Short SOA Research Articles

The time course of the aversive conflict signal.

The idea that conflicts are aversive signals recently has gained strong support by both physiological as well as psychological evidence. However, the time course of the aversive signal has not been subject to direct investigation. In the present study, participants had to judge the valence of neutral German words after being primed with conflict or non-conflict Stroop stimuli in three experiments with varying SOA (200 ms, 400 ms, 800 ms) and varying prime presentation time. Conflict priming effects (i.e., increased frequencies of negative judgments after conflict as compared to non-conflict primes) were found for SOAs of 200 ms and 400 ms, but absent (or even reversed) with a SOA of 800 ms. These results imply that the aversiveness of conflicts is evaluated automatically with short SOAs, but is actively counteracted with prolonged prime presentation.

Frontal and parietal EEG asymmetries interact to predict attentional bias to threat

Frontal and parietal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetries mark vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Drawing on cognitive theories of vulnerability, we hypothesise that cortical asymmetries predict attention to threat. Participants completed a dot-probe task in which bilateral face displays were followed by lateralised targets at either short (300ms) or long (1050ms) SOA. We also measured N2pc to face onset as an index of early attentional capture. At long SOA only, frontal and parietal asymmetry interacted to predict attentional bias to angry faces. Those with leftward frontal asymmetry showed no attentional bias. Among those with rightward frontal asymmetry those with low right parietal activity showed vigilance for threat, and those with high right parietal activity showed avoidance. Asymmetry was not related to the N2pc or to attentional bias at the short SOA. Findings suggest that trait asymmetries reflect function in a fronto-parietal network that controls attention to threat.

On the role of the ventral attention system in spatial orienting

On the role of the ventral attention system in spatial orienting

How time and semantic relatedness modulate whether and how unconscious information is represented in the brain

Event Abstract Back to Event How time and semantic relatedness modulate whether and how unconscious information is represented in the brain Charlotte Muscarella1, Bart Aben1, Karolien Smets2, Gethin Hughes3 and Eva Van Den Bussche1* 1 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Psychology, Belgium 2 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium 3 University of Essex, United Kingdom Activity of brain areas can be modulated by several behavioral manipulations. In the current study we used a typical masked priming paradigm to investigate whether time (as defined by the Stimulus Onset Asynchrony or SOA) and the degree of semantic relatedness between prime and target modulate the neural activity triggered by unconscious logos of well-known brands. This allows us to further explore the supposed short-livedness of unconscious representations and the potential of these representations to trigger a wider-spread semantic network. In a lexical decision task participants decided whether targets were words (which could also be brand names) or non-words. These targets were preceded by unconscious prime logos of highly familiar brands. During this behavioral task EEG was recorded. To assess the influence of time, a short (300ms) and long (2500ms) SOA condition was created. To assess the influence of semantic relatedness, related prime-target pairs could either be strongly semantically related (e.g., logo of McDonald’s followed by the target word MCDONALD’S) or semantically related to a lesser degree (e.g., logo of McDonald’s followed by the target word HAMBURGER) Behavioral results indicated that, even after the long SOA, unconscious brand logos facilitated categorization of strongly related targets and, albeit to a lesser extent, more weakly related targets. A modulation of the N400, a negative ERP deflection over the centro-parietal scalp thought to reflect semantic processing, was observed. This N400 modulation was moderated both by SOA and the semantic relatedness between prime and target. This implies that unconscious brand logos can be semantically processed, that this processing is not necessarily short-lived, and that it is moderated by the degree of semantic closeness between prime and target. Keywords: Consciousness, priming, N400, Semantic Processing, brands, logos, unconscious processing Conference: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE, Ghent, Belgium, 4 Oct - 4 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Basic Neuroscience Citation: Muscarella C, Aben B, Smets K, Hughes G and Van Den Bussche E (2014). How time and semantic relatedness modulate whether and how unconscious information is represented in the brain. Conference Abstract: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.214.00059 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Jul 2014; Published Online: 13 Jul 2014. * Correspondence: Prof. Eva Van Den Bussche, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Psychology, Brussels, 1050, Belgium, eva.vandenbussche@kuleuven.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Charlotte Muscarella Bart Aben Karolien Smets Gethin Hughes Eva Van Den Bussche Google Charlotte Muscarella Bart Aben Karolien Smets Gethin Hughes Eva Van Den Bussche Google Scholar Charlotte Muscarella Bart Aben Karolien Smets Gethin Hughes Eva Van Den Bussche PubMed Charlotte Muscarella Bart Aben Karolien Smets Gethin Hughes Eva Van Den Bussche Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Men in the Office, Women in the Kitchen? Contextual Dependency of Gender Stereotype Activation in Spanish Women

In a set of two studies, we tested whether gender-stereotypical associations are automatically activated by Spanish women in a categorization task, and how this process is conditioned by the context in which the target is presented (kitchen vs. office). We hypothesized that gender stereotypes would be activated implicitly when the target (men vs. women) appeared in an office context (associated with male dominant roles), but not when they appeared in a kitchen context (traditionally associated with female roles). The studies were conducted with two samples (N = 44; N = 47) of female undergraduate students from the University of Granada (Spain). In both studies, a priming effect was found, indicating that a traditional, role-congruent stereotype pattern (men-competence, women-warmth) emerged when primes appeared in an office context, but not in a kitchen context. Further, negative competence traits were evaluated faster when a male prime was presented in the context of a kitchen (role-incongruent). The purpose of Study 2 was to clarify the implicit nature of this contextual contingency effect by manipulating the controllability of the priming effect (i.e., Stimulus Onset Asynchrony duration-SOA, and restricted response time). The results of Study 1 were replicated in only the short SOA condition, which implies faster and presumably less controlled processing of the stimuli. Theoretical implications for stereotyping and gender role research are discussed.

Implicit learning of spatiotemporal contingencies in spatial cueing.

We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.

Direction of association between targets in a RSVP task influences priming at very short but not long SOAs

When two targets are presented using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) and the interval between the targets is 200-500 ms, detection or identification of the second target is impaired. This impairment in second target report is known as the attentional blink (AB). This study sought to examine the impact of the direction of target association on priming during an AB task using very short and long SOAs. Two experiments were conducted using dual-stream RSVP tasks and targets that either shared an associative relationship or were unrelated to one another. The direction of association between the targets was also varied so that associatively related targets were presented in the forward (strongest association from target 1 to target 2) or backward directions of association (strongest association from target 2 to target 1). In Experiment 1 very short SOAs between targets (27-213 ms) were used. Priming was evident at the same SOAs for both targets presented in the backward direction of association. However, for targets presented in the forward direction of association, priming occurred for target 1 and target 2 at different SOAs. Experiment 2 used longer SOAs between targets (107 to 535 ms) and it was determined that while direction of association between the targets did not affect priming, there was a larger priming effect for target 2 than for target 1. The results of the two experiments indicate that direction of association between targets influences priming in RSVP tasks that use very short but not long SOAs. The results are discussed in relation to the two-stage response competition model of Potter et al. (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 28:1149-1162, 2002).

Spatial eccentricity and temporal transition of split attentional foci

Various investigations have demonstrated that attentional focus is unitary, not splitable, over contiguous regions of space. However, others find that observers can split attentional foci concurrently over noncontiguous regions concurrently (e.g., Awh & Pashler, 2000). Key differences among studies remain unclear. We manipulated the spatial eccentricity of targets and explored temporal transition of attentional foci using Awh and Pashler’s (2000) partial report procedure. We also tested whether individual differences in working memory capacity affect the style of deploying attentional foci. Literature shows that individuals with high working memory capacity were able to simultaneously allocate their attention to noncontiguous regions. This leads to the prediction that working memory capacity contributes to differences in the style of deployment of attentional focus/foci. In the present study, prior to the onset of a search display consisted of nontargets (letters) and two targets (digits), two cues appeared at noncontiguous locations either horizontally or vertically. These cues indicated target locations in 80% of the trials. Cues and targets were separated by an SOA (50ms or 750ms) to probe the development of an attentional split, if any, over time. Results demonstrated a split of attention: target identification accuracy was higher at noncontiguous locations relative to those at the intervening uncued locations. This is consistent with results of Awh and Pasher (2000), with the exception that no cueing effect was obtained with vertical cues for short SOAs (50ms). No effect of working memory capacity was found on the split of attention. These results suggest that attentional split develops over time and space regardless of individual differences in working memory capacity. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012

A Novel 4H-SiC Fault Isolation Device with Improved Trade-Off between On-State Voltage Drop and Short Circuit SOA

This paper aims to introduce a solid-state fault isolation device (FID) for the short circuit protection application in the power distribution systems. The key performance of a FID is to have a low on-state loss and a strong short circuit safe operating area (SCSOA). As a FID, a novel 15kV 4H-SiC field controlled diode (FCD) with a p+buried layer is proposed to provide an improved trade-off between the on-state forward voltage drop and the saturation current. Dynamic response to the fault and the application example of the proposed FCD are described in this paper.

On the Automaticity of Semantic Processing during Task Switching

There is growing evidence that processes formerly believed to be automatic are, in fact, strongly modulated by top-down influences. The purpose of the present work was to investigate how cognitive control can affect the purported automaticity of word processing by examining the impact of task switching on semantic processing using the ERP technique. In the context of the psychological refractory period dual-task paradigm, two experiments contrasted the context-sensitive N400 ERP elicited by the second of two target words under conditions that involved either a task switch or no-task switch. Although the N400 was not affected by SOA in the absence of switching, it was strongly attenuated at short SOAs when the psychological refractory period procedure involved a switch from a perceptual to a semantic task (Experiment 1) or a switch between two different semantic tasks (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that semantic processing cannot be performed in parallel with task switching and illustrate limitations in the ability of the cognitive system to adapt flexibly to the dynamically changing challenges of the environment according to task demands and behavioral goals.

Electrophysiological correlates of automatic spreading of activation in patients with psychotic disorder and first-degree relatives

BackgroundSemantic network abnormalities in patients with psychotic disorder were examined using associative prime–target relations with two stimulus asynchronies (SOAs; −250ms and −500ms) to assess the time course of automatic and more controlled processes of semantic priming. To investigate whether an aberrant semantic network system is part of the familial liability for psychosis, healthy siblings of patients with psychotic disorder were additionally examined. The N400 event-related brain potential (ERP) was used as a probe of semantic processing. MethodTwenty-two patients with psychotic disorder, twenty siblings of patients with psychotic disorder and twenty controls participated in a lexical decision task and ERPs were recorded to target words that were associatively, indirectly or not related to their preceding prime word. ResultsAssociative priming of the N400 amplitude was found across all participants and both SOAs, but no between-group differences were found for the N400 amplitude (both SOAs). The Group×Condition interaction of the indirect priming N400 latency of the three groups was just short of statistical significance (F2,59=2.7, p=.077). Patients showed an increased indirect priming effect of the N400 latency only at short SOA, with decreased latency of the indirectly related compared to the unrelated condition, while controls did not show an indirect priming N400 latency effect. No between-group differences in N400 latency of indirect priming were found at the long SOA. Only a trend towards a Group×Condition interaction of the indirect priming N400 latency between the sibling and the controls was found, but without a main effect of indirect priming in the sibling group. ConclusionThese preliminary results support the assumption of a hyperactive semantic network in patients with psychotic disorder, which develops under automatic processes and decreases with more controlled processes, but does not represent clear trait familial liability.

Semantic picture–word interference is a postperceptual effect

Naming a picture is slower while ignoring a semantically related versus an unrelated distractor word (semantic picture-word interference, or PWI). To locate the PWI effect in the word production processing stream (during perceptual encoding, response selection, or afterward), we used the psychological refractory period paradigm, in which participants identified a tone and then, at varying SOAs, named a picture while ignoring a semantically related or unrelated word (following Dell'Acqua, Job, Peressotti, & Pascali, 2007). As in results from the Stroop paradigm (Fagot & Pashler, 1992), we found equivalent PWI effects at short and long SOAs following tone identification in two experiments, indicating that semantic competition occurs at response selection or later. Our results suggest that it is premature to assume that competitive selection occurs at multiple levels in the word production system (van Maanen, van Rijn, & Borst, 2009) or that the Stroop and semantic PWI effects are fundamentally different (Dell'Acqua et al., 2007).

Working Memory Encoding Delays Top–Down Attention to Visual Cortex

The encoding of information from one event into working memory can delay high-level, central decision-making processes for subsequent events [e.g., Jolicoeur, P., & Dell'Acqua, R. The demonstration of short-term consolidation. Cognitive Psychology, 36, 138-202, 1998, doi:10.1006/cogp.1998.0684]. Working memory, however, is also believed to interfere with the deployment of top-down attention [de Fockert, J. W., Rees, G., Frith, C. D., & Lavie, N. The role of working memory in visual selective attention. Science, 291, 1803-1806, 2001, doi:10.1126/science.1056496]. It is, therefore, possible that, in addition to delaying central processes, the engagement of working memory encoding (WME) also postpones perceptual processing as well. Here, we tested this hypothesis with time-resolved fMRI by assessing whether WME serially postpones the action of top-down attention on low-level sensory signals. In three experiments, participants viewed a skeletal rapid serial visual presentation sequence that contained two target items (T1 and T2) separated by either a short (550 msec) or long (1450 msec) SOA. During single-target runs, participants attended and responded only to T1, whereas in dual-target runs, participants attended and responded to both targets. To determine whether T1 processing delayed top-down attentional enhancement of T2, we examined T2 BOLD response in visual cortex by subtracting the single-task waveforms from the dual-task waveforms for each SOA. When the WME demands of T1 were high (Experiments 1 and 3), T2 BOLD response was delayed at the short SOA relative to the long SOA. This was not the case when T1 encoding demands were low (Experiment 2). We conclude that encoding of a stimulus into working memory delays the deployment of attention to subsequent target representations in visual cortex.

The influence of emotional associations on the neural correlates of semantic priming

Emotions influence our everyday life in several ways. With the present study, we wanted to examine the impact of emotional information on neural correlates of semantic priming, a well-established technique to investigate semantic processing. Stimuli were presented with a short SOA of 200 ms as subjects performed a lexical decision task during fMRI measurement. Seven experimental conditions were compared: positive/negative/neutral related, positive/negative/neutral unrelated, nonwords (all words were nouns). Behavioral data revealed a valence specific semantic priming effect (i.e., unrelated > related) only for neutral and positive related word pairs. On a neural level, the comparison of emotional over neutral relations showed activation in left anterior medial frontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, and posterior cingulate. Interactions for the different relations were located in left anterior part of the medial frontal cortex, cingulate regions, and right hippocampus (positive > neutral + negative) and left posterior part of medial frontal cortex (negative > neutral + positive). The results showed that emotional information have an influence on semantic association processes. While positive and neutral information seem to share a semantic network, negative relations might induce compensatory mechanisms that inhibit the spread of activation between related concepts. The neural correlates highlighted a distributed neural network, primarily involving attention, memory and emotion related processing areas in medial fronto-parietal cortices. The differentiation between anterior (positive) and posterior part (negative) of the medial frontal cortex was linked to the type of affective manipulation with more cognitive demands being involved in the automatic processing of negative information.

Hemispheric processing and reading efficiency

This study using a primed lexical decision task in a visual half-field paradigm investigated the advantage of interhemispheric processing to enhance cognitive capacity associated with reading ability among college students. Sixty-five undergraduate students (23 males, 42 females, mean age = 20.6) served as one of the following: skilled readers for the short SOA, skilled readers for the long SOA, or unskilled readers for the long SOA. The results demonstrated that intrahemispheric processing was advantageous in a simple task and interhemispheric processing was advantageous in a complex task for skilled readers, but unskilled readers did not show the advantage of interhemispheric processing in the complex task. The lack of switching strategies suggests that their unskilled reading ability may stem from inefficient reading processing.

Attentional orienting and awareness: Evidence from a discrimination task

We used several cue-target SOAs (100, 500, 1000 ms) and three different degrees of cue predictability (Non-predictive-50%, Predictive-75%, Counter-predictive-25%), to investigate the role of awareness of cue-target predictability on cueing effects. A group of participants received instructions about the informative value of the cue, while another group did not receive such instructions. Participants were able to extract the predictive value of a spatially peripheral cue and use it to orient attention, whether or not specific instructions about the predictive value of the cue were given, and no matter their ability to correctly report it in a post-test questionnaire. In the non-predictive block, bad estimators who received no instructions showed regular cueing effects, while good estimators exhibited smaller and non-significant facilitatory effects at the short SOA and an absence of significant IOR at longer SOAs. However, for the instructions group, the pattern of results reversed.

Accessing Semantic Person Knowledge: Temporal Dynamics of Nonstrategic Categorical and Associative Priming

Recent theories of semantic memory suggest a subdivision into several separate domains of knowledge. The present study examined the structure of semantic person knowledge by analyzing both behavioral and ERP correlates of associative priming (via co-occurrence and/or shared semantic information) versus purely categorical priming (via shared occupational information). Participants performed familiarity decisions for target faces, which were preceded by sandwich-masked prime names at either short (33 msec) or long (1033 msec) SOAs. Although masking effectively prevented explicit prime recognition, faster RTs were generally observed for both associative and categorical priming (relative to an unrelated prime-target condition). At the short SOA, both associatively and categorically primed targets similarly elicited more positive going ERPs compared with unrelated targets in the N400 time range (N400 priming effect), suggesting a common initial mechanism mediating both forms of priming. By contrast, at the long SOA, a typical N400 priming effect was observed for associative priming only, whereas the corresponding effect for categorical priming was small and restricted to a left parietal site. This hitherto unreported interaction of relatedness, and SOA in the N400 suggests an initial fast spreading of activation to a wide range of related targets, which subsequently focuses to more closely related people at longer SOAs. This ability of ERPs to trace the neural dynamics of activation for different forms of prime/target relatedness can be exploited for testing different models of semantic priming.

Time course of visual attention across perceptual levels and objects

Theories of shifts of visual attention based on attentional blink or dwell time do not directly address shifts of attention across different levels (global or local) involving multiple objects. Two experiments were conducted employing the attentional dwell time paradigm to investigate the shifts of visual attention between objects selected at same or different levels. Participants were instructed to identify two successive compound stimuli at a pre-specified level (global or local) presented at two different locations with variable SOA. The initial pair of locations in which the stimulus was presented was fixed in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 results showed very little impairment for second target identification when both the targets were at the global level. Attentional shift was better with both targets at the same level compared to different levels. Experiment 2 results showed that local followed by global target identification is difficult at short SOAs compared to other conditions. The results indicate that scope of attention affects the time course of visual attention. Global processing could be performed with very little capacity limitation simultaneously with distributed attention. The default mode of attention might be distributed and attention becomes focused for target identification. Different mechanisms may underlie shifts in focused attention between different locations and changes in attentional set required by changes in perceptual levels.

The processing of morphological structure information in Chinese coordinative compounds: An event-related potential study

The aim of this study was to investigate the morphological structure processing of Chinese compounds at short SOAs of 57 ms. Event-related potentials were recorded while 16 Hong Kong Chinese university students were instructed to make visual lexical decisions in a decision-making task involving Chinese compound words. Only words in the category of the coordinative compounding structure were included in the present study. In this compounding structure, both morphemes comprising the compound word are of equal importance, similar to the phrase “in-and-out” in English, where neither “in” nor “out” can be considered the head or modifier in the compound; both morphemes are of equal weight in communicating meaning. While the classic N400 semantic priming effect was replicated at this short SOA, an earlier P250 component, suggested to reflect semantic memory network activation during semantic information processing, was also obtained. The morphological structure effect was only found in the P250 component, suggesting that morphological structure may automatically influence the semantic information processing during Chinese compound word processing.

A real experiment is a factorial experiment?

Most studies addressing lexical processing make use of factorial designs. For many researchers in this field of inquiry, a real experiment is a factorial experiment. Methods such as regression and factor analysis would not allow for hypothesis testing and would not contribute substantially to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Their use would be restricted to exploratory studies at best. This paper is an apology coming to the defense of regression designs for experiments including lexical distributional variables as predictors. In studies of the mental lexicon, we often are dealing with two kinds of predictors, to which I will refer as treatments and covariates. Stimulus-onset asynchrony (soa) is an example of a treatment. If we want to study the effect of a long versus a short soa, it makes sense to choose sensible values, say 200 ms versus 50 ms, and to run experiments with these two settings. If the researcher knows that the effect of soa is linear, and that it can be administered independently of the intrinsic properties of the items, then the optimal design testing for an effect of soa is factorial. One would loose power by using a regression design testing for an effect at a sequence of SOA intervals, say 50, 60, 70, . . . , 200 ms. This advantage of sampling at the extremes is well-known (see, e.g., Crawley, 2002, p. 67): the further apart the values of soa are, the larger the corresponding sum of squares, and the smaller the standard error for the slope. The advantage of designs with maximal contrasts for treatment predictors is often assumed to carry over to the study of lexical covariates such as frequency, length, neighborhood density, etc. In order to test for an effect of frequency, the traditional wisdom advises us to create a data set with very high-frequency words on the one hand, and very low-frequency words on the other hand. The problem that one runs into very quickly is that the set of highfrequency words will comprise short words with many neighbors, and that the low-frequency words will be long words with few neighbors. The massive correlations characterizing lexical properties create the problem that an effect of frequency could just as well be an effect of length or an effect of neighborhood density, or any combination of these variables. The traditional solution is to create a factorial contrast for frequency, while matching for the other predictors. This can be done by hand, or with the help of Maarten van Casteren’s mix program (Van Casteren and Davis, 2006). The aim of this contribution is to illustrate, by means of some simple simulations, that this matching process leads to a severe loss of power (following up on, e.g., Cohen, 1983; MacCallum et al., 2002). In all the simulations to follow, the dependent variable (RT) is a function of two numerical predictors, X1 (this could be log frequency, or the word’s imageability) and X2 (this could be number of orthographic neighbors, or word length), which both follow a standard normal