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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

How Enduring Is Global Precedence?, Jong Lee Jan 2021

How Enduring Is Global Precedence?, Jong Lee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a set of visual processing advantages for holistic or global information over detailed or local information; these advantages are known as global precedence (Navon, 1977). Currently, there are inconsistent results about whether selective attention can reduce global precedence. Our studies look into Lamb et al. (1998)’s claim about selective attention’s inability to reduce global precedence. We reassess Lamb and colleagues’ claim by examining whether consecutively repeated tasks strengthen selective attention and reduce interference or facilitation from irrelevant information. Our studies utilized a series of trials, or runs, to present multiple consecutively repeated tasks. Before each run, participants were …


Mapping Reward Values To Cues, Locations, And Objects: The Influence Of Reward Associations On Visual Attention, Constanza De Dios Jul 2019

Mapping Reward Values To Cues, Locations, And Objects: The Influence Of Reward Associations On Visual Attention, Constanza De Dios

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Previous work has attempted to fit reward-driven attentional selection as being exogenous (stimulus-driven) or endogenous (goal-driven). However, recent work suggests that reward’s effects on attention depend on the type of stimulus feature that the motivational information is imparted during learning (incentive salience). If true, then reward should not be limited to solely impacting early perceptual or late categorization processes attention. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to test the idea that reward’s effects on attention depend on the process that the reward information is embedded – early perceptual or late categorization. Results demonstrated reward-driven effects on perceptual representation when …


Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz Jun 2016

Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How does the focus of attention influence the encoding of information? Research has shown that size and allocation of the attentional window has an influence on what information is attended to or missed. The size-scale of features also effects processing of visual information. Previous research involving hierarchical stimuli suggests precedence for global features. In the present experiment, I investigated the influence of attentional window size on accuracy of encoding hierarchical stimuli at the global and local level. Here I introduce a new method for manipulating the size of the attentional window and for collecting unconstrained responses. At the start of …


Effects Of Nicotine On A Translational Model Of Working Memory, David Alderson Macqueen Sep 2015

Effects Of Nicotine On A Translational Model Of Working Memory, David Alderson Macqueen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive research with human non-smokers has demonstrated that nicotine generally enhances performance on tasks of attention but, working memory does not appear to be affected. In contrast, nicotine has been shown to produce robust enhancements of working memory in non-human animals. To address this disparity, the present study investigated the effects of nicotine (2mg, 4mg nicotine gum, and placebo) on the performance of 30 non-smokers (15 male) completing a working memory task developed for rodents (the odor span task, OST). Nicotine has been reported to enhance OST performance in rodents and the present study sought to determine whether the effect …


Does Crowding Obscure The Presence Of Attentional Guidance In Contextual Cueing?, Steven William Fiske Jul 2011

Does Crowding Obscure The Presence Of Attentional Guidance In Contextual Cueing?, Steven William Fiske

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contextual cueing effect was initially thought to be the product of memory guiding attention to the target location. However, the steep search slopes obtained in contextual cueing indicate an absence of attentional guidance. We hypothesized that crowding could be obscuring the presence of attentional guidance and investigated this possibility in 2 experiments. Crowding was manipulated by varying the density of items in the local target region in a contextual cueing task. We observed a significant reduction in search slopes between the novel and repeated conditions when crowding was reduced. Enhancing crowding eliminated the contextual cueing effect. These findings suggest …


Visual Search For Smoking Stimuli: Detection And Distraction, Jason A. Oliver Jan 2011

Visual Search For Smoking Stimuli: Detection And Distraction, Jason A. Oliver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extensive research has shown that the attentional systems of addicted individuals are biased towards drug-related stimuli, but despite several decades of effort these results have frequently been inconsistent. Though commonly believed to result from addiction and dependence, cognitive research would suggest that frequent exposure to drug-related stimuli could affect the attentional processing of drug-related cues even if no actual drug use occurs. The present investigation examined attentional bias for smoking cues using a novel visual search paradigm amongst smokers currently in nicotine withdrawal and fully satiated smokers, as well as a non-smoker control group. Variables related to smoking behavior, as …


The Role Of Contextual Associations In The Selection Of Objects, Noah Patrick Sulman Jan 2011

The Role Of Contextual Associations In The Selection Of Objects, Noah Patrick Sulman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper describes a sequence of experiments addressing basic questions about the control of visual attention and the relationship between attention and object recognition. This work reviews compelling findings addressing attentional control on the basis of high-level perceptual properties. In five experiments observers were presented with a rapid sequence of object photographs and instructed to either detect or selectively encode a verbally cued object category. When these object categories (e.g. "baseball") were preceded by contextual images associated with a given object category (e.g. "baseball diamond"), observers were less likely to accurately report information about the target item. This effect obtained …