Stages Of Information Processing Research Articles

Catch me if you can: how episodic and thematic multimodal news frames shape policy support by stimulating visual attention and responsibility attributions

Using media coverage of animal welfare as an example, this study examines how the perception of multimodal news frames shapes recipients’ visual attention, attributions of responsibility, emotions, and policy support. To investigate the mechanisms of multimodal-episodic versus thematic framing, we combined eye-tracking measurements with a pre-post survey experiment in which 143 participants were randomly assigned to an episodic or a thematic multimodal framing condition. The results show that episodic multimodal frames are viewed longer than thematic frames, elicit stronger individual and political responsibility attributions, and increase political support for stricter animal-welfare laws. Understanding multimodal framing as a multistep process, a serial mediation model reveals that episodic frames affect viewing time, which leads to stronger attributions of political responsibility and, in turn, stronger policy support. Our results support the idea of a complex interplay between subsequent stages of information perception and processing within a multimodal framing process.

Distinct patterns of monocular advantage for facial emotions in social anxiety

Individuals with social anxiety often exhibit atypical processing of facial expressions. Previous research in social anxiety has primarily emphasized cognitive bias associated with face processing and the corresponding abnormalities in cortico-limbic circuitry, yet whether social anxiety influences early perceptual processing of emotional faces remains largely unknown. We used a psychophysical method to investigate the monocular advantage for face perception (i.e., face stimuli are better recognized when presented to the same eye compared to different eyes), an effect that is indicative of early, subcortical processing of face stimuli. We compared the monocular advantage for different emotional expressions (neutral, angry and sad) in three groups (N = 24 per group): individuals clinically diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD), individuals with high social anxiety in subclinical populations (SSA), and a healthy control (HC) group of individuals matched for age and gender. Compared to SSA and HC groups, we found that individuals with SAD exhibited a greater monocular advantage when processing neutral and sad faces. While the magnitudes of monocular advantages were similar across three groups when processing angry faces, individuals with SAD performed better in this condition when the faces were presented to different eye. The former findings suggest that social anxiety leads to an enhanced role of subcortical structures in processing nonthreatening expressions. The latter findings, on the other hand, likely reflect an enhanced cortical processing of threatening expressions in SAD group. These distinct patterns of monocular advantage indicate that social anxiety altered representation of emotional faces at various stages of information processing, starting at an early stage of the visual system.

Association between physical health and neurocognition in first-episode schizophrenia

IntroductionImpaired cognition is a core feature of schizophrenia that is evident early in the first episode and is frequently accompanied by compromised physical health. Although physical health confers benefits to cognition, it remains unclear whether physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and cardiorespiratory fitness are associated with neurocognition in first episode schizophrenia patients. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in stimulus categorization and motor response selection processes between first-episode schizophrenia patients compared to age-matched controls and explore associations between physical health and these stages of information processing.MethodsFourteen young adult patients receiving care following a first episode of psychosis and a matched sample of nonpsychiatric controls completed a visual oddball task from which the P3 and LRP (lateralized readiness potential) event-related potential (ERP) components were extracted to assess stimulus categorization and response selection processes, respectively. Physical activity, aerobic fitness, and BMI were correlated with ERP measures.ResultsCompared with controls, patients had lower physical activity levels and longer P3 and LRP latencies. Regardless of stimulus probability, patients had reduced accuracy and slower reaction times relative to controls. In patients, marginal associations were found between physical activity and P3 difference waveform amplitude, and BMI was negatively associated with parent P3 waveform amplitude.DiscussionThe present findings suggest that cognitive impairment in first-episode schizophrenia spans both stimulus- and response-related stages of information processing, and may be targeted through physical activity interventions.

“My friend, my friend, free try, free try”: An investigation of peddling activities through implicit self-theory

Hawking and peddling activities are common in tourist attractions to elicit tourist patronage. These controversial practices add vibes to the destination for some but are considered annoying to others. Based on the implicit theories, this paper aims to explore how the lay beliefs of individuals affect customer perceptions towards these practices and the tourist destination. Forty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted at hawking sites in Macao to examine how individuals with divergent mindsets react towards a spectrum of characteristics associated with peddling activities. The findings reveal that entity and incremental theorists form distinct evaluations, encompassing factors such as risk assessment, meaning attribution, experience connections, brand recognition, signalling, and stereotypes. These perceptions are developed throughout different information processing stages, including attention allocation, encoding, retrieval, and reasoning. These results provide insights for businesses and DMOs in administering peddling activities by ensuring accurate information, promoting fair practices and enforcing a trustworthy judicial system.

Disrupted properties of functional brain networks in major depressive disorder during emotional face recognition: an EEG study via graph theory analysis.

Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed abnormal brain networks in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) in emotional processing. While any cognitive task consists of a series of stages, little is yet known about the topology of functional brain networks in MDD for these stages during emotional face recognition. To address this problem, electroencephalography (EEG)-based functional brain networks of MDD patients at different stages of facial information processing were investigated in this study. First, EEG signals were collected from 16 patients with MDD and 18 age-, gender-, and education-matched normal subjects when performing an emotional face recognition task. Second, the global field power (GFP) method was employed to divide group-averaged event-related potentials into different stages. Third, using the phase transfer entropy (PTE) approach, the brain networks of MDD patients and normal individuals were constructed for each stage in negative and positive face processing, respectively. Finally, we compared the topological properties of brain networks of each stage between the two groups using graph theory approaches. The results showed that the analyzed three stages of emotional face processing corresponded to specific neurophysiological phases, namely, visual perception, face recognition, and emotional decision-making. It was also demonstrated that depressed patients showed abnormally decreased characteristic path length at the visual perception stage of negative face recognition and normalized characteristic path length in the stage of emotional decision-making during positive face processing compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, while both the MDD and normal groups' brain networks were found to exhibit small-world network characteristics, the brain network of patients with depression tended to be randomized. Moreover, for patients with MDD, the centro-parietal region may lose its status as a hub in the process of facial expression identification. Together, our findings suggested that altered emotional function in MDD patients might be associated with disruptions in the topological organization of functional brain networks during emotional face recognition, which further deepened our understanding of the emotion processing dysfunction underlying MDD.

Electrophysiological correlates of self-related processing in adults with autism.

The term "self-bias" refers to the human propensity to prioritize self- over other-related stimuli and is believed to influence various stages of the processing stream. By means of event-related potentials (ERPs), it was recently shown that the self-bias in a shape-label matching task modulates early as well as later phases of information processing in neurotypicals. Recent claims suggest autism-related deficits to specifically impact later stages of self-related processing; however, it is unclear whether these claims hold based on current findings. Using the shape-label matching task while recording ERPs in individuals with autism can clarify which stage of self-related processing is specifically affected in this condition. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the temporal course of self-related processing in adults with and without autism. Thirty-two adults with autism and 27 neurotypicals completed a shape-label matching task while ERPs were concomitantly recorded. At the behavioral level, results furnished evidence for a comparable self-bias across groups, with no differences in task performance between adults with and without autism. At the ERP level, the two groups showed a similar self-bias at early stages of self-related information processing (the N1 component). Conversely, the autism group manifested a lessened differentiation between self- and other-related stimuli at later stages (the parietal P3 component). In line with recent claims of later phases of self-related processing being altered in autism, we found an equivalent self-bias between groups at an early, sensory stage of processing, yet a strongly diminished self-bias at a later, cognitive stage in adults with autism.

Impaired eye movements in Parkinson's disease and their relationship to top–down and bottom–up neural processing

AbstractIntroductionEye movement disorder in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is less likely to appear when observing complex images compared with simple images. However, in case of auditory stimuli, meaningful stimuli can promote PD movement. Thus, we measured visual search movements with an eye tracker to investigate whether visual search changes in PD depending on the meaningfulness of visual stimuli; additionally, we measured event‐related potentials (ERPs) to neurophysiologically examine visual information processing in PD.MethodsData from 11 patients with cognitively unimpaired PD and 10 neurologically healthy individuals (controls) were used in this study. We simultaneously measured eye tracking and ERPs during the observation of three types of images: operation, noun, and meaningless figures. We compared intergroup differences in visual search parameters, such as saccade count, fixation time, and saccade amplitude, as well as in ERPs vertex‐to‐vertex amplitudes and latency among P1, N1, P2, and N2 at the posterior regions. These ERPs reflect different stages of visual information processing and provide insights into the underlying neural mechanisms of visual search in PD.ResultsAll visual search parameters were consistently smaller in the PD group than in the control group, regardless of visual stimulus. The saccade count in the PD group was significantly lower than in the control group for operation and meaningless figures but not for noun figures. Further, P1 and N1 amplitudes—bottom–up processing—were smaller in PD group when viewing operation figures and N2 amplitudes—top–down processing—were larger in PD group when viewing operation and meaningless figures.ConclusionsPD's visual search movements may change depending on the meaningfulness of visual stimuli. Further, the abnormal visual search movements in PD may be due to insufficient bottom–up processing and excessive top–down processing.Plain Language SummaryParkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that can cause eye movement disorders. People with PD may have difficulty searching for and processing visual information. In this study, we investigated how meaningfulness affects visual search movements and visual information processing in people with PD. We measured eye movements and brain activity in response to different types of visual stimuli, including meaningful and meaningless images, and compared them to a group of healthy control participants. Our results showed that PD patients had fewer eye movements and different brain activity patterns compared to healthy controls, regardless of the meaningfulness of the visual stimuli. However, we also found that the meaningfulness of visual stimuli had an effect on visual search movements in PD patients. This suggests that meaningfulness can impact the way people with PD process visual information. Understanding these differences could help in the development of new therapies to improve visual processing in people with PD.

Clarifying directional dependence among measures of early auditory processing and cognition in schizophrenia: leveraging Gaussian graphical models and Bayesian networks.

Research using latent variable models demonstrates that pre-attentive measures of early auditory processing (EAP) and cognition may initiate a cascading effect on daily functioning in schizophrenia. However, such models fail to account for relationships among individual measures of cognition and EAP, thereby limiting their utility. Hence, EAP and cognition may function as complementary and interacting measures of brain function rather than independent stages of information processing. Here, we apply a data-driven approach to identifying directional relationships among neurophysiologic and cognitive variables. Using data from the Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia 2, we estimated Gaussian Graphical Models and Bayesian networks to examine undirected and directed connections between measures of EAP, including mismatch negativity and P3a, and cognition in 663 outpatients with schizophrenia and 630 control participants. Chain structures emerged among EAP and attention/vigilance measures in schizophrenia and control groups. Concerning differences between the groups, object memory was an influential variable in schizophrenia upon which other cognitive domains depended, and working memory was an influential variable in controls. Measures of EAP and attention/vigilance are conditionally independent of other cognitive domains that were used in this study. Findings also revealed additional causal assumptions among measures of cognition that could help guide statistical control and ultimately help identify early-stage targets or surrogate endpoints in schizophrenia.

The enhanced emotional negativity bias in parents of atypically developing children: Evidence from an event-related potentials study.

Parents of atypically developing children such as parents of children with ASD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and intellectual disability experience higher levels of parenting stress than parents of typically developing children. However, whether they possess enhanced emotional negativity bias was unclear. In the present study, 28 parents of typically developing children and 29 parents of atypically developing children were recruited. The emotional Stroop task and event-related potentials were adopted to measure their emotional negativity bias, in which participants were required to respond to the borders' color of face pictures. Behaviorally, the impact of parenting stress on emotional negativity bias was not found. At the electrophysiological level, the P2 differential amplitude (negative minus positive) was greater in parents of atypically developing children than in parents of typically developing children, reflecting an enhanced early attentional bias toward negative faces. N2 amplitude for the emotionally negative face was smaller than the positive face in parents of atypically developing children, indicating a too weak attentional control to inhibit distractors. Furthermore, sustained attention to negative faces was observed in parents of atypically developing children, that is, the emotionally negative face elicited greater frontal P3 (300 ~ 500 ms) than the positive faces. These findings revealed that compared to parents of typically developing children, parents of atypically developing children owned an enhanced emotional negativity bias at the early and late stages of information processing.

Effects of a Passive Back-Support Exosuit on Postural Control and Cognitive Performance During a Fatigue-Inducing Posture Maintenance Task.

To evaluate the effectiveness of passive back-support exosuit on postural control and cognitive performance during a fatigue-inducing posture maintenance task. Wearable support systems (exoskeletons/exosuits) reduce physical demands but may also influence postural control and cognitive performance by reducing muscular fatigue. Eighteen participants visited on two different days to test an exosuit system and performed dual-task cognitive assessments based on human information processing (information acquisition, information integration, and action implementation) while maintaining a 35° trunk flexion posture for 16minutes. Center-of-pressure (CoP), cognitive performance, and perceived workload were recorded, while erector spinae muscle activity was captured to quantify muscle fatigue. The exosuit was effective in reducing erector spinae muscle fatigue during the static posture maintenance task (61% less in Δmedian frequency: -9.5Hz (EXO-Off) versus -3.7Hz (EXO-On)). The fatigue-inducing task increased CoP velocity as a function of time (29% greater: 9.3mm/sec (pre) versus 12.0mm/sec (post)), and exosuit use decreased CoP velocity (23% less: 12.1mm/sec (EXO-Off) versus 9.4mm/sec (EXO-On)). The exosuit was also effective at mitigating cognitive degradation, as evidenced by a higher hit-to-signal ratio (8% greater: 81.3 (EXO-Off) versus 87.9 (EXO-On)) in the information integration task and reducing perceived workload in all stages of human information processing. Exosuit provided benefits of postural control and information integration processing during a 16-min static posture maintenance task. Torso exoskeletons/suits can have positive implications for occupations with concurrent physical and cognitive demands.

Psychological effects of anti-Arab politics on American and Arab peoples' views of each other.

Disparaging rhetoric about Arab people was prevalent during Donald Trump's political rise in the United States. Although this rhetoric was intended to energize conservative Americans, it also echoed throughout many liberal parts of the United States and around the world. In this research, we experimentally examined the effects of such rhetoric on American and Arab people's attitudes and visual representations of each other before and after Trump was elected. Although people overwhelmingly reported not liking the negative rhetoric, the rhetoric alone did not influence explicit and implicit intergroup biases in either location, as measured by feeling thermometers and Implicit Association Tests. However, the election outcome moderated the way rhetoric influenced how American and Arab people visually represented each other. Our research sheds light on nuanced effects of global politics on various information processing stages within intergroup perception.

Crossmodal Associations and Working Memory in the Brain.

Crossmodal associations between stimuli from different sensory modalities could emerge in non-synesthetic people and be stored in working memory to guide goal-directed behaviors. This chapter reviews a plethora of studies in this field to summarize where, when, and how crossmodal associations and working memory are processed. It has been found that in those brain regions that are traditionally considered as unimodal primary sensory areas, neural activity could be influenced by crossmodal sensory signals at temporally very early stage of information processing. This phenomenon could not be due to feedback projections from higher level associative areas. Sequentially, neural processes would then occur in associative cortical areas including the posterior parietal cortex and prefrontal cortex. Neural oscillations in multiple frequency bands may reflect brain activity in crossmodal associations, and it is likely that neural synchrony is related to potential neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Primary sensory areas and associative areas coordinate together through neural synchrony to fulfil crossmodal associations and to guide working memory performance.

Eye Movement Evidence for Simultaneous Cognitive Processing in Reading.

Measuring simultaneous processing, a reliable predictor of reading development and reading difficulties (RDs), has traditionally involved cognitive tasks that test reaction or response time, which only capture the efficiency at the output processing stage and neglect the internal stages of information processing. However, with eye-tracking methodology, we can reveal the underlying temporal and spatial processes involved in simultaneous processing and investigate whether these processes are equivalent across chronological or reading age groups. This study used eye-tracking to investigate the simultaneous processing abilities of 15 Grade 6 and 15 Grade 3 children with RDs and their chronological-age controls (15 in each Grade). The Grade 3 typical readers were used as reading-level (RL) controls for the Grade 6 RD group. Participants were required to listen to a question and then point to a picture among four competing illustrations demonstrating the spatial relationship raised in the question. Two eye movements (fixations and saccades) were recorded using the EyeLink 1000 Plus eye-tracking system. The results showed that the Grade 3 RD group produced more and longer fixations than their CA controls, indicating that the pattern of eye movements of young children with RD is typically deficient compared to that of their typically developing counterparts when processing verbal and spatial stimuli simultaneously. However, no differences were observed between the Grade 6 groups in eye movement measures. Notably, the Grade 6 RD group outperformed the RL-matched Grade 3 group, yielding significantly fewer and shorter fixations. The discussion centers on the role of the eye-tracking method as a reliable means of deciphering the simultaneous cognitive processing involved in learning.

The role of brain oscillations in feature integration.

Our sensory system is able to build a unified perception of the world, which although rich, is limited and inaccurate. Sometimes, features from different objects are erroneously combined. At the neural level, the role of the parietal cortex in feature integration is well-known. However, the brain dynamics underlying correct and incorrect feature integration are less clear. To explore the temporal dynamics of feature integration, we studied the modulation of different frequency bands in trials in which feature integration was correct or incorrect. Participants responded to the color of a shape target, surrounded by distractors. A calibration procedure ensured that accuracy was around 70% in each participant. To explore the role of expectancy in feature integration, we introduced an unexpected feature to the target in the last blocks of trials. Results demonstrated the contribution of several frequency bands to feature integration. Alpha and beta power was reduced for hits compared to illusions. Moreover, gamma power was overall larger during the experiment for participants who were aware of the unexpected target presented during the last blocks of trials (as compared to unaware participants). These results demonstrate that feature integration is a complex process that can go wrong at different stages of information processing and is influenced by top-down expectancies.

Alternative to mean and least squares methods used in processing the results of scientific and technical experiments

Increasing the complexity and size of systems of various nature requires constant improvement of modeling and verification of the obtained results by experiment. It is possible to clearly conduct each experiment, objectively evaluate the summaries of the researched process, and spread the material obtained in one study to a series of other studies only if they are correctly set up and processed. On the basis of experimental data, algebraic expressions are selected, which are called empirical formulas, which are used if the analytical expression of some function is complex or does not exist at this stage of the description of the object, system or phenomenon. When selecting empirical formulas, polynomials of the form: у = А0 + А1х+ А2х2+ А3х3+…+ Аnхn are widely used, which can be used to approximate any measurement results if they are expressed as continuous functions. It is especially valuable that even if the exact expression of the solution (polynomial) is unknown, it is possible to determine the value of the coefficients An using the methods of mean and least squares. But in the method of least squares, there is a shift in estimates when the noise in the data is increased, as it is affected by the noise of the previous stages of information processing. Therefore, for real-time information processing procedures, a pseudo-reverse operation is proposed, which is performed using recurrent formulas. This procedure is a procedure of successive updating (with a shift) along the columns of the matrix of given sizes and pseudo-reversal at each step of information change. This approach is straightforward and takes advantage of the bounding method. With pseudo-inversion, it is possible to control the correctness of calculations at each step, using Penrose conditions. The need for pseudo-inversion may arise during optimization, forecasting of certain parameters and characteristics of systems of various purposes, in various problems of linear algebra, statistics, presentation of the structure of the obtained solutions, to understand the content of the incorrectness of the resulting solution, in the sense of Adomar-Tikhonov, and to see the ways of regularization of such solutions.

Reference induces biases in late visual processing

How we perceive a visual stimulus can be influenced by its surrounding context. For example, the presence of a reference skews the perception of a similar feature in a stimulus, a phenomenon called reference repulsion. Ongoing research so far remains inconclusive regarding the stage of visual information processing where such repulsion occurs. We examined the influence of a reference on late visual processing. We measured the repulsion effect caused by an orientation reference presented after an orientation ensemble stimulus. The participants’ reported orientations were significantly biased away from the post-stimulus reference, displaying typical characteristics of reference repulsion. Moreover, explicit discrimination choices between the reference and the stimulus influenced the magnitudes of repulsion effects, which can be explained by an encoding-decoding model that differentiates the re-weighting of sensory representations in implicit and explicit processes. These results support the notion that reference repulsion may arise at a late decision-related stage of visual processing, where different sensory decoding strategies are employed depending on the specific task.

Dissociating different temporal stages of emotional word processing by feature-based attention

Negative emotional content is prioritized across different stages of information processing as reflected by different components of the event-related potential (ERP). In this preregistered study (N = 40), we investigated how varying the attentional focus allows us to dissociate the involvement of specific ERP components in the processing of negative and neutral words. Participants had to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the words, the word type (adjective/noun), or the emotional content (negative/neutral). Thus, attention was either not focused on words (distraction task), non-emotional aspects, or the emotional relevance of words. Regardless of the task, there were no significant differences between negative and neutral words for the P1, N1, or P2 components. In contrast, interactions between emotion and task were observed for the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP). EPN differences were absent during the distraction task but were present in the other two tasks. LPP emotion differences were found only when attention was directed to the emotional content of words. Our study adds to the evidence that early ERP components do not reliably separate negative and neutral words. However, results show that mid-latency and late stages of emotion processing are separable by different attention tasks. The EPN represents a stage of attentional enhancement of negative words given sufficient attentional resources. Differential activations during the LPP stage are associated with more elaborative processing of the emotional meaning of words.

The many facets of inhibitory control and their role in syntactic selection

Abstract There is accumulating evidence that distinct forms of domain-general inhibition underlie the selection of lexical candidates from among co-activated representations in single-word production. It is less clear whether similar control processes are engaged in the resolution of syntactic conflict in sentence production. This study assessed the relative contribution of three types of inhibitory control operating at different stages of information processing to syntactic interference resolution in an active-passive voice production task. Inhibition of response execution (the anti-saccade effect) and resolution of representational conflict (the flanker effect) were related to the occurrence of repairs and sentence onset latencies in passive voice trials. The results suggest not only that general-purpose mechanisms may be in place that resolve conflict regardless of whether it stems from syntactic or non-syntactic (non-verbal) representations, but also that they operate at dissociable processing stages.

Investigating premotor reaching biases after prism adaptation

ABSTRACT Prism adaptation (PA) is both a visuomotor learning task and potential treatment for spatial neglect after stroke. While PA’s aftereffects can improve neglect symptoms, therapeutic benefits vary across individuals, possibly due to differences in neglect subtypes. Neglect symptoms can be described along an information processing pathway, yielding perceptual (input) and premotor (output) neglect subtypes. There is some evidence that PA mainly benefits persons with premotor neglect. We investigated whether PA modulates the premotor stage of information processing by examining whether PA could induce a premotor bias in healthy adults. We measured perceptual and premotor biases using a speeded reach task that compares the initiation time of leftward and rightward reaches to lateralized targets from different hand start positions. Using a randomized mixed experimental design, 30 right-handed healthy adults completed this speeded reach task before and after either left-shifting (n = 15) or right-shifting (n = 15) PA. As hypothesized, left-shifting PA speeded initiation time specifically for reaches in the rightward direction, regardless of target location (p = .02, ηp 2 = .18), suggesting that PA induced a premotor bias in the direction of the prism aftereffect. These findings have implications for PA’s underlying mechanisms, which can inform visuomotor learning theories and PA’s use as a treatment for spatial neglect.

Recognition and evaluation of mental workload in different stages of perceptual and cognitive information processing using a multimodal approach

This study explores the effects of different perceptual and cognitive information processing stages on mental workload by assessing multimodal indicators of mental workload such as the NASA-TLX, task performance, ERPs and eye movements. Repeated measures ANOVA of the data showed that among ERP indicators, P1, N1 and N2 amplitudes were sensitive to perceptual load (P-load), P3 amplitude was sensitive to P-load only in the prefrontal region during high cognitive load (C-load) states, and P3 amplitude in the occipital and parietal regions was sensitive to C-load. Among the eye movement indicators, blink frequency was sensitive to P-load in all C-load states, but to C-load in only low P-load states; pupil diameter and blink duration were sensitive to both P-load and C-load. Based on the above indicators, the k-nearest neighbours (KNN) algorithm was used to propose a classification method for the four different mental workload states with an accuracy of 97.89%. Practitioner summary: Based on the results of this study, it is possible to implement the monitoring of mental workload states and optimise brain task allocation in operations involving high mental workload, such as human-computer interaction.