Stages Of Perceptual Processing Research Articles

Two languages, two emotional minds in one brain: processing emotion-label and emotion-laden words by Chinese-English bilinguals

ABSTRACT The present study examined the neural correlates of emotion effects evoked by emotion-label and emotion-laden nouns in Chinese-English bilinguals’ two languages through the emotion categorization tasks. At the perceptual processing stage, only L2 emotion-label and emotion-laden nouns induced amplified N100 than neutral nouns. At the semantic processing stage, relative to neutral nouns, L2 negative emotion-laden nouns triggered heightened EEPN, and L1 emotion-laden nouns evoked marginally smaller EEPN; only L2 emotion-laden and positive emotion-label nouns exhibited augmented LEPN; L2 positive emotion-label and L1 emotion-label and emotion-laden nouns displayed reduced N400. At the integration processing stage, L2 positive nouns showed larger LPC and L1 positive nouns displayed smaller LPC than neutral nouns. These results verified emotion word type hypothesis across languages, and also implied that emotional attributes were encoded within both perceptual and semantic representations in L2, and predominantly within semantic representation in L1.

Unconsciously triggered cognitive conflict influences perceptual choice in active and sedentary individuals.

People who regularly exercise and receive training perform better when actioning unconscious cognitive tasks. The information flow triggered by a single unconscious visual stimulus has been extensively investigated, but it remains unclear whether multiple unconscious visual stimuli interact. This study aimed to explore the relationship between three simultaneous subliminal arrow stimuli (pointing in same or different directions), focusing on how they interact with each other and the subsequent priming effect on the target arrow in active and sedentary groups. We used a priming paradigm combining flanker task to test the hypothesis. A total of 42 participants were recruited. Of these, 22 constituted the active group and 20 constituted the sedentary group. Behavioral data results revealed that the main effects of group and prime-target compatibility were significant. In the neurophysiological data, prime-target compatibility significantly influenced the latency of PP1. The amplitude of TP1 and TN2 mainly influenced the prime-flanker congruency. The prime-flanker congruency and groups interacted when the prime-target showed sufficient compatibility. The prime-flanker congruency, and the prime-target compatibility considerably influenced the TP3 amplitude in the anterior central frontal region (CZ electrode point). Event-related potentials revealed the interactions between conscious processing and subliminal conflict in the early stages of perceptual and attention processing (target-related P1 potential component). These results suggest that exercise is helpful for coping with unconscious cognitive conflict.

Lateralized displays reveal the perceptual locus of the syllable transposition effect in Korean

Studies of letter transposition effects in alphabetic scripts provide compelling evidence that letter position is encoded flexibly during reading, potentially during an early, perceptual stage of visual word recognition. Recent studies additionally suggest similar flexibility in the spatial encoding of syllabic information in the Korean Hangul script. With the present research, we conducted two experiments to investigate the locus of this syllabic transposition effect. In Experiment 1, lexical decisions for foveal stimulus presentations were less accurate and slower for four-syllable nonwords created by transposing two syllables in a base word as compared to control nonwords, replicating prior evidence for a transposed syllable effect in Korean word recognition. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were presented to the right and left visual hemifields (i.e., RVF and LVF), which project both unilaterally and contralaterally to each participant's left and right cerebral hemisphere (i.e., LH and RH) respectively, using lateralized stimulus displays. Lexical decisions revealed a syllable transposition effect in the accuracy and latency of lexical decisions for both RVF and LVF presentations. However, response times for correct responses were longer in the LVF, and therefore the RH, as compared to the RVF/LH. As the LVF/RH appears to be selectively sensitive to the visual-perceptual attributes of words, the findings suggest that this syllable transposition effect partly finds its locus within a perceptual stage of processing. We discuss these findings in relation to current models of the spatial encoding of orthographic information during visual word recognition and accounts of visual word recognition in Korean.

Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlie the Effects of Attention on Visual Appearance and Response Bias.

A prominent theoretical framework spanning philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience holds that selective attention penetrates early stages of perceptual processing to alter the subjective visual experience of behaviorally relevant stimuli. For example, searching for a red apple at the grocery store might make the relevant color appear brighter and more saturated compared with seeing the exact same red apple while searching for a yellow banana. In contrast, recent proposals argue that data supporting attention-related changes in appearance reflect decision- and motor-level response biases without concurrent changes in perceptual experience. Here, we tested these accounts by evaluating attentional modulations of EEG responses recorded from male and female human subjects while they compared the perceived contrast of attended and unattended visual stimuli rendered at different levels of physical contrast. We found that attention enhanced the amplitude of the P1 component, an early evoked potential measured over visual cortex. A linking model based on signal detection theory suggests that response gain modulations of the P1 component track attention-induced changes in perceived contrast as measured with behavior. In contrast, attentional cues induced changes in the baseline amplitude of posterior alpha band oscillations (∼9-12 Hz), an effect that best accounts for cue-induced response biases, particularly when no stimuli are presented or when competing stimuli are similar and decisional uncertainty is high. The observation of dissociable neural markers that are linked to changes in subjective appearance and response bias supports a more unified theoretical account and demonstrates an approach to isolate subjective aspects of selective information processing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Does attention alter visual appearance, or does it simply induce response bias? In the present study, we examined these competing accounts using EEG and linking models based on signal detection theory. We found that response gain modulations of the visually evoked P1 component best accounted for attention-induced changes in visual appearance. In contrast, cue-induced baseline shifts in alpha band activity better explained response biases. Together, these results suggest that attention concurrently impacts visual appearance and response bias, and that these processes can be experimentally isolated.

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.

Statistical learning speeds visual search: More efficient selection, or faster response?

Learning statistical regularities of target objects speeds visual search performance. However, we do not yet know whether this statistical learning effect is driven by biasing attentional selection at the early perceptual stage of processing, as theories of attention propose, or by improving the decision-making efficiency at a late response-related stage. Leveraging the high-temporal resolution of the event-related potential (ERP) technique, we had 16 human observers perform a visual search task where we inserted a fine-grained statistical regularity that the target shapes appeared in different colors with six unique probabilities. Observers unintentionally learned these regularities such that they were faster to report targets that appeared in more likely target colors. The observers' ERPs showed that this learning effect resulted in subjects making faster decisions about the target presence, and not by preferentially shifting attention to more rapidly select likely target colors, as is often assumed by the attentional selection account, supporting a post-selection account for statistical learning of the probabilistic regularities of target features. These results provide fundamental insights into the attentional control mechanisms of statistical learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

On the origin of the Helmholtz’s square illusion: An attentional account

A square filled with parallel horizontal or vertical lines appears perceptually extended in the direction orthogonal to the lines. Here, we suggest that this Helmholtz illusion arises due to changes in spatial attention that entail changes at very early stages of perceptual processing. Three experiments are reported which tested this assumption. In Experiment1 and Experiment2, transient attentional cues were flashed in such a way that they either promoted (congruent condition) or hindered (incongruent condition) the attentional state presumably induced by the target objects. We predicted a decline of the illusion in the incongruent condition compared with the congruent condition. This prediction was confirmed in both experiments. However, the influence of (in)congruent attention cuing on the Helmholtz illusion depended on more sustained distributions of attention as well. An influence of sustained attention on the illusion was confirmed in Experiment 3, in which changes of attentional focus were induced by a secondary task. Overall, the results were consistent with our claim that the origin of the Helmholtz illusion is closely linked to the distribution of spatial attention.

Font disfluency and reading performance in children: An event-related potential study

Expert adult readers process fluent and disfluent fonts differently, at both early perceptual and late higher-order processing stages. This finding has been interpreted as reflecting the more difficult to read disfluent fonts requiring greater neural resources. We aimed to investigate whether neural activity is affected by font disfluency in pre-adolescent readers, and to determine if neural responses are related to reading performance. Thirty-three participants between 8 and 12 years old completed two one-back tasks using letter and word stimuli, where font was manipulated (fluent versus disfluent stimuli), during which electroencephalography was recorded. Event related potentials (ERPs) were calculated relative to non-target stimuli for both tasks. The Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement reading specific tests, and the Castles and Coltheart Test 2 were also collected. Font (fluent versus disfluent stimuli) did not consistently affect neural activity during both the letter and word tasks. Fluent stimuli elicited greater late activity (450–600 ms) than disfluent stimuli during the word task, suggesting easy-to-read fonts may enhance the maintenance of words in visual working memory and facilitate the retrieval of semantic information. However, reading performance was not associated with neural disfluency effects, suggesting that pre-adolescents are still at an early developmental reading period. Font manipulation may be a useful way to track developmental reading trajectories in the brain.

Early and late electrophysiological correlates of gradual perceptual awareness in- and outside the Attentional Blink window

There is an ongoing debate on the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in the attentional blink (AB). Theoretical accounts propose that NCC during the attentional blink occur late in the processing hierarchy and that this quality is specific to the AB. We investigated this question by recording event-related potentials during an AB experiment with faces as T2. We analyzed ERPs to T2 stimuli inside (short lag) and outside (long lag) the AB window after carefully calibrating T2 stimuli to ensure equal visibility ratings across lags. We found that the N170, the visual awareness negativity (VAN), and the P3b showed an increased amplitude for seen compared to unseen face stimuli regardless of stimulus lag and that all these components scale linearly with subjective visibility. These findings suggest similar early and late mechanisms of graded perceptual awareness within and outside the AB across perceptual (N170, VAN) and post-perceptual (P3b) processing stages.

Partial overlap between holistic processing of words and Gestalt line stimuli at an early perceptual stage.

A dual-route account of holistic processing has been proposed, which includes a stimulus-based and experience-based approach to holistic processing. The bottom-up route was suggested by the observation of holistic processing for novel Gestalt line patterns in the absence of expertise. For words, there is mainly evidence for a late, lexical, experience-based locus of holistic processing with scarce evidence for an early, stimulus-based locus. However, salient early Gestalt information (i.e., connectedness, closure, and continuity between parts) are important for letter and word identification. Thus, there might be an overlap at an early, perceptual processing stage, between Gestalt stimulus-based holistic processing and word holistic processing. In the task we used, words and Gestalt line patterns were superimposed, and we evaluated whether one class of stimuli was processed less holistically when an aligned other class pattern (processed holistically) was superimposed. There was some evidence supporting an early locus for the influence of word processing on Gestalt line patterns, but the interaction between the two stimuli was not reciprocal, which needs further clarification. When an aligned word (processed holistically) was overlaid on a line pattern, the line pattern was processed less holistically. However, when an aligned line pattern (processed holistically) was overlaid on a word, the word was not processed less holistically. This pattern might result from the higher cohesiveness of words and their automaticity and feedback from the lexicon.

Spatial frequency impacts perceptual and attentional ERP components across cultures

Culture impacts visual perception in several ways.To identify stages of perceptual processing that differ between cultures, we usedelectroencephalography measures of perceptual and attentional responses to simple visual stimuli.Gabor patches of higher or lower spatialfrequencywere presented at high contrast to 25 American and 31 East Asian participants while they were watching for the onset of aninfrequent, oddball stimulus. Region of interest and mass univariate analyses assessed how cultural background and stimuli spatial frequency affected the visual evoked response potentials. Across both groups, the Gabor of lower spatial frequency produced stronger evoked response potentials in the anterior N1 and P3 than did the higher frequency Gabor. The mass univariate analyses also revealed effects of spatial frequency, including a frontal negativity around 150 ms and a widespread posterior positivity around 300 ms. The effects of spatial frequency generally differed little across cultures; although there was some evidence for cultural differences in the P3 response to different frequencies at the Pz electrode, this effect did not emerge in the mass univariate analyses. We discuss these results in relation to those from previous studies, and explore the potential advantages of mass univariate analyses for cultural neuroscience.

Sense and timing: Localizing objects during emotional distraction.

There is substantial evidence demonstrating that emotional information influences perception. Yet across studies, findings of how it does so have been highly inconsistent. In particular, emotional context (task-unrelated emotional information in the environment) has a variable influence on spatial perceptual accuracy, sometimes improving and sometimes impairing the ability to localize objects. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the heterogenous nature of emotional influences on target localization is influenced by the specific combination of sensory modalities used in the task. In the present series of experiments, we used a cross-modal localization task to identify how emotional context influences the accuracy of spatial perception. By presenting nonemotional target stimuli alongside emotional nonspatial distractor items (facial expressions or vocalizations), we were able to systematically investigate how emotional stimuli presented to individual sensory modalities acted to modulate spatial perception at distinct stages of perception and action. In three separate experiments, distractor items were presented prior to or during target presentation or after presentation during the localization response. Intramodal emotional distractors influenced localization accuracy when they overlapped in timing with targets, and the direction of this effect was both modality and valence specific (Experiment I). Additionally, targeted contrasts revealed that auditory but not visual emotional distractors influenced localization of visual targets when presented during the behavioral response, with negative cues improving localization accuracy compared to neutral or positive cues (Experiment II). We suggest such effects reflect distinct patterns of unimodal versus multimodal processing in brain regions involved in early versus late stages of perceptual processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional content overrides spatial attention.

Spatial attention is our capacity to attend to or ignore particular regions of our spatial environment. However, some classes of stimuli may be able to override our efforts to ignore them. Here we assessed the relationship between involuntary attentional capture with emotional images and spatial attention at early stages of perceptual processing. Multiple scenes of unpleasant and neutral content were displayed in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams that elicited the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), a neural marker of selective attention at early visual areas. In a spatial cueing task, participants were cued to covertly attend to RSVP streams presented at 4 and 6Hz presentation rates in the left and right visual hemifields. The task was to detect square targets occasionally displayed within the image streams, responding only to those appearing on the cued side. The RSVP streams were always neutral pictures in one visual hemifield but would unpredictably switch from neutral to aversive content in the other visual hemifield. We found that SSVEP amplitude was consistently modulated by a change in emotional valence of image streams, regardless of whether the change in content occurred in the attended or unattended spatial location, reflecting an automatic sensory amplification for affective stimuli. The present data provide further evidence in support that emotional images can attract visual processing resources independently of spatial attention allocation, and are consistent with sustained sensory facilitation of early visual areas through re-entrant feedback projections from higher-order cortical areas involved in the extraction of affective information.

Affective Dysregulation in Children Is Associated With Difficulties in Response Control in Emotional Ambiguous Situations

BackgroundAffective dysregulation (AD), or synonymously "irritability," is a transdiagnostic construct that serves as a diagnostic criterion in various childhood mental disorders. It is characterized by severe or persistent outbursts of anger and aggression. Emotional self-regulation is highly dependent on the ability to process relevant and ignore conflicting emotional information. Understanding neurophysiological mechanisms underlying impairment in AD may provide a starting point for research on pharmacological treatment options and evaluation of psychotherapeutic intervention. MethodsA total of 120 children 8 to 12 years of age (63 with AD and 57 typically developing) were examined using an emotional Stroop task. Signal-decomposed electroencephalographic recordings providing information about the affected sensory–perceptual, response selection, or motor information processing stage were combined with source localization. ResultsBehavioral performance revealed dysfunctional cognitive-emotional conflict monitoring in children with AD, suggesting difficulties in differentiating between conflicting and nonconflicting cognitive-emotional information. This was confirmed by the electroencephalographic data showing that they cannot intensify response selection processes during conflicting cognitive-emotional situations. Typically developing children were able to do so and activated a functional–neuroanatomical network comprising the left inferior parietal cortex (Brodmann area 40), right middle frontal (Brodmann area 10), and right inferior/orbitofrontal (Brodmann area 47) regions. Purely sensory–perceptual selection and motor execution processes were not modulated in AD, as evidenced by Bayesian analyses. ConclusionsBehavioral and electroencephalogram data suggest that children with AD cannot adequately modulate controlled response selection processes given emotionally ambiguous information. Which neurotransmitter systems underlie these deficits and how they can be improved are important questions for future research.

Dissociating Perceptual Awareness and Postperceptual Processing: The P300 Is Not a Reliable Marker of Somatosensory Target Detection.

A central challenge in the study of conscious perception lies in dissociating the neural correlates of perceptual awareness from those reflecting its precursors and consequences. No-report paradigms have been instrumental in this endeavor, demonstrating that the event-related potential P300, recorded from the human scalp, reflects reports rather than awareness. However, these paradigms cannot probe the degree to which stimuli are consciously processed from trial to trial and, thus, leave open the possibility that the P300 is a genuine correlate of conscious access enabling reports. Here, instead of removing report requirements, we took the opposite approach and equated postperceptual task demands across conscious and unconscious trials by orthogonalizing target detection and overt reports in a somatosensory detection task. We used Bayesian model selection to track the transformation from physical to perceptual processing stages in the EEG data of 24 male and female participants and show that the early P50 component scaled with physical stimulus intensity, whereas the N140 component was the first correlate of target detection. The late P300 component was elicited for both perceived and unperceived stimuli and was not substantially modulated by target detection. This was in stark contrast to a control experiment using a classical direct report task, which replicated the P50 and N140 effects but additionally showed a strong effect of target detection in the P300 time range. Our results demonstrate the task dependence of the P300 in the somatosensory modality and show that late cortical potentials dissociate from perceptual awareness even when stimuli are always reported.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The time it takes for sensory information to enter our conscious experience can be an indicator of the neural processing stages that lead to perceptual awareness. However, because many cognitive processes routinely correlate with perception, isolating those signals that uniquely reflect perceptual awareness is not a trivial task. Here, we show that late electroencephalography signals cease to correlate with somatosensory awareness when common task confounds are controlled. Importantly, by balancing report requirements instead of abolishing them, we show that the lack of late effects cannot be explained by a lack of conscious access. Instead, we propose that conscious access occurs earlier, at ∼150 ms, supporting the view that early activity in sensory cortices is a neural correlate of conscious perception.

The influence of the cross-modal emotional pre-preparation effect on audiovisual integration.

Previous studies have shown that the cross-modal pre-preparation effect is an important factor for audiovisual integration. However, the facilitating influence of the pre-preparation effect on the integration of emotional cues remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the emotional pre-preparation effect during the multistage process of audiovisual integration. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a synchronous or asynchronous integration task with fearful or neutral stimuli. The results indicated that, compared with the sum of the unisensory presentation of visual (V) and auditory (A) stimuli (A+V), only fearful audiovisual stimuli induced a decreased N1 and an enhanced P2; this was not found for the neutral stimuli. Moreover, the fearful stimuli triggered a larger P2 than the neutral stimuli in the audiovisual condition, but not in the sum of the combined (A+V) waveforms. Our findings imply that, in the early perceptual processing stage and perceptual fine processing stage, fear improves the processing efficiency of the emotional audiovisual integration. In the last cognitively assessing stage, the fearful audiovisual induced a larger late positive component (LPC) than the neutral audiovisual. Moreover, the asynchronous-audiovisual induced a greater LPC than the synchronous-audiovisual during the 400-550 ms period. The different integration effects between the fearful and neutral stimuli may reflect the existence of distinct mechanisms of the pre-preparation in terms of the emotional dimension. In light of these results, we present a cross-modal emotional pre-preparation effect involving a three-phase emotional audiovisual integration.

Late attentional processes potentially compensate for early perceptual multisensory integration deficits in children with autism: evidence from evoked potentials

Sensory processing deficits and altered long-range connectivity putatively underlie Multisensory Integration (MSI) deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study set out to investigate non-social MSI stimuli and their electrophysiological correlates in young neurotypical adolescents and adolescents with ASD. We report robust MSI effects at behavioural and electrophysiological levels. Both groups demonstrated normal behavioural MSI. However, at the neurophysiological level, the ASD group showed less MSI-related reduction of the visual P100 latency, greater MSI-related slowing of the auditory P200 and an overall temporally delayed and spatially constrained onset of MSI. Given the task design and patient sample, and the age of our participants, we argue that electro-cortical indices of MSI deficits in ASD: (a) can be detected in early-adolescent ASD, (b) occur at early stages of perceptual processing, (c) can possibly be compensated by later attentional processes, (d) thus leading to normal MSI at the behavioural level.

Processing Facial Expressions That Conflict With Their Meanings to an Observer: An Event Related Potential Study

As social signals, identical facial expressions can be perceived differently, even oppositely, depending on the circumstances. Fast and accurate understanding of the information conveyed by others’ facial expressions is crucial for successful social interaction. In the current study, we used electroencephalographic analysis of several event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how the brain processes the facial expressions of others when they indicate different self-outcomes. In half of the trial blocks, a happy face indicated “Win” and an angry face indicated “Lose.” In the other half of the blocks, the rule was reversed. The results showed that the N170 could distinguish expression valence and the N300 could distinguish outcome valence. The valence of the expression (happy or angry) and the valence of the outcome (Win or Loss) interacted with each other in the early, automatic perceptual processing stage (N1) as well as in the later, cognitive evaluation stage (P300). Standardized Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (sLORETA) results indicated that the N1 modulation only occurred for happy faces, which may relate to automatic emotion regulation, while the interaction on P300 was significant only for angry faces, which might be associated with the regulation of negative emotions.

On Perceiving Continuity: the Role of Memory in the Perception of the Continuity of the Same Things

Theories of philosophy of perception are too simplifying. Direct realism and representationalism, for example, are philosophical theories of perception about the nature of the perceived object and its location. It is common sense to say that we directly perceive, through our senses, physical objects together with their properties. However, if perceptual experience is representational, it only appears that we directly perceive the represented physical objects. Despite psychological studies concerning the role of memory in perception, what these two philosophical theories do not explicate are the continuity of the external describable object and the role of memory in perceiving the continuity, difference, break or ending. Using empirical evidence of particular cases and the hypothetico-deductive model, this research article analyses how one is able to perceive the continuity of same things. The early stages of perceptual process are not sufficient for the perception of continuity. Empirical evidence of memory disorders shows that persons with a memory disorder do not perceive the same thing or the familiar place they previously saw and now experience or remember what they are thinking about, even if the object, the place or the person has remained the same. I will argue that the perception of continuity requires memory. In fact, observation indicates how the memory runs at the same time, when the object is seen over time. This fact implies the memory system’s essential role for perceiving the continuity of the same things.

Covert Spatial Attention Speeds Target Individuation.

Covert spatial attention has long been thought to speed visual processing. Psychophysics studies have shown that target information accrues faster at attended locations than at unattended locations. However, with behavioral evidence alone, it is difficult to determine whether attention speeds visual processing of the target or subsequent postperceptual stages of processing (e.g., converting sensory responses into decision signals). Moreover, although many studies have shown that attention can boost the amplitude of visually evoked neural responses, no robust effect has been observed on the latency of those neural responses. Here, we offer new evidence that may reconcile the neural and behavioral findings. We examined whether covert attention influenced the latency of the N2pc component, an electrophysiological marker of visual selection that has been linked with object individuation-the formation of an object representation that is distinct from the background and from other objects in the scene. To this end, we manipulated whether or not human observers (male and female) covertly attended the location of an impending search target. We found that the target evoked N2pc onset ∼20 ms earlier when the target location was cued than when it was not cued. In a second experiment, we provided a direct replication of this effect, confirming that the effect of attention on N2pc latency is robust. Thus, although attention may not speed the earliest stages of sensory processing, attention does speed the critical transition between raw sensory encoding and the formation of individuated object representations.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Covert spatial attention improves processing at attended locations. Past behavioral studies have shown that information about visual targets accrues faster at attended than at unattended locations. However, it has remained unclear whether attention speeds perceptual analysis or subsequent postperceptual stages of processing. Here, we present robust evidence that attention speeds the N2pc, an electrophysiological signal that indexes the formation of individuated object representations. Our findings show that attention speeds a relatively early stage of perceptual processing while also elucidating the specific perceptual process that is speeded.