealed an indirect effect of adaptive salience on the relation between consummatory pleasure and both role (αβ = .22, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.48) and social functioning (αβ = .14, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.30). These findings suggest a distinct pathway to poor global functioning in help-seeking youth, via impaired reward sensitivity and RL.

Personalized product recommendations and firm performance

• Personalized recommendations positively impact firm revenue. • Relevance of recommendations and revenue are positively related upto a limit. • Unobserved reputation effects of recommendations impact shopper willingness to pay. This paper investigates the incentives of e-commerce platforms to show personalized recommendations and its effects on performance. A theoretical framework is developed that characterizes the optimal decision policy of a firm, given current state of shoppers. The key finding is that the firm must always show recommendations to shoppers in the high state above a certain price or value threshold. In the low state, recommending is optimal if the “salience effect” is above a threshold that maximizes discounted future stream of profits. An empirical model provides support to the theoretical findings, highlighting the reputation effects of personalized recommendations, using browsing and purchase data from a Finnish multi-product platform. While recommendations are associated with a 29% increase in firm revenue, relevance of such recommendations potentially boost revenue by a significant 30%. Furthermore, strong evidence is presented that consumer state is endogenous in firm revenue regressions. A three-step IV process extracts the direct effect of consumer state on revenue which shows positive association between reputation effects and firm performance.

The Effects of Acute Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Attentional Bias in Pedophilic Disorder: A Preregistered Pilot Study

Individuals with pedophilic disorder (PD) experience personal and interpersonal difficulties and are at risk of sexually offending against children. As such, innovative and empirically validated treatments are needed. Recent studies have indicated that men who have sexually offended against children (SOC) with PD display an automatic attention bias for child-related stimuli as well as reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a brain area involved in cognitive control, including control over sexual arousal. In this preregistered pilot study, we are the first to investigate whether acutely increasing prefrontal activity could reduce the putative pedophilic attention bias. We delivered a single 20-min session of active anodal versus sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left dlPFC to 16 SOC with PD and 16 matched healthy controls, while they performed a task requiring controlled attention to computer-generated images of clothed and nude children and adults. We collected responses unobtrusively by recording eye movements. Our results did not support the presence of the expected automatic attention bias across outcome measures. Nonetheless, we found a response facilitation with child targets in patients and, unexpectedly, in controls, likely due to unwanted salience effects. Active versus sham tDCS reduced this bias across groups, as indicated by a significant group*condition interaction (p=0.04). However, no attentional bias and no tDCS effects on attentional responses to child and adult images emerged following tDCS. These results suggest enhanced cognitive control in response to salient stimuli during active tDCS. Thus, to assist future studies on neuromodulation in PD, we provide suggestions for design improvement.

Salience effects in information acquisition: No evidence for a top-down coherence influence

The Integrated Coherence-Based Decision and Search (iCodes) model proposed by Jekel et al. (Psychological Review, 125 (5), 744–768, 2018) formalizes both decision making and pre-decisional information search as coherence-maximization processes in an interactive network. Next to bottom-up attribute influences, the coherence of option information exerts a top-down influence on the search processes in this model, predicting the tendency to continue information search with the currently most attractive option. This hallmark “attraction search effect” (ASE) has been demonstrated in several studies. In three experiments with 250 participants altogether, a more subtle prediction of an extended version of iCodes including exogenous influence factors was tested: The salience of information is assumed to have both a direct (bottom-up) and an indirect (top-down) effect on search, the latter driven by the match between information valence and option attractiveness. The results of the experiments largely agree in (1) showing a strong ASE, (2) demonstrating a bottom-up salience effect on search, but (3) suggesting the absence of the hypothesized indirect top-down salience effect. Hence, only two of three model predictions were confirmed. Implications for various implementations of exogenous factors in the iCodes model are discussed.

Does visual saliency affect decision-making?

In the present study, we explore potential effects of visual saliency on decision quality in context of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). We compare two visualization techniques: parallel coordinates (PC) and scatterplot matrices (SPM). We investigate the impact of saliency facilitated by means of either color or size. The saliency and visualization techniques were factors in our analysis, and effects were evaluated in terms of decision quality, attention, time on task, and confidence. Results show that the quality of choice and attention were comparable for all saliency conditions when SPM was used. For PC, we found a positive effect of color saliency both on the quality of choice and on attention. Different forms of saliency led to varying times on task in both PC and SPM; however, those variations were not significant. A comparison of PC and SPM shows, users spent less time on the task, obtained better decision quality, and were more confident with their decision when using PC. To summarize, our findings suggest that saliency can increase attention and decision quality in MCDM for certain visualization techniques and forms of saliency. Another contribution of this work is the novel suggestion of the method to elicit of users’ preferences; its potential benefits are discussed in the end of the paper.Graphic abstract

Navigation with two landmarks relatively far from a goal in rats (Rattus norvegicus): The role of landmark salience

Male and female rats were extensively trained in a Morris pool to find a hidden platform in the presence of a configuration formed by 2 landmarks and the effects of varying the salience of one of the landmarks were studied. The two landmarks could be either of different salience (i.e., B and c, Group Bc) or of the same salience (i.e., b and c, Group bc) and they were relatively far (110 cm) and equidistant from the hidden platform. Rats in Group Bc ended up being faster to reach the platform than rats in Group bc, and males were always faster to find the platform than females. No sex differences were found on subsequent test trials without the platform (i.e., when a different measure was used). The results showed a clear salience effect: The best rats’ performance was when the more salient landmark, B, was present, either by itself or in compound with landmark c. A final test trial, a conflict test, was also conducted with the two landmarks in compound although reversing their relative positions, in order to test the preference for the geometry they formed, a straight line (independently of the landmarks’ identities), vs. the landmarks identities, B or b. All rats showed a preference for the geometry formed by the two landmarks, independently of their identities.

THE EFFECT OF SALIENCE AND DISPOSITION EFFECT ON STOCK INVESTMENT DECISIONS ON INVESTORS IN SURABAYA

This study aims to prove the effect of salience and disposition on investors' investment decisions in Surabaya. In addition, this study also seeks to see the effect of salience and disposition effect on investment decisions with the type of investor as a moderating variable. This type of research is quantitative research with associative methods and primary data sources. The data collection technique used a questionnaire. The data that has been collected is then processed using Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results showed that the salience and disposition effect had a significant influence on investment decisions. In addition, the types of investors weaken the relationship between the salience and disposition effect on investment decisions.

Effect of mortality salience on charitable donations: Evidence from a national sample.

Mortality salience refers to being reminded of death, which increases self-reported prosociality in student samples. Here, we examined effects of mortality salience on actual donations, in a national life-span sample (N = 5,376). In the mortality-salience (vs. control) condition, participants donated on average 25 cents more to charity, out of their $5 budget. This finding was unaffected by adult age or charity type, suggesting its generalizability. However, older adults donated more than younger adults. Auxiliary analyses suggested that fear of death was likely not the main mechanism underlying our findings. We discuss implications for literatures on mortality salience, aging, and charitable giving. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Design and optimization of reverse salient permanent magnet synchronous motor based on controllable leakage flux

In this paper, a controllable leakage flux reverse salient permanent magnet synchronous motor (CLF-RSPMSM) is designed, which has the advantages of wide speed range and low irreversible demagnetization risk. Firstly, the principle of controllable leakage flux and reverse saliency effect is introduced, and the design of the rotor flux barrier is emphatically discussed. Secondly, multiple design variables are stratified by the comprehensive sensitivity method, and the main variables are screened out. Then the relationship between the main variables and the optimization goal is discussed according to the response surface diagram. Thirdly, a sequential nonlinear programming algorithm (SNP) is used to optimize the three optimization objectives comprehensively. Finally, the electromagnetic performance of the proposed motor is compared with the initial IPM motor, the mechanical strength of the proposed rotor is analyzed, and the results verify the effectiveness of the design and optimization method of the proposed motor.

EFFECT OF MORTALITY SALIENCE ON HEALTH COMPROMISING BEHAVIOR

Over the decades, researchers have leaned on the TMT to explain numerous phenomena, including consumer choice, exercise motivation, risky driving behavior, and other behavioral domains. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of mortality salience on RSB as a health-compromising behavior. Sixty-two participants took part in the study. A quasi-experimental design was adopted. The result showed that MS increased resentment to RSB in the experimental condition (M = 44.82, SD= 9.28) compare to the control condition (M = 21.27, SD = 5.19). An independent t-test was used to test the studys hypothesis, and the result established a statistically significant differential effect of MS on RSB resentment between the conditions. We conclude that MS is effective in mitigating the incidence of RSB.

Glanceable Smartwatch Feedback Design: the Effects of Stylization, Granularity, and Salience

Glanceable Smartwatch Feedback Design: the Effects of Stylization, Granularity, and Salience

Phonetic & Phonological Salience Effects in Different Speech Processing Tasks

This paper provides evidence for both effects of both phonetic and phonological salience in speech processing. Results from three experiments are presented, each examining the relative processing of two speech sounds by speakers of two different languages. In each experiment, one of the two sounds is more phonetically salient and the other is more phonologically salient given the morphophonological patterning of one of the langauges. Phonetic salience effects emerged in shorter-term tasks and phonological salience effects emerged in tasks that were longer-term and that required more phonological processing.

Does self-esteem inflation mitigate mortality salience effects on suicide attitudes?

Suicide stigma is a major barrier to prevention and intervention efforts. Using terror management theory as the guiding framework, the present study examined whether enhancing self-esteem would buffer against suicide stigma and lead to prosocial attitudes and behavior. Experimental methods were utilized in the present study. After being primed with death-related thoughts, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) positive feedback (experimental group) and (2) no feedback (control group). The dependent variables included (1) evaluations of a suicide decedent, (2) intentions to intervene against suicide, and (3) charitable donation behavior toward a suicide prevention organization. The most consistent findings for the self-esteem boost hypothesis were for the interaction effects of death anxiety and self-esteem boost for the donation allocation task and intentions to intervene against suicide. For participants who were reminded of death, the self-esteem boost intervention mitigated the negative impact of death anxiety on donation behavior (i.e., an average difference of $16.37). Positive feedback for participants with reported low self-esteem also led to increased willingness to intervene against suicide. These findings provide some promising potential for the self-esteem enhancement intervention to attenuate defensive reactions to suicide.

The Salience of Children Increases Adult Prosocial Values

Organizations often put children front and center in campaigns to elicit interest and support for prosocial causes. Such initiatives raise a key theoretical and applied question that has yet to be addressed directly: Does the salience of children increase prosocial motivation and behavior in adults? We present findings aggregated across eight experiments involving 2,054 adult participants: Prosocial values became more important after completing tasks that made children salient compared to tasks that made adults (or a mundane event) salient or compared to a no-task baseline. An additional field study showed that adults were more likely to donate money to a child-unrelated cause when children were more salient on a shopping street. The findings suggest broad, reliable interconnections between human mental representations of children and prosocial motives, as the child salience effect was not moderated by participants’ gender, age, attitudes, or contact with children.

Do Animated Line Graphs Increase Risk Inferences?

This article shows that animated display of time-varying data (e.g., stock or commodity prices) enhances risk judgments. We outline a process whereby animated display enhances the visual salience of transitions in a trajectory (i.e., successive changes in data values), which leads to transitions being utilized more to form cognitive inferences about risk. In turn, this leads to inflated risk judgments. The studies reported in this article provide converging evidence via eye tracking (Study 1), serial mediation analyses (Studies 2 and 3), and experimental manipulations of transition salience (graph type; Study 3) and utilization of transitions (global trend; Study 4 and investment goals; Study 5) and, in the process, outline boundary conditions. The studies also demonstrate the effect of animated display on consequential investment decisions and behavior. This article adds to the literature on salience effects by disambiguating the role of inference making in how salience of stimuli causes biases in judgments. Broader implications for visual information processing, data visualization, financial decision making, and public policy are discussed.

The effect of target salience and size in visual search within naturalistic scenes under degraded vision.

We address two questions concerning eye guidance during visual search in naturalistic scenes. First, search has been described as a task in which visual salience is unimportant. Here, we revisit this question by using a letter-in-scene search task that minimizes any confounding effects that may arise from scene guidance. Second, we investigate how important the different regions of the visual field are for different subprocesses of search (target localization, verification). In Experiment 1, we manipulated both the salience (low vs. high) and the size (small vs. large) of the target letter (a “T”), and we implemented a foveal scotoma (radius: 1°) in half of the trials. In Experiment 2, observers searched for high- and low-salience targets either with full vision or with a central or peripheral scotoma (radius: 2.5°). In both experiments, we found main effects of salience with better performance for high-salience targets. In Experiment 1, search was faster for large than for small targets, and high-salience helped more for small targets. When searching with a foveal scotoma, performance was relatively unimpaired regardless of the target's salience and size. In Experiment 2, both visual-field manipulations led to search time costs, but the peripheral scotoma was much more detrimental than the central scotoma. Peripheral vision proved to be important for target localization, and central vision for target verification. Salience affected eye movement guidance to the target in both central and peripheral vision. Collectively, the results lend support for search models that incorporate salience for predicting eye-movement behavior.

Massive Effects of Saliency on Information Processing in Visual Working Memory

Limitations in the ability to temporarily represent information in visual working memory (VWM) are crucial for visual cognition. Whether VWM processing is dependent on an object’s saliency (i.e., how much it stands out) has been neglected in VWM research. Therefore, we developed a novel VWM task that allows direct control over saliency. In three experiments with this task (on 10, 31, and 60 adults, respectively), we consistently found that VWM performance is strongly and parametrically influenced by saliency and that both an object’s relative saliency (compared with concurrently presented objects) and absolute saliency influence VWM processing. We also demonstrated that this effect is indeed due to bottom-up saliency rather than differential fit between each object and the top-down attentional template. A simple computational model assuming that VWM performance is determined by the weighted sum of absolute and relative saliency accounts well for the observed data patterns.

Constituent order in silent gesture reflects the perspective of the producer

Abstract Understanding the relationship between human cognition and linguistic structure is a central theme in language evolution research. Numerous studies have investigated this question using the silent gesture paradigm in which participants describe events using only gesture and no speech. Research using this paradigm has found that Agent–Patient–Action (APV) is the most commonly produced gesture order, regardless of the producer’s native language. However, studies have uncovered a range of factors that influence ordering preferences. One such factor is salience, which has been suggested as a key determiner of word order. Specifically, humans, who are typically agents, are more salient than inanimate objects, so tend to be mentioned first. In this study, we investigated the role of salience in more detail and asked whether manipulating the salience of a human agent would modulate the tendency to express humans before objects. We found, first, that APV was less common than expected based on previous literature. Secondly, salience influenced the relative ordering of the patient and action, but not the agent and patient. For events involving a non-salient agent, participants typically expressed the patient before the action and vice versa for salient agents. Thirdly, participants typically omitted non-salient agents from their descriptions. We present details of a novel computational solution that infers the orders participants would have produced had they expressed all three constituents on every trial. Our analysis showed that events involving salient agents tended to elicit AVP; those involving a non-salient agent were typically described with APV, modulated by a strong tendency to omit the agent. We argue that these findings provide evidence that the effect of salience is realized through its effect on the perspective from which a producer frames an event.

The dynamics of saliency-driven and goal-driven visual selection as a function of eccentricity.

Both saliency and goal information are important factors in driving visual selection. Saliency-driven selection occurs primarily in early responses, whereas goal-driven selection happens predominantly in later responses. Here, we investigated how eccentricity affects the time courses of saliency-driven and goal-driven visual selection. In three experiments, we asked people to make a speeded eye movement toward a predefined target singleton which was simultaneously presented with a non-target singleton in a background of multiple homogeneously oriented other items. The target singleton could be either more or less salient than the non-target singleton. Both singletons were presented at one of three eccentricities (i.e., near, middle, or far). The results showed that, even though eccentricity had only little effect on overall selection performance, the underlying time courses of saliency-driven and goal-driven selection altered such that saliency effects became protracted and relevance effects became delayed for far eccentricity conditions. The protracted saliency effect was shown to be modulated by expectations as induced by the preceding trial. The results demonstrate the importance of incorporating both time and eccentricity as factors in models of visual selection.

Mortality salience in an offline and online setting

The current study aims to examine the effects of mortality salience effects on worldview defense in an offline and online setting. Participants were 146 (66 offline and 80 online) Singaporeans. Participants were randomly assigned to either the mortality salience condition or the control condition and after a delay completed a Worldview Defense Assessment. No significant mortality salience effects on worldview defense occurred in either setting. The results might be explained by the Asian sample, Singapore’s culture of tolerance, and data collection during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Future research directions include examining the effects of COVID-19 in activating worldview defense.