On the motivational properties of reward cues: Individual differences.

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Robinson, Terry E; Yager, Lindsay M; Cogan, Elizabeth S; Saunders, Benjamin T

2014-01-01

Cues associated with rewards, such as food or drugs of abuse, can themselves acquire motivational properties. Acting as incentive stimuli, such cues can exert powerful control over motivated behavior, and in the case of cues associated with drugs, they can goad continued drug-seeking behavior and relapse. However, recent studies reviewed here suggest that there are large individual differences in the extent to which food and drug cues are attributed with incentive salience. Rats prone to approach reward cues (sign-trackers) attribute greater motivational value to discrete localizable cues and interoceptive cues than do rats less prone to approach reward cues (goal-trackers). In contrast, contextual cues appear to exert greater control over motivated behavior in goal-trackers than sign-trackers. It is possible to predict, therefore, before any experience with drugs, in which animals specific classes of drug cues will most likely reinstate drug-seeking behavior. The finding that different individuals may be sensitive to different triggers capable of motivating behavior and producing relapse suggests there may be different pathways to addiction, and has implications for thinking about individualized treatment. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facilitated orienting underlies fearful face-enhanced gaze cueing of spatial location

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Joshua M. Carlson

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Faces provide a platform for non-verbal communication through emotional expression and eye gaze. Fearful facial expressions are salient indicators of potential threat within the environment, which automatically capture observers’ attention. However, the degree to which fearful facial expressions facilitate attention to others’ gaze is unresolved. Given that fearful gaze indicates the location of potential threat, it was hypothesized that fearful gaze facilitates location processing. To test this hypothesis, a gaze cueing study with fearful and neutral faces assessing target localization was conducted. The task consisted of leftward, rightward, and forward/straight gaze trials. The inclusion of forward gaze trials allowed for the isolation of orienting and disengagement components of gaze-directed attention. The results suggest that both neutral and fearful gaze modulates attention through orienting and disengagement components. Fearful gaze, however, resulted in quicker orienting than neutral gaze. Thus, fearful faces enhance gaze cueing of spatial location through facilitated orienting.

Haptic Cues Used for Outdoor Wayfinding by Individuals with Visual Impairments

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Koutsoklenis, Athanasios; Papadopoulos, Konstantinos

2014-01-01

Introduction: The study presented here examines which haptic cues individuals with visual impairments use more frequently and determines which of these cues are deemed by these individuals to be the most important for way-finding in urban environments. It also investigates the ways in which these haptic cues are used by individuals with visual…

Individual variation in the motivational and neurobiological effects of an opioid cue.

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Yager, Lindsay M; Pitchers, Kyle K; Flagel, Shelly B; Robinson, Terry E

2015-03-13

A discrete cue associated with intravenous injections of cocaine acquires greater control over motivated behavior in some rats ('sign-trackers', STs) than others ('goal-trackers', GTs). It is not known, however, if such variation generalizes to cues associated with other drugs. We asked, therefore, whether a discrete cue (a light) associated with the intravenous administration of an opioid drug (the short-acting mu receptor agonist, remifentanil) acquires incentive motivational properties differently in STs and GTs, as indicated by tests of Pavlovian conditioned approach and conditioned reinforcement. Consistent with studies using cocaine, STs approached a classically conditioned opioid cue more readily than GTs, and in a test of conditioned reinforcement worked more avidly to get it. Interestingly, STs and GTs did not differ in the acquisition of a conditioned orienting response. In addition, the performance of conditioned approach behavior, but not conditioned orientation, was attenuated by pretreatment with the dopamine receptor antagonist, flupenthixol, into the core of the nucleus accumbens. Lastly, food and opioid cues engaged similar amygdalo-striatal-thalamic circuitry to a much greater extent in STs than GTs, as indicated by Fos expression. Taken together, these data demonstrate that, similar to food and cocaine cues: (1) a discrete opioid cue attains greater incentive motivational value in STs than GTs; (2) the attribution of incentive motivational properties to an opioid cue is dopamine dependent; and (3) an opioid cue engages the so-called 'motive circuit' only if it is imbued with incentive salience.

Individualization of music-based rhythmic auditory cueing in Parkinson's disease.

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Bella, Simone Dalla; Dotov, Dobromir; Bardy, Benoît; de Cock, Valérie Cochen

2018-06-04

Gait dysfunctions in Parkinson's disease can be partly relieved by rhythmic auditory cueing. This consists in asking patients to walk with a rhythmic auditory stimulus such as a metronome or music. The effect on gait is visible immediately in terms of increased speed and stride length. Moreover, training programs based on rhythmic cueing can have long-term benefits. The effect of rhythmic cueing, however, varies from one patient to the other. Patients' response to the stimulation may depend on rhythmic abilities, often deteriorating with the disease. Relatively spared abilities to track the beat favor a positive response to rhythmic cueing. On the other hand, most patients with poor rhythmic abilities either do not respond to the cues or experience gait worsening when walking with cues. An individualized approach to rhythmic auditory cueing with music is proposed to cope with this variability in patients' response. This approach calls for using assistive mobile technologies capable of delivering cues that adapt in real time to patients' gait kinematics, thus affording step synchronization to the beat. Individualized rhythmic cueing can provide a safe and cost-effective alternative to standard cueing that patients may want to use in their everyday lives. © 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.

Individual differences in anticipatory activity to food rewards predict cue-induced appetitive 50-kHz calls in rats.

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Brenes, Juan C; Schwarting, Rainer K W

2015-10-01

Reward-related stimuli come to acquire incentive salience through Pavlovian learning and become capable of controlling reward-oriented behaviors. Here, we examined individual differences in anticipatory activity elicited by reward-related cues as indicative of how animals attribute incentive salience to otherwise neutral stimuli. Since adult rats can signal incentive motivation states through ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) at around 50-kHz, such calls were recorded in food-deprived rats trained to associate cues with food rewards, which were subsequently devalued by satiation.We found that the extent to which animals developed conditioned anticipatory activity to food cues while food deprived determined the level of cue-induced appetitive USVs while sated. Re-exposure to reward cues after a free-testing period reinstated USVs, invigorated reward seeking and consumption, and again, increases in calling occurred only in animals with high levels of cue-induced anticipatory activity. Reward-experienced rats systemically challenged with the catecholamine agonist amphetamine or with the dopamine receptor antagonist flupenthixol showed attenuated responses to these drugs, especially for USVs and in subjects with high levels of cue-induced anticipatory activity. Our results suggest that individuals prone to attribute incentive salience to reward cues showed heightened reward-induced USVs which were reliably expressed over time and persisted despite physiological needs being fulfilled. Also, prone subjects seemed to undergo particular adaptations in their dopaminergic system related with incentive learning. Our findings may have translational relevance in preclinical research modeling compulsive disorders, which may be due to excessive attribution of incentive salience to reward cues, such as overeating, pathological gambling, and drug addiction.

Atypical Visual Orienting to Gaze- and Arrow-Cues in Adults with High Functioning Autism

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Vlamings, Petra H. J. M.; Stauder, Johannes E. A.; van Son, Ilona A. M.; Mottron, Laurent

2005-01-01

The present study investigates visual orienting to directional cues (arrow or eyes) in adults with high functioning autism (n = 19) and age matched controls (n = 19). A choice reaction time paradigm is used in which eye-or arrow direction correctly (congruent) or incorrectly (incongruent) cues target location. In typically developing participants,…

Effects of the timing and identity of retrieval cues in individual recall: an attempt to mimic cross-cueing in collaborative recall.

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Andersson, Jan; Hitch, Graham; Meudell, Peter

2006-01-01

Inhibitory effects in collaborative recall have been attributed to cross-cueing among partners, in the same way that part-set cues are known to impair recall in individuals. However, studies of part-set cueing in individuals typically involve presenting cues visually at the start of recall, whereas cross-cueing in collaboration is likely to be spoken and distributed over time. In an attempt to bridge this gap, three experiments investigated effects of presenting spoken part-set or extra-list cues at different times during individual recall. Cues had an inhibitory effect on recollection in the early part of the recall period, especially when presented in immediate succession at the start of recall. There was no difference between the effects of part-set and extra-list cues under these presentation conditions. However, more inhibition was generated by part-set than extra-list cues when cue presentation was distributed throughout recall. These results are interpreted as suggesting that cues presented during recall disrupt memory in two ways, corresponding to either blocking or modifying retrieval processes. Implications for explaining and possibly ameliorating inhibitory effects in collaborative recall are discussed.

The Role of Auditory Cues in the Spatial Knowledge of Blind Individuals

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Papadopoulos, Konstantinos; Papadimitriou, Kimon; Koutsoklenis, Athanasios

2012-01-01

The study presented here sought to explore the role of auditory cues in the spatial knowledge of blind individuals by examining the relation between the perceived auditory cues and the landscape of a given area and by investigating how blind individuals use auditory cues to create cognitive maps. The findings reveal that several auditory cues…

Individual differences in the influence of task-irrelevant Pavlovian cues on human behavior.

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Garofalo, Sara; di Pellegrino, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to the process of a Pavlovian reward-paired cue acquiring incentive motivational proprieties that drive choices. It represents a crucial phenomenon for understanding cue-controlled behavior, and it has both adaptive and maladaptive implications (i.e., drug-taking). In animals, individual differences in the degree to which such cues bias performance have been identified in two types of individuals that exhibit distinct Conditioned Responses (CR) during Pavlovian conditioning: Sign-Trackers (ST) and Goal-Trackers (GT). Using an appetitive PIT procedure with a monetary reward, the present study investigated, for the first time, the extent to which such individual differences might affect the influence of reward-paired cues in humans. In a first task, participants learned an instrumental response leading to reward; then, in a second task, a visual Pavlovian cue was associated with the same reward; finally, in a third task, PIT was tested by measuring the preference for the reward-paired instrumental response when the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue was presented, in the absence of the reward itself. In ST individuals, but not in GT individuals, reward-related cues biased behavior, resulting in an increased likelihood to perform the instrumental response independently paired with the same reward when presented with the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue, even if the reward itself was no longer available (i.e., stronger PIT effect). This finding has important implications for developing individualized treatment for maladaptive behaviors, such as addiction.

Individual differences in the influence of task-irrelevant Pavlovian cues on human behavior

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Sara eGarofalo

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT refers to the process of a Pavlovian reward-paired cue acquiring incentive motivational proprieties that drive choices. It represents a crucial phenomenon for understanding cue-controlled behavior, and it has both adaptive and maladaptive implications (i.e., drug-taking. In animals, individual differences in the degree to which such cues bias performance have been identified in two types of individuals that exhibit distinct Conditioned Responses during Pavlovian conditioning: Sign-Trackers (ST and Goal-Trackers (GT. Using an appetitive PIT procedure with a monetary reward, the present study investigated, for the first time, the extent to which such individual differences might affect the influence of reward-paired cues in humans. In a first task, participants learned an instrumental response leading to reward; then, in a second task, a visual Pavlovian cue was associated with the same reward; finally, in a third task, PIT was tested by measuring the preference for the reward-paired instrumental response when the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue was presented, in the absence of the reward itself. In ST individuals, but not in GT individuals, reward-related cues biased behavior, resulting in an increased likelihood to perform the instrumental response independently paired with the same reward when presented with the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue, even if the reward itself was no longer available (i.e., stronger PIT effect. This finding has important implications for developing individualized treatment for maladaptive behaviors, such as addiction.

Individual differences in the influence of task-irrelevant Pavlovian cues on human behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Garofalo, Sara; di Pellegrino, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to the process of a Pavlovian reward-paired cue acquiring incentive motivational proprieties that drive choices. It represents a crucial phenomenon for understanding cue-controlled behavior, and it has both adaptive and maladaptive implications (i.e., drug-taking). In animals, individual differences in the degree to which such cues bias performance have been identified in two types of individuals that exhibit distinct Conditioned Responses (CR) during Pavlovian conditioning: Sign-Trackers (ST) and Goal-Trackers (GT). Using an appetitive PIT procedure with a monetary reward, the present study investigated, for the first time, the extent to which such individual differences might affect the influence of reward-paired cues in humans. In a first task, participants learned an instrumental response leading to reward; then, in a second task, a visual Pavlovian cue was associated with the same reward; finally, in a third task, PIT was tested by measuring the preference for the reward-paired instrumental response when the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue was presented, in the absence of the reward itself. In ST individuals, but not in GT individuals, reward-related cues biased behavior, resulting in an increased likelihood to perform the instrumental response independently paired with the same reward when presented with the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue, even if the reward itself was no longer available (i.e., stronger PIT effect). This finding has important implications for developing individualized treatment for maladaptive behaviors, such as addiction. PMID:26157371

Fearful gaze cueing: gaze direction and facial expression independently influence overt orienting responses in 12-month-olds.

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Reiko Matsunaka

Full Text Available Gaze direction cues and facial expressions have been shown to influence object processing in infants. For example, infants around 12 months of age utilize others' gaze directions and facial expressions to regulate their own behaviour toward an ambiguous target (i.e., social referencing. However, the mechanism by which social signals influence overt orienting in infants is unclear. The present study examined the effects of static gaze direction cues and facial expressions (neutral vs. fearful on overt orienting using a gaze-cueing paradigm in 6- and 12-month-old infants. Two experiments were conducted: in Experiment 1, a face with a leftward or rightward gaze direction was used as a cue, and a face with a forward gaze direction was added in Experiment 2. In both experiments, an effect of facial expression was found in 12-month-olds; no effect was found in 6-month-olds. Twelve-month-old infants exhibited more rapid overt orienting in response to fearful expressions than neutral expressions, irrespective of gaze direction. These findings suggest that gaze direction information and facial expressions independently influence overt orienting in infants, and the effect of facial expression emerges earlier than that of static gaze direction. Implications for the development of gaze direction and facial expression processing systems are discussed.

Reef Sound as an Orientation Cue for Shoreward Migration by Pueruli of the Rock Lobster, Jasus edwardsii.

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Hinojosa, Ivan A; Green, Bridget S; Gardner, Caleb; Hesse, Jan; Stanley, Jenni A; Jeffs, Andrew G

2016-01-01

The post-larval or puerulus stage of spiny, or rock, lobsters (Palinuridae) swim many kilometres from open oceans into coastal waters where they subsequently settle. The orientation cues used by the puerulus for this migration are unclear, but are presumed to be critical to finding a place to settle. Understanding this process may help explain the biological processes of dispersal and settlement, and be useful for developing realistic dispersal models. In this study, we examined the use of reef sound as an orientation cue by the puerulus stage of the southern rock lobster, Jasus edwardsii. Experiments were conducted using in situ binary choice chambers together with replayed recording of underwater reef sound. The experiment was conducted in a sandy lagoon under varying wind conditions. A significant proportion of puerulus (69%) swam towards the reef sound in calm wind conditions. However, in windy conditions (>25 m s-1) the orientation behaviour appeared to be less consistent with the inclusion of these results, reducing the overall proportion of pueruli that swam towards the reef sound (59.3%). These results resolve previous speculation that underwater reef sound is used as an orientation cue in the shoreward migration of the puerulus of spiny lobsters, and suggest that sea surface winds may moderate the ability of migrating pueruli to use this cue to locate coastal reef habitat to settle. Underwater sound may increase the chance of successful settlement and survival of this valuable species.

Do you hear where I hear?: Isolating the individualized sound localization cues.

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Griffin David Romigh

2014-12-01

Full Text Available It is widely acknowledged that individualized head-related transfer function (HRTF measurements are needed to adequately capture all of the 3D spatial hearing cues. However, many perceptual studies have shown that localization accuracy in the lateral dimension is only minimally decreased by the use of non-individualized head-related transfer functions. This evidence supports the idea that the individualized components of an HRTF could be isolated from those that are more general in nature. In the present study we decomposed the HRTF at each location into average, lateral and intraconic spectral components, along with an ITD in an effort to isolate the sound localization cues that are responsible for the inter-individual differences in localization performance. HRTFs for a given listener were then reconstructed systematically with components that were both individualized and non-individualized in nature, and the effect of each modification was analyzed via a virtual localization test where brief 250-ms noise bursts were rendered with the modified HRTFs. Results indicate that the cues important for individualization of HRTFs are contained almost exclusively in the intraconic portion of the HRTF spectra and localization is only minimally affected by introducing non-individualized cues into the other HRTF components. These results provide new insights into what specific inter-individual differences in head-related acoustical features are most relevant to sound localization, and provide a framework for how future human-machine interfaces might be more effectively generalized and/or individualized.

Two Persons with Multiple Disabilities Use Orientation Technology with Auditory Cues to Manage Simple Indoor Traveling

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Lancioni, Giulio E.; Singh, Nirbhay N.; O'Reilly, Mark F.; Sigafoos, Jeff; Campodonico, Francesca; Oliva, Doretta

2010-01-01

This study was an effort to extend the evaluation of orientation technology for promoting independent indoor traveling in persons with multiple disabilities. Two participants (adults) were included, who were to travel to activity destinations within occupational settings. The orientation system involved (a) cueing sources only at the destinations…

Individual differences in food cue responsivity are associated with acute and repeated cocaine-induced vocalizations, but not cue-induced vocalizations.

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Tripi, Jordan A; Dent, Micheal L; Meyer, Paul J

2017-02-01

Individuals prone to attribute incentive salience to food-associated stimuli ("cues") are also more sensitive to cues during drug seeking and drug taking. This may be due in part to a difference in sensitivity to the affective or other stimulus properties of the drug. In rats, these properties are associated with 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), in that they are elicited during putative positive affective and motivational states, including in response to drugs of abuse. We sought to determine whether individual differences in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to a food cue (as measured by approach) were associated with differences in cocaine-induced USVs. We also tested whether the food cue would elicit USVs and if this response was related to approach to the food cue. In experiment 1, rats underwent Pavlovian conditioned approach (PavCA) training where they learned to associate a cue (an illuminated lever) with the delivery of a food pellet into a food cup. Subjects were categorized based on their approach to the cue ("sign-trackers") or to the food cup ("goal-trackers"). Rats subsequently underwent nine testing days in which they were given saline or cocaine (10 mg/kg i.p) and placed into a locomotor chamber. In experiment 2, rats were first tested in the locomotor chambers for one saline-treated day followed by one cocaine-treated day and then trained in PavCA. USVs were recorded from a subset of individuals during the last day of PavCA to determine if the food cue would elicit USVs. Sign-trackers produced 5-24 times more cocaine-induced 50 kHz USVs compared to goal-trackers for all days of experiment 1, and this response sensitized with repeated cocaine, only in sign-trackers. Similarly in experiment 2, individuals that produced the most cocaine-induced USVs on a single exposure also showed the greatest tendency to sign-track during PavCA. Lastly, while sign-trackers produced more USVs during PavCA generally, the cue itself did not elicit

Compass cues used by a nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas.

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Freas, Cody A; Narendra, Ajay; Cheng, Ken

2017-05-01

Ants use both terrestrial landmarks and celestial cues to navigate to and from their nest location. These cues persist even as light levels drop during the twilight/night. Here, we determined the compass cues used by a nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas , in which the majority of individuals begin foraging during the evening twilight period. Myrmecia midas foragers with vectors of ≤5   m when displaced to unfamiliar locations did not follow the home vector, but instead showed random heading directions. Foragers with larger home vectors (≥10   m) oriented towards the fictive nest, indicating a possible increase in cue strength with vector length. When the ants were displaced locally to create a conflict between the home direction indicated by the path integrator and terrestrial landmarks, foragers oriented using landmark information exclusively and ignored any accumulated home vector regardless of vector length. When the visual landmarks at the local displacement site were blocked, foragers were unable to orient to the nest direction and their heading directions were randomly distributed. Myrmecia midas ants typically nest at the base of the tree and some individuals forage on the same tree. Foragers collected on the nest tree during evening twilight were unable to orient towards the nest after small lateral displacements away from the nest. This suggests the possibility of high tree fidelity and an inability to extrapolate landmark compass cues from information collected on the tree and at the nest site to close displacement sites. © 2017. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Cue self-relevance affects autobiographical memory specificity in individuals with a history of major depression.

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Crane, Catherine; Barnhofer, Thorsten; Mark, J; Williams, G

2007-04-01

Previously depressed and never-depressed individuals identified personal characteristics (self-guides) defining their ideal, ought, and feared selves. One week later they completed the autobiographical memory test (AMT). For each participant the number of AMT cues that reflected self-guide content was determined to produce an index of AMT cue self-relevance. Individuals who had never been depressed showed no significant relationship between cue self-relevance and specificity. In contrast, in previously depressed participants there was a highly significant negative correlation between cue self-relevance and specificity--the greater the number of AMT cues that reflected self-guide content, the fewer specific memories participants recalled. It is suggested that in individuals with a history of depression, cues reflecting self-guide content are more likely to prompt a shift to processing of information within the long-term self (Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004), increasing the likelihood that self-related semantic information will be provided in response to cues on the autobiographical memory test.

Quantifying individual variation in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues.

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Meyer, Paul J; Lovic, Vedran; Saunders, Benjamin T; Yager, Lindsay M; Flagel, Shelly B; Morrow, Jonathan D; Robinson, Terry E

2012-01-01

If reward-associated cues acquire the properties of incentive stimuli they can come to powerfully control behavior, and potentially promote maladaptive behavior. Pavlovian incentive stimuli are defined as stimuli that have three fundamental properties: they are attractive, they are themselves desired, and they can spur instrumental actions. We have found, however, that there is considerable individual variation in the extent to which animals attribute Pavlovian incentive motivational properties ("incentive salience") to reward cues. The purpose of this paper was to develop criteria for identifying and classifying individuals based on their propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. To do this, we conducted a meta-analysis of a large sample of rats (N = 1,878) subjected to a classic Pavlovian conditioning procedure. We then used the propensity of animals to approach a cue predictive of reward (one index of the extent to which the cue was attributed with incentive salience), to characterize two behavioral phenotypes in this population: animals that approached the cue ("sign-trackers") vs. others that approached the location of reward delivery ("goal-trackers"). This variation in Pavlovian approach behavior predicted other behavioral indices of the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. Thus, the procedures reported here should be useful for making comparisons across studies and for assessing individual variation in incentive salience attribution in small samples of the population, or even for classifying single animals.

Visual cues and listening effort: individual variability.

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Picou, Erin M; Ricketts, Todd A; Hornsby, Benjamin W Y

2011-10-01

To investigate the effect of visual cues on listening effort as well as whether predictive variables such as working memory capacity (WMC) and lipreading ability affect the magnitude of listening effort. Twenty participants with normal hearing were tested using a paired-associates recall task in 2 conditions (quiet and noise) and 2 presentation modalities (audio only [AO] and auditory-visual [AV]). Signal-to-noise ratios were adjusted to provide matched speech recognition across audio-only and AV noise conditions. Also measured were subjective perceptions of listening effort and 2 predictive variables: (a) lipreading ability and (b) WMC. Objective and subjective results indicated that listening effort increased in the presence of noise, but on average the addition of visual cues did not significantly affect the magnitude of listening effort. Although there was substantial individual variability, on average participants who were better lipreaders or had larger WMCs demonstrated reduced listening effort in noise in AV conditions. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that integrating auditory and visual cues requires cognitive resources in some participants. The data indicate that low lipreading ability or low WMC is associated with relatively effortful integration of auditory and visual information in noise.

Quantifying individual variation in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues.

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Paul J Meyer

Full Text Available If reward-associated cues acquire the properties of incentive stimuli they can come to powerfully control behavior, and potentially promote maladaptive behavior. Pavlovian incentive stimuli are defined as stimuli that have three fundamental properties: they are attractive, they are themselves desired, and they can spur instrumental actions. We have found, however, that there is considerable individual variation in the extent to which animals attribute Pavlovian incentive motivational properties ("incentive salience" to reward cues. The purpose of this paper was to develop criteria for identifying and classifying individuals based on their propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. To do this, we conducted a meta-analysis of a large sample of rats (N = 1,878 subjected to a classic Pavlovian conditioning procedure. We then used the propensity of animals to approach a cue predictive of reward (one index of the extent to which the cue was attributed with incentive salience, to characterize two behavioral phenotypes in this population: animals that approached the cue ("sign-trackers" vs. others that approached the location of reward delivery ("goal-trackers". This variation in Pavlovian approach behavior predicted other behavioral indices of the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. Thus, the procedures reported here should be useful for making comparisons across studies and for assessing individual variation in incentive salience attribution in small samples of the population, or even for classifying single animals.

Individual differences in the attribution of incentive salience to reward-related cues: Implications for addiction.

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Flagel, Shelly B; Akil, Huda; Robinson, Terry E

2009-01-01

Drugs of abuse acquire different degrees of control over thoughts and actions based not only on the effects of drugs themselves, but also on predispositions of the individual. Those individuals who become addicted are unable to shift their thoughts and actions away from drugs and drug-associated stimuli. Thus in addicts, exposure to places or things (cues) that has been previously associated with drug-taking often instigates renewed drug-taking. We and others have postulated that drug-associated cues acquire the ability to maintain and instigate drug-taking behavior in part because they acquire incentive motivational properties through Pavlovian (stimulus-stimulus) learning. In the case of compulsive behavioral disorders, including addiction, such cues may be attributed with pathological incentive value ("incentive salience"). For this reason, we have recently begun to explore individual differences in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to cues that predict rewards. When discrete cues are associated with the non-contingent delivery of food or drug rewards some animals come to quickly approach and engage the cue even if it is located at a distance from where the reward will be delivered. In these animals the reward-predictive cue itself becomes attractive, eliciting approach towards it, presumably because it is attributed with incentive salience. Animals that develop this type of conditional response are called "sign-trackers". Other animals, "goal-trackers", do not approach the reward-predictive cue, but upon cue presentation they immediately go to the location where food will be delivered (the "goal"). For goal-trackers the reward-predictive cue is not attractive, presumably because it is not attributed with incentive salience. We review here preliminary data suggesting that these individual differences in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to cues predictive of reward may confer vulnerability or resistance to compulsive behavioral disorders

Revisiting Broken Windows: The Role of Neighborhood and Individual Characteristics in Reaction to Disorder Cues

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Beate Volker

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The influential "broken windows" theory proposes that disorder cues in neighborhoods trigger littering and other antisocial behavior. Until now, the theory has been empirically tested only on a small scale and restricted to just one specific area. In this study, I investigated the effect of disorder cues on individual behavior once more, replicating and extending the original field experiments by Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg (2008 and 2013. The data from 12,528 individuals were collected in 84 field experiments conducted in 33 neighborhoods. The results, based on multilevel techniques for binary data, show that the absolute effect of cues is smaller than originally thought and that neighborhood and individual characteristics moderate cue effects.

Prospective memory failures in aviation: effects of cue salience, workload, and individual differences.

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Van Benthem, Kathleen D; Herdman, Chris M; Tolton, Rani G; LeFevre, Jo-Anne

2015-04-01

Prospective memory allows people to complete intended tasks in the future. Prospective memory failures, such as pilots forgetting to inform pattern traffic of their locations, can have fatal consequences. The present research examined the impact of system factors (memory cue salience and workload) and individual differences (pilot age, cognitive health, and expertise) on prospective memory for communication tasks in the cockpit. Pilots (N = 101) flew a Cessna 172 simulator at a non-towered aerodrome while maintaining communication with traffic and attending to flight parameters. Memory cue salience (the prominence of cues that signal an intended action) and workload were manipulated. Prospective memory was measured as radio call completion rates. Pilots' prospective memory was adversely affected by low-salience cues and high workload. An interaction of cue salience, pilots' age, and cognitive health reflected the effects of system and individual difference factors on prospective memory failures. For example, younger pilots with low levels of cognitive health completed 78% of the radio calls associated with low-salience memory cues, whereas older pilots with low cognitive health scores completed just 61% of similar radio calls. Our findings suggest that technologies designed to signal intended future tasks should target those tasks with inherently low-salience memory cues. In addition, increasing the salience of memory cues is most likely to benefit pilots with lower levels of cognitive health in high-workload conditions.

Context cue focality influences strategic prospective memory monitoring.

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Hunter Ball, B; Bugg, Julie M

2018-02-12

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the context cue focality hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.

Enhanced attentional bias towards sexually explicit cues in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours.

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Daisy J Mechelmans

Full Text Available Compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB is relatively common and has been associated with significant distress and psychosocial impairments. CSB has been conceptualized as either an impulse control disorder or a non-substance 'behavioural' addiction. Substance use disorders are commonly associated with attentional biases to drug cues which are believed to reflect processes of incentive salience. Here we assess male CSB subjects compared to age-matched male healthy controls using a dot probe task to assess attentional bias to sexually explicit cues. We show that compared to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects have enhanced attentional bias to explicit cues but not neutral cues particularly for early stimuli latency. Our findings suggest enhanced attentional bias to explicit cues possibly related to an early orienting attentional response. This finding dovetails with our recent observation that sexually explicit videos were associated with greater activity in a neural network similar to that observed in drug-cue-reactivity studies. Greater desire or wanting rather than liking was further associated with activity in this neural network. These studies together provide support for an incentive motivation theory of addiction underlying the aberrant response towards sexual cues in CSB.

Action experience changes attention to kinematic cues

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Courtney eFilippi

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The current study used remote corneal reflection eye-tracking to examine the relationship between motor experience and action anticipation in 13-month-old infants. To measure online anticipation of actions infants watched videos where the actor’s hand provided kinematic information (in its orientation about the type of object that the actor was going to reach for. The actor’s hand orientation either matched the orientation of a rod (congruent cue or did not match the orientation of the rod (incongruent cue. To examine relations between motor experience and action anticipation, we used a 2 (reach first vs. observe first x 2 (congruent kinematic cue vs. incongruent kinematic cue between-subjects design. We show that 13-month-old infants in the observe first condition spontaneously generate rapid online visual predictions to congruent hand orientation cues and do not visually anticipate when presented incongruent cues. We further demonstrate that the speed that these infants generate predictions to congruent motor cues is correlated with their own ability to pre-shape their hands. Finally, we demonstrate that following reaching experience, infants generate rapid predictions to both congruent and incongruent hand shape cues—suggesting that short-term experience changes attention to kinematics.

Intact reflexive but deficient voluntary social orienting in autism spectrum disorder

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Megan Anne Kirchgessner

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Impairment in social interactions is a primary characteristic of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD. Although these individuals tend to orient less to naturalistic social cues than do typically developing (TD individuals, laboratory experiments testing social orienting in ASD have been inconclusive, possibly because of a failure to fully isolate reflexive (stimulus-driven and voluntary (goal-directed social orienting processes. The purpose of the present study was to separately examine potential reflexive and/or voluntary social orienting differences in individuals with ASD relative to TD controls. Subjects (ages 7-14 with high-functioning ASD and a matched control group completed three gaze cueing tasks on an iPad in which individuals briefly saw a face with averted gaze followed by a target after a variable delay. Two tasks were 100% predictive with either all congruent (target appears in gaze direction or all incongruent (target appears opposite from gaze direction trials, respectively. Another task was non-predictive with these same trials (half congruent and half incongruent intermixed randomly. Response times (RTs to the target were used to calculate reflexive (incongruent condition RT – congruent condition RT and voluntary (non-predictive condition RT – predictive condition RT gaze cueing effects. Subjects also completed two additional non-social orienting tasks (ProPoint and AntiPoint. Subjects with ASD demonstrate intact reflexive but deficient voluntary gaze following. Similar results were found in a separate test of non-social orienting. This suggests problems with using social cues, but only in a goal-directed fashion, in our sample of high-functioning individuals with ASD. Such findings may not only explain inconclusive previous findings but more importantly be critical for understanding social dysfunctions in ASD and for developing future interventions.

Evidence for impairments in using static line drawings of eye gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention in children with high functioning autism.

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Goldberg, Melissa C; Mostow, Allison J; Vecera, Shaun P; Larson, Jennifer C Gidley; Mostofsky, Stewart H; Mahone, E Mark; Denckla, Martha B

2008-09-01

We examined the ability to use static line drawings of eye gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention in children with high functioning autism (HFA) compared to typically developing children (TD). The task was organized such that on valid trials, gaze cues were directed toward the same spatial location as the appearance of an upcoming target, while on invalid trials gaze cues were directed to an opposite location. Unlike TD children, children with HFA showed no advantage in reaction time (RT) on valid trials compared to invalid trials (i.e., no significant validity effect). The two stimulus onset asynchronies (200 ms, 700 ms) did not differentially affect these findings. The results suggest that children with HFA show impairments in utilizing static line drawings of gaze cues to orient visual-spatial attention.

The individual-oriented and social-oriented Chinese bicultural self: testing the theory.

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Lu, Luo

2008-06-01

The author proposes a bicultural self theory for contemporary Chinese individuals, encompassing 2 main components: the individual-oriented self and the social-oriented self. The social orientation is rooted in traditional Chinese conceptualization of the self, whereas the individual orientation has evolved and developed under Western influences along with recent societal modernization. The author conducted a series of 5 studies to test the theory and relate the model to important issues in current personality and social psychological research, such as cultural individualism-collectivism, self-construals, motivation, cognition, emotion, and well-being. A total of 977 university students in Taiwan participated. The author found that contrasting self-aspects were differentially associated with the aforementioned constructs, as theoretically predicted. This evidence thus generally supported the bicultural self model.

Who's your neighbor? Acoustic cues to individual identity in red squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus rattle calls

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Shannon M. DIGWEED, Drew RENDALL, Teana IMBEAU

2012-10-01

Full Text Available North American red squirrels Tamiasciurus hudsonicus often produce a loud territorial rattle call when conspecifics enter or invade a territory. Previous playback experiments suggest that the territorial rattle call may indicate an invader's identity as squirrels responded more intensely to calls played from strangers than to calls played from neighbors. This dear-enemy effect is well known in a variety of bird and mammal species and functions to reduce aggressive interactions between known neighbors. However, although previous experiments on red squirrels suggest some form of individual differentiation and thus recognition, detailed acoustic analysis of potential acoustic cues in rattle calls have not been conducted. If calls function to aid in conspecific identification in order to mitigate aggressive territorial interactions, we would expect that individual recognition cues would be acoustically represented. Our work provides a detailed analysis of acoustic cues to identity within rattle calls. A total of 225 calls across 32 individual squirrels from Sheep River Provincial Park, Kananaskis, AB, Canada, were analyzed with discriminant function analysis for potential acoustic cues to individual identity. Initial analysis of all individuals revealed a reliable acoustic differentiation across individuals. A more detailed analysis of clusters of neighboring squirrels was performed and results again indicated a statistically significant likelihood that calls were assigned correctly to specific squirrels (55%-75% correctly assigned; in other words squirrels have distinct voices that should allow for individual identification and discrimination by conspecifics [Current Zoology 58 (5: 758–764, 2012].

Neural correlates of sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours.

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Voon, Valerie; Mole, Thomas B; Banca, Paula; Porter, Laura; Morris, Laurel; Mitchell, Simon; Lapa, Tatyana R; Karr, Judy; Harrison, Neil A; Potenza, Marc N; Irvine, Michael

2014-01-01

Although compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) has been conceptualized as a "behavioural" addiction and common or overlapping neural circuits may govern the processing of natural and drug rewards, little is known regarding the responses to sexually explicit materials in individuals with and without CSB. Here, the processing of cues of varying sexual content was assessed in individuals with and without CSB, focusing on neural regions identified in prior studies of drug-cue reactivity. 19 CSB subjects and 19 healthy volunteers were assessed using functional MRI comparing sexually explicit videos with non-sexual exciting videos. Ratings of sexual desire and liking were obtained. Relative to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater desire but similar liking scores in response to the sexually explicit videos. Exposure to sexually explicit cues in CSB compared to non-CSB subjects was associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and amygdala. Functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum-amygdala network was associated with subjective sexual desire (but not liking) to a greater degree in CSB relative to non-CSB subjects. The dissociation between desire or wanting and liking is consistent with theories of incentive motivation underlying CSB as in drug addictions. Neural differences in the processing of sexual-cue reactivity were identified in CSB subjects in regions previously implicated in drug-cue reactivity studies. The greater engagement of corticostriatal limbic circuitry in CSB following exposure to sexual cues suggests neural mechanisms underlying CSB and potential biological targets for interventions.

Individual differences in regulatory focus predict neural response to reward.

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Scult, Matthew A; Knodt, Annchen R; Hanson, Jamie L; Ryoo, Minyoung; Adcock, R Alison; Hariri, Ahmad R; Strauman, Timothy J

2017-08-01

Although goal pursuit is related to both functioning of the brain's reward circuits and psychological factors, the literatures surrounding these concepts have often been separate. Here, we use the psychological construct of regulatory focus to investigate individual differences in neural response to reward. Regulatory focus theory proposes two motivational orientations for personal goal pursuit: (1) promotion, associated with sensitivity to potential gain, and (2) prevention, associated with sensitivity to potential loss. The monetary incentive delay task was used to manipulate reward circuit function, along with instructional framing corresponding to promotion and prevention in a within-subject design. We observed that the more promotion oriented an individual was, the lower their ventral striatum response to gain cues. Follow-up analyses revealed that greater promotion orientation was associated with decreased ventral striatum response even to no-value cues, suggesting that promotion orientation may be associated with relatively hypoactive reward system function. The findings are also likely to represent an interaction between the cognitive and motivational characteristics of the promotion system with the task demands. Prevention orientation did not correlate with ventral striatum response to gain cues, supporting the discriminant validity of regulatory focus theory. The results highlight a dynamic association between individual differences in self-regulation and reward system function.

Who is Less Welcome?: The Impact of Individuating Cues on Attitudes towards Immigrants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Turper, Sedef; Iyengar, Shanto; Aarts, Kees; van Gerven-Haanpää, Minna Marja-Leena

2014-01-01

Based on a novel experimental design, the current study examines the impact of economic and cultural characteristics of potential immigrants on anti-immigrant sentiments. We investigate the extent to which individuating cues affect public support for individual immigrants in the USA and the

Individual Differences in Cue-Induced Motivation and Striatal Systems in Rats Susceptible to Diet-Induced Obesity.

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Robinson, Mike J F; Burghardt, Paul R; Patterson, Christa M; Nobile, Cameron W; Akil, Huda; Watson, Stanley J; Berridge, Kent C; Ferrario, Carrie R

2015-08-01

Pavlovian cues associated with junk-foods (caloric, highly sweet, and/or fatty foods), like the smell of brownies, can elicit craving to eat and increase the amount of food consumed. People who are more susceptible to these motivational effects of food cues may have a higher risk for becoming obese. Further, overconsumption of junk-foods leading to the development of obesity may itself heighten attraction to food cues. Here, we used a model of individual susceptibility to junk-foods diet-induced obesity to determine whether there are pre-existing and/or diet-induced increases in attraction to and motivation for sucrose-paired cues (ie, incentive salience or 'wanting'). We also assessed diet- vs obesity-associated alterations in mesolimbic function and receptor expression. We found that rats susceptible to diet-induced obesity displayed heightened conditioned approach prior to the development of obesity. In addition, after junk-food diet exposure, those rats that developed obesity also showed increased willingness to gain access to a sucrose cue. Heightened 'wanting' was not due to individual differences in the hedonic impact ('liking') of sucrose. Neurobiologically, Mu opioid receptor mRNA expression was lower in striatal 'hot-spots' that generate eating or hedonic impact only in those rats that became obese. In contrast, prolonged exposure to junk-food resulted in cross-sensitization to amphetamine-induced locomotion and downregulation of striatal D2R mRNA regardless of the development of obesity. Together these data shed light on individual differences in behavioral and neurobiological consequences of exposure to junk-food diets and the potential contribution of incentive sensitization in susceptible individuals to greater food cue-triggered motivation.

Individual Differences in Cue-Induced Motivation and Striatal Systems in Rats Susceptible to Diet-Induced Obesity

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, Mike JF; Burghardt, Paul R; Patterson, Christa M; Nobile, Cameron W; Akil, Huda; Watson, Stanley J; Berridge, Kent C; Ferrario, Carrie R

2015-01-01

Pavlovian cues associated with junk-foods (caloric, highly sweet, and/or fatty foods), like the smell of brownies, can elicit craving to eat and increase the amount of food consumed. People who are more susceptible to these motivational effects of food cues may have a higher risk for becoming obese. Further, overconsumption of junk-foods leading to the development of obesity may itself heighten attraction to food cues. Here, we used a model of individual susceptibility to junk-foods diet-induced obesity to determine whether there are pre-existing and/or diet-induced increases in attraction to and motivation for sucrose-paired cues (ie, incentive salience or ‘wanting’). We also assessed diet- vs obesity-associated alterations in mesolimbic function and receptor expression. We found that rats susceptible to diet-induced obesity displayed heightened conditioned approach prior to the development of obesity. In addition, after junk-food diet exposure, those rats that developed obesity also showed increased willingness to gain access to a sucrose cue. Heightened ‘wanting’ was not due to individual differences in the hedonic impact (‘liking’) of sucrose. Neurobiologically, Mu opioid receptor mRNA expression was lower in striatal ‘hot-spots’ that generate eating or hedonic impact only in those rats that became obese. In contrast, prolonged exposure to junk-food resulted in cross-sensitization to amphetamine-induced locomotion and downregulation of striatal D2R mRNA regardless of the development of obesity. Together these data shed light on individual differences in behavioral and neurobiological consequences of exposure to junk-food diets and the potential contribution of incentive sensitization in susceptible individuals to greater food cue-triggered motivation. PMID:25761571

Neural correlates of sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valerie Voon

Full Text Available Although compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB has been conceptualized as a "behavioural" addiction and common or overlapping neural circuits may govern the processing of natural and drug rewards, little is known regarding the responses to sexually explicit materials in individuals with and without CSB. Here, the processing of cues of varying sexual content was assessed in individuals with and without CSB, focusing on neural regions identified in prior studies of drug-cue reactivity. 19 CSB subjects and 19 healthy volunteers were assessed using functional MRI comparing sexually explicit videos with non-sexual exciting videos. Ratings of sexual desire and liking were obtained. Relative to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater desire but similar liking scores in response to the sexually explicit videos. Exposure to sexually explicit cues in CSB compared to non-CSB subjects was associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and amygdala. Functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum-amygdala network was associated with subjective sexual desire (but not liking to a greater degree in CSB relative to non-CSB subjects. The dissociation between desire or wanting and liking is consistent with theories of incentive motivation underlying CSB as in drug addictions. Neural differences in the processing of sexual-cue reactivity were identified in CSB subjects in regions previously implicated in drug-cue reactivity studies. The greater engagement of corticostriatal limbic circuitry in CSB following exposure to sexual cues suggests neural mechanisms underlying CSB and potential biological targets for interventions.

Craving Responses to Methamphetamine and Sexual Visual Cues in Individuals With Methamphetamine Use Disorder After Long-Term Drug Rehabilitation

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Shucai Huang

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI cue-reactivity paradigms have demonstrated that short-term abstinent or current methamphetamine (MA users have increased brain activity in the ventral striatum, caudate nucleus and medial frontal cortex, when exposed to MA-related visual cues. However, patterns of brain activity following cue-reactivity in subjects with long-term MA abstinence, especially long-term compulsory drug rehabilitation, have not been well studied. To enrich knowledge in this field, functional brain imaging was conducted during a cue-reactivity paradigm task in 28 individuals with MA use disorder following long-term compulsory drug rehabilitation, and 27 healthy control subjects. The results showed that, when compared with controls, individuals with MA use disorder displayed elevated activity in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC and right lateral posterior cingulate cortex in response to MA-related images. Additionally, the anterior cingulate region of mPFC activation during the MA-related cue-reactivity paradigm was positively correlated with craving alterations and previous frequency of drug use. No significant differences in brain activity in response to pornographic images were found between the two groups. Compared to MA cues, individuals with MA use disorder had increased activation in the occipital lobe when exposed to pornographic cues. In conclusion, the present study indicates that, even after long-term drug rehabilitation, individuals with MA use disorder have unique brain activity when exposed to MA-related cues. Additionally, our results illustrate that the libido brain response might be restored, and that sexual demand might be more robust than drug demand, in individuals with MA use disorder following long-term drug rehabilitation.

Craving Responses to Methamphetamine and Sexual Visual Cues in Individuals With Methamphetamine Use Disorder After Long-Term Drug Rehabilitation.

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Huang, Shucai; Zhang, Zhixue; Dai, Yuanyuan; Zhang, Changcun; Yang, Cheng; Fan, Lidan; Liu, Jun; Hao, Wei; Chen, Hongxian

2018-01-01

Studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) cue-reactivity paradigms have demonstrated that short-term abstinent or current methamphetamine (MA) users have increased brain activity in the ventral striatum, caudate nucleus and medial frontal cortex, when exposed to MA-related visual cues. However, patterns of brain activity following cue-reactivity in subjects with long-term MA abstinence, especially long-term compulsory drug rehabilitation, have not been well studied. To enrich knowledge in this field, functional brain imaging was conducted during a cue-reactivity paradigm task in 28 individuals with MA use disorder following long-term compulsory drug rehabilitation, and 27 healthy control subjects. The results showed that, when compared with controls, individuals with MA use disorder displayed elevated activity in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and right lateral posterior cingulate cortex in response to MA-related images. Additionally, the anterior cingulate region of mPFC activation during the MA-related cue-reactivity paradigm was positively correlated with craving alterations and previous frequency of drug use. No significant differences in brain activity in response to pornographic images were found between the two groups. Compared to MA cues, individuals with MA use disorder had increased activation in the occipital lobe when exposed to pornographic cues. In conclusion, the present study indicates that, even after long-term drug rehabilitation, individuals with MA use disorder have unique brain activity when exposed to MA-related cues. Additionally, our results illustrate that the libido brain response might be restored, and that sexual demand might be more robust than drug demand, in individuals with MA use disorder following long-term drug rehabilitation.

Attentional control constrains visual short-term memory: Insights from developmental and individual differences

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Astle, D.E.; Nobre, A.C.; Scerif, G.

2014-01-01

The mechanisms by which attentional control biases mnemonic representations have attracted much interest but remain poorly understood. As attention and memory develop gradually over childhood and variably across individuals, assessing how participants of different ages and ability attend to mnemonic contents can elucidate their interplay. In Experiment 1, 7-, 10-year-olds and adults were asked to report whether a probe item had been part of a previously presented four-item array. The initial array could either be uncued, preceded (“pre-cued”) or followed (“retro-cued”) by a spatial cue orienting attention to one of the potential item locations. Performance across groups was significantly improved by both cue types and individual differences in children’s retrospective attentional control predicted their visual short-term and working memory span, whereas their basic ability to remember in the absence of cues did not. Experiment 2 imposed a variable delay between the array and the subsequent orienting cue. Cueing benefits were greater in adults compared to 10-year-olds, but they persisted even when cues followed the array by nearly 3 seconds, suggesting that orienting operated on durable short-term representations for both age groups. The findings indicate that there are substantial developmental and individual differences in the ability to control attention to memory and that in turn these differences constrain visual short-term memory capacity. PMID:20680889

Sun-Compass Orientation in Mediterranean Fish Larvae.

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Faillettaz, Robin; Blandin, Agathe; Paris, Claire B; Koubbi, Philippe; Irisson, Jean-Olivier

2015-01-01

Mortality is very high during the pelagic larval phase of fishes but the factors that determine recruitment success remain unclear and hard to predict. Because of their bipartite life history, larvae of coastal species have to head back to the shore at the end of their pelagic episode, to settle. These settlement-stage larvae are known to display strong sensory and motile abilities, but most work has been focused on tropical, insular environments and on the influence of coast-related cues on orientation. In this study we quantified the in situ orientation behavior of settlement-stage larvae in a temperate region, with a continuous coast and a dominant along-shore current, and inspected both coast-dependent and independent cues. We tested six species: one Pomacentridae, Chromis chromis, and five Sparidae, Boops boops, Diplodus annularis, Oblada melanura, Spicara smaris and Spondyliosoma cantharus. Over 85% of larvae were highly capable of keeping a bearing, which is comparable to the orientation abilities of tropical species. Sun-related cues influenced the precision of bearing-keeping at individual level. Three species, out of the four tested in sufficient numbers, oriented significantly relative to the sun position. These are the first in situ observations demonstrating the use of a sun compass for orientation by wild-caught settlement-stage larvae. This mechanism has potential for large-scale orientation of fish larvae globally.

Sun-Compass Orientation in Mediterranean Fish Larvae.

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Robin Faillettaz

Full Text Available Mortality is very high during the pelagic larval phase of fishes but the factors that determine recruitment success remain unclear and hard to predict. Because of their bipartite life history, larvae of coastal species have to head back to the shore at the end of their pelagic episode, to settle. These settlement-stage larvae are known to display strong sensory and motile abilities, but most work has been focused on tropical, insular environments and on the influence of coast-related cues on orientation. In this study we quantified the in situ orientation behavior of settlement-stage larvae in a temperate region, with a continuous coast and a dominant along-shore current, and inspected both coast-dependent and independent cues. We tested six species: one Pomacentridae, Chromis chromis, and five Sparidae, Boops boops, Diplodus annularis, Oblada melanura, Spicara smaris and Spondyliosoma cantharus. Over 85% of larvae were highly capable of keeping a bearing, which is comparable to the orientation abilities of tropical species. Sun-related cues influenced the precision of bearing-keeping at individual level. Three species, out of the four tested in sufficient numbers, oriented significantly relative to the sun position. These are the first in situ observations demonstrating the use of a sun compass for orientation by wild-caught settlement-stage larvae. This mechanism has potential for large-scale orientation of fish larvae globally.

Stimulus homogeneity enhances implicit learning: evidence from contextual cueing.

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Feldmann-Wüstefeld, Tobias; Schubö, Anna

2014-04-01

Visual search for a target object is faster if the target is embedded in a repeatedly presented invariant configuration of distractors ('contextual cueing'). It has also been shown that the homogeneity of a context affects the efficiency of visual search: targets receive prioritized processing when presented in a homogeneous context compared to a heterogeneous context, presumably due to grouping processes at early stages of visual processing. The present study investigated in three Experiments whether context homogeneity also affects contextual cueing. In Experiment 1, context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-relevant dimension (orientation) and contextual cueing was most pronounced for context configurations with high orientation homogeneity. When context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-irrelevant dimension (color) and orientation homogeneity was fixed, no modulation of contextual cueing was observed: high orientation homogeneity led to large contextual cueing effects (Experiment 2) and low orientation homogeneity led to low contextual cueing effects (Experiment 3), irrespective of color homogeneity. Enhanced contextual cueing for homogeneous context configurations suggest that grouping processes do not only affect visual search but also implicit learning. We conclude that memory representation of context configurations are more easily acquired when context configurations can be processed as larger, grouped perceptual units. However, this form of implicit perceptual learning is only improved by stimulus homogeneity when stimulus homogeneity facilitates grouping processes on a dimension that is currently relevant in the task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Changes to Articulatory Kinematics in Response to Loudness Cues in Individuals with Parkinson's Disease

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Darling, Meghan; Huber, Jessica E.

2011-01-01

Purpose: Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit differences in displacement and velocity of the articulators as compared with older adults. The purpose of the current study was to examine effects of 3 loudness cues on articulatory movement patterns in individuals with PD. Method: Nine individuals diagnosed with idiopathic PD and 9 age-…

Cigarette Cue Attentional Bias in Cocaine-Smoking and Non-Cocaine-Using Cigarette Smokers.

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Marks, Katherine R; Alcorn, Joseph L; Stoops, William W; Rush, Craig R

2016-09-01

Cigarette smoking in cocaine users is nearly four times higher than the national prevalence and cocaine use increases cigarette smoking. The mechanisms underlying cigarette smoking in cocaine-using individuals need to be identified to promote cigarette and cocaine abstinence. Previous studies have examined the salience of cigarette and cocaine cues separately. The present aim was to determine whether cigarette attentional bias (AB) is higher in cigarettes smokers who smoke cocaine relative to individuals who only smoke cigarettes. Twenty cigarette smokers who smoke cocaine and 20 non-cocaine-using cigarette smokers completed a visual probe task with eye-tracking technology. During this task, the magnitude of cigarette and cocaine AB was assessed through orienting bias, fixation time, and response time. Cocaine users displayed an orienting bias towards cigarette cues. Cocaine users also endorsed a more urgent desire to smoke to relieve negative affect associated with cigarette craving than non-cocaine users (g = 0.6). Neither group displayed a cigarette AB, as measured by fixation time. Cocaine users, but not non-cocaine users, displayed a cocaine AB as measured by orienting bias (g = 2.0) and fixation time (g = 1.2). There were no significant effects for response time data. Cocaine-smoking cigarettes smokers display an initial orienting bias toward cigarette cues, but not sustained cigarette AB. The incentive motivation underlying cigarette smoking also differs. Cocaine smokers report more urgent desire to smoke to relieve negative affect. Identifying differences in motivation to smoke cigarettes may provide new treatment targets for cigarette and cocaine use disorders. These results suggest that cocaine-smoking cigarette smokers display an initial orienting bias towards cigarette cues, but not sustained attention towards cigarette cues, relative to non-cocaine-using smokers. Smoked cocaine users also report a more urgent desire to smoke to relieve negative affect

Sexual Orientation as a Peripheral Cue in Advertising: Effects of Models' Sexual Orientation, Argument Strength, and Involvement on Responses to Magazine Ads.

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Ivory, Adrienne Holz

2017-10-12

This study examines how sexual orientation of couples featured in magazine advertisements affects heterosexual viewers' responses using the elaboration likelihood model as a framework. A 3 × 2 × 2 × 3 experiment tested effects of sexual orientation, argument strength, involvement, and attitudes toward homosexuality on heterosexuals' attitudes toward the couple, advertisement, brand, and product, purchase intentions, and recall. Results indicate that consumers were accepting of ads with lesbian portrayals. Participants showed more negative attitudes toward gay male portrayals, but attitudes toward heterosexual and lesbian ads were similar. This effect was moderated by participants' attitudes toward homosexuals. Low-involvement consumers showed more negative attitudes toward homosexual portrayals than toward heterosexual portrayals, indicating that sexual orientation may have served as a peripheral cue negatively impacting attitudes toward the couple and ad under low elaboration. These effects were not observed for attitudes toward the brand and product, purchase intentions, or recall.

Discriminating individually considerate and authoritarian leaders by speech activity cues

OpenAIRE

Feese, Sebastian; Muaremi, Amir; Arnrich, Bert; Tröster, Gerhard; Meyer, Bertolt; Jonas, Klaus

2011-01-01

Effective leadership can increase team performance, however up to now the influence of specific micro-level behavioral patterns on team performance is unclear. At the same time, current behavior observation methods in social psychology mostly rely on manual video annotations that impede research. In our work, we follow a sensor-based approach to automatically extract speech activity cues to discriminate individualized considerate from authoritarian leadership. On a subset of 35 selected...

An investigation of the roles of geomagnetic and acoustic cues in whale navigation and orientation

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Allen, Ann Nichole

Many species of whales migrate annually between high-latitude feeding grounds and low-latitude breeding grounds. Yet, very little is known about how these animals navigate during these migrations. This thesis takes a first look at the roles of geomagnetic and acoustic cues in humpback whale navigation and orientation, in addition to documenting some effects of human-produced sound on beaked whales. The tracks of satellite-tagged humpback whales migrating from Hawaii to Alaska were found to have systematic deviations from the most direct route to their destination. For each whale, a migration track was modeled using only geomagnetic inclination and intensity as navigation cues. The directions in which the observed and modeled tracks deviated from the direct route were compared and found to match for 7 out of 9 tracks, which suggests that migrating humpback whales may use geomagnetic cues for navigation. Additionally, in all cases the observed tracks followed a more direct route to the destination than the modeled tracks, indicating that the whales are likely using additional navigational cues to improve their routes. There is a significant amount of sound available in the ocean to aid in navigation and orientation of a migrating whale. This research investigates the possibility that humpback whales migrating near-shore listen to sounds of snapping shrimp to detect the presence of obstacles, such as rocky islands. A visual tracking study was used, together with hydrophone recordings near a rocky island, to determine whether the whales initiated an avoidance reaction at distances that varied with the acoustic detection range of the island. No avoidance reaction was found. Propagation modeling of the snapping shrimp sounds suggested that the detection range of the island was beyond the visual limit of the survey, indicating that snapping shrimp sounds may be suited as a long-range indicator of a rocky island. Lastly, this thesis identifies a prolonged avoidance

Individual differences in recognising involuntary autobiographical memories: impact on the reporting of abstract cues.

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Mace, John H; Bernas, Ronan S; Clevinger, Amanda

2015-01-01

This study examined individual differences in the ability to recognise involuntary autobiographical memories. We hypothesised that individuals may not always recognise involuntary memories which are cued by abstract experiences (e.g., thoughts or language), while they are better able to recognise those which are cued by concrete sensory/perpetual experiences. We hypothesised that individuals without formal training in psychology would be more prone to these recognition failures than individuals with training in psychology. We tested the hypothesis by comparing the results of general first-year undergraduate students, graduate students in psychology and graduates students in other disciplines after each had participated in a two-week diary study of their naturally occurring involuntary memories. The results showed undergraduate participants and non-psychology graduate participants reporting fewer involuntary memories being triggered by abstract cues than the graduate psychology participants, while the groups did not differ in the report of memories triggered by sensory/perpetual cues. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Interactive jewellery as memory cue : designing a sound locket for individual reminiscence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Niemantsverdriet, K.; Versteeg, M.F.

2016-01-01

In this paper we describe the design of Memento: an interactive sound locket for individual reminiscence that triggers a similar sense of intimacy and values as its non-technological predecessor. Jewellery often forms a cue for autobiographical memory. In this work we investigate the role that

A dominance hierarchy of auditory spatial cues in barn owls.

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Ilana B Witten

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Barn owls integrate spatial information across frequency channels to localize sounds in space.We presented barn owls with synchronous sounds that contained different bands of frequencies (3-5 kHz and 7-9 kHz from different locations in space. When the owls were confronted with the conflicting localization cues from two synchronous sounds of equal level, their orienting responses were dominated by one of the sounds: they oriented toward the location of the low frequency sound when the sources were separated in azimuth; in contrast, they oriented toward the location of the high frequency sound when the sources were separated in elevation. We identified neural correlates of this behavioral effect in the optic tectum (OT, superior colliculus in mammals, which contains a map of auditory space and is involved in generating orienting movements to sounds. We found that low frequency cues dominate the representation of sound azimuth in the OT space map, whereas high frequency cues dominate the representation of sound elevation.We argue that the dominance hierarchy of localization cues reflects several factors: 1 the relative amplitude of the sound providing the cue, 2 the resolution with which the auditory system measures the value of a cue, and 3 the spatial ambiguity in interpreting the cue. These same factors may contribute to the relative weighting of sound localization cues in other species, including humans.

Automaticity of phasic alertness: Evidence for a three-component model of visual cueing.

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Lin, Zhicheng; Lu, Zhong-Lin

2016-10-01

The automaticity of phasic alertness is investigated using the attention network test. Results show that the cueing effect from the alerting cue-double cue-is strongly enhanced by the task relevance of visual cues, as determined by the informativeness of the orienting cue-single cue-that is being mixed (80 % vs. 50 % valid in predicting where the target will appear). Counterintuitively, the cueing effect from the alerting cue can be negatively affected by its visibility, such that masking the cue from awareness can reveal a cueing effect that is otherwise absent when the cue is visible. Evidently, then, top-down influences-in the form of contextual relevance and cue awareness-can have opposite influences on the cueing effect from the alerting cue. These findings lead us to the view that a visual cue can engage three components of attention-orienting, alerting, and inhibition-to determine the behavioral cueing effect. We propose that phasic alertness, particularly in the form of specific response readiness, is regulated by both internal, top-down expectation and external, bottom-up stimulus properties. In contrast to some existing views, we advance the perspective that phasic alertness is strongly tied to temporal orienting, attentional capture, and spatial orienting. Finally, we discuss how translating attention research to clinical applications would benefit from an improved ability to measure attention. To this end, controlling the degree of intraindividual variability in the attentional components and improving the precision of the measurement tools may prove vital.

Measuring effects of voluntary attention: a comparison among predictive arrow, colour, and number cues.

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Olk, Bettina; Tsankova, Elena; Petca, A Raisa; Wilhelm, Adalbert F X

2014-10-01

The Posner cueing paradigm is one of the most widely used paradigms in attention research. Importantly, when employing it, it is critical to understand which type of orienting a cue triggers. It has been suggested that large effects elicited by predictive arrow cues reflect an interaction of involuntary and voluntary orienting. This conclusion is based on comparisons of cueing effects of predictive arrows, nonpredictive arrows (involuntary orienting), and predictive numbers (voluntary orienting). Experiment 1 investigated whether this conclusion is restricted to comparisons with number cues and showed similar results to those of previous studies, but now for comparisons to predictive colour cues, indicating that the earlier conclusion can be generalized. Experiment 2 assessed whether the size of a cueing effect is related to the ease of deriving direction information from a cue, based on the rationale that effects for arrows may be larger, because it may be easier to process direction information given by symbols such as arrows than that given by other cues. Indeed, direction information is derived faster and more accurately from arrows than from colour and number cues in a direction judgement task, and cueing effects are larger for arrows than for the other cues. Importantly though, performance in the two tasks is not correlated. Hence, the large cueing effects of arrows are not a result of the ease of information processing, but of the types of orienting that the arrows elicit.

Orientation Preferences and Motion Sickness Induced in a Virtual Reality Environment.

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Chen, Wei; Chao, Jian-Gang; Zhang, Yan; Wang, Jin-Kun; Chen, Xue-Wen; Tan, Cheng

2017-10-01

Astronauts' orientation preferences tend to correlate with their susceptibility to space motion sickness (SMS). Orientation preferences appear universally, since variable sensory cue priorities are used between individuals. However, SMS susceptibility changes after proper training, while orientation preferences seem to be intrinsic proclivities. The present study was conducted to investigate whether orientation preferences change if susceptibility is reduced after repeated exposure to a virtual reality (VR) stimulus environment that induces SMS. A horizontal supine posture was chosen to create a sensory context similar to weightlessness, and two VR devices were used to produce a highly immersive virtual scene. Subjects were randomly allocated to an experimental group (trained through exposure to a provocative rotating virtual scene) and a control group (untrained). All subjects' orientation preferences were measured twice with the same interval, but the experimental group was trained three times during the interval, while the control group was not. Trained subjects were less susceptible to SMS, with symptom scores reduced by 40%. Compared with untrained subjects, trained subjects' orientation preferences were significantly different between pre- and posttraining assessments. Trained subjects depended less on visual cues, whereas few subjects demonstrated the opposite tendency. Results suggest that visual information may be inefficient and unreliable for body orientation and stabilization in a rotating visual scene, while reprioritizing preferences for different sensory cues was dynamic and asymmetric between individuals. The present findings should facilitate customization of efficient and proper training for astronauts with different sensory prioritization preferences and dynamic characteristics.Chen W, Chao J-G, Zhang Y, Wang J-K, Chen X-W, Tan C. Orientation preferences and motion sickness induced in a virtual reality environment. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2017

The relative use of proximity, shape similarity, and orientation as visual perceptual grouping cues in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and humans (Homo sapiens).

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Spinozzi, Giovanna; De Lillo, Carlo; Truppa, Valentina; Castorina, Giulia

2009-02-01

Recent experimental results suggest that human and nonhuman primates differ in how they process visual information to assemble component parts into global shapes. To assess whether some of the observed differences in perceptual grouping could be accounted for by the prevalence of different grouping factors in different species, we carried out 2 experiments designed to evaluate the relative use of proximity, similarity of shape, and orientation as grouping cues in humans (Homo sapiens) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Both species showed similarly high levels of accuracy using proximity as a cue. Moreover, for both species, grouping by orientation similarity produced a lower level of performance than grouping by proximity. Differences emerged with respect to the use of shape similarity as a cue. In humans, grouping by shape similarity also proved less effective than grouping by proximity but the same was not observed in capuchins. These results suggest that there may be subtle differences between humans and capuchin monkeys in the weighting assigned to different grouping cues that may affect the way in which they combine local features into global shapes. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation.

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Rule, Nicholas O; Ambady, Nalini; Adams, Reginald B; Macrae, C Neil

2008-11-01

For clear and unambiguous social categories, person perception occurs quite accurately from minimal cues. This article addresses the perception of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from minimal cues. Across 5 studies, the authors examined individuals' actual and self-assessed accuracy when judging male sexual orientation from faces and facial features. Although participants were able to make accurate judgments from multiple facial features (i.e., hair, the eyes, and the mouth area), their perceived accuracy was calibrated with their actual accuracy only when making judgments based on hairstyle, a controllable feature. These findings provide evidence that suggests different processes for extracting social category information during perception: explicit judgments based on obvious cues (hairstyle) and intuitive judgments based on nonobvious cues (information from the eyes and mouth area). Differences in the accuracy of judgments based on targets' controllability and perceivers' awareness of cues provides insight into the processes underlying intuitive predictions and intuitive judgments. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

Human cortical activity evoked by contextual processing in attentional orienting.

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Zhao, Shuo; Li, Chunlin; Uono, Shota; Yoshimura, Sayaka; Toichi, Motomi

2017-06-07

The ability to assess another person's direction of attention is paramount in social communication, many studies have reported a similar pattern between gaze and arrow cues in attention orienting. Neuroimaging research has also demonstrated no qualitative differences in attention to gaze and arrow cues. However, these studies were implemented under simple experiment conditions. Researchers have highlighted the importance of contextual processing (i.e., the semantic congruence between cue and target) in attentional orienting, showing that attentional orienting by social gaze or arrow cues could be modulated through contextual processing. Here, we examine the neural activity of attentional orienting by gaze and arrow cues in response to contextual processing using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results demonstrated that the influence of neural activity through contextual processing to attentional orienting occurred under invalid conditions (when the cue and target were incongruent versus congruent) in the ventral frontoparietal network, although we did not identify any differences in the neural substrates of attentional orienting in contextual processing between gaze and arrow cues. These results support behavioural data of attentional orienting modulated by contextual processing based on the neurocognitive architecture.

Use of olfactory cues by newly metamorphosed wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) during emigration

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Zydlewski, Joseph D.; Popescu, Viorel D.; Brodie, Bekka S.; Hunter, Malcom L.

2012-01-01

Juvenile amphibians are capable of long-distance upland movements, yet cues used for orientation during upland movements are poorly understood. We used newly metamorphosed Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) to investigate: (1) the existence of innate (i.e., inherited) directionality, and (2) the use of olfactory cues, specifically forested wetland and natal pond cues during emigration. In a circular arena experiment, animals with assumed innate directionality did not orient in the expected direction (suggested by previous studies) when deprived of visual and olfactory cues. This suggests that juvenile Wood Frogs most likely rely on proximate cues for orientation. Animals reared in semi-natural conditions (1500 l cattle tanks) showed a strong avoidance of forested wetland cues in two different experimental settings, although they had not been previously exposed to such cues. This finding is contrary to known habitat use by adult Wood Frogs during summer. Juvenile Wood Frogs were indifferent to the chemical signature of natal pond (cattle tank) water. Our findings suggest that management strategies for forest amphibians should consider key habitat features that potentially influence the orientation of juveniles during emigration movements, as well as adult behavior.

Understanding the emergence of state goal orientation in organizational work groups: the role of leadership and multilevel climate perceptions.

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Dragoni, Lisa

2005-11-01

This article attends to a broad range of practically significant employee motivations and provides insight into how to enhance individual-level performance by examining individual-level state goal orientation emergence in organizational work groups. Leadership and multilevel climate processes are theorized to parallel each dimension of state goal orientation to cue and ultimately induce the corresponding achievement focus among individual work group members. It is argued that the patterns of leader behavior, which elucidate the leader's achievement priority, shape group members' psychological and work group climate to embody this priority. Resulting multilevel climate perceptions signal and compel group members to adopt the ascribed form of state goal orientation. The quality of the leader-member exchange relationship is viewed as a means to clarify leader messages in the formation of group members' psychological climate and internalize these cues in the emergence of state goal orientation. Considerations for future research and practice are discussed. ((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Computer tool to evaluate the cue reactivity of chemically dependent individuals.

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Silva, Meire Luci da; Frère, Annie France; Oliveira, Henrique Jesus Quintino de; Martucci Neto, Helio; Scardovelli, Terigi Augusto

2017-03-01

Anxiety is one of the major influences on the dropout of relapse and treatment of substance abuse treatment. Chemically dependent individuals need (CDI) to be aware of their emotional state in situations of risk during their treatment. Many patients do not agree with the diagnosis of the therapist when considering them vulnerable to environmental stimuli related to drugs. This research presents a cue reactivity detection tool based on a device acquiring physiological signals connected to personal computer. Depending on the variations of the emotional state of the drug addict, alteration of the physiological signals will be detected by the computer tool (CT) which will modify the displayed virtual sets without intervention of the therapist. Developed in 3ds Max® software, the CT is composed of scenarios and objects that are in the habit of marijuana and cocaine dependent individual's daily life. The interaction with the environment is accomplished using a Human-Computer Interface (HCI) that converts incoming physiological signals indicating anxiety state into commands that change the scenes. Anxiety was characterized by the average variability from cardiac and respiratory rate of 30 volunteers submitted stress environment situations. To evaluate the effectiveness of cue reactivity a total of 50 volunteers who were marijuana, cocaine or both dependent were accompanied. Prior to CT, the results demonstrated a poor correlation between the therapists' predictions and those of the chemically dependent individuals. After exposure to the CT, there was a significant increase of 73% in awareness of the risks of relapse. We confirmed the hypothesis that the CT, controlled only by physiological signals, increases the perception of vulnerability to risk situations of individuals with dependence on marijuana, cocaine or both. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cue combination encoding via contextual modulation of V1 and V2 neurons

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Zarella MD

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Mark D Zarella, Daniel Y Ts’o Department of Neurosurgery, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA Abstract: Neurons in early visual cortical areas encode the local properties of a stimulus in a number of different feature dimensions such as color, orientation, and motion. It has been shown, however, that stimuli presented well beyond the confines of the classical receptive field can augment these responses in a way that emphasizes these local attributes within the greater context of the visual scene. This mechanism imparts global information to cells that are otherwise considered local feature detectors and can potentially serve as an important foundation for surface segmentation, texture representation, and figure–ground segregation. The role of early visual cortex toward these functions remains somewhat of an enigma, as it is unclear how surface segmentation cues are integrated from multiple feature dimensions. We examined the impact of orientation- and motion-defined surface segmentation cues in V1 and V2 neurons using a stimulus in which the two features are completely separable. We find that, although some cells are modulated in a cue-invariant manner, many cells are influenced by only one cue or the other. Furthermore, cells that are modulated by both cues tend to be more strongly affected when both cues are presented together than when presented individually. These results demonstrate two mechanisms by which cue combinations can enhance salience. We find that feature-specific populations are more frequently encountered in V1, while cue additivity is more prominent in V2. These results highlight how two strongly interconnected areas at different stages in the cortical hierarchy can potentially contribute to scene segmentation. Keywords: striate, extrastriate, extraclassical, texture, segmentation

Approach bias for food cues in obese individuals.

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Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2015-01-01

This study aimed to investigate the existence of an approach bias for food cues in obese individuals. A community sample of 56 obese women and 56 normal weight controls completed an approach-avoidance variant of the implicit association task. The obese participants were faster to respond to trials that paired food words with approach words, and trials that paired non-food words with avoid words, than the converse pairings, thus, demonstrating an approach bias for food. This bias was evident for both high caloric and low caloric food words, and was not attributable to a state of deprivation or feelings of hunger. By contrast, the normal weight controls did not show any such bias. The results are consistent with recent neurocognitive perspectives of obesity. At a practical level, approach biases for food may present a potential target for modifying (excessive) food intake.

Obese adults have visual attention bias for food cue images: evidence for altered reward system function.

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Castellanos, E H; Charboneau, E; Dietrich, M S; Park, S; Bradley, B P; Mogg, K; Cowan, R L

2009-09-01

The major aim of this study was to investigate whether the motivational salience of food cues (as reflected by their attention-grabbing properties) differs between obese and normal-weight subjects in a manner consistent with altered reward system function in obesity. A total of 18 obese and 18 normal-weight, otherwise healthy, adult women between the ages of 18 and 35 participated in an eye-tracking paradigm in combination with a visual probe task. Eye movements and reaction time to food and non-food images were recorded during both fasted and fed conditions in a counterbalanced design. Eating behavior and hunger level were assessed by self-report measures. Obese individuals had higher scores than normal-weight individuals on self-report measures of responsiveness to external food cues and vulnerability to disruptions in control of eating behavior. Both obese and normal-weight individuals demonstrated increased gaze duration for food compared to non-food images in the fasted condition. In the fed condition, however, despite reduced hunger in both groups, obese individuals maintained the increased attention to food images, whereas normal-weight individuals had similar gaze duration for food and non-food images. Additionally, obese individuals had preferential orienting toward food images at the onset of each image. Obese and normal-weight individuals did not differ in reaction time measures in the fasted or fed condition. Food cue incentive salience is elevated equally in normal-weight and obese individuals during fasting. Obese individuals retain incentive salience for food cues despite feeding and decreased self-report of hunger. Sensitization to food cues in the environment and their dysregulation in obese individuals may play a role in the development and/or maintenance of obesity.

A Snapshot-Based Mechanism for Celestial Orientation.

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El Jundi, Basil; Foster, James J; Khaldy, Lana; Byrne, Marcus J; Dacke, Marie; Baird, Emily

2016-06-06

In order to protect their food from competitors, ball-rolling dung beetles detach a piece of dung from a pile, shape it into a ball, and roll it away along a straight path [1]. They appear to rely exclusively on celestial compass cues to maintain their bearing [2-8], but the mechanism that enables them to use these cues for orientation remains unknown. Here, we describe the orientation strategy that allows dung beetles to use celestial cues in a dynamic fashion. We tested the underlying orientation mechanism by presenting beetles with a combination of simulated celestial cues (sun, polarized light, and spectral cues). We show that these animals do not rely on an innate prediction of the natural geographical relationship between celestial cues, as other navigating insects seem to [9, 10]. Instead, they appear to form an internal representation of the prevailing celestial scene, a "celestial snapshot," even if that scene represents a physical impossibility for the real sky. We also find that the beetles are able to maintain their bearing with respect to the presented cues only if the cues are visible when the snapshot is taken. This happens during the "dance," a behavior in which the beetle climbs on top of its ball and rotates about its vertical axis [11]. This strategy for reading celestial signals is a simple but efficient mechanism for straight-line orientation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Chemical cues released by an alien invasive aquatic gastropod drive its invasion success.

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Jacqueline L Raw

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Chemical cues provide aquatic organisms with sensory information that guides behavioural responses and thus interactions among themselves, each other and the environment. Chemical cues are considered important for predator avoidance, foraging, larval settlement and broadcast spawning in aquatic environments. However, the significance of their role as drivers of direct interactions between heterospecifics has been largely overlooked. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A video camera and a demarcated arena were used in situ to record behavioural responses of three native gastropod species, Assiminea cf. capensis, Melanoides tuberculata and Coriandria durbanensis, exposed to treatments representing chemical cues released by a non-native invasive gastropod, Tarebia granifera. The responses were measured quantitatively as displacement and orientation of movement at locations in St Lucia Estuary, within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the east coast of South Africa. All native gastropods exhibited a negative taxis response to chemical cues released by T. granifera, while T. granifera individuals responded randomly to conspecifics. Displacement was measured relative to the source of the extract, the number of steps taken were determined with path analysis and orientation was determined from the mean (±95% CIs turning angles, with significant negative turning angles representing negative taxis. Responses to treatments corresponding to the environment and conspecifics were random and undirected, indicating kinesis. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This study presents evidence for interactions driven by chemical cues between a non-native invasive gastropod and several gastropods native to South Africa. The results indicate that chemical cues can facilitate invasion success as the behavioural response of native gastropods is to move away allowing additional food and space resources to become available to T. granifera.

Chemical cues released by an alien invasive aquatic gastropod drive its invasion success.

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Raw, Jacqueline L; Miranda, Nelson A F; Perissinotto, Renzo

2013-01-01

Chemical cues provide aquatic organisms with sensory information that guides behavioural responses and thus interactions among themselves, each other and the environment. Chemical cues are considered important for predator avoidance, foraging, larval settlement and broadcast spawning in aquatic environments. However, the significance of their role as drivers of direct interactions between heterospecifics has been largely overlooked. A video camera and a demarcated arena were used in situ to record behavioural responses of three native gastropod species, Assiminea cf. capensis, Melanoides tuberculata and Coriandria durbanensis, exposed to treatments representing chemical cues released by a non-native invasive gastropod, Tarebia granifera. The responses were measured quantitatively as displacement and orientation of movement at locations in St Lucia Estuary, within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the east coast of South Africa. All native gastropods exhibited a negative taxis response to chemical cues released by T. granifera, while T. granifera individuals responded randomly to conspecifics. Displacement was measured relative to the source of the extract, the number of steps taken were determined with path analysis and orientation was determined from the mean (±95% CIs) turning angles, with significant negative turning angles representing negative taxis. Responses to treatments corresponding to the environment and conspecifics were random and undirected, indicating kinesis. This study presents evidence for interactions driven by chemical cues between a non-native invasive gastropod and several gastropods native to South Africa. The results indicate that chemical cues can facilitate invasion success as the behavioural response of native gastropods is to move away allowing additional food and space resources to become available to T. granifera.

Brain dynamics of visual attention during anticipation and encoding of threat- and safe-cues in spider-phobic individuals.

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Michalowski, Jaroslaw M; Pané-Farré, Christiane A; Löw, Andreas; Hamm, Alfons O

2015-09-01

This study systematically investigated the sensitivity of the phobic attention system by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) in spider-phobic and non-phobic volunteers in a context where spider and neutral pictures were presented (phobic threat condition) and in contexts where no phobic but unpleasant and neutral or only neutral pictures were displayed (phobia-irrelevant conditions). In a between-group study, participants were assigned to phobia-irrelevant conditions either before or after the exposure to spider pictures (pre-exposure vs post-exposure participants). Additionally, each picture was preceded by a fixation cross presented in one of three different colors that were informative about the category of an upcoming picture. In the phobic threat condition, spider-phobic participants showed a larger P1 than controls for all pictures and signal cues. Moreover, individuals with spider phobia who were sensitized by the exposure to phobic stimuli (i.e. post-exposure participants) responded with an increased P1 also in phobia-irrelevant conditions. In contrast, no group differences between spider-phobic and non-phobic individuals were observed in the P1-amplitudes during viewing of phobia-irrelevant stimuli in the pre-exposure group. In addition, cues signaling neutral pictures elicited decreased stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) compared with cues signaling emotional pictures. Moreover, emotional pictures and cues signaling emotional pictures evoked larger early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) than neutral stimuli. Spider phobics showed greater selective attention effects than controls for phobia-relevant pictures (increased EPN and LPP) and cues (increased LPP and SPN). Increased sensitization of the attention system observed in spider-phobic individuals might facilitate fear conditioning and promote generalization of fear playing an important role in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. © The Author (2015). Published by

Individual variation in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to a food cue: influence of sex.

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Pitchers, Kyle K; Flagel, Shelly B; O'Donnell, Elizabeth G; Woods, Leah C Solberg; Sarter, Martin; Robinson, Terry E

2015-02-01

There is considerable individual variation in the propensity of animals to attribute incentive salience to discrete reward cues, but to date most of this research has been conducted in male rats. The purpose of this study was to determine whether sex influences the propensity to attribute incentive salience to a food cue, using rats from two different outbred strains (Sprague-Dawley [SD] and Heterogeneous Stock [HS]). The motivational value of a food cue was assessed in two ways: (i) by the ability of the cue to elicit approach toward it and (ii) by its ability to act as a conditioned reinforcer. We found that female SD rats acquired Pavlovian conditioned approach behavior slightly faster than males, but no sex difference was detected in HS rats, and neither strain showed a sex difference in asymptotic performance of approach behavior. Moreover, female approach behavior did not differ across estrous cycle. Compared to males, females made more active responses during the test for conditioned reinforcement, although they made more inactive responses as well. We conclude that although there are small sex differences in performance on these tasks, these are probably not due to a notable sex difference in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to a food cue. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Orienting of attention via observed eye gaze is head-centred.

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Bayliss, Andrew P; di Pellegrino, Giuseppe; Tipper, Steven P

2004-11-01

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue.

Updating appetitive memory during reconsolidation window: critical role of cue-directed behavior and amygdala central nucleus.

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Olshavsky, Megan E; Song, Bryan J; Powell, Daniel J; Jones, Carolyn E; Monfils, Marie-H; Lee, Hongjoo J

2013-01-01

When presented with a light cue followed by food, some rats simply approach the foodcup (Nonorienters), while others first orient to the light in addition to displaying the food-cup approach behavior (Orienters). Cue-directed orienting may reflect enhanced attentional and/or emotional processing of the cue, suggesting divergent natures of cue-information processing in Orienters and Nonorienters. The current studies investigate how differences in cue processing might manifest in appetitive memory retrieval and updating using a paradigm developed to persistently attenuate fear responses (Retrieval-extinction paradigm; Monfils et al., 2009). First, we examined whether the retrieval-extinction paradigm could attenuate appetitive responses in Orienters and Nonorienters. Next, we investigated if the appetitive memory could be updated using reversal learning (fear conditioning) during the reconsolidation window (as opposed to repeated unreinforced trials, i.e., extinction). Both extinction and new fear learning given within the reconsolidation window were effective at persistently updating the initial appetitive memory in the Orienters, but not the Nonorienters. Since conditioned orienting is mediated by the amygdala central nucleus (CeA), our final experiment examined the CeA's role in the retrieval-extinction process. Bilateral CeA lesions interfered with the retrieval-extinction paradigm-did not prevent spontaneous recovery of food-cup approach. Together, our studies demonstrate the critical role of conditioned orienting behavior and the CeA in updating appetitive memory during the reconsolidation window.

Chemical Cues in Tritrophic Interaction on Biocontrol of Insect Pest

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Nurindah Nurindah

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Tritrophic interaction among host plant-herbivore-parasitoid involves chemical cues. The infested plant by herbivores has been reacted to produce volatiles which is a cue used by the herbivore parasitoids for host location. These volatiles can be developed to enhance natural control of insect pests, especially by optimally use of parasitoids. Egg parasitoids are biocontrol agents that play an important role in natural control of herbivores. This research used a tritrophic interaction model of rice plant-brown plant hopper (BPH-egg parasitoid of BPH. Research on analysis of chemical cues in tritrophic interactions was aimed to identify volatiles that are used by the parasitoid to find its host. The volatiles that effectively affect the parasitoid orientation behavior could be developed into a parasitoid attractant. Extraction of volatiles as the egg parasitoid cues was done using soxhlet, and identification of the volatiles using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS. Bioassay of the volatiles on the BPH parasitoid orientation behavior was performed using Y-tube olfactometry. The volatiles that are used for host location cues by the parasitoid affect the parasitoid orientation behavior by showing the preference of the parasitoid females to the odor of volatile. Volatiles extracted from BPH-egg-infested plants and uninfested plants contain alcohol, hydrocarbon, and ester compounds. Based on the difference of the compound composition of both extractions, five compounds of long-chain hydrocarbon, both branched and unsaturated compounds are the main volatile components which caused positive orientation behavior of the egg parasitoid. The egg parasitoids showed positive behavior orientation toward the volatiles extracted from BPH-egg-infested plant. Those hydrocarbon compounds are potential materials to be developed into bio attractants of BPH egg parasitoid.

A Conditioned Visual Orientation Requires the Ellipsoid Body in "Drosophila"

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Guo, Chao; Du, Yifei; Yuan, Deliang; Li, Meixia; Gong, Haiyun; Gong, Zhefeng; Liu, Li

2015-01-01

Orientation, the spatial organization of animal behavior, is an essential faculty of animals. Bacteria and lower animals such as insects exhibit taxis, innate orientation behavior, directly toward or away from a directional cue. Organisms can also orient themselves at a specific angle relative to the cues. In this study, using…

Veering re-visited: noise and posture cues in walking without sight.

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Millar, S

1999-01-01

Effects of sound and posture cues on veering from the straight-ahead were tested with young blind children in an unfamiliar space that lacked orienting cues. In a pre-test with a previously heard target sound, all subjects walked straight to the target. A recording device, which sampled the locomotor trajectories automatically, showed that, without prior cues from target locations, subjects tended to veer more to the side from which they heard a brief, irrelevant noise. Carrying a load on one side produced more veering to the opposite side. The detailed samples showed that, underlying the main trajectories, were alternating concave and convex (left and right) movements, suggesting stepwise changes in body position. It is argued that the same external and body-centred cues that contribute to reference-frame orientation for locomotion when they converge and concur, influence the direction of veering when the cues occur in isolation in environments that lack converging reference information.

Neural network configuration and efficiency underlies individual differences in spatial orientation ability.

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Arnold, Aiden E G F; Protzner, Andrea B; Bray, Signe; Levy, Richard M; Iaria, Giuseppe

2014-02-01

Spatial orientation is a complex cognitive process requiring the integration of information processed in a distributed system of brain regions. Current models on the neural basis of spatial orientation are based primarily on the functional role of single brain regions, with limited understanding of how interaction among these brain regions relates to behavior. In this study, we investigated two sources of variability in the neural networks that support spatial orientation--network configuration and efficiency--and assessed whether variability in these topological properties relates to individual differences in orientation accuracy. Participants with higher accuracy were shown to express greater activity in the right supramarginal gyrus, the right precentral cortex, and the left hippocampus, over and above a core network engaged by the whole group. Additionally, high-performing individuals had increased levels of global efficiency within a resting-state network composed of brain regions engaged during orientation and increased levels of node centrality in the right supramarginal gyrus, the right primary motor cortex, and the left hippocampus. These results indicate that individual differences in the configuration of task-related networks and their efficiency measured at rest relate to the ability to spatially orient. Our findings advance systems neuroscience models of orientation and navigation by providing insight into the role of functional integration in shaping orientation behavior.

Featural Guidance in Conjunction Search: The Contrast between Orientation and Color

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Anderson, Giles M.; Heinke, Dietmar; Humphreys, Glyn W.

2010-01-01

Four experiments examined the effects of precues on visual search for targets defined by a color-orientation conjunction. Experiment 1 showed that cueing the identity of targets enhanced the efficiency of search. Cueing effects were stronger with color than with orientation cues, but this advantage was additive across array size. Experiment 2…

Expectancy modulates pupil size during endogenous orienting of spatial attention.

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Dragone, Alessio; Lasaponara, Stefano; Pinto, Mario; Rotondaro, Francesca; De Luca, Maria; Doricchi, Fabrizio

2018-05-01

fMRI investigations in healthy humans have documented phasic changes in the level of activation of the right temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) during cued voluntary orienting of spatial attention. Cues that correctly predict the position of upcoming targets in the majority of trials, i.e., predictive cues, produce higher deactivation of the right TPJ as compared with non-predictive cues. Since the right TPJ is the recipient of noradrenergic (NE) innervation, it has been hypothesised that changes in the level of TPJ activity are matched with changes in the level of NE activity. Based on aforementioned fMRI findings, this might imply that orienting with predictive cues is matched with different levels of NE activity as compared with non-predictive cues. To test this hypothesis, we measured changes in pupil dilation, an indirect index of NE activity, during voluntary orienting of attention with highly predictive (80% validity) or non-predictive (50% validity) cues. In agreement with current interpretations of the tonic/phasic activity of the Locus Coeruleus-Norepinephrinic system (LC-NE), we found that the steady level of cue predictiveness that characterised both the predictive and non-predictive conditions caused, across consecutive blocks of trials, a progressive decrement in pupil dilation during the baseline-fixation period that anticipated the cue period. With predictive cues we observed increased pupil dilation as compared with non-predictive cues. In addition, the relative reduction in pupil size observed with non-predictive cues increased as a function of cue-duration. These results show that changes in the predictiveness of cues that guide voluntary orienting of spatial attention are matched with changes in pupil dilation and, putatively, with corresponding changes in LC-NE activity. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PERIPHERAL IMMUNE SYSTEM SUPPRESSION IN EARLY ABSTINENT ALCOHOL DEPENDENT INDIVIDUALS: LINKS TO STRESS AND CUE-RELATED CRAVING

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Fox, Helen C; Milivojevic, Verica; Angarita, Gustavo A; Stowe, Raymond; Sinha, Rajita

2017-01-01

Background Peripheral immune system cytokines may play an integral role in underlying sensitized stress response and alcohol craving during early withdrawal. To date, the nature of these immune changes during early abstinence have not been examined. Methods Thirty-nine early abstinent, treatment-seeking alcohol dependent individuals and 46 socially drinking controls were exposed to three guided imageries: stress, alcohol cue and neutral. These were presented randomly across consecutive days. Plasma measures of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-10 (IL-10), were collected at baseline, immediately after imagery and at various recovery time-points. Ratings of alcohol craving, negative mood and anxiety were also obtained at the same time-points. Results The alcohol group demonstrated decreased basal IL-10 compared with controls particularly following exposure to alcohol cue. They also showed a dampened TNFα and TNFR1 response to stress and cue, respectively, and a generalized suppression of IL-6. In the alcohol group, these immune system adaptations occurred alongside significant elevations in anxiety, negative mood and alcohol craving. Conclusions Findings demonstrate that broad immuno-suppression is still observed in alcohol dependent individuals after three weeks of abstinence and may be linked to motivation for alcohol. PMID:28675117

Self-construal differences in neural responses to negative social cues.

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Liddell, Belinda J; Felmingham, Kim L; Das, Pritha; Whitford, Thomas J; Malhi, Gin S; Battaglini, Eva; Bryant, Richard A

2017-10-01

Cultures differ substantially in representations of the self. Whereas individualistic cultural groups emphasize an independent self, reflected in processing biases towards centralized salient objects, collectivistic cultures are oriented towards an interdependent self, attending to contextual associations between visual cues. It is unknown how these perceptual biases may affect brain activity in response to negative social cues. Moreover, while some studies have shown that individual differences in self-construal moderate cultural group comparisons, few have examined self-construal differences separate to culture. To investigate these issues, a final sample of a group of healthy participants high in trait levels of collectivistic self-construal (n=16) and individualistic self-construal (n=19), regardless of cultural background, completed a negative social cue evaluation task designed to engage face/object vs context-specific neural processes whilst undergoing fMRI scanning. Between-group analyses revealed that the collectivistic group exclusively engaged the parahippocampal gyrus (parahippocampal place area) - a region critical to contextual integration - during negative face processing - suggesting compensatory activations when contextual information was missing. The collectivist group also displayed enhanced negative context dependent brain activity involving the left superior occipital gyrus/cuneus and right anterior insula. By contrast, the individualistic group did not engage object or localized face processing regions as predicted, but rather demonstrated heightened appraisal and self-referential activations in medial prefrontal and temporoparietal regions to negative contexts - again suggesting compensatory processes when focal cues were absent. While individualists also appeared more sensitive to negative faces in the scenes, activating the right middle cingulate gyrus, dorsal prefrontal and parietal activations, this activity was observed relative to the

Sensorimotor Adaptation Following Exposure to Ambiguous Inertial Motion Cues

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Wood, S. J.; Clement, G. R.; Rupert, A. H.; Reschke, M. F.; Harm, D. L.; Guedry, F. E.

2007-01-01

The central nervous system must resolve the ambiguity of inertial motion sensory cues in order to derive accurate spatial orientation awareness. Adaptive changes in how inertial cues from the otolith system are integrated with other sensory information lead to perceptual and postural disturbances upon return to Earth s gravity. The primary goals of this ground-based research investigation are to explore physiological mechanisms and operational implications of tilt-translation disturbances during and following re-entry, and to evaluate a tactile prosthesis as a countermeasure for improving control of whole-body orientation during tilt and translation motion.

Monocular channels have a functional role in endogenous orienting.

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Saban, William; Sekely, Liora; Klein, Raymond M; Gabay, Shai

2018-03-01

The literature has long emphasized the role of higher cortical structures in endogenous orienting. Based on evolutionary explanation and previous data, we explored the possibility that lower monocular channels may also have a functional role in endogenous orienting of attention. Sensitive behavioral manipulation was used to probe the contribution of monocularly segregated regions in a simple cue - target detection task. A central spatially informative cue, and its ensuing target, were presented to the same or different eyes at varying cue-target intervals. Results indicated that the onset of endogenous orienting was apparent earlier when the cue and target were presented to the same eye. The data provides converging evidence for the notion that endogenous facilitation is modulated by monocular portions of the visual stream. This, in turn, suggests that higher cortical mechanisms are not exclusively responsible for endogenous orienting, and that a dynamic interaction between higher and lower neural levels, might be involved. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Responses of Young Domestic Horses to Human-Given Cues

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Proops, Leanne; Rayner, Jenny; Taylor, Anna M.; McComb, Karen

2013-01-01

It has been suggested that the process of domestication, at least in some species, has led to an innate predisposition to be skilled at reading human communicative and attentional cues. Adult domestic horses (Equus caballus) are highly sensitive to subtle bodily cues when determining if a person is attending to them but they are less adept at using human communicative cues in object choice tasks. Here we provide the first study into the ontogeny of such skills in order to gain insights into the mechanisms underlying these abilities. Compared with adult horses, youngsters under the age of three could use body orientation but not more subtle cues such as head movement and open/closed eyes to correctly choose an attentive person to approach for food. Across two object choice experiments, the performance of young horses was comparable to that of adult horses – subjects were able to correctly choose a rewarded bucket using marker placement, pointing and touching cues but could not use body orientation, gaze, elbow pointing or tapping cues. Taken together these results do not support the theory that horses possess an innate predisposition to be particularly skilled at using human cues. Horses' ability to determine whether humans are attending to them using subtle body cues appears to require significant experience to fully develop and their perhaps less remarkable use of limited cues in object choice tasks, although present at a much earlier age, is likely to reflect a more general learning ability related to stimulus enhancement rather than a specific ‘human-reading’ skill. PMID:23840572

The effect of oxytocin on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma depends on the social context and a person’s social value orientation

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Boone, Christophe; Kiyonari, Toko

2014-01-01

The interactionist approach to the study of exogenous oxytocin (OT) effects on prosocial behavior has emphasized the need to consider both contextual cues and individual differences. Therefore, an experiment was set up to examine the joint effect of intranasal OT, a salient social cue and the personality trait social value orientation on cooperative behavior in one-shot prisoner’s dilemma games. The outcome of these mixed-motive games is known to be highly dependent on values and on social information that might reveal the partner’s intent. Consistent with an a priori hypothesis, OT and social information interact significantly to affect the behavior of individuals with a proself value orientation: after prior contact with the game partner, OT enhances cooperative behavior, whereas in anonymous conditions, it exacerbates their intrinsic self-interested behavior. These effects of OT do not hold for individuals with a prosocial value orientation, whose cooperation levels appear to be more influenced by prior contact with the game partner. Follow-up hypotheses for why prosocial and proself individuals respond differently to exogenous OT were developed. PMID:23588271

The influence of social and symbolic cues on observers' gaze behaviour.

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Hermens, Frouke; Walker, Robin

2016-08-01

Research has shown that social and symbolic cues presented in isolation and at fixation have strong effects on observers, but it is unclear how cues compare when they are presented away from fixation and embedded in natural scenes. We here compare the effects of two types of social cue (gaze and pointing gestures) and one type of symbolic cue (arrow signs) on eye movements of observers under two viewing conditions (free viewing vs. a memory task). The results suggest that social cues are looked at more quickly, for longer and more frequently than the symbolic arrow cues. An analysis of saccades initiated from the cue suggests that the pointing cue leads to stronger cueing than the gaze and the arrow cue. While the task had only a weak influence on gaze orienting to the cues, stronger cue following was found for free viewing compared to the memory task. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.

The effect of social cues on marketing decisions

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Hentschel, H. G. E.; Pan, Jiening; Family, Fereydoon; Zhang, Zhenyu; Song, Yiping

2012-02-01

We address the question as to what extent individuals, when given information in marketing polls on the decisions made by the previous Nr individuals questioned, are likely to change their original choices. The processes can be formulated in terms of a Cost function equivalent to a Hamiltonian, which depends on the original likelihood of an individual making a positive decision in the absence of social cues p0; the strength of the social cue J; and memory size Nr. We find both positive and negative herding effects are significant. Specifically, if p0>1/2 social cues enhance positive decisions, while for p0cues reduce the likelihood of a positive decision.

Thin Layer Sensory Cues Affect Antarctic Krill Swimming Kinematics

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True, A. C.; Webster, D. R.; Weissburg, M. J.; Yen, J.

2013-11-01

A Bickley jet (laminar, planar free jet) is employed in a recirculating flume system to replicate thin shear and phytoplankton layers for krill behavioral assays. Planar laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements quantify the spatiotemporal structure of the chemical and free shear layers, respectively, ensuring a close match to in situ hydrodynamic and biochemical conditions. Path kinematics from digitized trajectories of free-swimming Euphausia superba examine the effects of hydrodynamic sensory cues (deformation rate) and bloom level phytoplankton patches (~1000 cells/mL, Tetraselamis spp.) on krill behavior (body orientation, swimming modes and kinematics, path fracticality). Krill morphology is finely tuned for receiving and deciphering both hydrodynamic and chemical information that is vital for basic life processes such as schooling behaviors, predator/prey, and mate interactions. Changes in individual krill behavior in response to ecologically-relevant sensory cues have the potential to produce population-scale phenomena with significant ecological implications. Krill are a vital trophic link between primary producers (phytoplankton) and larger animals (seabirds, whales, fish, penguins, seals) as well as the subjects of a valuable commercial fishery in the Southern Ocean; thus quantifying krill behavioral responses to relevant sensory cues is an important step towards accurately modeling Antarctic ecosystems.

The effect of oxytocin on cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma depends on the social context and a person's social value orientation.

Science.gov (United States)

Declerck, Carolyn H; Boone, Christophe; Kiyonari, Toko

2014-06-01

The interactionist approach to the study of exogenous oxytocin (OT) effects on prosocial behavior has emphasized the need to consider both contextual cues and individual differences. Therefore, an experiment was set up to examine the joint effect of intranasal OT, a salient social cue and the personality trait social value orientation on cooperative behavior in one-shot prisoner's dilemma games. The outcome of these mixed-motive games is known to be highly dependent on values and on social information that might reveal the partner's intent. Consistent with an a priori hypothesis, OT and social information interact significantly to affect the behavior of individuals with a proself value orientation: after prior contact with the game partner, OT enhances cooperative behavior, whereas in anonymous conditions, it exacerbates their intrinsic self-interested behavior. These effects of OT do not hold for individuals with a prosocial value orientation, whose cooperation levels appear to be more influenced by prior contact with the game partner. Follow-up hypotheses for why prosocial and proself individuals respond differently to exogenous OT were developed. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting in crossmodal attention.

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Chen, Xiaoxi; Chen, Qi; Gao, Dingguo; Yue, Zhenzhu

2012-08-01

Using a cue-target paradigm, we investigated the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting in cross-modal attention. A peripheral (exogenous) cue was presented after a central (endogenous) cue with a variable time interval. The endogenous and exogenous cues were presented in one sensory modality (auditory in Experiment 1 and visual in Experiment 2) whereas the target was presented in another modality. Both experiments showed a significant endogenous cuing effect (longer reaction times in the invalid condition than in the valid condition). However, exogenous cuing produced a facilitatory effect in both experiments in response to the target when endogenous cuing was valid, but it elicited a facilitatory effect in Experiment 1 and an inhibitory effect in Experiment 2 when endogenous cuing was invalid. These findings indicate that endogenous and exogenous cuing can co-operate in orienting attention to the crossmodal target. Moreover, the interaction between endogenous and exogenous orienting of attention is modulated by the modality between the cue and the target. © 2012 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES INFLUENCING INDIVIDUAL ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION AND STRATEGIC THINKING CAPABILITY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lara Jelenc

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Strategic thinking capability is interesting part of the cognitive development of each entrepreneur. This paper develops on notion that there a number of demographic variables that shape the behavior of each particular elements of entrepreneurial orientation and strategic component of each entrepreneur. The demographic variable that have significant role will take the role of moderator in further research. Since both constructs are multidimensional, the demographic variables are not influencing them in the same way. The empirical research has been performed on IT firms in Croatia in 2014. Individual entrepreneurial orientation is measured by the construct developed by Bolton and Lane’s (2012 individual entrepreneurial orientation instrument. The instrument is grounded in the seminal work of Miller (1983, Covin and Slevin (1986; 1988; 1989, Lumpkin and Dess (1996 and Covin and Wales (2011; consisting of three dimensions – risk-taking, innovation, and proactiveness. Strategic thinking was measured by Pisapia’s (2009 Strategic thinking questionnaire (STQ. The STQ asked respondents to rate how often they use systems thinking, reframing, and reflecting skills. Within the framework of individual entrepreneurial orientation the following demographic variables shape the trends: age, gender, education abroad and previous experience. Entrepreneurs between 40-60 years old are less prone to risk, female entrepreneurs are more proactive than men, education abroad provides with the additional proactiveness and the entrepreneur with previous experience is prone to higher risk, proactiveness and innovativeness. Within the framework of strategic thinking capability the following demographic variables shape the trends: age, gender, education and experience. Entrepreneurs older than 60 score high on system thinking as well as females, females also score higher on reframing. Entrepreneurs with PhD degree score lower on reframing, while managers working more

Seeing the forest before the trees-spatial orientation in freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygon motoro) in a hole-board task.

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Schluessel, V; Herzog, H; Scherpenstein, M

2015-10-01

Freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygon motoro) have been shown to use a variety of spatial learning strategies including directional, landmark and place learning. In the present study, the significance of landmarks and geometric cues was investigated in a hole-board task. The aim was to determine cue preferences and collect additional information on the orientation mechanisms used in elasmobranchs. In four experiments, five juvenile stingrays had to memorize a fixed goal location within either a rectangular or a circular arena in the presence of goal-associated, signaling landmarks, proximal and distal cues. Transfer tests elucidated which cues the rays used or favored to reach the goal position. All rays successfully solved three of four tasks; as expected, different strategies were used in the process. Small alterations in the positioning of signaling landmarks (causing a spatial conflict between the previous feeding location and the new position of the signaling landmark) caused individuals to visit both locations equally often, whereas large alterations caused animals to ignore signaling cues and return to the previous feeding location. In the last and most complex experiment, three of five rays found the feeding location by remembering the positions of both proximate and distal landmarks in addition to memorizing particular swimming paths. Results showed that rays generally placed more importance on the overall environmental or geometric arrangement of the arena than on (individual) landmarks. This seems ecologically feasible, as distinct landmarks (e.g. rocks, pieces of wood, water plants) in the rays' natural environment may be more easily altered, removed or obscured from view than global ones (e.g. a river bend), which tend to be more stable. Overall, these results confirm those of previous studies, in that freshwater stingrays orient visually, learn quickly and can apply various orientation strategies, which are not mutually exclusive. Copyright © 2015

No two cues are alike: Depth of learning during infancy is dependent on what orients attention.

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Wu, Rachel; Kirkham, Natasha Z

2010-10-01

Human infants develop a variety of attentional mechanisms that allow them to extract relevant information from a cluttered multimodal world. We know that both social and nonsocial cues shift infants' attention, but not how these cues differentially affect learning of multimodal events. Experiment 1 used social cues to direct 8- and 4-month-olds' attention to two audiovisual events (i.e., animations of a cat or dog accompanied by particular sounds) while identical distractor events played in another location. Experiment 2 directed 8-month-olds' attention with colorful flashes to the same events. Experiment 3 measured baseline learning without attention cues both with the familiarization and test trials (no cue condition) and with only the test trials (test control condition). The 8-month-olds exposed to social cues showed specific learning of audiovisual events. The 4-month-olds displayed only general spatial learning from social cues, suggesting that specific learning of audiovisual events from social cues may be a function of experience. Infants cued with the colorful flashes looked indiscriminately to both cued locations during test (similar to the 4-month-olds learning from social cues) despite attending for equal duration to the training trials as the 8-month-olds with the social cues. Results from Experiment 3 indicated that the learning effects in Experiments 1 and 2 resulted from exposure to the different cues and multimodal events. We discuss these findings in terms of the perceptual differences and relevance of the cues. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Investigating Hemispheric Lateralization of Reflexive Attention to Gaze and Arrow Cues

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Marotta, Andrea; Lupianez, Juan; Casagrande, Maria

2012-01-01

Recent studies have demonstrated that central cues, such as eyes and arrows, reflexively trigger attentional shifts. However, it is not clear whether the attentional mechanisms induced by these two cues are similar or rather differ in some important way. We investigated hemispheric lateralization of the orienting effects induced by the two cue…

Salience of Tactile Cues: An Examination of Tactor Actuator and Tactile Cue Characteristics

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2015-08-01

Similarly, tactile alerts can help manage and focus attention in a complex high-tempo multitasked environment. Figure 1, while simple, can serve to...tactile cueing on concurrent performance of military and robotics tasks in a simulated multitasking environment. Ergonomics. 2008;51(8):1137–1152...2007;78(3):338. Moorhead IR, Holmes S, Furnell S. Understanding multisensory integration for pilot spatial orientation. Farnborough (UK): QinetiQ

Atomoxetine effects on attentional bias to drug-related cues in cocaine dependent individuals.

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Passamonti, Luca; Luijten, M; Ziauddeen, H; Coyle-Gilchrist, I T S; Rittman, T; Brain, S A E; Regenthal, R; Franken, I H A; Sahakian, B J; Bullmore, E T; Robbins, T W; Ersche, K D

2017-08-01

Biased attention towards drug-related cues and reduced inhibitory control over the regulation of drug-intake characterize drug addiction. The noradrenaline system has been critically implicated in both attentional and response inhibitory processes and is directly affected by drugs such as cocaine. We examined the potentially beneficial effects of the noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine in improving cognitive control during two tasks that used cocaine- and non-cocaine-related stimuli. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, and cross-over psycho-pharmacological design was employed. A single oral dose of atomoxetine (40 mg) was administered to 28 cocaine-dependent individuals (CDIs) and 28 healthy controls. All participants performed a pictorial attentional bias task involving both cocaine- and non-cocaine-related pictures as well as a verbal go/no-go task composed of cocaine- and food-related words. As expected, CDIs showed attentional bias to cocaine-related cues whilst controls did not. More importantly, however, atomoxetine, relative to placebo, significantly attenuated attentional bias in CDIs (F 26  = 6.73, P = 0.01). During the go/no-go task, there was a treatment × trial × group interaction, although this finding only showed a trend towards statistical significance (F 26  = 3.38, P = 0.07). Our findings suggest that atomoxetine reduces attentional bias to drug-related cues in CDIs. This may result from atomoxetine's modulation of the balance between tonic/phasic activity in the locus coeruleus and the possibly parallel enhancement of noradrenergic neurotransmission within the prefrontal cortex. Studying how cognitive enhancers such as atomoxetine influence key neurocognitive indices in cocaine addiction may help to develop reliable biomarkers for patient stratification in future clinical trials.

Dynamic Mechanical and Nanofibrous Topological Combinatory Cues Designed for Periodontal Ligament Engineering.

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Kim, Joong-Hyun; Kang, Min Sil; Eltohamy, Mohamed; Kim, Tae-Hyun; Kim, Hae-Won

2016-01-01

Complete reconstruction of damaged periodontal pockets, particularly regeneration of periodontal ligament (PDL) has been a significant challenge in dentistry. Tissue engineering approach utilizing PDL stem cells and scaffolding matrices offers great opportunity to this, and applying physical and mechanical cues mimicking native tissue conditions are of special importance. Here we approach to regenerate periodontal tissues by engineering PDL cells supported on a nanofibrous scaffold under a mechanical-stressed condition. PDL stem cells isolated from rats were seeded on an electrospun polycaprolactone/gelatin directionally-oriented nanofiber membrane and dynamic mechanical stress was applied to the cell/nanofiber construct, providing nanotopological and mechanical combined cues. Cells recognized the nanofiber orientation, aligning in parallel, and the mechanical stress increased the cell alignment. Importantly, the cells cultured on the oriented nanofiber combined with the mechanical stress produced significantly stimulated PDL specific markers, including periostin and tenascin with simultaneous down-regulation of osteogenesis, demonstrating the roles of topological and mechanical cues in altering phenotypic change in PDL cells. Tissue compatibility of the tissue-engineered constructs was confirmed in rat subcutaneous sites. Furthermore, in vivo regeneration of PDL and alveolar bone tissues was examined under the rat premaxillary periodontal defect models. The cell/nanofiber constructs engineered under mechanical stress showed sound integration into tissue defects and the regenerated bone volume and area were significantly improved. This study provides an effective tissue engineering approach for periodontal regeneration-culturing PDL stem cells with combinatory cues of oriented nanotopology and dynamic mechanical stretch.

External validity of individual differences in multiple cue probability learning: The case of pilot training

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nadine Matton

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Individuals differ in their ability to deal with unpredictable environments. Could impaired performances on learning an unpredictable cue-criteria relationship in a laboratory task be associated with impaired learning of complex skills in a natural setting? We focused on a multiple-cue probability learning (MCPL laboratory task and on the natural setting of pilot training. We used data from three selection sessions and from the three corresponding selected pilot student classes of a national airline pilot selection and training system. First, applicants took an MCPL task at the selection stage (N=556; N=701; N=412. Then, pilot trainees selected from the applicant pools (N=44; N=60; N=28 followed the training for 2.5 to 3 yrs. Differences in final MCPL performance were associated with pilot training difficulties. Indeed, poor MCPL performers experienced almost twice as many pilot training difficulties as better MCPL performers (44.0% and 25.0%, respectively.

Organization of Individual Work of Students under Competence-Oriented Approach to Education in Higher School

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Ualiyeva, Nazym T.; Murzalinova, Alma Z.

2016-01-01

The main objective of this research is to identify the essence, content and specifics of organization of individual work of higher school students under competence-oriented approach. The research methodology is related to the choice of competence-oriented approach to ensure transformation of individual work into individual activity in…

The effect of offset cues on saccade programming and covert attention.

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Smith, Daniel T; Casteau, Soazig

2018-02-01

Salient peripheral events trigger fast, "exogenous" covert orienting. The influential premotor theory of attention argues that covert orienting of attention depends upon planned but unexecuted eye-movements. One problem with this theory is that salient peripheral events, such as offsets, appear to summon attention when used to measure covert attention (e.g., the Posner cueing task) but appear not to elicit oculomotor preparation in tasks that require overt orienting (e.g., the remote distractor paradigm). Here, we examined the effects of peripheral offsets on covert attention and saccade preparation. Experiment 1 suggested that transient offsets summoned attention in a manual detection task without triggering motor preparation planning in a saccadic localisation task, although there were a high proportion of saccadic capture errors on "no-target" trials, where a cue was presented but no target appeared. In Experiment 2, "no-target" trials were removed. Here, transient offsets produced both attentional facilitation and faster saccadic responses on valid cue trials. A third experiment showed that the permanent disappearance of an object also elicited attentional facilitation and faster saccadic reaction times. These experiments demonstrate that offsets trigger both saccade programming and covert attentional orienting, consistent with the idea that exogenous, covert orienting is tightly coupled with oculomotor activation. The finding that no-go trials attenuates oculomotor priming effects offers a way to reconcile the current findings with previous claims of a dissociation between covert attention and oculomotor control in paradigms that utilise a high proportion of catch trials.

Consistently Showing Your Best Side? Intra-individual Consistency in #Selfie Pose Orientation

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Lindell, Annukka K.

2017-01-01

Painted and photographic portraits of others show an asymmetric bias: people favor their left cheek. Both experimental and database studies confirm that the left cheek bias extends to selfies. To date all such selfie studies have been cross-sectional; whether individual selfie-takers tend to consistently favor the same pose orientation, or switch between multiple poses, remains to be determined. The present study thus examined intra-individual consistency in selfie pose orientations. Two hundred selfie-taking participants (100 male and 100 female) were identified by searching #selfie on Instagram. The most recent 10 single-subject selfies for the each of the participants were selected and coded for type of selfie (normal; mirror) and pose orientation (left, midline, right), resulting in a sample of 2000 selfies. Results indicated that selfie-takers do tend to consistently adopt a preferred pose orientation (α = 0.72), with more participants showing an overall left cheek bias (41%) than would be expected by chance (overall right cheek bias = 31.5%; overall midline bias = 19.5%; no overall bias = 8%). Logistic regression modellng, controlling for the repeated measure of participant identity, indicated that sex did not affect pose orientation. However, selfie type proved a significant predictor when comparing left and right cheek poses, with a stronger left cheek bias for mirror than normal selfies. Overall, these novel findings indicate that selfie-takers show intra-individual consistency in pose orientation, and in addition, replicate the previously reported left cheek bias for selfies and other types of portrait, confirming that the left cheek bias also presents within individuals’ selfie corpora. PMID:28270790

Individual differences in event-based prospective memory: Evidence for multiple processes supporting cue detection.

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Brewer, Gene A; Knight, Justin B; Marsh, Richard L; Unsworth, Nash

2010-04-01

The multiprocess view proposes that different processes can be used to detect event-based prospective memory cues, depending in part on the specificity of the cue. According to this theory, attentional processes are not necessary to detect focal cues, whereas detection of nonfocal cues requires some form of controlled attention. This notion was tested using a design in which we compared performance on a focal and on a nonfocal prospective memory task by participants with high or low working memory capacity. An interaction was found, such that participants with high and low working memory performed equally well on the focal task, whereas the participants with high working memory performed significantly better on the nonfocal task than did their counterparts with low working memory. Thus, controlled attention was only necessary for detecting event-based prospective memory cues in the nonfocal task. These results have implications for theories of prospective memory, the processes necessary for cue detection, and the successful fulfillment of intentions.

Using Retrieval Cues to Attenuate Return of Fear in Individuals With Public Speaking Anxiety.

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Shin, Ki Eun; Newman, Michelle G

2018-03-01

Even after successful exposure, relapse is not uncommon. Based on the retrieval model of fear extinction (e.g., Vervliet, Craske, & Hermans, 2013), return of fear can occur after exposure due to an elapse of time (spontaneous recovery) or change in context (contextual renewal). The use of external salient stimuli presented throughout extinction (i.e., retrieval cues [RCs]) has been suggested as a potential solution to this problem (Bouton, 2002). The current study examined whether RCs attenuated return of fear in individuals with public speaking anxiety. Sixty-five participants completed a brief exposure while presented with two RC stimuli aimed at a variety of senses (visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory). Later, half the participants were tested for return of fear in a context different from the exposure context, and the other half in the same context. Half of each context group were presented with the same cues as in exposure, while the other half were not. Return of fear due to an elapse of time, change in context, and effects of RCs were evaluated on subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures of anxiety. Although contextual renewal was not observed, results supported effects of RCs in reducing spontaneous recovery on behavioral and physiological measures of anxiety. There was also evidence that participants who were reminded of feeling anxious during exposure by the RCs benefited more from using them at follow-up, whereas those who perceived the cues as comforting (safety signals) benefited less. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Individualism-Collectivism and the Role of Goal Orientation in Organizational Training

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Rogers, Altovise; Spitzmueller, Christiane

2009-01-01

This research examines how individualism-collectivism and goal orientation impact training effectiveness through study of an internationally diverse sample of engineers who were undergoing technical training. In light of contemporary views of individualism-collectivism, we argue that collectivism will moderate the influence of learning and…

Coherence of structural visual cues and pictorial gravity paves the way for interceptive actions.

Science.gov (United States)

Zago, Myrka; La Scaleia, Barbara; Miller, William L; Lacquaniti, Francesco

2011-09-20

Dealing with upside-down objects is difficult and takes time. Among the cues that are critical for defining object orientation, the visible influence of gravity on the object's motion has received limited attention. Here, we manipulated the alignment of visible gravity and structural visual cues between each other and relative to the orientation of the observer and physical gravity. Participants pressed a button triggering a hitter to intercept a target accelerated by a virtual gravity. A factorial design assessed the effects of scene orientation (normal or inverted) and target gravity (normal or inverted). We found that interception was significantly more successful when scene direction was concordant with target gravity direction, irrespective of whether both were upright or inverted. This was so independent of the hitter type and when performance feedback to the participants was either available (Experiment 1) or unavailable (Experiment 2). These results show that the combined influence of visible gravity and structural visual cues can outweigh both physical gravity and viewer-centered cues, leading to rely instead on the congruence of the apparent physical forces acting on people and objects in the scene.

The effects of overfeeding on the neuronal response to visual food cues in thin and reduced-obese individuals.

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Marc-Andre Cornier

2009-07-01

Full Text Available The regulation of energy intake is a complex process involving the integration of homeostatic signals and both internal and external sensory inputs. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of short-term overfeeding on the neuronal response to food-related visual stimuli in individuals prone and resistant to weight gain.22 thin and 19 reduced-obese (RO individuals were studied. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI was performed in the fasted state after two days of eucaloric energy intake and after two days of 30% overfeeding in a counterbalanced design. fMRI was performed while subjects viewed images of foods of high hedonic value and neutral non-food objects. In the eucaloric state, food as compared to non-food images elicited significantly greater activation of insula and inferior visual cortex in thin as compared to RO individuals. Two days of overfeeding led to significant attenuation of not only insula and visual cortex responses but also of hypothalamus response in thin as compared to RO individuals.These findings emphasize the important role of food-related visual cues in ingestive behavior and suggest that there are important phenotypic differences in the interactions between external visual sensory inputs, energy balance status, and brain regions involved in the regulation of energy intake. Furthermore, alterations in the neuronal response to food cues may relate to the propensity to gain weight.

Selection within working memory based on a color retro-cue modulates alpha oscillations.

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Poch, Claudia; Capilla, Almudena; Hinojosa, José Antonio; Campo, Pablo

2017-11-01

Working Memory (WM) maintains flexible representations. Retrospective cueing studies indicate that selective attention can be directed to memory representations in WM improving performance. While most of the work has explored the neural substrates of orienting attention based on a spatial retro-cue, behavioral studies show that a feature other than location can also improve WM performance. In the present work we explored the oscillatory underpinnings of orienting attention to a relevant representation held in WM guided by a feature value. We recorded EEG data in a group of 36 healthy human subjects (20 females) performing a WM task in which they had to memorize the orientation of four rectangles of different colors. After a maintenance period, a cue was presented indicating the color of the relevant item. We showed that directing attention to a memory item based on its color resulted in a modulation of posterior alpha activity, which appears as more desynchronization in the contralateral than in the ipsilateral hemisphere. Alpha lateralization is considered a neurophysiological marker of external and internal spatial attention. We propose that current findings support the idea that selection of a memory item based on a non-location feature could be accomplished by a spatial attentional mechanism. Moreover, using a centrally presented color retro-cue allowed us to surpass the confounds inherent to the use of spatial retro-cues, supporting that the observed lateralized alpha results from an endogenous attentional mechanism. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Intelligence as the efficiency of cue-driven retrieval from secondary memory.

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Liesefeld, Heinrich René; Hoffmann, Eugenia; Wentura, Dirk

2016-01-01

Complex-span (working-memory-capacity) tasks are among the most successful predictors of intelligence. One important contributor to this relationship is the ability to efficiently employ cues for the retrieval from secondary memory. Presumably, intelligent individuals can considerably restrict their memory search sets by using such cues and can thereby improve recall performance. We here test this assumption by experimentally manipulating the validity of retrieval cues. When memoranda are drawn from the same semantic category on two successive trials of a verbal complex-span task, the category is a very strong retrieval cue on its first occurrence (strong-cue trial) but loses some of its validity on its second occurrence (weak-cue trial). If intelligent individuals make better use of semantic categories as retrieval cues, their recall accuracy suffers more from this loss of cue validity. Accordingly, our results show that less variance in intelligence is explained by recall accuracy on weak-cue compared with strong-cue trials.

Modeling the Effects of Attentional Cueing on Meditators

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Vugt, Marieke K.; van den Hurk, Paul M.

2016-01-01

Training in meditation has been shown to affect functioning of several attentional subsystems, most prominently conflict monitoring, and to some extent orienting. These previous findings described the effects of cueing and manipulating stimulus congruency on response times and accuracies. However,

Cue combination in a combined feature contrast detection and figure identification task.

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Meinhardt, Günter; Persike, Malte; Mesenholl, Björn; Hagemann, Cordula

2006-11-01

Target figures defined by feature contrast in spatial frequency, orientation or both cues had to be detected in Gabor random fields and their shape had to be identified in a dual task paradigm. Performance improved with increasing feature contrast and was strongly correlated among both tasks. Subjects performed significantly better with combined cues than with single cues. The improvement due to cue summation was stronger than predicted by the assumption of independent feature specific mechanisms, and increased with the performance level achieved with single cues until it was limited by ceiling effects. Further, cue summation was also strongly correlated among tasks: when there was benefit due to the additional cue in feature contrast detection, there was also benefit in figure identification. For the same performance level achieved with single cues, cue summation was generally larger in figure identification than in feature contrast detection, indicating more benefit when processes of shape and surface formation are involved. Our results suggest that cue combination improves spatial form completion and figure-ground segregation in noisy environments, and therefore leads to more stable object vision.

Feature-based attentional modulation of orientation perception in somatosensation

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Meike Annika Schweisfurth

2014-07-01

Full Text Available In a reaction time study of human tactile orientation detection the effects of spatial attention and feature-based attention were investigated. Subjects had to give speeded responses to target orientations (parallel and orthogonal to the finger axis in a random stream of oblique tactile distractor orientations presented to their index and ring fingers. Before each block of trials, subjects received a tactile cue at one finger. By manipulating the validity of this cue with respect to its location and orientation (feature, we provided an incentive to subjects to attend spatially to the cued location and only there to the cued orientation. Subjects showed quicker responses to parallel compared to orthogonal targets, pointing to an orientation anisotropy in sensory processing. Also, faster reaction times were observed in location-matched trials, i.e. when targets appeared on the cued finger, representing a perceptual benefit of spatial attention. Most importantly, reaction times were shorter to orientations matching the cue, both at the cued and at the uncued location, documenting a global enhancement of tactile sensation by feature-based attention. This is the first report of a perceptual benefit of feature-based attention outside the spatial focus of attention in somatosensory perception. The similarity to effects of feature-based attention in visual perception supports the notion of matching attentional mechanisms across sensory domains.

'Goats that stare at men': dwarf goats alter their behaviour in response to human head orientation, but do not spontaneously use head direction as a cue in a food-related context.

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Nawroth, Christian; von Borell, Eberhard; Langbein, Jan

2015-01-01

Recently, comparative research on the mechanisms and species-specific adaptive values of attributing attentive states and using communicative cues has gained increased interest, particularly in non-human primates, birds, and dogs. Here, we investigate these phenomena in a farm animal species, the dwarf goat (Capra aegagrus hircus). In the first experiment, we investigated the effects of different human head and body orientations, as well as human experimenter presence/absence, on the behaviour of goats in a food-anticipating paradigm. Over a 30-s interval, the experimenter engaged in one of four different postures or behaviours (head and body towards the subject-'Control', head to the side, head and body away from the subject, or leaving the room) before delivering a reward. We found that the level of subjects' active anticipatory behaviour was highest in the control condition and decreased with a decreasing level of attention paid to the subject by the experimenter. Additionally, goats 'stared' (i.e. stood alert) at the experimental set-up for significantly more time when the experimenter was present but paid less attention to the subject ('Head' and 'Back' condition) than in the 'Control' and 'Out' conditions. In a second experiment, the experimenter provided different human-given cues that indicated the location of a hidden food reward in a two-way object choice task. Goats were able to use both 'Touch' and 'Point' cues to infer the correct location of the reward but did not perform above the level expected by chance in the 'Head only' condition. We conclude that goats are able to differentiate among different body postures of a human, including head orientation; however, despite their success at using multiple physical human cues, they fail to spontaneously use human head direction as a cue in a food-related context.

Feature-based and object-based attention orientation during short-term memory maintenance.

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Ku, Yixuan

2015-12-01

Top-down attention biases the short-term memory (STM) processing at multiple stages. Orienting attention during the maintenance period of STM by a retrospective cue (retro-cue) strengthens the representation of the cued item and improves the subsequent STM performance. In a recent article, Backer et al. (Backer KC, Binns MA, Alain C. J Neurosci 35: 1307-1318, 2015) extended these findings from the visual to the auditory domain and combined electroencephalography to dissociate neural mechanisms underlying feature-based and object-based attention orientation. Both event-related potentials and neural oscillations explained the behavioral benefits of retro-cues and favored the theory that feature-based and object-based attention orientation were independent. Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society.

The effects of transient attention on spatial resolution and the size of the attentional cue.

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Yeshurun, Yaffa; Carrasco, Marisa

2008-01-01

It has been shown that transient attention enhances spatial resolution, but is the effect of transient attention on spatial resolution modulated by the size of the attentional cue? Would a gradual increase in the size of the cue lead to a gradual decrement in spatial resolution? To test these hypotheses, we used a texture segmentation task in which performance depends on spatial resolution, and systematically manipulated the size of the attentional cue: A bar of different lengths (Experiment 1) or a frame of different sizes (Experiments 2-3) indicated the target region in a texture segmentation display. Observers indicated whether a target patch region (oriented line elements in a background of an orthogonal orientation), appearing at a range of eccentricities, was present in the first or the second interval. We replicated the attentional enhancement of spatial resolution found with small cues; attention improved performance at peripheral locations but impaired performance at central locations. However, there was no evidence of gradual resolution decrement with large cues. Transient attention enhanced spatial resolution at the attended location when it was attracted to that location by a small cue but did not affect resolution when it was attracted by a large cue. These results indicate that transient attention cannot adapt its operation on spatial resolution on the basis of the size of the attentional cue.

Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect.

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Cole, Geoff G; Smith, Daniel T; Atkinson, Mark A

2015-05-01

Theory of mind is said to be possessed by an individual if he or she is able to impute mental states to others. Recently, some authors have demonstrated that such mental state attributions can mediate the "gaze cueing" effect, in which observation of another individual shifts an observer's attention. One question that follows from this work is whether such mental state attributions produce mandatory modulations of gaze cueing. Employing the basic gaze cueing paradigm, together with a technique commonly used to assess mental-state attribution in nonhuman animals, we manipulated whether the gazing agent could see the same thing as the participant (i.e., the target) or had this view obstructed by a physical barrier. We found robust gaze cueing effects, even when the observed agent in the display could not see the same thing as the participant. These results suggest that the attribution of "seeing" does not necessarily modulate the gaze cueing effect.

Individual differences in social comparison : Development of a scale of social comparison orientation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gibbons, FX; Buunk, BP

Development and validation of a measure of individual differences in social comparison orientation (the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure [INCOM]) are described. Assuming that the tendency toward social comparison is universal, the scale was constructed so as to be appropriate to and

A randomised controlled trial evaluating the effect of an individual auditory cueing device on freezing and gait speed in people with Parkinson's disease

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Lynch Deirdre

2008-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder resulting from a degeneration of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra. Clinical symptoms typically affect gait pattern and motor performance. Evidence suggests that the use of individual auditory cueing devices may be used effectively for the management of gait and freezing in people with Parkinson's disease. The primary aim of the randomised controlled trial is to evaluate the effect of an individual auditory cueing device on freezing and gait speed in people with Parkinson's disease. Methods A prospective multi-centre randomised cross over design trial will be conducted. Forty-seven subjects will be randomised into either Group A or Group B, each with a control and intervention phase. Baseline measurements will be recorded using the Freezing of Gait Questionnaire as the primary outcome measure and 3 secondary outcome measures, the 10 m Walk Test, Timed "Up & Go" Test and the Modified Falls Efficacy Scale. Assessments are taken 3-times over a 3-week period. A follow-up assessment will be completed after three months. A secondary aim of the study is to evaluate the impact of such a device on the quality of life of people with Parkinson's disease using a qualitative methodology. Conclusion The Apple iPod-Shuffle™ and similar devices provide a cost effective and an innovative platform for integration of individual auditory cueing devices into clinical, social and home environments and are shown to have immediate effect on gait, with improvements in walking speed, stride length and freezing. It is evident that individual auditory cueing devices are of benefit to people with Parkinson's disease and the aim of this randomised controlled trial is to maximise the benefits by allowing the individual to use devices in both a clinical and social setting, with minimal disruption to their daily routine. Trial registration The protocol for this study is registered

Kin-informative recognition cues in ants

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nehring, Volker; Evison, Sophie E F; Santorelli, Lorenzo A

2011-01-01

behaviour is thought to be rare in one of the classic examples of cooperation--social insect colonies--because the colony-level costs of individual selfishness select against cues that would allow workers to recognize their closest relatives. In accord with this, previous studies of wasps and ants have...... found little or no kin information in recognition cues. Here, we test the hypothesis that social insects do not have kin-informative recognition cues by investigating the recognition cues and relatedness of workers from four colonies of the ant Acromyrmex octospinosus. Contrary to the theoretical...... prediction, we show that the cuticular hydrocarbons of ant workers in all four colonies are informative enough to allow full-sisters to be distinguished from half-sisters with a high accuracy. These results contradict the hypothesis of non-heritable recognition cues and suggest that there is more potential...

Vocal individuality cues in the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus): a source-filter theory approach.

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Favaro, Livio; Gamba, Marco; Alfieri, Chiara; Pessani, Daniela; McElligott, Alan G

2015-11-25

The African penguin is a nesting seabird endemic to southern Africa. In penguins of the genus Spheniscus vocalisations are important for social recognition. However, it is not clear which acoustic features of calls can encode individual identity information. We recorded contact calls and ecstatic display songs of 12 adult birds from a captive colony. For each vocalisation, we measured 31 spectral and temporal acoustic parameters related to both source and filter components of calls. For each parameter, we calculated the Potential of Individual Coding (PIC). The acoustic parameters showing PIC ≥ 1.1 were used to perform a stepwise cross-validated discriminant function analysis (DFA). The DFA correctly classified 66.1% of the contact calls and 62.5% of display songs to the correct individual. The DFA also resulted in the further selection of 10 acoustic features for contact calls and 9 for display songs that were important for vocal individuality. Our results suggest that studying the anatomical constraints that influence nesting penguin vocalisations from a source-filter perspective, can lead to a much better understanding of the acoustic cues of individuality contained in their calls. This approach could be further extended to study and understand vocal communication in other bird species.

Estimating location without external cues.

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Allen Cheung

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The ability to determine one's location is fundamental to spatial navigation. Here, it is shown that localization is theoretically possible without the use of external cues, and without knowledge of initial position or orientation. With only error-prone self-motion estimates as input, a fully disoriented agent can, in principle, determine its location in familiar spaces with 1-fold rotational symmetry. Surprisingly, localization does not require the sensing of any external cue, including the boundary. The combination of self-motion estimates and an internal map of the arena provide enough information for localization. This stands in conflict with the supposition that 2D arenas are analogous to open fields. Using a rodent error model, it is shown that the localization performance which can be achieved is enough to initiate and maintain stable firing patterns like those of grid cells, starting from full disorientation. Successful localization was achieved when the rotational asymmetry was due to the external boundary, an interior barrier or a void space within an arena. Optimal localization performance was found to depend on arena shape, arena size, local and global rotational asymmetry, and the structure of the path taken during localization. Since allothetic cues including visual and boundary contact cues were not present, localization necessarily relied on the fusion of idiothetic self-motion cues and memory of the boundary. Implications for spatial navigation mechanisms are discussed, including possible relationships with place field overdispersion and hippocampal reverse replay. Based on these results, experiments are suggested to identify if and where information fusion occurs in the mammalian spatial memory system.

Perceived Sexual Orientation Based on Vocal and Facial Stimuli Is Linked to Self-Rated Sexual Orientation in Czech Men

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Valentova, Jaroslava Varella; Havlíček, Jan

2013-01-01

Previous research has shown that lay people can accurately assess male sexual orientation based on limited information, such as face, voice, or behavioral display. Gender-atypical traits are thought to serve as cues to sexual orientation. We investigated the presumed mechanisms of sexual orientation attribution using a standardized set of facial and vocal stimuli of Czech men. Both types of stimuli were rated for sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity by non-student heterosexual women and homosexual men. Our data showed that by evaluating vocal stimuli both women and homosexual men can judge sexual orientation of the target men in agreement with their self-reported sexual orientation. Nevertheless, only homosexual men accurately attributed sexual orientation of the two groups from facial images. Interestingly, facial images of homosexual targets were rated as more masculine than heterosexual targets. This indicates that attributions of sexual orientation are affected by stereotyped association between femininity and male homosexuality; however, reliance on such cues can lead to frequent misjudgments as was the case with the female raters. Although our study is based on a community sample recruited in a non-English speaking country, the results are generally consistent with the previous research and thus corroborate the validity of sexual orientation attributions. PMID:24358180

Perceived sexual orientation based on vocal and facial stimuli is linked to self-rated sexual orientation in Czech men.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaroslava Varella Valentova

Full Text Available Previous research has shown that lay people can accurately assess male sexual orientation based on limited information, such as face, voice, or behavioral display. Gender-atypical traits are thought to serve as cues to sexual orientation. We investigated the presumed mechanisms of sexual orientation attribution using a standardized set of facial and vocal stimuli of Czech men. Both types of stimuli were rated for sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity by non-student heterosexual women and homosexual men. Our data showed that by evaluating vocal stimuli both women and homosexual men can judge sexual orientation of the target men in agreement with their self-reported sexual orientation. Nevertheless, only homosexual men accurately attributed sexual orientation of the two groups from facial images. Interestingly, facial images of homosexual targets were rated as more masculine than heterosexual targets. This indicates that attributions of sexual orientation are affected by stereotyped association between femininity and male homosexuality; however, reliance on such cues can lead to frequent misjudgments as was the case with the female raters. Although our study is based on a community sample recruited in a non-English speaking country, the results are generally consistent with the previous research and thus corroborate the validity of sexual orientation attributions.

Heavy drinking, impulsivity and attentional narrowing following alcohol cue exposure.

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Hicks, Joshua A; Fields, Sherecce; Davis, William E; Gable, Philip A

2015-08-01

Research shows that alcohol-related stimuli have the propensity to capture attention among individuals motivated to consume alcohol. Research has further demonstrated that impulsive individuals are especially prone to this type of attentional bias. Recently, it is suggested that alcohol cue exposure can also produce a general narrowing of attention consistent with the activation of approach motivational states. Based on previous models of addiction and recent research on the activation of approach motivational states, we predicted that impulsive individuals would demonstrate a constriction of attentional focus in response to alcohol cue exposure. Participants (n = 392) completed a task assessing attentional breadth in response to alcohol and non-alcohol cues, followed by measures of alcohol use and impulsivity. The findings revealed that impulsivity scores predicted narrowing of attentional scope following the presentation of alcohol cues for heavier drinkers but not for light drinkers. These results suggest that impulsive individuals who drink more heavily demonstrate a narrowing of attention in the presence of alcohol-related incentive cues. Implications for how these findings might account for the link between impulsivity and alcohol use and misuse are discussed.

Orienting attention to locations in mental representations

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Astle, Duncan Edward; Summerfield, Jennifer; Griffin, Ivan; Nobre, Anna Christina

2014-01-01

Many cognitive processes depend on our ability to hold information in mind, often well beyond the offset of the original sensory input. The capacity of this ‘visual short-term memory’ (VSTM) is limited to around three to four items. Recent research has demonstrated that the content of VSTM can be modulated by top-down attentional biases. This has been demonstrated using retrodictive spatial cues, termed ‘retro-cues’, which orient participants’ attention to spatial locations within VSTM. In the current paper, we tested whether the use of these cues is modulated by memory load and cue delay. There are a number of important conclusions: i) top-down biases can operate upon very brief iconic traces as well as older VSTM representations (Experiment 1); ii) when operating within capacity, subjects use the cue to prioritize where they initiate their memory search, rather than to discard un-cued items (Experiments 2 and 3); iii) when capacity is exceeded there is little benefit to top-down biasing relative to a neutral condition, however, unattended items are lost, with there being a substantial cost of invalid spatial cueing (Experiment 3); iv) these costs and benefits of orienting spatial attention differ across iconic memory and VSTM representations when VSTM capacity is exceeded (Experiment 4). PMID:21972046

Integration of polarization and chromatic cues in the insect sky compass.

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el Jundi, Basil; Pfeiffer, Keram; Heinze, Stanley; Homberg, Uwe

2014-06-01

Animals relying on a celestial compass for spatial orientation may use the position of the sun, the chromatic or intensity gradient of the sky, the polarization pattern of the sky, or a combination of these cues as compass signals. Behavioral experiments in bees and ants, indeed, showed that direct sunlight and sky polarization play a role in sky compass orientation, but the relative importance of these cues are species-specific. Intracellular recordings from polarization-sensitive interneurons in the desert locust and monarch butterfly suggest that inputs from different eye regions, including polarized-light input through the dorsal rim area of the eye and chromatic/intensity gradient input from the main eye, are combined at the level of the medulla to create a robust compass signal. Conflicting input from the polarization and chromatic/intensity channel, resulting from eccentric receptive fields, is eliminated at the level of the anterior optic tubercle and central complex through internal compensation for changing solar elevations, which requires input from a circadian clock. Across several species, the central complex likely serves as an internal sky compass, combining E-vector information with other celestial cues. Descending neurons, likewise, respond both to zenithal polarization and to unpolarized cues in an azimuth-dependent way.

Flight calls and orientation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Ole Næsbye; Andersen, Bent Bach; Kropp, Wibke

2008-01-01

flight calls was simulated by sequential computer controlled activation of five loudspeakers placed in a linear array perpendicular to the bird's migration course. The bird responded to this stimulation by changing its migratory course in the direction of that of the ‘flying conspecifics' but after about......  In a pilot experiment a European Robin, Erithacus rubecula, expressing migratory restlessness with a stable orientation, was video filmed in the dark with an infrared camera and its directional migratory activity was recorded. The flight overhead of migrating conspecifics uttering nocturnal...... 30 minutes it drifted back to its original migration course. The results suggest that songbirds migrating alone at night can use the flight calls from conspecifics as additional cues for orientation and that they may compare this information with other cues to decide what course to keep....

Retrospective Cues Based on Object Features Improve Visual Working Memory Performance in Older Adults

OpenAIRE

Gilchrist, Amanda L.; Duarte, Audrey; Verhaeghen, Paul

2015-01-01

Research with younger adults has shown that retrospective cues can be used to orient top-down attention toward relevant items in working memory. We examined whether older adults could take advantage of these cues to improve memory performance. Younger and older adults were presented with visual arrays of five colored shapes; during maintenance, participants were either presented with an informative cue based on an object feature (here, object shape or color) that would be probed, or with an u...

Retrospective cues based on object features improve visual working memory performance in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Gilchrist, Amanda L; Duarte, Audrey; Verhaeghen, Paul

2016-01-01

Research with younger adults has shown that retrospective cues can be used to orient top-down attention toward relevant items in working memory. We examined whether older adults could take advantage of these cues to improve memory performance. Younger and older adults were presented with visual arrays of five colored shapes; during maintenance, participants were presented either with an informative cue based on an object feature (here, object shape or color) that would be probed, or with an uninformative, neutral cue. Although older adults were less accurate overall, both age groups benefited from the presentation of an informative, feature-based cue relative to a neutral cue. Surprisingly, we also observed differences in the effectiveness of shape versus color cues and their effects upon post-cue memory load. These results suggest that older adults can use top-down attention to remove irrelevant items from visual working memory, provided that task-relevant features function as cues.

Default mode network deactivation to smoking cue relative to food cue predicts treatment outcome in nicotine use disorder.

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Wilcox, Claire E; Claus, Eric D; Calhoun, Vince D; Rachakonda, Srinivas; Littlewood, Rae A; Mickey, Jessica; Arenella, Pamela B; Goodreau, Natalie; Hutchison, Kent E

2018-01-01

Identifying predictors of treatment outcome for nicotine use disorders (NUDs) may help improve efficacy of established treatments, like varenicline. Brain reactivity to drug stimuli predicts relapse risk in nicotine and other substance use disorders in some studies. Activity in the default mode network (DMN) is affected by drug cues and other palatable cues, but its clinical significance is unclear. In this study, 143 individuals with NUD (male n = 91, ages 18-55 years) received a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan during a visual cue task during which they were presented with a series of smoking-related or food-related video clips prior to randomization to treatment with varenicline (n = 80) or placebo. Group independent components analysis was utilized to isolate the DMN, and temporal sorting was used to calculate the difference between the DMN blood-oxygen-level dependent signal during smoke cues and that during food cues for each individual. Food cues were associated with greater deactivation compared with smoke cues in the DMN. In correcting for baseline smoking and other clinical variables, which have been shown to be related to treatment outcome in previous work, a less positive Smoke - Food difference score predicted greater smoking at 6 and 12 weeks when both treatment groups were combined (P = 0.005, β = -0.766). An exploratory analysis of executive control and salience networks demonstrated that a more positive Smoke - Food difference score for executive control network predicted a more robust response to varenicline relative to placebo. These findings provide further support to theories that brain reactivity to palatable cues, and in particular in DMN, may have a direct clinical relevance in NUD. © 2017 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Social Values Priorities and Orientation towards Individualism and Collectivism of Greek University Students

Science.gov (United States)

Papastylianou, Dona; Lampridis, Efthymios

2016-01-01

The study aimed to explore the value priorities of Greek young adults and their orientation towards individualism and collectivism and to investigate for possible relationships between value types and individualism and collectivism. Greek undergraduate students (n = 484) completed the Social Values Survey, the Auckland's Individualism and…

Moderation of Nicotine Effects on Covert Orienting of Attention Tasks by Poor Placebo Performance and Cue Validity

Science.gov (United States)

Gilbert, David G.; Rzetelny, Adam; Rabinovich, Norka E.

2016-01-01

Introduction and Rationale Given baseline-dependent effects of nicotine on other forms of attention, there is reason to believe that inconsistent findings for the effects of nicotine on attentional orienting may be partly due to individual differences in baseline (abstinence state) functioning. Individuals with low baseline attention may benefit more from nicotine replacement. Method The effects of nicotine as a function of baseline performance (bottom, middle, and top third of mean reaction times during placebo) were assessed in 52 habitual abstinent smokers (26 females/26 males) utilizing an arrow-cued covert orienting of attention task. Results Compared to a placebo patch, a 14 mg nicotine patch produced faster overall reaction times (RTs). In addition, individuals with slower RTs during the placebo condition benefitted more from nicotine on cued trials than did those who had shorter (faster) RTs during placebo. Nicotine also enhanced the validity effect (shorter RTs to validly vs. invalidly cued targets), but this nicotine benefit did not differ as a function of overall placebo-baseline performance. Conclusions These findings support the view that nicotine enhances cued spatial attentional orienting in individuals who have slower RTs during placebo (nicotine-free) conditions; however, baseline-dependent effects may not generalize to all aspects of spatial attention. These findings are consistent with findings indicating that nicotine’s effects vary as a function of task parameters rather than simple RT speeding or cognitive enhancement. PMID:27461547

Visual-vestibular cue integration for heading perception: applications of optimal cue integration theory.

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Fetsch, Christopher R; Deangelis, Gregory C; Angelaki, Dora E

2010-05-01

The perception of self-motion is crucial for navigation, spatial orientation and motor control. In particular, estimation of one's direction of translation, or heading, relies heavily on multisensory integration in most natural situations. Visual and nonvisual (e.g., vestibular) information can be used to judge heading, but each modality alone is often insufficient for accurate performance. It is not surprising, then, that visual and vestibular signals converge frequently in the nervous system, and that these signals interact in powerful ways at the level of behavior and perception. Early behavioral studies of visual-vestibular interactions consisted mainly of descriptive accounts of perceptual illusions and qualitative estimation tasks, often with conflicting results. In contrast, cue integration research in other modalities has benefited from the application of rigorous psychophysical techniques, guided by normative models that rest on the foundation of ideal-observer analysis and Bayesian decision theory. Here we review recent experiments that have attempted to harness these so-called optimal cue integration models for the study of self-motion perception. Some of these studies used nonhuman primate subjects, enabling direct comparisons between behavioral performance and simultaneously recorded neuronal activity. The results indicate that humans and monkeys can integrate visual and vestibular heading cues in a manner consistent with optimal integration theory, and that single neurons in the dorsal medial superior temporal area show striking correlates of the behavioral effects. This line of research and other applications of normative cue combination models should continue to shed light on mechanisms of self-motion perception and the neuronal basis of multisensory integration.

Improving visual spatial working memory in younger and older adults: effects of cross-modal cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Curtis, Ashley F; Turner, Gary R; Park, Norman W; Murtha, Susan J E

2017-11-06

Spatially informative auditory and vibrotactile (cross-modal) cues can facilitate attention but little is known about how similar cues influence visual spatial working memory (WM) across the adult lifespan. We investigated the effects of cues (spatially informative or alerting pre-cues vs. no cues), cue modality (auditory vs. vibrotactile vs. visual), memory array size (four vs. six items), and maintenance delay (900 vs. 1800 ms) on visual spatial location WM recognition accuracy in younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA). We observed a significant interaction between spatially informative pre-cue type, array size, and delay. OA and YA benefitted equally from spatially informative pre-cues, suggesting that attentional orienting prior to WM encoding, regardless of cue modality, is preserved with age.  Contrary to predictions, alerting pre-cues generally impaired performance in both age groups, suggesting that maintaining a vigilant state of arousal by facilitating the alerting attention system does not help visual spatial location WM.

Teamwork orientation and personal learning: The role of individual cultural values and value congruence

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Ghulam Mustafa

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Orientation: There is a growing body of research that indicates that personal factors such as collectivist value orientation play an important role in individuals’ preference for teamwork, and an individual’s propensity to work in a team is seen as a contributing factor in one’s personal learning. Research purpose: The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, the article aims to explore whether individual-level cultural values of power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity–femininity interact with individual collectivist values to influence teamwork orientation. Secondly, the study aims to examine the influence of teamwork orientation on personal learning further exploring the role of perceived value congruence in this relationship. Motivation for the study: While an extensive amount of research has been conducted on teamwork orientation, the question of how individual cultural values influence formation of teamwork orientation is still largely unanswered. This lack is especially evident with regard to how the influence of collectivism on the development of positive attitudes towards teamwork is promoted or inhibited by other values such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity–femininity. Moreover, the current evidence about the influence of teamwork orientation on personal learning and the role of personal and contextual factors in such a relationship is still scarce. Research design, approach and method: The study used a cross-sectional survey, with data collected from 120 business students engaged in project teams at a Norwegian university. All the hypothesised relationships were assessed using partial least square structural equation modelling technique. Main findings: The findings indicate that the link between collectivism–teamwork orientation is stronger for team members who scored high on uncertainty avoidance values and the relationship was weaker for team members who endorsed high

Neural basis of uncertain cue processing in trait anxiety.

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Zhang, Meng; Ma, Chao; Luo, Yanyan; Li, Ji; Li, Qingwei; Liu, Yijun; Ding, Cody; Qiu, Jiang

2016-02-19

Individuals with high trait anxiety form a non-clinical group with a predisposition for an anxiety-related bias in emotional and cognitive processing that is considered by some to be a prerequisite for psychiatric disorders. Anxious individuals tend to experience more worry under uncertainty, and processing uncertain information is an important, but often overlooked factor in anxiety. So, we decided to explore the brain correlates of processing uncertain information in individuals with high trait anxiety using the learn-test paradigm. Behaviorally, the percentages on memory test and the likelihood ratios of identifying novel stimuli under uncertainty were similar to the certain fear condition, but different from the certain neutral condition. The brain results showed that the visual cortex, bilateral fusiform gyrus, and right parahippocampal gyrus were active during the processing of uncertain cues. Moreover, we found that trait anxiety was positively correlated with the BOLD signal of the right parahippocampal gyrus during the processing of uncertain cues. No significant results were found in the amygdala during uncertain cue processing. These results suggest that memory retrieval is associated with uncertain cue processing, which is underpinned by over-activation of the right parahippocampal gyrus, in individuals with high trait anxiety.

A configural dominant account of contextual cueing: Configural cues are stronger than colour cues.

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Kunar, Melina A; John, Rebecca; Sweetman, Hollie

2014-01-01

Previous work has shown that reaction times to find a target in displays that have been repeated are faster than those for displays that have never been seen before. This learning effect, termed "contextual cueing" (CC), has been shown using contexts such as the configuration of the distractors in the display and the background colour. However, it is not clear how these two contexts interact to facilitate search. We investigated this here by comparing the strengths of these two cues when they appeared together. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distractor configural cues, compared with when the target was only predicted by configural information. The results showed that the addition of a colour cue did not increase contextual cueing. In Experiment 2, participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distractor configuration compared with when the target was only cued by colour. The results showed that adding a predictive configural cue led to a stronger CC benefit. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the disruptive effects of removing either a learned colour cue or a learned configural cue and whether there was cue competition when colour and configural cues were presented together. Removing the configural cue was more disruptive to CC than removing colour, and configural learning was shown to overshadow the learning of colour cues. The data support a configural dominant account of CC, where configural cues act as the stronger cue in comparison to colour when they are presented together.

Conspecific and Heterospecific Cues Override Resource Quality to Influence Offspring Production

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Miller, Christine W.; Fletcher, Robert J.; Gillespie, Stephanie R.

2013-01-01

Animals live in an uncertain world. To reduce uncertainty, animals use cues that can encode diverse information regarding habitat quality, including both non-social and social cues. While it is increasingly appreciated that the sources of potential information are vast, our understanding of how individuals integrate different types of cues to guide decision-making remains limited. We experimentally manipulated both resource quality (presence/absence of cactus fruit) and social cues (conspecific juveniles, heterospecific juveniles, no juveniles) for a cactus-feeding insect, Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae), to ask how individuals responded to resource quality in the presence or absence of social cues. Cactus with fruit is a high-quality environment for juvenile development, and indeed we found that females laid 56% more eggs when cactus fruit was present versus when it was absent. However, when conspecific or heterospecific juveniles were present, the effects of resource quality on egg numbers vanished. Overall, N . femorata laid approximately twice as many eggs in the presence of heterospecifics than alone or in the presence of conspecifics. Our results suggest that the presence of both conspecific and heterospecific social cues can disrupt responses of individuals to environmental gradients in resource quality. PMID:23861984

Biological Motion Cues Trigger Reflexive Attentional Orienting

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Shi, Jinfu; Weng, Xuchu; He, Sheng; Jiang, Yi

2010-01-01

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to biological signals around us. In the current study, we demonstrate that biological motion walking direction can induce robust reflexive attentional orienting. Following a brief presentation of a central point-light walker walking towards either the left or right direction, observers' performance…

Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

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Charlotte Elisabeth Wittekind

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST, a large number of studies demonstrated attentional biases in individuals with PTSD across different types of trauma. However, the specificity and robustness of the emotional Stroop effect in PTSD were questioned recently. In particular, the paradigm cannot disentangle underlying cognitive mechanisms. Transgenerational studies provide evidence that consequences of trauma are not limited to the traumatized people, but extend to close relatives, especially the children. To further investigate attentional biases in PTSD and to shed light on the underlying cognitive mechanism(s, a spatial-cueing paradigm with pictures of different emotional valence (neutral, anxiety, depression, trauma was administered to individuals displaced as children during World War II with (n = 22 and without PTSD (n = 26 as well as to nontraumatized controls (n = 22. To assess whether parental PTSD is associated with biased information processing in children, each one adult offspring was also included in the study. PTSD was not associated with attentional biases for trauma-related stimuli. There was no evidence for a transgenerational transmission of biased information processing. However, when samples were regrouped based on current depression, a reduced inhibition of return (IOR effect emerged for depression-related cues. IOR refers to the phenomenon that with longer intervals between cue and target the validity effect is reversed: uncued locations are associated with shorter and cued locations with longer RTs. The results diverge from EST studies and demonstrate that findings on attentional biases yield equivocal results across different paradigms. Attentional biases for trauma-related material may only appear for verbal but not for visual stimuli in an elderly population with childhood trauma with PTSD. Future studies should more closely investigate whether findings from younger trauma populations also manifest in older

Overgeneral past and future thinking in dysphoria: the role of emotional cues and cueing methodology.

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Anderson, Rachel J; Boland, Jennifer; Garner, Sarah R

2016-01-01

Overgeneral memory, where individuals exhibit difficulties in retrieving specific episodes from autobiographical memory, has been consistently linked with emotional disorders. However, the majority of this literature has relied upon a single methodology, in which participants respond to emotional cue words with explicit instructions to retrieve/simulate specific events. Through the use of sentence completion tasks the current studies explored whether overgenerality represents a habitual pattern of thinking that extends to how individuals naturally consider their personal past and future life story. In both studies, when compared with controls, dysphoric individuals evidenced overgeneral thinking style with respect to their personal past. However, overgeneral future thinking was only evident when the sentence stems included emotional words. These findings highlight the importance of investigating the overgenerality phenomenon using a variety of cueing techniques and results are discussed with reference to the previous literature exploring overgenerality and cognitive models of depression.

Heads First: Visual Aftereffects Reveal Hierarchical Integration of Cues to Social Attention.

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Sarah Cooney

Full Text Available Determining where another person is attending is an important skill for social interaction that relies on various visual cues, including the turning direction of the head and body. This study reports a novel high-level visual aftereffect that addresses the important question of how these sources of information are combined in gauging social attention. We show that adapting to images of heads turned 25° to the right or left produces a perceptual bias in judging the turning direction of subsequently presented bodies. In contrast, little to no change in the judgment of head orientation occurs after adapting to extremely oriented bodies. The unidirectional nature of the aftereffect suggests that cues from the human body signaling social attention are combined in a hierarchical fashion and is consistent with evidence from single-cell recording studies in nonhuman primates showing that information about head orientation can override information about body posture when both are visible.

The Study of Object-Oriented Motor Imagery Based on EEG Suppression.

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Lili Li

Full Text Available Motor imagery is a conventional method for brain computer interface and motor learning. To avoid the great individual difference of the motor imagery ability, object-oriented motor imagery was applied, and the effects were studied. Kinesthetic motor imagery and visual observation were administered to 15 healthy volunteers. The EEG during cue-based simple imagery (SI, object-oriented motor imagery (OI, non-object-oriented motor imagery (NI and visual observation (VO was recorded. Study results showed that OI and NI presented significant contralateral suppression in mu rhythm (p 0.05. Compared with NI, OI showed significant difference (p < 0.05 in mu rhythm and weak significant difference (p = 0.0612 in beta rhythm over the contralateral hemisphere. The ability of motor imagery can be reflected by the suppression degree of mu and beta frequencies which are the motor related rhythms. Thus, greater enhancement of activation in mirror neuron system is involved in response to object-oriented motor imagery. The object-oriented motor imagery is favorable for improvement of motor imagery ability.

Monetary rewards influence retrieval orientations.

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Halsband, Teresa M; Ferdinand, Nicola K; Bridger, Emma K; Mecklinger, Axel

2012-09-01

Reward anticipation during learning is known to support memory formation, but its role in retrieval processes is so far unclear. Retrieval orientations, as a reflection of controlled retrieval processing, are one aspect of retrieval that might be modulated by reward. These processes can be measured using the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by retrieval cues from tasks with different retrieval requirements, such as via changes in the class of targeted memory information. To determine whether retrieval orientations of this kind are modulated by reward during learning, we investigated the effects of high and low reward expectancy on the ERP correlates of retrieval orientation in two separate experiments. The reward manipulation at study in Experiment 1 was associated with later memory performance, whereas in Experiment 2, reward was directly linked to accuracy in the study task. In both studies, the participants encoded mixed lists of pictures and words preceded by high- or low-reward cues. After 24 h, they performed a recognition memory exclusion task, with words as the test items. In addition to a previously reported material-specific effect of retrieval orientation, a frontally distributed, reward-associated retrieval orientation effect was found in both experiments. These findings suggest that reward motivation during learning leads to the adoption of a reward-associated retrieval orientation to support the retrieval of highly motivational information. Thus, ERP retrieval orientation effects not only reflect retrieval processes related to the sought-for materials, but also relate to the reward conditions with which items were combined during encoding.

When the body reveals the mind: Children's use of others' body orientation to understand their focus of attention.

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Paulus, Markus; Murillo, Esther; Sodian, Beate

2016-08-01

A considerable amount of research has examined children's ability to rely on explicit social cues such as pointing to understand others' referential intentions. Yet, skillful social interaction also requires reliance on and learning from implicit cues (i.e., cues that are not displayed with the explicit intention to teach or inform someone). From an embodied point of view, orienting movements and body orientation are salient cues that reveal something about a person's intentional relations without being explicit communicative cues. In three experiments, the current study investigated the development of the ability to use body information in a word learning situation. To this end, we presented 2-year-old children, 3.5-year-old children, and adults with movies on an eye-tracking screen in which an actor oriented her upper body to one of two objects while uttering a novel word. The results show that the 3.5-year-old children and adults, but not the 2-year-old children, related the novel word to the referred object (Experiments 1 and 2). Yet, when the actor oriented her body to one object while pointing to the other object, children of both age groups relied on the pointing cue (Experiment 3). This suggests that by 3.5 years children use another's body orientation as an indicator of her intentional relations but that they prioritize explicit social cues over the implicit body posture cues. Overall, the study supports theoretical views that an appreciation of others' intentional relations does not emerge as an all-or-nothing ability but rather emerges gradually during the course of early development. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cues of fatigue: effects of sleep deprivation on facial appearance.

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Sundelin, Tina; Lekander, Mats; Kecklund, Göran; Van Someren, Eus J W; Olsson, Andreas; Axelsson, John

2013-09-01

To investigate the facial cues by which one recognizes that someone is sleep deprived versus not sleep deprived. Experimental laboratory study. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Forty observers (20 women, mean age 25 ± 5 y) rated 20 facial photographs with respect to fatigue, 10 facial cues, and sadness. The stimulus material consisted of 10 individuals (five women) photographed at 14:30 after normal sleep and after 31 h of sleep deprivation following a night with 5 h of sleep. Ratings of fatigue, fatigue-related cues, and sadness in facial photographs. The faces of sleep deprived individuals were perceived as having more hanging eyelids, redder eyes, more swollen eyes, darker circles under the eyes, paler skin, more wrinkles/fine lines, and more droopy corners of the mouth (effects ranging from b = +3 ± 1 to b = +15 ± 1 mm on 100-mm visual analog scales, P sleep deprivation (P sleep deprivation, nor associated with judgements of fatigue. In addition, sleep-deprived individuals looked sadder than after normal sleep, and sadness was related to looking fatigued (P sleep deprivation affects features relating to the eyes, mouth, and skin, and that these features function as cues of sleep loss to other people. Because these facial regions are important in the communication between humans, facial cues of sleep deprivation and fatigue may carry social consequences for the sleep deprived individual in everyday life.

Spatial attention triggered by unimodal, crossmodal, and bimodal exogenous cues: a comparison of reflexive orienting mechanisms

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Santangelo, Valerio; van der Lubbe, Robert Henricus Johannes; Belardinelli, Marta Olivetti; Postma, Albert

The aim of this study was to establish whether spatial attention triggered by bimodal exogenous cues acts differently as compared to unimodal and crossmodal exogenous cues due to crossmodal integration. In order to investigate this issue, we examined cuing effects in discrimination tasks and

Effects of augmented proprioceptive cues on the parameters of gait of individuals with Parkinson′s disease

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Mohamed S El-Tamawy

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Context : Impairment of initiating sequential movements and processing of proprioception contribute to characteristic Parkinson′s disease (PD gait abnormalities. Many studies have used a single external cue or 2 different cues to correct PD gait. Aim: An aim of this study was to determine the influence of paired proprioceptive cues on gait parameters of individuals with PD. Setting and Design: Double-blind randomized controlled trial. Materials and Methods: Subjects were 30 PD patients who had mild to moderate impairment according to the United Parkinson′s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS. They were randomly assigned to either a routine physiotherapy program or treadmill training with vibratory stimuli applied to the feet plantar surfaces and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF as well as the same physiotherapy program. All Participants received a 45-minutes session of low intensity physiotherapy program, 3 times a week, for 8 weeks. The duration of treadmill training was 5 minutes at baseline and 25 minutes at the end of treatment. Walking speed and distance were recorded from the treadmill control panel for both groups before and immediately after the end of treatment. The Qualysis ProReflex motion analysis system was used to measure cadence, stride length, hip, knee, and ankle joints′ angular excursion. Results: The cadence, stride length, and lower limb joints′ angular excursion showed a significant improvement in both groups (P ≤ 0.05. These improvements in spatio-temporal parameters and angular excursion were higher in the study group than in the control group (P ≤ 0.05. Conclusion: Potentiated proprioceptive feedback improves parkinsonian gait kinematics, the hip, knee, and ankle joints′ angular excursion.

The interaction of cognitive load and attention-directing cues in driving.

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Lee, Yi-Ching; Lee, John D; Boyle, Linda Ng

2009-06-01

This study investigated the effect of a nondriving cognitively loading task on the relationship between drivers' endogenous and exogenous control of attention. Previous studies have shown that cognitive load leads to a withdrawal of attention from the forward scene and a narrowed field of view, which impairs hazard detection. Posner's cue-target paradigm was modified to study how endogenous and exogenous cues interact with cognitive load to influence drivers' attention in a complex dynamic situation. In a driving simulator, pedestrian crossing signs that predicted the spatial location of pedestrians acted as endogenous cues. To impose cognitive load on drivers, we had them perform an auditory task that simulated the demands of emerging in-vehicle technology. Irrelevant exogenous cues were added to half of the experimental drives by including scene clutter. The validity of endogenous cues influenced how drivers scanned for pedestrian targets. Cognitive load delayed drivers' responses, and scene clutter reduced drivers' fixation durations to pedestrians. Cognitive load diminished the influence of exogenous cues to attract attention to irrelevant areas, and drivers were more affected by scene clutter when the endogenous cues were invalid. Cognitive load suppresses interference from irrelevant exogenous cues and delays endogenous orienting of attention in driving. The complexity of everyday tasks, such as driving, is better captured experimentally in paradigms that represent the interactive nature of attention and processing load.

Evolution of orientations and deformation structures within individual grains in cold rolled columnar grained nickel

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wu, G.L.; Godfrey, A.; Winther, Grethe

2011-01-01

Columnar grained Ni is used as a model material allowing simultaneous non-surface investigations of the evolution of crystallographic orientations and deformation microstructures within individual grains as a function of rolling strain up to ε=0.7. Electron channelling contrast and electron...... backscattered diffraction are used to visualise microstructures and crystallographic orientations. It is found that both the microstructural and the textural development depend strongly on the initial grain orientation. A grain size effect is observed on the deformation-induced orientation scatter within...

Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition

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Jesse, A.; McQueen, J.M.

2014-01-01

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes

Reacting to Neighborhood Cues?

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Danckert, Bolette; Dinesen, Peter Thisted; Sønderskov, Kim Mannemar

2017-01-01

is founded on politically sophisticated individuals having a greater comprehension of news and other mass-mediated sources, which makes them less likely to rely on neighborhood cues as sources of information relevant for political attitudes. Based on a unique panel data set with fine-grained information...

Matching cue size and task properties in exogenous attention.

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Burnett, Katherine E; d'Avossa, Giovanni; Sapir, Ayelet

2013-01-01

Exogenous attention is an involuntary, reflexive orienting response that results in enhanced processing at the attended location. The standard view is that this enhancement generalizes across visual properties of a stimulus. We test whether the size of an exogenous cue sets the attentional field and whether this leads to different effects on stimuli with different visual properties. In a dual task with a random-dot kinematogram (RDK) in each quadrant of the screen, participants discriminated the direction of moving dots in one RDK and localized one red dot. Precues were uninformative and consisted of either a large or a small luminance-change frame. The motion discrimination task showed attentional effects following both large and small exogenous cues. The red dot probe localization task showed attentional effects following a small cue, but not a large cue. Two additional experiments showed that the different effects on localization were not due to reduced spatial uncertainty or suppression of RDK dots in the surround. These results indicate that the effects of exogenous attention depend on the size of the cue and the properties of the task, suggesting the involvement of receptive fields with different sizes in different tasks. These attentional effects are likely to be driven by bottom-up mechanisms in early visual areas.

Context Modulates Congruency Effects in Selective Attention to Social Cues

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Andrea Ravagli

2018-06-01

Full Text Available Head and gaze directions are used during social interactions as essential cues to infer where someone attends. When head and gaze are oriented toward opposite directions, we need to extract socially meaningful information despite stimulus conflict. Recently, a cognitive and neural mechanism for filtering-out conflicting stimuli has been identified while performing non-social attention tasks. This mechanism is engaged proactively when conflict is anticipated in a high proportion of trials and reactively when conflict occurs infrequently. Here, we investigated whether a similar mechanism is at play for limiting distraction from conflicting social cues during gaze or head direction discrimination tasks in contexts with different probabilities of conflict. Results showed that, for the gaze direction task only (Experiment 1, inverse efficiency (IE scores for distractor-absent trials (i.e., faces with averted gaze and centrally oriented head were larger (indicating worse performance when these trials were intermixed with congruent/incongruent distractor-present trials (i.e., faces with averted gaze and tilted head in the same/opposite direction relative to when the same distractor-absent trials were shown in isolation. Moreover, on distractor-present trials, IE scores for congruent (vs. incongruent head-gaze pairs in blocks with rare conflict were larger than in blocks with frequent conflict, suggesting that adaptation to conflict was more efficient than adaptation to infrequent events. However, when the task required discrimination of head orientation while ignoring gaze direction, performance was not impacted by both block-level and current trial congruency (Experiment 2, unless the cognitive load of the task was increased by adding a concurrent task (Experiment 3. Overall, our study demonstrates that during attention to social cues proactive cognitive control mechanisms are modulated by the expectation of conflicting stimulus information at both

Geometric Cues, Reference Frames, and the Equivalence of Experienced-Aligned and Novel-Aligned Views in Human Spatial Memory

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Kelly, Jonathan W.; Sjolund, Lori A.; Sturz, Bradley R.

2013-01-01

Spatial memories are often organized around reference frames, and environmental shape provides a salient cue to reference frame selection. To date, however, the environmental cues responsible for influencing reference frame selection remain relatively unknown. To connect research on reference frame selection with that on orientation via…

Molecular orientation of individual LCP particles in injection-moulded PPS/LCP blends

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Kestenbach H.-J.

2003-01-01

Full Text Available Polarized light microscopy was used to investigate the presence of preferred molecular orientation in the LCP phase of PPS/LCP blends after injection moulding. Normal birefringence effects appeared to be complicated by artifacts due to sample preparation and by the complex nature of polarized light transmission through a multicomponent sample. It was found, however, that, during low-temperature cutting of optically transparent thin sections on a standard microtome, individual LCP particles could be separated from the PPS matrix, and their birefringence analyzed separately. Preferred orientation was detected only in LCP fibrils which dominated in skin regions, but not in droplet-shaped particles which had formed in core regions. Quantitative measurements indicated that the molecular orientation of the fibrils increased linearly with their length-to-diameter aspect ratios which ranged from 15 to 50. Even for the highest aspect ratios, however, the degree of orientation was always less than that which could easily be introduced into pure LCP thin-film samples by manual shearing.

ERP evidence for selective drop in attentional costs in uncertain environments: challenging a purely premotor account of covert orienting of attention.

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Lasaponara, Stefano; Chica, Ana B; Lecce, Francesca; Lupianez, Juan; Doricchi, Fabrizio

2011-07-01

Several studies have proved that the reliability of endogenous spatial cues linearly modulates the reaction time advantage in the processing of targets at validly cued vs. invalidly cued locations, i.e. the "validity effect". This would imply that with non-predictive cues, no "validity effect" should be observed. However, contrary to this prediction, one could hypothesize that attentional benefits by valid cuing (i.e. the RT advantage for validly vs. neutrally cued targets) can still be maintained with non-predictive cues, if the brain were endowed with mechanisms allowing the selective reduction in costs of reorienting from invalidly cued locations (i.e. the reduction of the RT disadvantage for invalidly vs. neutrally cued targets). This separated modulation of attentional benefits and costs would be adaptive in uncertain contexts where cues predict at chance level the location of targets. Through the joint recording of manual reaction times and event-related cerebral potentials (ERPs), we have found that this is the case and that relying on non-predictive endogenous cues results in abatement of attentional costs and the difference in the amplitude of the P1 brain responses evoked by invalidly vs. neutrally cued targets. In contrast, the use of non-predictive cues leaves unaffected attentional benefits and the difference in the amplitude of the N1 responses evoked by validly vs. neutrally cued targets. At the individual level, the drop in costs with non-predictive cues was matched with equivalent lateral biases in RTs to neutrally and invalidly cued targets presented in the left and right visual field. During the cue period, the drop in costs with non-predictive cues was preceded by reduction of the Early Directing Attention Negativity (EDAN) on posterior occipital sites and by enhancement of the frontal Anterior Directing Attention Negativity (ADAN) correlated to preparatory voluntary orienting. These findings demonstrate, for the first time, that the segregation

Brain activation to cocaine cues and motivation/treatment status.

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Prisciandaro, James J; McRae-Clark, Aimee L; Myrick, Hugh; Henderson, Scott; Brady, Kathleen T

2014-03-01

Motivation to change is believed to be a key factor in therapeutic success in substance use disorders; however, the neurobiological mechanisms through which motivation to change impacts decreased substance use remain unclear. Existing research is conflicting, with some investigations supporting decreased and others reporting increased frontal activation to drug cues in individuals seeking treatment for substance use disorders. The present study investigated the relationship between motivation to change cocaine use and cue-elicited brain activity in cocaine-dependent individuals using two conceptualizations of 'motivation to change': (1) current treatment status (i.e. currently receiving versus not receiving outpatient treatment for cocaine dependence) and (2) self-reported motivation to change substance use, using the Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale. Thirty-eight cocaine-dependent individuals (14 currently in treatment) completed a diagnostic assessment and an fMRI cocaine cue-reactivity task. Whole-brain analyses demonstrated that both treatment-seeking and motivated participants had lower activation to cocaine cues in a wide variety of brain regions in the frontal, occipital, temporal and cingulate cortices relative to non-treatment-seeking and less motivated participants. Future research is needed to explain the mechanism by which treatment and/or motivation impacts neural cue reactivity, as such work could potentially aid in the development of more effective therapeutic techniques for substance-dependent patients. © 2012 The Authors, Addiction Biology © 2012 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Patterns of prospective memory impairment among individuals with depression: the influence of cue type and delay interval.

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Li, Yanqi Ryan; Weinborn, Michael; Loft, Shayne; Maybery, Murray

2013-07-01

The present study investigated the impact of cue type and delay interval on prospective memory performance in depressed, compared to non-depressed, individuals using a clinically relevant measure, the Memory for Intentions Screening Test. The depressed group demonstrated impaired performance on time-based, but not event-based, prospective memory tasks relative to the nondepressed group. The depressed group also demonstrated impaired prospective memory on tasks with longer delay intervals (15 min), but not on tasks with shorter delay intervals (2 min). These data support theoretical frameworks that posit that depression is associated with deficits in cognitive initiative (i.e., reduced ability to voluntarily direct attention to relevant tasks) and thus that depressed individuals are susceptible to poor performance on strategically demanding tasks. The results also raise multiple avenues for developing interventions (e.g., implementation intentions) to improve prospective memory performance among individuals with depression, with potential implications for medication and other treatment adherence.

Role of Speaker Cues in Attention Inference

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Jin Joo Lee

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Current state-of-the-art approaches to emotion recognition primarily focus on modeling the nonverbal expressions of the sole individual without reference to contextual elements such as the co-presence of the partner. In this paper, we demonstrate that the accurate inference of listeners’ social-emotional state of attention depends on accounting for the nonverbal behaviors of their storytelling partner, namely their speaker cues. To gain a deeper understanding of the role of speaker cues in attention inference, we conduct investigations into real-world interactions of children (5–6 years old storytelling with their peers. Through in-depth analysis of human–human interaction data, we first identify nonverbal speaker cues (i.e., backchannel-inviting cues and listener responses (i.e., backchannel feedback. We then demonstrate how speaker cues can modify the interpretation of attention-related backchannels as well as serve as a means to regulate the responsiveness of listeners. We discuss the design implications of our findings toward our primary goal of developing attention recognition models for storytelling robots, and we argue that social robots can proactively use speaker cues to form more accurate inferences about the attentive state of their human partners.

Individual Differences in the Attribution of Incentive Salience to a Pavlovian Alcohol Cue

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Villaruel, Franz R.; Chaudhri, Nadia

2016-01-01

Individual differences exist in the attribution of incentive salience to conditioned stimuli associated with food. Here, we investigated whether individual differences also manifested with a Pavlovian alcohol conditioned stimulus (CS). We compiled data from five experiments that used a Pavlovian autoshaping paradigm and tests of conditioned reinforcement. In all experiments, male, Long-Evans rats with unrestricted access to food and water were acclimated to 15% ethanol. Next, rats received Pavlovian autoshaping training, in which a 10 s presentation of a retractable lever served as the CS and 0.2 mL of 15% ethanol served as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Finally, rats underwent conditioned reinforcement tests in which nose-pokes to an active aperture led to brief presentations of the lever-CS, but nose-pokes to an inactive aperture had no consequence. Rats were categorized as sign-trackers, goal-trackers and intermediates based on a response bias score that reflected their tendencies to sign-track or goal-track at different times during training. We found that distinct groups of rats either consistently interacted with the lever-CS (“sign-trackers”) or routinely approached the port during the lever-CS (“goal-trackers”) across a majority of the training sessions. However, some individuals (“shifted sign-trackers”) with an early tendency to goal-track later shifted to comparable asymptotic levels of sign-tracking as the group identified as sign-trackers. The lever-CS functioned as a conditioned reinforcer for sign-trackers and shifted sign-trackers, but not for goal-trackers. These results provide evidence of robust individual differences in the extent to which a Pavlovian alcohol cue gains incentive salience and functions as a conditioned reinforcer. PMID:28082877

Individual Differences in the Attribution of Incentive Salience to a Pavlovian Alcohol Cue.

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Villaruel, Franz R; Chaudhri, Nadia

2016-01-01

Individual differences exist in the attribution of incentive salience to conditioned stimuli associated with food. Here, we investigated whether individual differences also manifested with a Pavlovian alcohol conditioned stimulus (CS). We compiled data from five experiments that used a Pavlovian autoshaping paradigm and tests of conditioned reinforcement. In all experiments, male, Long-Evans rats with unrestricted access to food and water were acclimated to 15% ethanol. Next, rats received Pavlovian autoshaping training, in which a 10 s presentation of a retractable lever served as the CS and 0.2 mL of 15% ethanol served as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Finally, rats underwent conditioned reinforcement tests in which nose-pokes to an active aperture led to brief presentations of the lever-CS, but nose-pokes to an inactive aperture had no consequence. Rats were categorized as sign-trackers, goal-trackers and intermediates based on a response bias score that reflected their tendencies to sign-track or goal-track at different times during training. We found that distinct groups of rats either consistently interacted with the lever-CS ("sign-trackers") or routinely approached the port during the lever-CS ("goal-trackers") across a majority of the training sessions. However, some individuals ("shifted sign-trackers") with an early tendency to goal-track later shifted to comparable asymptotic levels of sign-tracking as the group identified as sign-trackers. The lever-CS functioned as a conditioned reinforcer for sign-trackers and shifted sign-trackers, but not for goal-trackers. These results provide evidence of robust individual differences in the extent to which a Pavlovian alcohol cue gains incentive salience and functions as a conditioned reinforcer.

Estimating 3D tilt from local image cues in natural scenes

OpenAIRE

Burge, Johannes; McCann, Brian C.; Geisler, Wilson S.

2016-01-01

Estimating three-dimensional (3D) surface orientation (slant and tilt) is an important first step toward estimating 3D shape. Here, we examine how three local image cues from the same location (disparity gradient, luminance gradient, and dominant texture orientation) should be combined to estimate 3D tilt in natural scenes. We collected a database of natural stereoscopic images with precisely co-registered range images that provide the ground-truth distance at each pixel location. We then ana...

Attentional bias for craving-related (chocolate) food cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2009-12-01

In this study, we investigated attentional biases for craving-related food cues. A pictorial dot probe task was used to assess selective attentional processing of one particular highly desired food, namely chocolate, relative to that of other highly desired foods. In Experiment 1, we examined biased processing of chocolate cues in habitual (trait) chocolate cravers, whereas in Experiment 2 we investigated the effect of experimentally induced (state) chocolate cravings on such processing. As predicted, habitual chocolate cravers (Experiment 1) and individuals in whom a craving for chocolate was temporarily induced (Experiment 2) showed speeded detection of probes replacing chocolate-related pictures, demonstrating an attentional bias for chocolate cues. Subsequent examination indicated that in both experiments the observed attentional biases stemmed from difficulty in disengaging attention from chocolate cues rather than from a shift of attention toward such cues. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications.

Top down modulation of attention to food cues via working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Higgs, Suzanne; Rutters, Femke; Thomas, Jason M; Naish, Katherine; Humphreys, Glyn W

2012-08-01

Attentional biases towards food cues may be linked to the development of obesity. The present study investigated the mechanisms underlying attentional biases to food cues by assessing the role of top down influences, such as working memory (WM). We assessed whether attention in normal-weight, sated participants was drawn to food items specifically when that food item was held in WM. Twenty-three participants (15 f/8 m, age 23.4±5 year, BMI 23.5±4 kg/m(2)) took part in a laboratory based study assessing reaction times to food and non-food stimuli. Participants were presented with an initial cue stimulus to either hold in WM or to merely attend to, and then searched for the target (a circle) in a two-item display. On valid trials the target was flanked by a picture matching the cue, on neutral trials the display did not contain a picture matching the cue, and on invalid trials the distractor (a square) was flanked by a picture matching the cue. Cues were food, cars or stationery items. We observed that, relative to the effects with non-food stimuli, food items in WM strongly affected attention when the memorised cue re-appeared in the search display. In particular there was an enhanced response on valid trials, when the re-appearance of the memorised cue coincided with the search target. There were no effects of cue category on attentional guidance when the cues were merely attended to but not held in WM. These data point towards food having a strong effect on top-down guidance of search from working memory, and suggest a mechanism whereby individuals who are preoccupied with thoughts of food, for example obese individuals, show facilitated detection of food cues in the environment. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Competition Between Endogenous and Exogenous Orienting of Visual Attention

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Berger, Andrea; Henik, Avishai; Rafal, Robert

2005-01-01

The relation between reflexive and voluntary orienting of visual attention was investigated with 4 experiments: a simple detection task, a localization task, a saccade toward the target task, and a target identification task in which discrimination difficulty was manipulated. Endogenous and exogenous orienting cues were presented in each trial and…

Interplay of Gravicentric, Egocentric, and Visual Cues About the Vertical in the Control of Arm Movement Direction.

Science.gov (United States)

Bock, Otmar; Bury, Nils

2018-03-01

Our perception of the vertical corresponds to the weighted sum of gravicentric, egocentric, and visual cues. Here we evaluate the interplay of those cues not for the perceived but rather for the motor vertical. Participants were asked to flip an omnidirectional switch down while their egocentric vertical was dissociated from their visual-gravicentric vertical. Responses were directed mid-between the two verticals; specifically, the data suggest that the relative weight of congruent visual-gravicentric cues averages 0.62, and correspondingly, the relative weight of egocentric cues averages 0.38. We conclude that the interplay of visual-gravicentric cues with egocentric cues is similar for the motor and for the perceived vertical. Unexpectedly, we observed a consistent dependence of the motor vertical on hand position, possibly mediated by hand orientation or by spatial selective attention.

Cue reactivity towards shopping cues in female participants.

Science.gov (United States)

Starcke, Katrin; Schlereth, Berenike; Domass, Debora; Schöler, Tobias; Brand, Matthias

2013-03-01

Background and aims It is currently under debate whether pathological buying can be considered as a behavioural addiction. Addictions have often been investigated with cue-reactivity paradigms to assess subjective, physiological and neural craving reactions. The current study aims at testing whether cue reactivity towards shopping cues is related to pathological buying tendencies. Methods A sample of 66 non-clinical female participants rated shopping related pictures concerning valence, arousal, and subjective craving. In a subgroup of 26 participants, electrodermal reactions towards those pictures were additionally assessed. Furthermore, all participants were screened concerning pathological buying tendencies and baseline craving for shopping. Results Results indicate a relationship between the subjective ratings of the shopping cues and pathological buying tendencies, even if baseline craving for shopping was controlled for. Electrodermal reactions were partly related to the subjective ratings of the cues. Conclusions Cue reactivity may be a potential correlate of pathological buying tendencies. Thus, pathological buying may be accompanied by craving reactions towards shopping cues. Results support the assumption that pathological buying can be considered as a behavioural addiction. From a methodological point of view, results support the view that the cue-reactivity paradigm is suited for the investigation of craving reactions in pathological buying and future studies should implement this paradigm in clinical samples.

Diverse Roads to Relapse: A Discriminative Cue Signaling Cocaine Availability Is More Effective in Renewing Cocaine Seeking in Goal Trackers Than Sign Trackers and Depends on Basal Forebrain Cholinergic Activity.

Science.gov (United States)

Pitchers, Kyle K; Phillips, Kyra B; Jones, Jonte L; Robinson, Terry E; Sarter, Martin

2017-07-26

Stimuli associated with taking drugs are notorious instigators of relapse. There is, however, considerable variation in the motivational properties of such stimuli, both as a function of the individual and the nature of the stimulus. The behavior of some individuals (sign trackers, STs) is especially influenced by cues paired with reward delivery, perhaps because they are prone to process information via dopamine-dependent, cue-driven, incentive salience systems. Other individuals (goal trackers, GTs) are better able to incorporate higher-order contextual information, perhaps because of better executive/attentional control over behavior, which requires frontal cortical cholinergic activity. We hypothesized, therefore, that a cue that "sets the occasion" for drug taking (a discriminative stimulus, DS) would reinstate cocaine seeking more readily in GTs than STs and that this would require intact cholinergic neurotransmission. To test this, male STs and GTs were trained to self-administer cocaine using an intermittent access schedule with periods of cocaine availability and unavailability signaled by a DS + and a DS - , respectively. Thereafter, half of the rats received an immunotoxic lesion that destroyed 40-50% of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons and later, after extinction training, were tested for the ability of noncontingent presentations of the DS + to reinstate cocaine seeking behavior. The DS + was much more effective in reinstating cocaine seeking in GTs than STs and this effect was abolished by cholinergic losses despite the fact that all rats continued to orient to the DS + We conclude that vulnerability to relapse involves interactions between individual cognitive-motivational biases and the form of the drug cue encountered. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The most predictable outcome of a diagnosis of addiction is a high chance for relapse. When addicts encounter cues previously associated with drug, their attention may be unduly attracted to such cues and

Which Cue to ‘Want?’ Central Amygdala Opioid Activation Enhances and Focuses Incentive Salience on a Prepotent Reward Cue

Science.gov (United States)

Mahler, Stephen V.; Berridge, Kent C.

2009-01-01

The central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) helps translate learning into motivation, and here we show that opioid stimulation of CeA magnifies and focuses learned incentive salience onto a specific reward cue (Pavlovian conditioned stimulus, or CS). This motivation enhancement makes that cue more attractive, noticeable, and liable to elicit appetitive and consummatory behaviors. To reveal the focusing of incentive salience, we exploited individual differences in an autoshaping paradigm in which a rat prefers to approach, nibble and sniff one of two reward-associated stimuli (its prepotent stimulus). The individually-prepotent cue is either a predictive CS+ that signals reward (8sec metal lever insertion), or instead the metal cup that delivers sucrose pellets (the reward source). Results indicated that CeA opioid activation by microinjection of the μ agonist DAMGO (0.1μg) selectively and reversibly enhanced the attractiveness of whichever reward CS was that rat's prepotent cue. CeA DAMGO microinjections made rats more vigorously approach their particular prepotent CS, and to energetically sniff and nibble it in a nearly frenzied consummatory fashion. Only the prepotent cue was enhanced as an incentive target, and alternative cues were not enhanced. Conversely, inactivation of CeA by muscimol microinjection (0.25μg) suppressed approach, nibbles and sniffs of the prepotent CS. Confirming modulation of incentive salience, unconditioned food intake was similarly increased by DAMGO microinjection and decreased by muscimol in CeA. We conclude that opioid neurotransmission in central amygdala helps determine which environmental stimuli become most ‘wanted,’ and how ‘wanted’ they become. This may powerfully guide reward-seeking behavior. PMID:19458221

Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition

OpenAIRE

Jesse, A.; McQueen, J.

2014-01-01

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes in duration, amplitude, and pitch) in spoken-word recognition. We asked here whether they can also use visual suprasegmental cues. In two categorization experiments, Dutch participants saw a speaker...

Attention and memory protection: Interactions between retrospective attention cueing and interference.

Science.gov (United States)

Makovski, Tal; Pertzov, Yoni

2015-01-01

Visual working memory (VWM) and attention have a number of features in common, but despite extensive research it is still unclear how the two interact. Can focused attention improve VWM precision? Can it protect VWM from interference? Here we used a partial-report, continuous-response orientation memory task to examine how attention and interference affect different aspects of VWM and how they interact with one another. Both attention and interference were orthogonally manipulated during the retention interval. Attention was manipulated by presenting informative retro-cues, whereas interference was manipulated by introducing a secondary interfering task. Mixture-model analyses revealed that retro-cues, compared to uninformative cues, improved all aspects of performance: Attention increased recall precision and decreased guessing rate and swap-errors (reporting a wrong item in memory). Similarly, performing a secondary task impaired all aspects of the VWM task. In particular, an interaction between retro-cue and secondary task interference was found primarily for swap-errors. Together these results suggest that both the quantity and quality of VWM representations are sensitive to attention cueing and interference modulations, and they highlight the role of attention in protecting the feature-location associations needed to access the correct items in memory.

Role of Speaker Cues in Attention Inference

OpenAIRE

Jin Joo Lee; Cynthia Breazeal; David DeSteno

2017-01-01

Current state-of-the-art approaches to emotion recognition primarily focus on modeling the nonverbal expressions of the sole individual without reference to contextual elements such as the co-presence of the partner. In this paper, we demonstrate that the accurate inference of listeners’ social-emotional state of attention depends on accounting for the nonverbal behaviors of their storytelling partner, namely their speaker cues. To gain a deeper understanding of the role of speaker cues in at...

Out with the new, in with the old: Exogenous orienting to locations with physically constant stimulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Taylor, J Eric T; Hilchey, Matthew D; Pratt, Jay

2018-01-24

Dominant methods of investigating exogenous orienting presume that attention is captured most effectively at locations containing new events. This is evidenced by the ubiquitous use of transient stimuli as cues in the literature on exogenous orienting. In the present study, we showed that attention can be oriented exogenously toward a location containing a completely unchanging stimulus by modifying Posner's landmark exogenous spatial-cueing paradigm. Observers searched a six-element array of placeholder stimuli for an onset target. The target was preceded by a decrement in luminance to five of the six placeholders, such that one location remained physically constant. This "nonset" stimulus (so named to distinguish it from a traditional onsetting transient) acted as an exogenous cue, eliciting patterns of facilitation and inhibition at the nonset location and demonstrating that exogenous orienting is not always evident at the location of a visual transient. This method eliminates the decades-long confounding of orienting to a location with the processing of new events at that location, permitting alternative considerations of the nature of attentional selection.

Public Service Motivation, User Orientation, and Prescription Behaviour: Doing Good for Society or for the Individual User?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Ulrich Thy; Andersen, Lotte Bøgh

2015-01-01

Motivation to benefit individual recipients of public services (user orientation) can conflict with classic public service motivation linked to the interest of a collective entity. When actions intended to increase the well-being of an individual user can harm societal interests, the two types...... of motivation have different behavioural implications, but we know far too little about these potential trade-offs. This study analyses the relationships between public service motivation, user orientation, and antibiotic prescriptions for 407 general medical practitioners in Denmark. Use of antibiotics has...... a positive effect on the individual patient and (especially broad-spectrum antibiotics) a negative effect on society due to resistant bacteria. Combining survey and administrative data, we find that public service motivation and user orientation indeed are differently associated with prescription behaviour...

Adapting to the destitute situations: poverty cues lead to short-term choice.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Lei; Feng, Tingyong; Suo, Tao; Lee, Kang; Li, Hong

2012-01-01

Why do some people live for the present, whereas others save for the future? The evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that preference for delay of gratification should be influenced by social economic status (SES). However, here we propose that the decision to choose alternatives in immediate and delayed gratification in poverty environments may have a psychological dimension. Specifically, the perception of environmental poverty cues may induce people alike to favor choices with short-term, likely smaller benefit than choices with long-term, greater benefit. The present study was conducted to explore how poverty and affluence cues affected individuals' intertemporal choices. In our first two experiments, individuals exposed explicitly (Experiment 1) and implicitly (Experiment 2) to poverty pictures (the poverty cue) were induced to prefer immediate gratification compared with those exposed to affluence pictures (the affluence cue). Furthermore, by the manipulation of temporary perceptions of poverty and affluence status using a lucky draw game; individuals in the poverty state were more impulsive in a manner, which made them pursue immediate gratification in intertemporal choices (Experiment 3). Thus, poverty cues can lead to short-term choices. Decision makers chose more frequently the sooner-smaller reward over the later-larger reward as they were exposed to the poverty cue. This indicates that it is that just the feeling of poverty influences intertemporal choice - the actual reality of poverty (restricted resources, etc.) is not necessary to get the effect. Furthermore, our findings emphasize that it is a change of the poverty-affluence status, not a trait change, can influence individual preference in intertemporal choice.

Cue-induced craving in pathological buying: empirical evidence and clinical implications.

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Trotzke, Patrick; Starcke, Katrin; Pedersen, Anya; Brand, Matthias

2014-01-01

Pathological buying is associated with marked distress and impaired functioning in important life domains. It is currently under debate whether pathological buying can be considered a behavioral addiction. In analogy to results reported in addicted individuals, craving reactions elicited by addiction-related cues might be an underlying mechanism for the etiology and pathogenesis of pathological buying. In the present study, 30 pathological buyers and 30 matched control participants were examined with a cue-reactivity paradigm consisting of shopping and control cues. Skin conductance responses, as well as subjective ratings for arousal, valence, and urge to buy, were assessed. Subjective craving reactions were measured before and after the cue-reactivity paradigm. On a physiological level, skin conductance responses toward shopping cues were higher in pathological buyers (mean [M; standard deviation {SD}] = 0.26 [0.13]) compared with control participants (M [SD] = 0.19 [0.09]; t(58) = 2.29, p = .025, d = 0.60). On a behavioral level, the individuals with pathological buying rated the shopping cues as more arousing and more positive, and reported a greater urge to buy compared with control participants and with control cues. An increase in subjective craving after completing the cue-reactivity paradigm was observed only in the pathological buyers (Mpre [SD] = 1.95 [1.47], Mpost [SD] = 2.87 [1.79]; t(29) = 5.07, p buying. The results demonstrate similarities between pathological buying and substance or behavioral addictions and provide implications for clinical treatment.

The effect of contextual cues on the encoding of motor memories.

Science.gov (United States)

Howard, Ian S; Wolpert, Daniel M; Franklin, David W

2013-05-01

Several studies have shown that sensory contextual cues can reduce the interference observed during learning of opposing force fields. However, because each study examined a small set of cues, often in a unique paradigm, the relative efficacy of different sensory contextual cues is unclear. In the present study we quantify how seven contextual cues, some investigated previously and some novel, affect the formation and recall of motor memories. Subjects made movements in a velocity-dependent curl field, with direction varying randomly from trial to trial but always associated with a unique contextual cue. Linking field direction to the cursor or background color, or to peripheral visual motion cues, did not reduce interference. In contrast, the orientation of a visual object attached to the hand cursor significantly reduced interference, albeit by a small amount. When the fields were associated with movement in different locations in the workspace, a substantial reduction in interference was observed. We tested whether this reduction in interference was due to the different locations of the visual feedback (targets and cursor) or the movements (proprioceptive). When the fields were associated only with changes in visual display location (movements always made centrally) or only with changes in the movement location (visual feedback always displayed centrally), a substantial reduction in interference was observed. These results show that although some visual cues can lead to the formation and recall of distinct representations in motor memory, changes in spatial visual and proprioceptive states of the movement are far more effective than changes in simple visual contextual cues.

Salient cues improve prospective remembering in Korsakoff's syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Altgassen, Mareike; Ariese, Laura; Wester, Arie J; Kessels, Roy P C

2016-06-01

Korsakoff's syndrome is characterized by deficits in episodic memory and executive functions. Both cognitive functions are needed to remember to execute delayed intentions (prospective memory, PM), an ability that is crucial for independent living in everyday life. So far, PM has only been targeted by one study in Korsakoff's syndrome. This study explored the effects of executive control demands on PM to shed further light on a possible interdependence of memory and executive functions in Korsakoff's syndrome, Twenty-five individuals with Korsakoff's syndrome and 23 chronic alcoholics (without amnesia) performed a categorization task into which a PM task was embedded that put either high or low demands on executive control processes (using low vs. high salient cues). Overall, Korsakoff patients had fewer PM hits than alcoholic controls. Across groups, participants had fewer PM hits when cues were low salient as compared to high salient. Korsakoff patients performed better on PM when highly salient cues were presented than cues of low salience, while there were no differential effects for alcoholic controls. While overall Korsakoff patients' showed a global PM deficit, the extent of this deficit was moderated by the executive control demands of the task applied. This indicated further support for an interrelation of executive functions and memory performance in Korsakoff. Positive clinical implications of the work Prospective memory (PM) performance in Korsakoff's syndrome is related to executive control load. Increasing cues' salience improves PM performance in Korsakoff's syndrome. Salient visual aids may be used in everyday life to improve Korsakoff individuals' planning and organization skills. Cautions or limitations of the study Results were obtained in a structured laboratory setting and need to be replicated in a more naturalistic setting to assess their transferability to everyday life. Given the relatively small sample size, individual predictors of PM

Individual variation in resisting temptation: implications for addiction

Science.gov (United States)

Saunders, Benjamin T.; Robinson, Terry E.

2013-01-01

When exposed to the sights, sounds, smells and/or places that have been associated with rewards, such as food or drugs, some individuals have difficulty resisting the temptation to seek out and consume them. Others have less difficulty restraining themselves. Thus, Pavlovian reward cues may motivate maladaptive patterns of behavior to a greater extent in some individuals than in others. We are just beginning to understand the factors underlying individual differences in the extent to which reward cues acquire powerful motivational properties, and therefore, the ability to act as incentive stimuli. Here we review converging evidence from studies in both human and non-human animals suggesting that a subset of individuals are more “cue reactive”, in that certain reward cues are more likely to attract these individuals to them and motivate actions to get them. We suggest that those individuals for whom Pavlovian reward cues become especially powerful incentives may be more vulnerable to impulse control disorders, such as binge eating and addiction. PMID:23438893

Orienting attention in visual working memory requires central capacity: decreased retro-cue effects under dual-task conditions.

Science.gov (United States)

Janczyk, Markus; Berryhill, Marian E

2014-04-01

The retro-cue effect (RCE) describes superior working memory performance for validly cued stimulus locations long after encoding has ended. Importantly, this happens with delays beyond the range of iconic memory. In general, the RCE is a stable phenomenon that emerges under varied stimulus configurations and timing parameters. We investigated its susceptibility to dual-task interference to determine the attentional requirements at the time point of cue onset and encoding. In Experiment 1, we compared single- with dual-task conditions. In Experiment 2, we borrowed from the psychological refractory period paradigm and compared conditions with high and low (dual-) task overlap. The secondary task was always binary tone discrimination requiring a manual response. Across both experiments, an RCE was found, but it was diminished in magnitude in the critical dual-task conditions. A previous study did not find evidence that sustained attention is required in the interval between cue offset and test. Our results apparently contradict these findings and point to a critical time period around cue onset and briefly thereafter during which attention is required.

Visual form Cues, Biological Motions, Auditory Cues, and Even Olfactory Cues Interact to Affect Visual Sex Discriminations

OpenAIRE

Rick Van Der Zwan; Anna Brooks; Duncan Blair; Coralia Machatch; Graeme Hacker

2011-01-01

Johnson and Tassinary (2005) proposed that visually perceived sex is signalled by structural or form cues. They suggested also that biological motion cues signal sex, but do so indirectly. We previously have shown that auditory cues can mediate visual sex perceptions (van der Zwan et al., 2009). Here we demonstrate that structural cues to body shape are alone sufficient for visual sex discriminations but that biological motion cues alone are not. Interestingly, biological motions can resolve ...

Effect of reference frames and number of cues available on the spatial orientation of males and females in a virtual memory task.

Science.gov (United States)

Cánovas, Rosa; García, Rubén Fernández; Cimadevilla, Jose Manuel

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of the number of cues and cue location in human spatial learning. To assess their importance, subjects performed variants of a virtual task called "The Boxes Room". Participants were trained to locate, in a computer-generated environment with 16 boxes, the rewarded boxes through 8 trials. In experiment I, the number of distal cues available was zero, one, two or the standard arrangement (seven cues). In experiment II, place navigation was compared based on distal landmarks (extra-maze cues placed on the walls) and proximal landmarks (proximal cues placed between the boxes). The results of experiment I demonstrated that one cue in the room is enough to obtain a good performance in the task. Experiment II showed that groups using proximal cues were slower and less accurate than groups using distal cues. In addition, our data suggest that men are better navigators than women, as they found the rewarded boxes sooner and committed fewer errors in both studies. These results indicate that performance can change depending on the number and location of available cues. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of stress- and food cue-induced food craving in obesity: association with insulin levels.

Science.gov (United States)

Jastreboff, Ania M; Sinha, Rajita; Lacadie, Cheryl; Small, Dana M; Sherwin, Robert S; Potenza, Marc N

2013-02-01

Obesity is associated with alterations in corticolimbic-striatal brain regions involved in food motivation and reward. Stress and the presence of food cues may each motivate eating and engage corticolimibic-striatal neurocircuitry. It is unknown how these factors interact to influence brain responses and whether these interactions are influenced by obesity, insulin levels, and insulin sensitivity. We hypothesized that obese individuals would show greater responses in corticolimbic-striatal neurocircuitry after exposure to stress and food cues and that brain activations would correlate with subjective food craving, insulin levels, and HOMA-IR. Fasting insulin levels were assessed in obese and lean subjects who were exposed to individualized stress and favorite-food cues during functional MRI. Obese, but not lean, individuals exhibited increased activation in striatal, insular, and hypothalamic regions during exposure to favorite-food and stress cues. In obese but not lean individuals, food craving, insulin, and HOMA-IR levels correlated positively with neural activity in corticolimbic-striatal brain regions during favorite-food and stress cues. The relationship between insulin resistance and food craving in obese individuals was mediated by activity in motivation-reward regions including the striatum, insula, and thalamus. These findings demonstrate that obese, but not lean, individuals exhibit increased corticolimbic-striatal activation in response to favorite-food and stress cues and that these brain responses mediate the relationship between HOMA-IR and food craving. Improving insulin sensitivity and in turn reducing corticolimbic-striatal reactivity to food cues and stress may diminish food craving and affect eating behavior in obesity.

Disrupted functional connectivity in dorsal and ventral attention networks during attention orienting in autism spectrum disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Fitzgerald, Jacqueline; Johnson, Katherine; Kehoe, Elizabeth; Bokde, Arun L W; Garavan, Hugh; Gallagher, Louise; McGrath, Jane

2015-04-01

Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism. © 2014 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Fractionating dead reckoning: role of the compass, odometer, logbook, and home base establishment in spatial orientation

Science.gov (United States)

Wallace, Douglas G.; Martin, Megan M.; Winter, Shawn S.

2008-06-01

Rats use multiple sources of information to maintain spatial orientation. Although previous work has focused on rats’ use of environmental cues, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that rats also use self-movement cues to organize navigation. This review examines the extent that kinematic analysis of naturally occurring behavior has provided insight into processes that mediate dead-reckoning-based navigation. This work supports a role for separate systems in processing self-movement cues that converge on the hippocampus. The compass system is involved in deriving directional information from self-movement cues; whereas, the odometer system is involved in deriving distance information from self-movement cues. The hippocampus functions similar to a logbook in that outward path unique information from the compass and odometer is used to derive the direction and distance of a path to the point at which movement was initiated. Finally, home base establishment may function to reset this system after each excursion and anchor environmental cues to self-movement cues. The combination of natural behaviors and kinematic analysis has proven to be a robust paradigm to investigate the neural basis of spatial orientation.

Oxytocin differentially modulates pavlovian cue and context fear acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Cavalli, Juliana; Ruttorf, Michaela; Pahi, Mario Rosero; Zidda, Francesca; Flor, Herta; Nees, Frauke

2017-06-01

Fear acquisition and extinction have been demonstrated as core mechanisms for the development and maintenance of mental disorders, with different contributions of processing cues vs contexts. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) may have a prominent role in this context, as it has been shown to affect fear learning. However, investigations have focused on cue conditioning, and fear extinction. Its differential role for cue and context fear acquisition is still not known. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo (PLC)-controlled design, we administered an intranasal dose of OXT or PLC before the acquisition of cue and context fear conditioning in healthy individuals (n = 52), and assessed brain responses, skin conductance responses and self-reports (valence/arousal/contingency). OXT compared with PLC significantly induced decreased responses in the nucleus accumbens during early cue and context acquisition, and decreased responses of the anterior cingulate cortex and insula during early as well as increased hippocampal response during late context, but not cue acquisition. The OXT group additionally showed significantly higher arousal in late cue and context acquisition. OXT modulates various aspects of cue and context conditioning, which is relevant from a mechanism-based perspective and might have implications for the treatment of fear and anxiety. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Distinguishing Reconfiguration and Compound-cue Retrieval in Task Switching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gordon D Logan

2010-10-01

Full Text Available Many researchers claim that task switching requires reconfiguration of the cognitive system. Others claim that task switching involves cue-based memory retrieval processes and not reconfiguration. We evaluate these competing claims by developing both reconfiguration and cue-based memory models in a common theoretical framework and by fitting the models to' target functions', which show how performance on individual target stimuli varies depending on the task subjects perform on the targets. Our analyses show that the process of compound-cue retrieval – using the task cue and the target as joint retrieval cues to select a response from memory – is sufficient to explain target functions for parity and magnitude judgments of digits and that reconfiguration does not seem to add anything to the explanation. We address the generality of this conclusion and speculate about the conditions under which reconfiguration may be necessary for task switching.

Global cue inconsistency diminishes learning of cue validity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tony Wang

2016-11-01

Full Text Available We present a novel two-stage probabilistic learning task that examines the participants’ ability to learn and utilize valid cues across several levels of probabilistic feedback. In the first stage, participants sample from one of three cues that gives predictive information about the outcome of the second stage. Participants are rewarded for correct prediction of the outcome in stage two. Only one of the three cues gives valid predictive information and thus participants can maximise their reward by learning to sample from the valid cue. The validity of this predictive information, however, is reinforced across several levels of probabilistic feedback. A second manipulation involved changing the consistency of the predictive information in stage one and the outcome in stage two. The results show that participants, with higher probabilistic feedback, learned to utilise the valid cue. In inconsistent task conditions, however, participants were significantly less successful in utilising higher validity cues. We interpret this result as implying that learning in probabilistic categorization is based on developing a representation of the task that allows for goal-directed action.

POST-RETRIEVAL EXTINCTION ATTENUATES ALCOHOL CUE REACTIVITY IN RATS

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Cofresí, Roberto U.; Lewis, Suzanne M.; Chaudhri, Nadia; Lee, Hongjoo J.; Monfils, Marie-H.; Gonzales, Rueben A.

2017-01-01

BACKGROUND Conditioned responses to alcohol-associated cues can hinder recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD). Cue exposure (extinction) therapy (CET) can reduce reactivity to alcohol cues, but its efficacy is limited by phenomena such as spontaneous recovery and reinstatement that can cause a return of conditioned responding after extinction. Using a preclinical model of alcohol cue reactivity in rats, we evaluated whether the efficacy of alcohol CET could be improved by conducting CET during the memory reconsolidation window after retrieval of a cue-alcohol association. METHODS Rats were provided with intermittent access to unsweetened alcohol. Rats were then trained to predict alcohol access based on a visual cue. Next, rats were treated with either standard extinction (n=14) or post-retrieval extinction (n=13). Rats were then tested for long-term memory of extinction and susceptibility to spontaneous recovery and reinstatement. RESULTS Despite equivalent extinction, rats treated with post-retrieval extinction exhibited reduced spontaneous recovery and reinstatement relative to rats treated with standard extinction. CONCLUSIONS Post-retrieval CET shows promise for persistently attenuating the risk to relapse posed by alcohol cues in individuals with AUD. PMID:28169439

Conditioned responses elicited by experimentally produced cues for smoking.

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Mucha, R F; Pauli, P; Angrilli, A

1998-03-01

Several theories of drug-craving postulate that a signal for drug elicits conditioned responses. However, depending on the theory, a drug cue is said to elicit drug similar, drug compensatory, positive motivational, and negative motivational effects. Since animal data alone cannot tease apart the relative importance of different cue-related processes in the addict, we developed and examined a model of drug cues in the human based on a two-sound, differential conditioning procedure using smoking as the reinforcer. After multiple pairings of a sound with smoking, there was a preference for the smoking cue on a conditioned preference test. The acute effects of smoking (increased heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance level, skin conductance fluctuations, EEG beta power and trapezius EMG, decreased alpha power) were not affected by the smoking cue, although subjects drew more on their cigarette in the presence of the smoking cue than in the presence of a control cue. Moreover, the cue did not change baseline behaviour except for a possible increase in EEG beta power and an increase in trapezius EMG at about the time when smoking should have occurred. The findings confirm the value of experimental models of drug cues in the human for comparing different cue phenomena in the dependent individual. They indicate that an acquired signal for drug in the human may elicit incentive motivational effects and associated preparatory motor responses in addition to possible conditioned tolerance.

Wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds do not use geometric cues in a spatial task.

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Hornsby, Mark A W; Hurly, T Andrew; Hamilton, Caitlin E; Pritchard, David J; Healy, Susan D

2014-10-01

In the laboratory, many species orient themselves using the geometric properties of an enclosure or array and geometric information is often preferred over visual cues. Whether animals use geometric cues when relocating rewarded locations in the wild, however, has rarely been investigated. We presented free-living rufous hummingbirds with a rectangular array of four artificial flowers to investigate learning of rewarded locations using geometric cues. In one treatment, we rewarded two of four flowers at diagonally opposite corners. In a second treatment, we provided a visual cue to the rewarded flower by connecting the flowers with "walls" consisting of four dowels (three white, one blue) laid on the ground connecting each of the flowers. Neither treatment elicited classical geometry results; instead, hummingbirds typically chose one particular flower over all others. When we exchanged that flower with another, hummingbirds tended to visit the original flower. These results suggest that (1) hummingbirds did not use geometric cues, but instead may have used a visually derived cue on the flowers themselves, and (2) using geometric cues may have been more difficult than using visual characteristics. Although hummingbirds typically prefer spatial over visual information, we hypothesize that they will not use geometric cues over stable visual features but that they make use of small, flower-specific visual cues. Such cues may play a more important role in foraging decisions than previously thought. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multisensory guidance of goal-oriented behaviour of legged robots

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shaikh, Danish; Manoonpong, Poramate; Tuxworth, Gervase

2017-01-01

Biological systems often combine cues from two different sensory modalities to execute goal-oriented sensorimotor tasks, which otherwise cannot be accurately executed with either sensory stream in isolation. When auditory cues alone are not sufficient to accurately localise an audio-visual target...... is tasked with localising an audio-visual target by turning towards it. The architecture extracts sound direction information with a model of the peripheral auditory system of lizards to modulate locomotion control parameters driving the turning behaviour. The visual information adaptively changes...... the strength of the acoustomotor coupling to adjust turning speed of the robot. Our experiments demonstrate improved orientation towards the audio-visual target emitting a tone of frequency 2.2kHz located at an angular offset of 45 degrees from the robot....

Metacognitive Monitoring and Dementia: How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Cues Influence Judgments of Learning in People with Alzheimer’s disease

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Thomas, Ayanna K.; Lee, Meeyeon; Balota, David A.

2014-01-01

Objective The present research compared metamemorial monitoring processes among younger adults, non-demented older adults, and older adults diagnosed with early stage Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type (DAT). Method In three experiments we examined the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic cues on Judgment of Learning (JOL) accuracy. Changes in association strength between cue-target word pairs served as our intrinsic manipulation in Experiments 1 and 2. Changes in encoding orientation served as our extrinsic manipulation in Experiment 3. Results Across all experiments we found that young adults, non-demented older adults, and individuals in the early stages of DAT effectively used intrinsic and extrinsic factors to guide JOL predictions. Conclusions We conclude that while certain aspects of metacognition may be impaired in both the normal and demented older populations, these groups remain able to use theory-based processing, or general knowledge about how memory works, to make metamemory monitoring predictions. PMID:23876118

Gender differences in cue exposure reactivity and 9-month outcome.

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Sterling, Robert C; Dean, Jessica; Weinstein, Stephen P; Murphy, Jennifer; Gottheil, Edward

2004-07-01

Gender differences have been shown to be related to the course of cocaine dependence and treatment. While previous research has shown cue exposure procedures to be somewhat effective at reducing reactivity of substance dependent individuals to drug related stimuli, the few studies that have examined gender differences in craving and cue-reactivity have yielded equivocal results. We have recently demonstrated that an active cue-exposure procedure that featured cocaine-dependent individuals receiving immediate feedback about their level of physiological arousal following videotaped exposure to cocaine-related stimuli was capable of positively influencing in-treatment (helplessness, abstinence efficacy) as well as 9-month followup outcome (i.e., urinalysis) indices (Sterling, R., Gottheil, E., Murphy, J., & Weinstein, S. (2001). Cue exposure and abstinence efficacy. College on Problems of Drug Dependence, Phoenix, AZ, June 17, 2001). The purpose of the present study was to determine whether differential in-treatment or 9-month followup outcomes were obtained for male and female study participants. Subjects in this study were 81 individuals (47 male/34 female) who met DSM-IV criteria for cocaine dependence and who had consented to be randomly assigned to either the active cue-exposure or control conditions. Participants were compared along a myriad of pre-treatment, in-treatment, and 9-month followup measures. Other than males reporting more recent employment, there was no obvious systematic pattern of differences on pre-treatment indices. No gender differences in treatment retention were observed. With respect to 9-month followup, no gender differences on measures of addiction severity, psychological functioning, or urinalyses were noted. However males were more "cue-reactive" and more successful at establishing control over their reactivity to the cocaine stimuli. Additional research is needed to determine whether these differences in reactivity can be more clearly

Female sea lamprey shift orientation toward a conspecific chemical cue to escape a sensory trap

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Brant, Cory O.; Johnson, Nicholas; Li, Ke; Buchinger, Tyler J.; Li, Weiming

2016-01-01

The sensory trap model of signal evolution hypothesizes that signalers adapt to exploit a cue used by the receiver in another context. Although exploitation of receiver biases can result in conflict between the sexes, deceptive signaling systems that are mutually beneficial drive the evolution of stable communication systems. However, female responses in the nonsexual and sexual contexts may become uncoupled if costs are associated with exhibiting a similar response to a trait in both contexts. Male sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) signal with a mating pheromone, 3-keto petromyzonol sulfate (3kPZS), which may be a match to a juvenile cue used by females during migration. Upstream movement of migratory lampreys is partially guided by 3kPZS, but females only move toward 3kPZS with proximal accuracy during spawning. Here, we use in-stream behavioral assays paired with gonad histology to document the transition of female preference for juvenile- and male-released 3kPZS that coincides with the functional shift of 3kPZS as a migratory cue to a mating pheromone. Females became increasingly biased toward the source of synthesized 3kPZS as their maturation progressed into the reproductive phase, at which point, a preference for juvenile odor (also containing 3kPZS naturally) ceased to exist. Uncoupling of female responses during migration and spawning makes the 3kPZS communication system a reliable means of synchronizing mate search. The present study offers a rare example of a transition in female responses to a chemical cue between nonsexual and sexual contexts, provides insights into the origins of stable communication signaling systems.

Feature integration and spatial attention: common processes for endogenous and exogenous orienting.

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Henderickx, David; Maetens, Kathleen; Soetens, Eric

2010-05-01

Briand (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 24:1243-1256, 1998) and Briand and Klein (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 13:228-241, 1987) demonstrated that spatial cueing effects are larger for detecting conjunction of features than for detecting simple features when spatial attention is oriented exogenously, and not when attention is oriented endogenously. Their results were interpreted as if only exogenous attention affects the posterior spatial attention system that performs the feature binding function attributed to spatial attention by Treisman's feature integration theory (FIT; 1980). In a series of 6 experiments, we attempted to replicate Briand's findings. Manipulations of distractor string size and symmetry of stimulus presentation left and right from fixation were implemented in Posner's cueing paradigm. The data indicate that both exogenous and endogenous cueing address the same attentional mechanism needed for feature binding. The results also limit the generalisability of Briand's proposal concerning the role of exogenous attention in feature integration. Furthermore, the importance to control the effect of unintended attentional capture in a cueing task is demonstrated.

Sensorimotor Adaptations Following Exposure to Ambiguous Inertial Motion Cues

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Wood, S. J.; Harm, D. L.; Reschke, M. F.; Rupert, A. H.; Clement, G. R.

2009-01-01

The central nervous system must resolve the ambiguity of inertial motion sensory cues in order to derive accurate spatial orientation awareness. We hypothesize that multi-sensory integration will be adaptively optimized in altered gravity environments based on the dynamics of other sensory information available, with greater changes in otolith-mediated responses in the mid-frequency range where there is a crossover of tilt and translation responses. The primary goals of this ground-based research investigation are to explore physiological mechanisms and operational implications of tilt-translation disturbances during and following re-entry, and to evaluate a tactile prosthesis as a countermeasure for improving control of whole-body orientation.

Studies of the Interactions Between Vestibular Function and Tactual Orientation Display Systems

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Cholewiak, Roger W.; Reschke, Millard F.

1997-01-01

When humans experience conditions in which internal vestibular cues to movement or spatial location are challenged or contradicted by external visual information, the result can be spatial disorientation, often leading to motion sickness. Spatial disorientation can occur in any situation in which the individual is passively moved in the environment, but is most common in automotive, aircraft, or undersea travel. Significantly, the incidence of motion sickness in space travel is great: The majority of individuals in Shuttle operations suffer from the syndrome. Even after the space-sickness-producing influences of spatial disorientation dissipate, usually within several days, there are other situations in which, because of the absence of reliable or familiar vestibular cues, individuals in space still experience disorientation, resulting in a reliance on the already preoccupied sense of vision. One possible technique to minimize the deleterious effects of spatial disorientation might be to present attitude information (including orientation, direction, and motion) through another less-used sensory modality - the sense of touch. Data from experiences with deaf and blind persons indicate that this channel can provide useful communication and mobility information on a real-time basis. More recently, technologies have developed to present effective attitude information to pilots in situations in which dangerously ambiguous and conflicting visual and vestibular sensations occur. This summers project at NASA-Johnson Space Center will evaluate the influence of motion-based spatial disorientation on the perception of tactual stimuli representing veridical position and orientation information, presented by new dynamic vibrotactile array display technologies. In addition, the possibility will be explored that tactile presentations of motion and direction from this alternative modality might be useful in mitigating or alleviating spatial disorientation produced by multi

Credit cues and impression management: a preliminary attempt to explain the credit card effect.

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McCall, Michael; Trombetta, Jessica; Gipe, Aimee

2004-08-01

Prior research had suggested that individuals would estimate higher product values and even tip more in the presence of credit cues. In the absence of a clear theoretical interpretation of this credit card effect we propose that this tendency is an impression management strategy such that credit cue exposure influences perceptions of the self and focuses attention on individual wealth. Thus, in the presence of others, credit cues serve to enhance images of the self. Preliminary data in support of this alternative theoretical perspective are presented.

Evaluating the effects of delivering integrated kinesthetic and tactile cues to individuals with unilateral hemiparetic stroke during overground walking.

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Afzal, Muhammad Raheel; Pyo, Sanghun; Oh, Min-Kyun; Park, Young Sook; Yoon, Jungwon

2018-04-16

Integration of kinesthetic and tactile cues for application to post-stroke gait rehabilitation is a novel concept which needs to be explored. The combined provision of haptic cues may result in collective improvement of gait parameters such as symmetry, balance and muscle activation patterns. Our proposed integrated cue system can offer a cost-effective and voluntary gait training experience for rehabilitation of subjects with unilateral hemiparetic stroke. Ten post-stroke ambulatory subjects participated in a 10 m walking trial while utilizing the haptic cues (either alone or integrated application), at their preferred and increased gait speeds. In the system a haptic cane device (HCD) provided kinesthetic perception and a vibrotactile feedback device (VFD) provided tactile cue on the paretic leg for gait modification. Balance, gait symmetry and muscle activity were analyzed to identify the benefits of utilizing the proposed system. When using kinesthetic cues, either alone or integrated with a tactile cue, an increase in the percentage of non-paretic peak activity in the paretic muscles was observed at the preferred gait speed (vastus medialis obliquus: p kinesthetic cue, at their preferred gait speed (p <  0.001, partial η 2  = 0.702). When combining haptic cues, the subjects walked at their preferred gait speed with increased temporal stance symmetry and paretic muscle activity affecting their balance. Similar improvements were observed at higher gait speeds. The efficacy of the proposed system is influenced by gait speed. Improvements were observed at a 20% increased gait speed, whereas, a plateau effect was observed at a 40% increased gait speed. These results imply that integration of haptic cues may benefit post-stroke gait rehabilitation by inducing simultaneous improvements in gait symmetry and muscle activity.

Individual variation in resisting temptation: implications for addiction.

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Saunders, Benjamin T; Robinson, Terry E

2013-11-01

When exposed to the sights, sounds, smells and/or places that have been associated with rewards, such as food or drugs, some individuals have difficulty resisting the temptation to seek out and consume them. Others have less difficulty restraining themselves. Thus, Pavlovian reward cues may motivate maladaptive patterns of behavior to a greater extent in some individuals than in others. We are just beginning to understand the factors underlying individual differences in the extent to which reward cues acquire powerful motivational properties, and therefore, the ability to act as incentive stimuli. Here we review converging evidence from studies in both human and non-human animals suggesting that a subset of individuals are more "cue reactive", in that certain reward cues are more likely to attract these individuals to them and motivate actions to get them. We suggest that those individuals for whom Pavlovian reward cues become especially powerful incentives may be more vulnerable to impulse control disorders, such as binge eating and addiction. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Increased contextual cue utilization with tDCS over the prefrontal cortex during a recognition task

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Pergolizzi, Denise; Chua, Elizabeth F.

2016-01-01

The precise role of the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices in recognition performance remains controversial, with questions about whether these regions contribute to recognition via the availability of mnemonic evidence or via decision biases and retrieval orientation. Here we used an explicit memory cueing paradigm, whereby external cues probabilistically predict upcoming memoranda as old or new, in our case with 75% validity, and these cues affect recognition decision biases in the direction of the cue. The present study applied bilateral transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over prefrontal or posterior parietal cortex, or sham tDCS, to test the causal role of these regions in recognition accuracy or decision biasing. Participants who received tDCS over prefrontal cortex showed increased cue utilization compared to tDCS over posterior parietal cortex and sham tDCS, suggesting that the prefrontal cortex is involved in processes that contribute to decision biases in memory. PMID:27845032

Orienting attention within visual short-term memory: development and mechanisms.

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Shimi, Andria; Nobre, Anna C; Astle, Duncan; Scerif, Gaia

2014-01-01

How does developing attentional control operate within visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Seven-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults (total n = 205) were asked to report whether probe items were part of preceding visual arrays. In Experiment 1, central or peripheral cues oriented attention to the location of to-be-probed items either prior to encoding or during maintenance. Cues improved memory regardless of their position, but younger children benefited less from cues presented during maintenance, and these benefits related to VSTM span over and above basic memory in uncued trials. In Experiment 2, cues of low validity eliminated benefits, suggesting that even the youngest children use cues voluntarily, rather than automatically. These findings elucidate the close coupling between developing visuospatial attentional control and VSTM. © 2013 The Authors. Child Development © 2013 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Loneliness and hypervigilance to social cues in females: an eye-tracking study.

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Gerine M A Lodder

Full Text Available The goal of the present study was to examine whether lonely individuals differ from nonlonely individuals in their overt visual attention to social cues. Previous studies showed that loneliness was related to biased post-attentive processing of social cues (e.g., negative interpretation bias, but research on whether lonely and nonlonely individuals also show differences in an earlier information processing stage (gazing behavior is very limited. A sample of 25 lonely and 25 nonlonely students took part in an eye-tracking study consisting of four tasks. We measured gazing (duration, number of fixations and first fixation at the eyes, nose and mouth region of faces expressing emotions (Task 1, at emotion quadrants (anger, fear, happiness and neutral expression (Task 2, at quadrants with positive and negative social and nonsocial images (Task 3, and at the facial area of actors in video clips with positive and negative content (Task 4. In general, participants tended to gaze most often and longest at areas that conveyed most social information, such as the eye region of the face (T1, and social images (T3. Participants gazed most often and longest at happy faces (T2 in still images, and more often and longer at the facial area in negative than in positive video clips (T4. No differences occurred between lonely and nonlonely participants in their gazing times and frequencies, nor at first fixations at social cues in the four different tasks. Based on this study, we found no evidence that overt visual attention to social cues differs between lonely and nonlonely individuals. This implies that biases in social information processing of lonely individuals may be limited to other phases of social information processing. Alternatively, biased overt attention to social cues may only occur under specific conditions, for specific stimuli or for specific lonely individuals.

Oscillating magnetic field disrupts magnetic orientation in Zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata

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Wiltschko Wolfgang

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Zebra finches can be trained to use the geomagnetic field as a directional cue for short distance orientation. The physical mechanisms underlying the primary processes of magnetoreception are, however, largely unknown. Two hypotheses of how birds perceive magnetic information are mainly discussed, one dealing with modulation of radical pair processes in retinal structures, the other assuming that iron deposits in the upper beak of the birds are involved. Oscillating magnetic fields in the MHz range disturb radical pair mechanisms but do not affect magnetic particles. Thus, application of such oscillating fields in behavioral experiments can be used as a diagnostic tool to decide between the two alternatives. Methods In a setup that eliminates all directional cues except the geomagnetic field zebra finches were trained to search for food in the magnetic north/south axis. The birds were then tested for orientation performance in two magnetic conditions. In condition 1 the horizontal component of the geomagnetic field was shifted by 90 degrees using a helmholtz coil. In condition 2 a high frequently oscillating field (1.156 MHz was applied in addition to the shifted field. Another group of birds was trained to solve the orientation task, but with visual landmarks as directional cue. The birds were then tested for their orientation performance in the same magnetic conditions as applied for the first experiment. Results The zebra finches could be trained successfully to orient in the geomagnetic field for food search in the north/south axis. They were also well oriented in test condition 1, with the magnetic field shifted horizontally by 90 degrees. In contrast, when the oscillating field was added, the directional choices during food search were randomly distributed. Birds that were trained to visually guided orientation showed no difference of orientation performance in the two magnetic conditions. Conclusion The results

Counterconditioning reduces cue-induced craving and actual cue-elicited consumption.

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Van Gucht, Dinska; Baeyens, Frank; Vansteenwegen, Debora; Hermans, Dirk; Beckers, Tom

2010-10-01

Cue-induced craving is not easily reduced by an extinction or exposure procedure and may constitute an important route toward relapse in addictive behavior after treatment. In the present study, we investigated the effectiveness of counterconditioning as an alternative procedure to reduce cue-induced craving, in a nonclinical population. We found that a cue, initially paired with chocolate consumption, did not cease to elicit craving for chocolate after extinction (repeated presentation of the cue without chocolate consumption), but did so after counterconditioning (repeated pairing of the cue with consumption of a highly disliked liquid, Polysorbate 20). This effect persisted after 1 week. Counterconditioning moreover was more effective than extinction in disrupting reported expectancy to get to eat chocolate, and also appeared to be more effective in reducing actual cue-elicited chocolate consumption. These results suggest that counterconditioning may be more promising than cue exposure for the prevention of relapse in addictive behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

The Role of Global and Local Visual Information during Gaze-Cued Orienting of Attention.

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Munsters, Nicolette M; van den Boomen, Carlijn; Hooge, Ignace T C; Kemner, Chantal

2016-01-01

Gaze direction is an important social communication tool. Global and local visual information are known to play specific roles in processing socially relevant information from a face. The current study investigated whether global visual information has a primary role during gaze-cued orienting of attention and, as such, may influence quality of interaction. Adults performed a gaze-cueing task in which a centrally presented face cued (valid or invalid) the location of a peripheral target through a gaze shift. We measured brain activity (electroencephalography) towards the cue and target and behavioral responses (manual and saccadic reaction times) towards the target. The faces contained global (i.e. lower spatial frequencies), local (i.e. higher spatial frequencies), or a selection of both global and local (i.e. mid-band spatial frequencies) visual information. We found a gaze cue-validity effect (i.e. valid versus invalid), but no interaction effects with spatial frequency content. Furthermore, behavioral responses towards the target were in all cue conditions slower when lower spatial frequencies were not present in the gaze cue. These results suggest that whereas gaze-cued orienting of attention can be driven by both global and local visual information, global visual information determines the speed of behavioral responses towards other entities appearing in the surrounding of gaze cue stimuli.

Retrieval of bilingual autobiographical memories: effects of cue language and cue imageability.

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Mortensen, Linda; Berntsen, Dorthe; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen

2015-01-01

An important issue in theories of bilingual autobiographical memory is whether linguistically encoded memories are represented in language-specific stores or in a common language-independent store. Previous research has found that autobiographical memory retrieval is facilitated when the language of the cue is the same as the language of encoding, consistent with language-specific memory stores. The present study examined whether this language congruency effect is influenced by cue imageability. Danish-English bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to Danish and English high- or low-imageability cues. Retrieval latencies were shorter to Danish than English cues and shorter to high- than low-imageability cues. Importantly, the cue language effect was stronger for low-than high-imageability cues. To examine the relationship between cue language and the language of internal retrieval, participants identified the language in which the memories were internally retrieved. More memories were retrieved when the cue language was the same as the internal language than when the cue was in the other language, and more memories were identified as being internally retrieved in Danish than English, regardless of the cue language. These results provide further evidence for language congruency effects in bilingual memory and suggest that this effect is influenced by cue imageability.

Multimodal stimulation of the Colorado potato beetle: Prevalence of visual over olfactory cues

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Orientation of insects to host plants and conspecifics is the result of detection and integration of chemical and physical cues present in the environment. Sensory organs have evolved to be sensitive to important signals, providing neural input for higher order processing and behavioral output. He...

Cue-induced craving for marijuana in cannabis-dependent adults.

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Lundahl, Leslie H; Johanson, Chris-Ellyn

2011-06-01

Recent interest in the development of medications for treatment of cannabis-use disorders indicates the need for laboratory models to evaluate potential compounds prior to undertaking clinical trials. To investigate whether a cue-reactivity paradigm could induce marijuana craving in cannabis-dependent adults, 16 (eight female) cannabis-dependent and 16 (eight female) cannabis-naïve participants were exposed to neutral and marijuana-related cues, and subsequent changes in mood, self-reported craving, and physiologic function were assessed. Significant Group X cue interactions were found on all three VAS craving indices as well as on the Compulsivity scale of the Marijuana Craving Questionnaire-Brief Form (MCQ-BF). Cannabis-dependent individuals responded to marijuana-related cues with significantly increased reports of marijuana craving compared to neutral cue exposure, although there were no cue-induced changes in any of the physiological measures. There were no significant gender differences on any of the measures. These results indicate that marijuana craving can be induced and assessed in cannabis-dependent, healthy adults within a laboratory setting, and support the need for further research of the cue reactivity paradigm in the development of medications to treat cannabis-use disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

Responsivity to food cues in bulimic women and controls.

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Staiger, P; Dawe, S; McCarthy, R

2000-08-01

The current study investigated responsivity to individualized food cues consisting of binge/favourite foods in 17 women with bulimic nervosa (BN) and 17 women with no history or current symptoms of eating disorders (C). The hypothesis that increasing cue salience would be associated with an increase in responsivity was tested by comparison of self reported urges, affective responses and salivation to the sight and smell (SS) and the sight, smell and taste (SST) of a binge/favourite food compared to a neutral stimulus (lettuce leaf). As predicted, the BN group reported a greater urge to binge and higher levels of stress/arousal to selected binge/favourite food cues compared to the C group. The BN group also reported lower confidence to resist the urge to binge and control over food intake compared to the C group. Further, a series of planned comparisons in the BN group found that the urge to binge, stress, and loss of control were greater when participants were exposed to the SST cue than to the SS cue. There was no difference between the groups in salivary responsivity to food cues. These results are discussed in terms of a conditioning model of cue reactivity. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Emotional cues enhance the attentional effects on spatial and temporal resolution.

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Bocanegra, Bruno R; Zeelenberg, René

2011-12-01

In the present study, we demonstrated that the emotional significance of a spatial cue enhances the effect of covert attention on spatial and temporal resolution (i.e., our ability to discriminate small spatial details and fast temporal flicker). Our results indicated that fearful face cues, as compared with neutral face cues, enhanced the attentional benefits in spatial resolution but also enhanced the attentional deficits in temporal resolution. Furthermore, we observed that the overall magnitudes of individuals' attentional effects correlated strongly with the magnitude of the emotion × attention interaction effect. Combined, these findings provide strong support for the idea that emotion enhances the strength of a cue's attentional response.

Polarized light sensitivity and orientation in coral reef fish post-larvae.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Igal Berenshtein

Full Text Available Recent studies of the larvae of coral-reef fishes reveal that these tiny vertebrates possess remarkable swimming capabilities, as well as the ability to orient to olfactory, auditory, and visual cues. While navigation according to reef-generated chemicals and sounds can significantly affect dispersal, the effect is limited to the vicinity of the reef. Effective long-distance navigation requires at least one other capacity-the ability to maintain a bearing using, for example, a sun compass. Directional information in the sun's position can take the form of polarized-light related cues (i.e., e-vector orientation and percent polarization and/or non-polarized-light related cues (i.e., the direct image of the sun, and the brightness and spectral gradients. We examined the response to both types of cues using commercially-reared post-larvae of the spine-cheeked anemonefish Premnas biaculeatus. Initial optomotor trials indicated that the post-larval stages are sensitive to linearly polarized light. Swimming directionality was then tested using a Drifting In-Situ Chamber (DISC, which allowed us to examine the response of the post-larvae to natural variation in light conditions and to manipulated levels of light polarization. Under natural light conditions, 28 of 29 post-larvae showed significant directional swimming (Rayleigh's test p<0.05, R = 0.74±0.23, but to no particular direction. Swimming directionality was positively affected by sky clarity (absence of clouds and haze, which explained 38% of the observed variation. Moreover, post-larvae swimming under fully polarized light exhibited a distinct behavior of tracking the polarization axis, as it rotated along with the DISC. This behavior was not observed under partially-polarized illumination. We view these findings as an indication for the use of sun-related cues, and polarized light signal in specific, by orienting coral-reef fish larvae.

Polarized light sensitivity and orientation in coral reef fish post-larvae.

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Berenshtein, Igal; Kiflawi, Moshe; Shashar, Nadav; Wieler, Uri; Agiv, Haim; Paris, Claire B

2014-01-01

Recent studies of the larvae of coral-reef fishes reveal that these tiny vertebrates possess remarkable swimming capabilities, as well as the ability to orient to olfactory, auditory, and visual cues. While navigation according to reef-generated chemicals and sounds can significantly affect dispersal, the effect is limited to the vicinity of the reef. Effective long-distance navigation requires at least one other capacity-the ability to maintain a bearing using, for example, a sun compass. Directional information in the sun's position can take the form of polarized-light related cues (i.e., e-vector orientation and percent polarization) and/or non-polarized-light related cues (i.e., the direct image of the sun, and the brightness and spectral gradients). We examined the response to both types of cues using commercially-reared post-larvae of the spine-cheeked anemonefish Premnas biaculeatus. Initial optomotor trials indicated that the post-larval stages are sensitive to linearly polarized light. Swimming directionality was then tested using a Drifting In-Situ Chamber (DISC), which allowed us to examine the response of the post-larvae to natural variation in light conditions and to manipulated levels of light polarization. Under natural light conditions, 28 of 29 post-larvae showed significant directional swimming (Rayleigh's test p<0.05, R = 0.74±0.23), but to no particular direction. Swimming directionality was positively affected by sky clarity (absence of clouds and haze), which explained 38% of the observed variation. Moreover, post-larvae swimming under fully polarized light exhibited a distinct behavior of tracking the polarization axis, as it rotated along with the DISC. This behavior was not observed under partially-polarized illumination. We view these findings as an indication for the use of sun-related cues, and polarized light signal in specific, by orienting coral-reef fish larvae.

Gait parameter control timing with dynamic manual contact or visual cues

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Shi, Peter; Werner, William

2016-01-01

We investigated the timing of gait parameter changes (stride length, peak toe velocity, and double-, single-support, and complete step duration) to control gait speed. Eleven healthy participants adjusted their gait speed on a treadmill to maintain a constant distance between them and a fore-aft oscillating cue (a place on a conveyor belt surface). The experimental design balanced conditions of cue modality (vision: eyes-open; manual contact: eyes-closed while touching the cue); treadmill speed (0.2, 0.4, 0.85, and 1.3 m/s); and cue motion (none, ±10 cm at 0.09, 0.11, and 0.18 Hz). Correlation analyses revealed a number of temporal relationships between gait parameters and cue speed. The results suggest that neural control ranged from feedforward to feedback. Specifically, step length preceded cue velocity during double-support duration suggesting anticipatory control. Peak toe velocity nearly coincided with its most-correlated cue velocity during single-support duration. The toe-off concluding step and double-support durations followed their most-correlated cue velocity, suggesting feedback control. Cue-tracking accuracy and cue velocity correlations with timing parameters were higher with the manual contact cue than visual cue. The cue/gait timing relationships generalized across cue modalities, albeit with greater delays of step-cycle events relative to manual contact cue velocity. We conclude that individual kinematic parameters of gait are controlled to achieve a desired velocity at different specific times during the gait cycle. The overall timing pattern of instantaneous cue velocities associated with different gait parameters is conserved across cues that afford different performance accuracies. This timing pattern may be temporally shifted to optimize control. Different cue/gait parameter latencies in our nonadaptation paradigm provide general-case evidence of the independent control of gait parameters previously demonstrated in gait adaptation paradigms

Gait parameter control timing with dynamic manual contact or visual cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Rabin, Ely; Shi, Peter; Werner, William

2016-06-01

We investigated the timing of gait parameter changes (stride length, peak toe velocity, and double-, single-support, and complete step duration) to control gait speed. Eleven healthy participants adjusted their gait speed on a treadmill to maintain a constant distance between them and a fore-aft oscillating cue (a place on a conveyor belt surface). The experimental design balanced conditions of cue modality (vision: eyes-open; manual contact: eyes-closed while touching the cue); treadmill speed (0.2, 0.4, 0.85, and 1.3 m/s); and cue motion (none, ±10 cm at 0.09, 0.11, and 0.18 Hz). Correlation analyses revealed a number of temporal relationships between gait parameters and cue speed. The results suggest that neural control ranged from feedforward to feedback. Specifically, step length preceded cue velocity during double-support duration suggesting anticipatory control. Peak toe velocity nearly coincided with its most-correlated cue velocity during single-support duration. The toe-off concluding step and double-support durations followed their most-correlated cue velocity, suggesting feedback control. Cue-tracking accuracy and cue velocity correlations with timing parameters were higher with the manual contact cue than visual cue. The cue/gait timing relationships generalized across cue modalities, albeit with greater delays of step-cycle events relative to manual contact cue velocity. We conclude that individual kinematic parameters of gait are controlled to achieve a desired velocity at different specific times during the gait cycle. The overall timing pattern of instantaneous cue velocities associated with different gait parameters is conserved across cues that afford different performance accuracies. This timing pattern may be temporally shifted to optimize control. Different cue/gait parameter latencies in our nonadaptation paradigm provide general-case evidence of the independent control of gait parameters previously demonstrated in gait adaptation paradigms

Tactical decisions for changeable cuttlefish camouflage: visual cues for choosing masquerade are relevant from a greater distance than visual cues used for background matching.

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Buresch, Kendra C; Ulmer, Kimberly M; Cramer, Corinne; McAnulty, Sarah; Davison, William; Mäthger, Lydia M; Hanlon, Roger T

2015-10-01

Cuttlefish use multiple camouflage tactics to evade their predators. Two common tactics are background matching (resembling the background to hinder detection) and masquerade (resembling an uninteresting or inanimate object to impede detection or recognition). We investigated how the distance and orientation of visual stimuli affected the choice of these two camouflage tactics. In the current experiments, cuttlefish were presented with three visual cues: 2D horizontal floor, 2D vertical wall, and 3D object. Each was placed at several distances: directly beneath (in a circle whose diameter was one body length (BL); at zero BL [(0BL); i.e., directly beside, but not beneath the cuttlefish]; at 1BL; and at 2BL. Cuttlefish continued to respond to 3D visual cues from a greater distance than to a horizontal or vertical stimulus. It appears that background matching is chosen when visual cues are relevant only in the immediate benthic surroundings. However, for masquerade, objects located multiple body lengths away remained relevant for choice of camouflage. © 2015 Marine Biological Laboratory.

Sensory modality of smoking cues modulates neural cue reactivity.

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Yalachkov, Yavor; Kaiser, Jochen; Görres, Andreas; Seehaus, Arne; Naumer, Marcus J

2013-01-01

Behavioral experiments have demonstrated that the sensory modality of presentation modulates drug cue reactivity. The present study on nicotine addiction tested whether neural responses to smoking cues are modulated by the sensory modality of stimulus presentation. We measured brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 15 smokers and 15 nonsmokers while they viewed images of smoking paraphernalia and control objects and while they touched the same objects without seeing them. Haptically presented, smoking-related stimuli induced more pronounced neural cue reactivity than visual cues in the left dorsal striatum in smokers compared to nonsmokers. The severity of nicotine dependence correlated positively with the preference for haptically explored smoking cues in the left inferior parietal lobule/somatosensory cortex, right fusiform gyrus/inferior temporal cortex/cerebellum, hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and supplementary motor area. These observations are in line with the hypothesized role of the dorsal striatum for the expression of drug habits and the well-established concept of drug-related automatized schemata, since haptic perception is more closely linked to the corresponding object-specific action pattern than visual perception. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that with the growing severity of nicotine dependence, brain regions involved in object perception, memory, self-processing, and motor control exhibit an increasing preference for haptic over visual smoking cues. This difference was not found for control stimuli. Considering the sensory modality of the presented cues could serve to develop more reliable fMRI-specific biomarkers, more ecologically valid experimental designs, and more effective cue-exposure therapies of addiction.

Individual differences in personality in laying hens are related to learning a colour cue association.

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de Haas, Elske N; Lee, Caroline; Hernandez, Carlos E; Naguib, Marc; Rodenburg, T Bas

2017-01-01

Personality can influence how animals perceive and learn cues. The behaviour and physiological responses animals show during stressful events is indicative of their personality. Acute induced stress prior to a cognitive test are known to affect the judgement of a stimulus, but personality of an individual could also affect learning of a specific cognitive paradigm. Here, we assessed if adult laying hens' behaviour and physiological responses, as indicators of their personality, were related to their cognitive performance. We assessed their behavioural responses to a tonic immobility test, an open field test, and a manual restraint test, and measured plasma corticosterone levels after manual restraint. After that, hens (n=20) were trained in a pre-set training schedule to associate a colour-cue with a reward. In a two-choice go-go test, hens needed to choose between a baited or non-baited food container displayed randomly on the left or right side of an arena. Success in learning was related to personality, with better performance of hens which showed a reactive personality type by a long latency to walk, struggle or vocalize during the tests. Only eight out of 20 hens reached the training criteria. The non-learners showed a strong side preference during all training days. Side preferences were strong in hens with high levels of plasma corticosterone and with a long duration of tonic immobility, indicating that fearful, stress-sensitive hens are more prone to develop side biases. Our results show that learning can be hindered by side biases, and fearful animals with a more proactive personality type are more sensitive to develop such biases. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Modulation of the electrophysiological correlates of retrieval cue processing by the specificity of task demands.

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Johnson, Jeffrey D; Rugg, Michael D

2006-02-03

Retrieval orientation refers to the differential processing of retrieval cues according to the type of information sought from memory (e.g., words vs. pictures). In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate whether the neural correlates of differential retrieval orientations are sensitive to the specificity of the retrieval demands of the test task. In separate study-test phases, subjects encoded lists of intermixed words and pictures, and then undertook one of two retrieval tests, in both of which the retrieval cues were exclusively words. In the recognition test, subjects performed 'old/new' discriminations on the test items, and old items corresponded to only one class of studied material (words or pictures). In the exclusion test, old items corresponded to both classes of study material, and subjects were required to respond 'old' only to test items corresponding to a designated class of material. Thus, demands for retrieval specificity were greater in the exclusion test than during recognition. ERPs elicited by correctly classified new items in the two types of test were contrasted according to whether words or pictures were the sought-for material. Material-dependent ERP effects were evident in both tests, but the effects onset earlier and offset later in the exclusion test. The findings suggest that differential processing of retrieval cues, and hence the adoption of differential retrieval orientations, varies according to the specificity of the retrieval goal.

The Effects of Anxiety on the Recognition of Multisensory Emotional Cues with Different Cultural Familiarity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ai Koizumi

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Anxious individuals have been shown to interpret others' facial expressions negatively. However, whether this negative interpretation bias depends on the modality and familiarity of emotional cues remains largely unknown. We examined whether trait-anxiety affects recognition of multisensory emotional cues (ie, face and voice, which were expressed by actors from either the same or different cultural background as the participants (ie, familiar in-group and unfamiliar out-group. The dynamic face and voice cues of the same actors were synchronized, and conveyed either congruent (eg, happy face and voice or incongruent emotions (eg, happy face and angry voice. Participants were to indicate the perceived emotion in one of the cues, while ignoring the other. The results showed that when recognizing emotions of in-group actors, highly anxious individuals, compared with low anxious ones, were more likely to interpret others' emotions in a negative manner, putting more weight on the to-be-ignored angry cues. This interpretation bias was found regardless of the cue modality. However, when recognizing emotions of out-group actors, low and high anxious individuals showed no difference in the interpretation of emotions irrespective of modality. These results suggest that trait-anxiety affects recognition of emotional expressions in a modality independent yet cultural familiarity dependent manner.

Altered Brain Reactivity to Game Cues After Gaming Experience.

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Ahn, Hyeon Min; Chung, Hwan Jun; Kim, Sang Hee

2015-08-01

Individuals who play Internet games excessively show elevated brain reactivity to game-related cues. This study attempted to test whether this elevated cue reactivity observed in game players is a result of repeated exposure to Internet games. Healthy young adults without a history of excessively playing Internet games were recruited, and they were instructed to play an online Internet game for 2 hours/day for five consecutive weekdays. Two control groups were used: the drama group, which viewed a fantasy TV drama, and the no-exposure group, which received no systematic exposure. All participants performed a cue reactivity task with game, drama, and neutral cues in the brain scanner, both before and after the exposure sessions. The game group showed an increased reactivity to game cues in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). The degree of VLPFC activation increase was positively correlated with the self-reported increase in desire for the game. The drama group showed an increased cue reactivity in response to the presentation of drama cues in the caudate, posterior cingulate, and precuneus. The results indicate that exposure to either Internet games or TV dramas elevates the reactivity to visual cues associated with the particular exposure. The exact elevation patterns, however, appear to differ depending on the type of media experienced. How changes in each of the regions contribute to the progression to pathological craving warrants a future longitudinal study.

Earthworms use odor cues to locate and feed on microorganisms in soil.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lara Zirbes

Full Text Available Earthworms are key components of temperate soil ecosystems but key aspects of their ecology remain unexamined. Here we elucidate the role of olfactory cues in earthworm attraction to food sources and document specific chemical cues that attract Eisenia fetida to the soil fungi Geotrichum candidum. Fungi and other microorganisms are major sources of volatile emissions in soil ecosystems as well as primary food sources for earthworms, suggesting the likelihood that earthworms might profitably use olfactory cues to guide foraging behavior. Moreover, previous studies have documented earthworm movement toward microbial food sources. But, the specific olfactory cues responsible for earthworm attraction have not previously been identified. Using olfactometer assays combined with chemical analyses (GC-MS, we documented the attraction of E. fetida individuals to filtrate derived from G. candidum colonies and to two individual compounds tested in isolation: ethyl pentanoate and ethyl hexanoate. Attraction at a distance was observed when barriers prevented the worms from reaching the target stimuli, confirming the role of volatile cues. These findings enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying key trophic interactions in soil ecosystems and have potential implications for the extraction and collection of earthworms in vermiculture and other applied activities.

Attentional bias to betel quid cues: An eye tracking study.

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Shen, Bin; Chiu, Meng-Chun; Li, Shuo-Heng; Huang, Guo-Joe; Liu, Ling-Jun; Ho, Ming-Chou

2016-09-01

The World Health Organization regards betel quid as a human carcinogen, and DSM-IV and ICD-10 dependence symptoms may develop with heavy use. This study, conducted in central Taiwan, investigated whether betel quid chewers can exhibit overt orienting to selectively respond to the betel quid cues. Twenty-four male chewers' and 23 male nonchewers' eye movements to betel-quid-related pictures and matched pictures were assessed during a visual probe task. The eye movement index showed that betel quid chewers were more likely to initially direct their gaze to the betel quid cues, t(23) = 3.70, p betel quid chewers' attentional bias. The results demonstrated that the betel quid chewers (but not the nonchewers) were more likely to initially direct their gaze to the betel quid cues, and spent more time and were more fixated on them. These findings suggested that when attention is directly measured through the eye tracking technique, this methodology may be more sensitive to detecting attentional biases in betel quid chewers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial midsession reversal learning in rats: Effects of egocentric Cue use and memory.

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Rayburn-Reeves, Rebecca M; Moore, Mary K; Smith, Thea E; Crafton, Daniel A; Marden, Kelly L

2018-07-01

The midsession reversal task has been used to investigate behavioral flexibility and cue use in non-human animals, with results indicating differences in the degree of control by environmental cues across species. For example, time-based control has been found in rats only when tested in a T-maze apparatus and under specific conditions in which position and orientation (i.e., egocentric) cues during the intertrial interval could not be used to aid performance. Other research in an operant setting has shown that rats often produce minimal errors around the reversal location, demonstrating response patterns similar to patterns exhibited by humans and primates in this task. The current study aimed to reduce, but not eliminate, the ability for rats to utilize egocentric cues by placing the response levers on the opposite wall of the chamber in relation to the pellet dispenser. Results showed that rats made minimal errors prior to the reversal, suggesting time-based cues were not controlling responses, and that they switched to the second correct stimulus within a few trials after the reversal event. Video recordings also revealed highly structured patterns of behavior by the majority of rats, which often differed depending on which response was reinforced. We interpret these findings as evidence that rats are adept at utilizing their own egocentric cues and that these cues, along with memory for the recent response-reinforcement contingencies, aid in maximizing reinforcement over the session. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cognitive-linguistic effort in multidisciplinary stroke rehabilitation: Decreasing vs. increasing cues for word retrieval.

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Choe, Yu-Kyong; Foster, Tammie; Asselin, Abigail; LeVander, Meagan; Baird, Jennifer

2017-04-01

Approximately 24% of stroke survivors experience co-occurring aphasia and hemiparesis. These individuals typically attend back-to-back therapy sessions. However, sequentially scheduled therapy may trigger physical and mental fatigue and have an adverse impact on treatment outcomes. The current study tested a hypothesis that exerting less effort during a therapy session would reduce overall fatigue and enhance functional recovery. Two stroke survivors chronically challenged by non-fluent aphasia and right hemiparesis sequentially completed verbal naming and upper-limb tasks on their home computers. The level of cognitive-linguistic effort in speech/language practice was manipulated by presenting verbal naming tasks in two conditions: Decreasing cues (i.e., most-to-least support for word retrieval), and Increasing cues (i.e., least-to-most support). The participants completed the same upper-limb exercises throughout the study periods. Both individuals showed a statistically significant advantage of decreasing cues over increasing cues in word retrieval during the practice period, but not at the end of the practice period or thereafter. The participant with moderate aphasia and hemiparesis achieved clinically meaningful gains in upper-limb functions following the decreasing cues condition, but not after the increasing cues condition. Preliminary findings from the current study suggest a positive impact of decreasing cues in the context of multidisciplinary stroke rehabilitation.

Atomoxetine effects on attentional bias to drug-related cues in cocaine dependent individuals

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Passamonti, L. (Luca); M. Luijten (Maartje); Ziauddeen, H.; I. Coyle-Gilchrist (Ian); Rittman, T.; Brain, S.A.E.; Regenthal, R.; I.H.A. Franken (Ingmar); Sahakian, B.J.; Bullmore, E.T.; Robbins, T.W.; Ersche, K.D.

2017-01-01

textabstractRationale: Biased attention towards drug-related cues and reduced inhibitory control over the regulation of drug-intake characterize drug addiction. The noradrenaline system has been critically implicated in both attentional and response inhibitory processes and is directly affected by

Cue Reliability Represented in the Shape of Tuning Curves in the Owl's Sound Localization System.

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Cazettes, Fanny; Fischer, Brian J; Peña, Jose L

2016-02-17

Optimal use of sensory information requires that the brain estimates the reliability of sensory cues, but the neural correlate of cue reliability relevant for behavior is not well defined. Here, we addressed this issue by examining how the reliability of spatial cue influences neuronal responses and behavior in the owl's auditory system. We show that the firing rate and spatial selectivity changed with cue reliability due to the mechanisms generating the tuning to the sound localization cue. We found that the correlated variability among neurons strongly depended on the shape of the tuning curves. Finally, we demonstrated that the change in the neurons' selectivity was necessary and sufficient for a network of stochastic neurons to predict behavior when sensory cues were corrupted with noise. This study demonstrates that the shape of tuning curves can stand alone as a coding dimension of environmental statistics. In natural environments, sensory cues are often corrupted by noise and are therefore unreliable. To make the best decisions, the brain must estimate the degree to which a cue can be trusted. The behaviorally relevant neural correlates of cue reliability are debated. In this study, we used the barn owl's sound localization system to address this question. We demonstrated that the mechanisms that account for spatial selectivity also explained how neural responses changed with degraded signals. This allowed for the neurons' selectivity to capture cue reliability, influencing the population readout commanding the owl's sound-orienting behavior. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/362101-10$15.00/0.

The effect of cue content on retrieval from autobiographical memory.

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Uzer, Tugba; Brown, Norman R

2017-01-01

It has long been argued that personal memories are usually generated in an effortful search process in word-cueing studies. However, recent research (Uzer, Lee, & Brown, 2012) shows that direct retrieval of autobiographical memories, in response to word cues, is common. This invites the question of whether direct retrieval phenomenon is generalizable beyond the standard laboratory paradigm. Here we investigated prevalence of direct retrieval of autobiographical memories cued by specific and individuated cues versus generic cues. In Experiment 1, participants retrieved memories in response to cues from their own life (e.g., the names of friends) and generic words (e.g., chair). In Experiment 2, participants provided their personal cues two or three months prior to coming to the lab (min: 75days; max: 100days). In each experiment, RT was measured and participants reported whether memories were directly retrieved or generated on each trial. Results showed that personal cues elicited a high rate of direct retrieval. Personal cues were more likely to elicit direct retrieval than generic word cues, and as a consequence, participants responded faster, on average, to the former than to the latter. These results challenge the constructive view of autobiographical memory and suggest that autobiographical memories consist of pre-stored event representations, which are largely governed by associative mechanisms. These demonstrations offer theoretically interesting questions such as why are we not overwhelmed with directly retrieved memories cued by everyday familiar surroundings? Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Reward dependence moderates smoking-cue- and stress-induced cigarette cravings.

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Michalowski, Alexandra; Erblich, Joel

2014-12-01

Cigarette cravings following exposure to smoking cues in a smoker's environment are thought to play an important role in cessation failure. The possibility that dispositional factors may impact cue-induced cravings, though intriguing, has received little attention. According to Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Theory, factors such as reward dependence (RD), harm avoidance (HA), and novelty seeking (NS) may figure prominently in risk for addiction, as well as relapse, in individuals attempting to abstain from drug and alcohol use. Particularly interesting in this regard is the possibility that smokers with higher levels of RD, who are especially sensitive to reward signals, will have heightened craving reactions to smoking cues. To that end, non-treatment-seeking nicotine dependent smokers (n=96, mean age=41.1, 47% African American, 17% Caucasian, 22% Hispanic, 19.3cigs/day, FTND=7.5) underwent a classic experimental cue-induction, during which they were exposed to imagery of: (1) smoking, (2) neutral, and (3) stress cues, and reported their cigarette cravings (0-100) before and after each exposure. Participants also completed the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. Not surprisingly, smoking and stress cues (but not neutral cues) elicited significant elevations in craving (p'scues (pcues (pcues. Furthermore, the similar effects of RD on stress-induced craving suggest that both cue-and stress-induced cravings may be influenced by a common underlying disposition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Orientation in a crowded environment: can King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) chicks find their creches after a displacement?

Science.gov (United States)

Nesterova, Anna P; Mardon, Jérôme; Bonadonna, Francesco

2009-01-01

For seabird species, the presence of conspecifics in a crowded breeding colony can obstruct locally available orientation cues. Thus, navigation to specific locations can present a challenging problem. We investigated short-range orientation in King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) chicks that live in a large and densely populated colony. The two main objectives were to determine whether chicks displaced to a novel location away from the colony (i) can orient towards the colony and return to their crèche and (ii) rely on visual or non-visual cues for orientation. To address these questions, a circular arena was constructed 100 m away from the colony. Chicks were released in the arena during the day and at night. After the orientation experiment in the arena, chicks were allowed to return to their home crèche, if they could. Our results showed that, during day trials, chicks preferred the half of the arena closer to the colony, but not at night. However, at night, birds spent more time on ;the colony half' of the arena if the wind blew from the colony direction. When animals were allowed to leave the arena, 98% of chicks homed during the day but only 62% of chicks homed at night. Chicks that homed at night also took longer to find their crèche. The experiments suggest that King Penguin chicks can find their crèche from a novel location. Visual cues are important for homing but, when visual cues are not present, animals are able to make use of other information carried by the wind.

Individual differences on social comparison : properties of the orientation Spanish scale towards social comparison

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Buunk, AP; Belmonte, J; Peiro, JM; Zurriaga, R; Gibbons, FX

2005-01-01

This paper describes the development and the properties of the INCOM-E, the Spanish language version of the INCOM, a measure to assess individual differences in social comparison orientation that was originally developed simultaneously in English and in Dutch. In both Study 1 (including 212

Quantitative characterization of the orientation spread within individual grains in copper after tensile deformation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Krog-Pedersen, Stine; Bowen, Jacob R.; Pantleon, Wolfgang

2009-01-01

By means of electron backscatter diffraction, orientations are determined on a regular grid on a polished section of a copper specimen after tensile deformation to 25%. Individual grains separated by boundaries with disorientation angles above 7° are identified and the microtexture in the form...

Individual fibre segmentation from 3D X-ray computed tomography for characterising the fibre orientation in unidirectional composite materials

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Emerson, Monica Jane; Jespersen, Kristine Munk; Dahl, Anders Bjorholm

2017-01-01

The aim of this paper is to characterise the fibre orientation in unidirectional fibre reinforced polymers, namely glass and carbon fibre composites. The compression strength of the composite is related to the orientation of the fibres. Thus the orientation is essential when designing materials...... of composites with high fibre volume fraction. From the individual fibre orientations, it is possible to obtain results which are independent of the scanning quality. The compression strength for both composites is estimated from the average fibre orientations and is found to be of the same order of magnitude...

Drinkers’ memory bias for alcohol picture cues in explicit and implicit memory tasks

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen-Louie, Tam T.; Buckman, Jennifer F.; Ray, Suchismita

2016-01-01

Background Alcohol cues can bias attention and elicit emotional reactions, especially in drinkers. Yet, little is known about how alcohol cues affect explicit and implicit memory processes, and how memory for alcohol cues is affected by acute alcohol intoxication. Methods Young adult participants (N=161) were randomly assigned to alcohol, placebo, or control beverage conditions. Following beverage consumption, they were shown neutral, emotional and alcohol-related pictures cues. Participants then completed free recall and repetition priming tasks to test explicit and implicit memory, respectively, for picture cues. Average blood alcohol concentration for the alcohol group was 74 ± 13 mg/dl when memory testing began. Two mixed linear model analyses were conducted to examine the effects of beverage condition, picture cue type, and their interaction on explicit and implicit memory. Results Picture cue type and beverage condition each significantly affected explicit recall of picture cues, whereas only picture cue type significantly influenced repetition priming. Individuals in the alcohol condition recalled significantly fewer pictures than those in other conditions, regardless of cue type. Both free recall and repetition priming were greater for emotional and alcohol-related cues compared to neutral picture cues. No interaction effects were detected. Conclusions Young adult drinkers showed enhanced explicit and implicit memory processing of alcohol cues compared to emotionally neutral cues. This enhanced processing for alcohol cues was on par with that seen for positive emotional cues. Acute alcohol intoxication did not alter this preferential memory processing for alcohol cues over neutral cues. PMID:26811126

Drinkers' memory bias for alcohol picture cues in explicit and implicit memory tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen-Louie, Tam T; Buckman, Jennifer F; Ray, Suchismita; Bates, Marsha E

2016-03-01

Alcohol cues can bias attention and elicit emotional reactions, especially in drinkers. Yet, little is known about how alcohol cues affect explicit and implicit memory processes, and how memory for alcohol cues is affected by acute alcohol intoxication. Young adult participants (N=161) were randomly assigned to alcohol, placebo, or control beverage conditions. Following beverage consumption, they were shown neutral, emotional and alcohol-related pictures cues. Participants then completed free recall and repetition priming tasks to test explicit and implicit memory, respectively, for picture cues. Average blood alcohol concentration for the alcohol group was 74±13mg/dl when memory testing began. Two mixed linear model analyses were conducted to examine the effects of beverage condition, picture cue type, and their interaction on explicit and implicit memory. Picture cue type and beverage condition each significantly affected explicit recall of picture cues, whereas only picture cue type significantly influenced repetition priming. Individuals in the alcohol condition recalled significantly fewer pictures than those in other conditions, regardless of cue type. Both free recall and repetition priming were greater for emotional and alcohol-related cues compared to neutral picture cues. No interaction effects were detected. Young adult drinkers showed enhanced explicit and implicit memory processing of alcohol cues compared to emotionally neutral cues. This enhanced processing for alcohol cues was on par with that seen for positive emotional cues. Acute alcohol intoxication did not alter this preferential memory processing for alcohol cues over neutral cues. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Heralding the authoritarian? Orientation toward authority in early childhood.

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Reifen Tagar, Michal; Federico, Christopher M; Lyons, Kristen E; Ludeke, Steven; Koenig, Melissa A

2014-04-01

In the research reported here, we examined whether individual differences in authoritarianism have expressions in early childhood. We expected that young children would be more responsive to cues of deviance and status to the extent that their parents endorsed authoritarian values. Using a sample of 43 preschoolers and their parents, we found support for both expectations. Children of parents high in authoritarianism trusted adults who adhered to convention (vs. adults who did not) more than did children of parents low in authoritarianism. Furthermore, compared with children of parents low in authoritarianism, children of parents high in authoritarianism gave greater weight to a status-based "adult = reliable" heuristic in trusting an ambiguously conventional adult. Findings were consistent using two different measures of parents' authoritarian values. These findings demonstrate that children's trust-related behaviors vary reliably with their parents' orientations toward authority and convention, and suggest that individual differences in authoritarianism express themselves well before early adulthood.

Telling friend from foe : Environmental cues improve recognition of individuals with hostile intentions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wijn, R.; Kleij, R. van der; Kallen, V.L.; Stekkinger, M.; Vries, P. de

2017-01-01

Detecting deviant behaviours that precede and are related to crimes can help prevent these crimes. Research suggests that the psychological mindset of wrongdoers may differ from others, such that they are more anxious, self-focussed, and vigilant. As a result, their responses to environmental cues,

Neural correlates of the spatial and expectancy components of endogenous and stimulus-driven orienting of attention in the Posner task.

Science.gov (United States)

Doricchi, Fabrizio; Macci, Enrica; Silvetti, Massimo; Macaluso, Emiliano

2010-07-01

Voluntary orienting of visual attention is conventionally measured in tasks with predictive central cues followed by frequent valid targets at the cued location and by infrequent invalid targets at the uncued location. This implies that invalid targets entail both spatial reorienting of attention and breaching of the expected spatial congruency between cues and targets. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to separate the neural correlates of the spatial and expectancy components of both endogenous orienting and stimulus-driven reorienting of attention. We found that during endogenous orienting with predictive cues, there was a significant deactivation of the right Temporal-Parietal Junction (TPJ). We also discovered that the lack of an equivalent deactivation with nonpredictive cues was matched to drop in attentional costs and preservation of attentional benefits. The right TPJ showed equivalent responses to invalid targets following predictive and nonpredictive cues. On the contrary, infrequent-unexpected invalid targets following predictive cues specifically activated the right Middle and Inferior Frontal Gyrus (MFG-IFG). Additional comparisons with spatially neutral trials demonstrated that, independently of cue predictiveness, valid targets activate the left TPJ, whereas invalid targets activate both the left and right TPJs. These findings show that the selective right TPJ activation that is found in the comparison between invalid and valid trials results from the reciprocal cancelling of the different activations that in the left TPJ are related to the processing of valid and invalid targets. We propose that left and right TPJs provide "matching and mismatching to attentional template" signals. These signals enable reorienting of attention and play a crucial role in the updating of the statistical contingency between cues and targets.

Recovery-oriented services for individuals with mental illness and case managers' experience of professional burnout.

Science.gov (United States)

Kraus, Shane W; Stein, Catherine H

2013-02-01

Present cross-sectional study examined perceptions of recovery-oriented services and reports of professional burnout and job satisfaction in a sample of 114 case managers working in community mental health centers across Ohio. The research examined the relative contribution of demographic characteristics, the structure of case management services, and case managers' beliefs about recovery-oriented services in describing their reports of professional burnout and job satisfaction. Regardless of individual characteristics of case managers and reports of the structure of their jobs, case managers who perceived their agency to offer higher levels of recovery-oriented services also reported lower levels of depersonalization and emotional exhaustion at work, and higher levels of professional accomplishment and job satisfaction. Directions for future research in the area are discussed.

Detection vs. selection: integration of genetic, epigenetic and environmental cues in fluctuating environments.

Science.gov (United States)

McNamara, John M; Dall, Sasha R X; Hammerstein, Peter; Leimar, Olof

2016-10-01

There are many inputs during development that influence an organism's fit to current or upcoming environments. These include genetic effects, transgenerational epigenetic influences, environmental cues and developmental noise, which are rarely investigated in the same formal framework. We study an analytically tractable evolutionary model, in which cues are integrated to determine mature phenotypes in fluctuating environments. Environmental cues received during development and by the mother as an adult act as detection-based (individually observed) cues. The mother's phenotype and a quantitative genetic effect act as selection-based cues (they correlate with environmental states after selection). We specify when such cues are complementary and tend to be used together, and when using the most informative cue will predominate. Thus, we extend recent analyses of the evolutionary implications of subsets of these effects by providing a general diagnosis of the conditions under which detection and selection-based influences on development are likely to evolve and coexist. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/CNRS.

The "where" of social attention: Head and body direction aftereffects arise from representations specific to cue type and not direction alone.

Science.gov (United States)

Lawson, Rebecca P; Calder, Andrew J

2016-01-01

Human beings have remarkable social attention skills. From the initial processing of cues, such as eye gaze, head direction, and body orientation, we perceive where other people are attending, allowing us to draw inferences about the intentions, desires, and dispositions of others. But before we can infer why someone is attending to something in the world we must first accurately represent where they are attending. Here we investigate the "where" of social attention perception, and employ adaptation paradigms to ascertain how head and body orientation are visually represented in the human brain. Across two experiments we show that the representation of two cues to social attention (head and body orientation) exists at the category-specific level. This suggests that aftereffects do not arise from "social attention cells" discovered in macaques or from abstract representations of "leftness" or "rightness."

Post-cueing deficits with maintained cueing benefits in patients with Parkinson's disease dementia

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Susanne eGräber

2014-11-01

Full Text Available In Parkinson’s disease (PD internal cueing mechanisms are impaired leading to symptoms such as like hypokinesia. However external cues can improve movement execution by using cortical resources. These cortical processes can be affected by cognitive decline in dementia.It is still unclear how dementia in PD influences external cueing. We investigated a group of 25 PD patients with dementia (PDD and 25 non-demented PD patients (PDnD matched by age, sex and disease duration in a simple reaction time (SRT task using an additional acoustic cue. PDD patients benefited from the additional cue in similar magnitude as did PDnD patients. However, withdrawal of the cue led to a significantly increased reaction time in the PDD group compared to the PDnD patients. Our results indicate that even PDD patients can benefit from strategies using external cue presentation but the process of cognitive worsening can reduce the effect when cues are withdrawn.

Disentangling environmental and heritable nestmate recognition cues in a carpenter ant

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

van Zweden, Jelle S; Dreier, Stephanie; d'Ettorre, Patrizia

2009-01-01

Discriminating between group members and strangers is a key feature of social life. Nestmate recognition is very effective in social insects and is manifested by aggression and rejection of alien individuals, which are prohibited to enter the nest. Nestmate recognition is based on the quantitative...... variation in cuticular hydrocarbons, which can include heritable cues from the workers, as well as acquired cues from the environment or queen-derived cues. We tracked the profile of six colonies of the ant Camponotus aethiops for a year under homogeneous laboratory conditions. We performed chemical...... diagnostic power between colonies. The presence of a queen had little influence on nestmate discrimination abilities. Our results suggest that heritable cues of workers are the dominant factor influencing nestmate discrimination in these carpenter ants and highlight the importance of colony kin structure...

Experience-Dependency of Reliance on Local Visual and Idiothetic Cues for Spatial Representations Created in the Absence of Distal Information

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Fabian Draht

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Spatial encoding in the hippocampus is based on a range of different input sources. To generate spatial representations, reliable sensory cues from the external environment are integrated with idiothetic cues, derived from self-movement, that enable path integration and directional perception. In this study, we examined to what extent idiothetic cues significantly contribute to spatial representations and navigation: we recorded place cells while rodents navigated towards two visually identical chambers in 180° orientation via two different paths in darkness and in the absence of reliable auditory or olfactory cues. Our goal was to generate a conflict between local visual and direction-specific information, and then to assess which strategy was prioritized in different learning phases. We observed that, in the absence of distal cues, place fields are initially controlled by local visual cues that override idiothetic cues, but that with multiple exposures to the paradigm, spaced at intervals of days, idiothetic cues become increasingly implemented in generating an accurate spatial representation. Taken together, these data support that, in the absence of distal cues, local visual cues are prioritized in the generation of context-specific spatial representations through place cells, whereby idiothetic cues are deemed unreliable. With cumulative exposures to the environments, the animal learns to attend to subtle idiothetic cues to resolve the conflict between visual and direction-specific information.

Experience-Dependency of Reliance on Local Visual and Idiothetic Cues for Spatial Representations Created in the Absence of Distal Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Draht, Fabian; Zhang, Sijie; Rayan, Abdelrahman; Schönfeld, Fabian; Wiskott, Laurenz; Manahan-Vaughan, Denise

2017-01-01

Spatial encoding in the hippocampus is based on a range of different input sources. To generate spatial representations, reliable sensory cues from the external environment are integrated with idiothetic cues, derived from self-movement, that enable path integration and directional perception. In this study, we examined to what extent idiothetic cues significantly contribute to spatial representations and navigation: we recorded place cells while rodents navigated towards two visually identical chambers in 180° orientation via two different paths in darkness and in the absence of reliable auditory or olfactory cues. Our goal was to generate a conflict between local visual and direction-specific information, and then to assess which strategy was prioritized in different learning phases. We observed that, in the absence of distal cues, place fields are initially controlled by local visual cues that override idiothetic cues, but that with multiple exposures to the paradigm, spaced at intervals of days, idiothetic cues become increasingly implemented in generating an accurate spatial representation. Taken together, these data support that, in the absence of distal cues, local visual cues are prioritized in the generation of context-specific spatial representations through place cells, whereby idiothetic cues are deemed unreliable. With cumulative exposures to the environments, the animal learns to attend to subtle idiothetic cues to resolve the conflict between visual and direction-specific information.

Inferences About Sexual Orientation: The Roles of Stereotypes, Faces, and The Gaydar Myth.

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Cox, William T L; Devine, Patricia G; Bischmann, Alyssa A; Hyde, Janet S

2016-01-01

In the present work, we investigated the pop cultural idea that people have a sixth sense, called "gaydar," to detect who is gay. We propose that "gaydar" is an alternate label for using stereotypes to infer orientation (e.g., inferring that fashionable men are gay). Another account, however, argues that people possess a facial perception process that enables them to identify sexual orientation from facial structure. We report five experiments testing these accounts. Participants made gay-or-straight judgments about fictional targets that were constructed using experimentally manipulated stereotypic cues and real gay/straight people's face cues. These studies revealed that orientation is not visible from the face-purportedly "face-based" gaydar arises from a third-variable confound. People do, however, readily infer orientation from stereotypic attributes (e.g., fashion, career). Furthermore, the folk concept of gaydar serves as a legitimizing myth: Compared to a control group, people stereotyped more often when led to believe in gaydar, whereas people stereotyped less when told gaydar is an alternate label for stereotyping. Discussion focuses on the implications of the gaydar myth and why, contrary to some prior claims, stereotyping is highly unlikely to result in accurate judgments about orientation.

Dorsolateral neostriatum contribution to incentive salience: opioid or dopamine stimulation makes one reward cue more motivationally attractive than another.

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DiFeliceantonio, Alexandra G; Berridge, Kent C

2016-05-01

Pavlovian cues for rewards can become attractive incentives: approached and 'wanted' as the rewards themselves. The motivational attractiveness of a previously learned cue is not fixed, but can be dynamically amplified during re-encounter by simultaneous activation of brain limbic circuitry. Here it was reported that opioid or dopamine microinjections in the dorsolateral quadrant of the neostriatum (DLS) of rats selectively amplify attraction toward a previously learned Pavlovian cue in an individualized fashion, at the expense of a competing cue. In an autoshaping (sign-tracking vs. goal-tracking) paradigm, microinjection of the mu opioid receptor agonist (DAMGO) or dopamine indirect agonist (amphetamine) in the DLS of sign-tracker individuals selectively enhanced their sign-tracking attraction toward the reward-predictive lever cue. By contrast, DAMGO or amphetamine in the DLS of goal-trackers selectively enhanced prepotent attraction toward the reward-proximal cue of sucrose dish. Amphetamine also enhanced goal-tracking in some sign-tracker individuals (if they ever defected to the dish even once). That DLS enhancement of cue attraction was due to stronger motivation, not stronger habits, was suggested by: (i) sign-trackers flexibly followed their cue to a new location when the lever was suddenly moved after DLS DAMGO microinjection; and (ii) DAMGO in the DLS also made sign-trackers work harder on a new instrumental nose-poke response required to earn presentations of their Pavlovian lever cue (instrumental conditioned reinforcement). Altogether, the current results suggest that DLS circuitry can enhance the incentive salience of a Pavlovian reward cue, selectively making that cue a stronger motivational magnet. © 2016 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Can Victoria's Secret Change the Future? A Subjective Time Perception Account of Sexual-Cue Effects on Impatience

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Kim, B. Kyu; Zauberman, Gal

2013-01-01

Sexual cues influence decisions not only about sex, but also about unrelated outcomes such as money. In the presence of sexual cues, individuals are more "impatient" when making intertemporal monetary tradeoffs, choosing smaller immediate amounts over larger delayed amounts. Previous research has emphasized the power of sexual cues to induce a…

Modulation of alpha and gamma oscillations related to retrospectively orienting attention within working memory.

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Poch, Claudia; Campo, Pablo; Barnes, Gareth R

2014-07-01

Selective attention mechanisms allow us to focus on information that is relevant to the current behavior and, equally important, ignore irrelevant information. An influential model proposes that oscillatory neural activity in the alpha band serves as an active functional inhibitory mechanism. Recent studies have shown that, in the same way that attention can be selectively oriented to bias sensory processing in favor of relevant stimuli in perceptual tasks, it is also possible to retrospectively orient attention to internal representations held in working memory. However, these studies have not explored the associated oscillatory phenomena. In the current study, we analysed the patterns of neural oscillatory activity recorded with magnetoencephalography while participants performed a change detection task, in which a spatial retro-cue was presented during the maintenance period, indicating which item or items were relevant for subsequent retrieval. Participants benefited from retro-cues in terms of accuracy and reaction time. Retro-cues also modulated oscillatory activity in the alpha and gamma frequency bands. We observed greater alpha activity in a ventral visual region ipsilateral to the attended hemifield, thus supporting its suppressive role, i.e., a functional disengagement of task-irrelevant regions. Accompanying this modulation, we found an increase in gamma activity contralateral to the attended hemifield, which could reflect attentional orienting and selective processing. These findings suggest that the oscillatory mechanisms underlying attentional orienting to representations held in working memory are similar to those engaged when attention is oriented in the perceptual space. © 2014 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Cell division orientation is coupled to cell-cell adhesion by the E-cadherin/LGN complex

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gloerich, Martijn; Bianchini, Julie M.; Siemers, Kathleen A.; Cohen, Daniel J.; Nelson, W. James

2017-01-01

Both cell-cell adhesion and oriented cell division play prominent roles in establishing tissue architecture, but it is unclear how they might be coordinated. Here, we demonstrate that the cell-cell adhesion protein E-cadherin functions as an instructive cue for cell division orientation. This is

Retrieval-induced forgetting and interference between cues:Training a cue-outcome association attenuates retrieval by alternative cues

OpenAIRE

Ortega-Castro, Nerea; Vadillo Nistal, Miguel

2013-01-01

Some researchers have attempted to determine whether situations in which a single cue is paired with several outcomes (A-B, A-C interference or interference between outcomes) involve the same learning and retrieval mechanisms as situations in which several cues are paired with a single outcome (A-B, C-B interference or interference between cues). Interestingly, current research on a related effect, which is known as retrieval-induced forgetting, can illuminate this debate. Most retrieval-indu...

Bow Your Head in Shame, or, Hold Your Head Up with Pride: Semantic Processing of Self-Esteem Concepts Orients Attention Vertically.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J Eric T Taylor

Full Text Available Embodied cognition holds that abstract concepts are grounded in perceptual-motor simulations. If a given embodied metaphor maps onto a spatial representation, then thinking of that concept should bias the allocation of attention. In this study, we used positive and negative self-esteem words to examine two properties of conceptual cueing. First, we tested the orientation-specificity hypothesis, which predicts that conceptual cues should selectively activate certain spatial axes (in this case, valenced self-esteem concepts should activate vertical space, instead of any spatial continuum. Second, we tested whether conceptual cueing requires semantic processing, or if it can be achieved with shallow visual processing of the cue words. Participants viewed centrally presented words consisting of high or low self-esteem traits (e.g., brave, timid before detecting a target above or below the cue in the vertical condition, or on the left or right of the word in the horizontal condition. Participants were faster to detect targets when their location was compatible with the valence of the word cues, but only in the vertical condition. Moreover, this effect was observed when participants processed the semantics of the word, but not when processing its orthography. The results show that conceptual cueing by spatial metaphors is orientation-specific, and that an explicit consideration of the word cues' semantics is required for conceptual cueing to occur.

Amodal brain activation and functional connectivity in response to high-energy-density food cues in obesity.

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Carnell, Susan; Benson, Leora; Pantazatos, Spiro P; Hirsch, Joy; Geliebter, Allan

2014-11-01

The obesogenic environment is pervasive, yet only some people become obese. The aim was to investigate whether obese individuals show differential neural responses to visual and auditory food cues, independent of cue modality. Obese (BMI 29-41, n = 10) and lean (BMI 20-24, n = 10) females underwent fMRI scanning during presentation of auditory (spoken word) and visual (photograph) cues representing high-energy-density (ED) and low-ED foods. The effect of obesity on whole-brain activation, and on functional connectivity with the midbrain/VTA, was examined. Obese compared with lean women showed greater modality-independent activation of the midbrain/VTA and putamen in response to high-ED (vs. low-ED) cues, as well as relatively greater functional connectivity between the midbrain/VTA and cerebellum (P food cues within the midbrain/VTA and putamen, and altered functional connectivity between the midbrain/VTA and cerebellum, could contribute to excessive food intake in obese individuals. © 2014 The Obesity Society.

Visual cues for data mining

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Rogowitz, Bernice E.; Rabenhorst, David A.; Gerth, John A.; Kalin, Edward B.

1996-04-01

This paper describes a set of visual techniques, based on principles of human perception and cognition, which can help users analyze and develop intuitions about tabular data. Collections of tabular data are widely available, including, for example, multivariate time series data, customer satisfaction data, stock market performance data, multivariate profiles of companies and individuals, and scientific measurements. In our approach, we show how visual cues can help users perform a number of data mining tasks, including identifying correlations and interaction effects, finding clusters and understanding the semantics of cluster membership, identifying anomalies and outliers, and discovering multivariate relationships among variables. These cues are derived from psychological studies on perceptual organization, visual search, perceptual scaling, and color perception. These visual techniques are presented as a complement to the statistical and algorithmic methods more commonly associated with these tasks, and provide an interactive interface for the human analyst.

Cue-induced craving in patients with cocaine use disorder predicts cognitive control deficits toward cocaine cues.

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DiGirolamo, Gregory J; Smelson, David; Guevremont, Nathan

2015-08-01

Cue-induced craving is a clinically important aspect of cocaine addiction influencing ongoing use and sobriety. However, little is known about the relationship between cue-induced craving and cognitive control toward cocaine cues. While studies suggest that cocaine users have an attentional bias toward cocaine cues, the present study extends this research by testing if cocaine use disorder patients (CDPs) can control their eye movements toward cocaine cues and whether their response varied by cue-induced craving intensity. Thirty CDPs underwent a cue exposure procedure to dichotomize them into high and low craving groups followed by a modified antisaccade task in which subjects were asked to control their eye movements toward either a cocaine or neutral drug cue by looking away from the suddenly presented cue. The relationship between breakdowns in cognitive control (as measured by eye errors) and cue-induced craving (changes in self-reported craving following cocaine cue exposure) was investigated. CDPs overall made significantly more errors toward cocaine cues compared to neutral cues, with higher cravers making significantly more errors than lower cravers even though they did not differ significantly in addiction severity, impulsivity, anxiety, or depression levels. Cue-induced craving was the only specific and significant predictor of subsequent errors toward cocaine cues. Cue-induced craving directly and specifically relates to breakdowns of cognitive control toward cocaine cues in CDPs, with higher cravers being more susceptible. Hence, it may be useful identifying high cravers and target treatment toward curbing craving to decrease the likelihood of a subsequent breakdown in control. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of reverberation-related binaural cues in the externalization of speech.

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Catic, Jasmina; Santurette, Sébastien; Dau, Torsten

2015-08-01

The perception of externalization of speech sounds was investigated with respect to the monaural and binaural cues available at the listeners' ears in a reverberant environment. Individualized binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) were used to simulate externalized sound sources via headphones. The measured BRIRs were subsequently modified such that the proportion of the response containing binaural vs monaural information was varied. Normal-hearing listeners were presented with speech sounds convolved with such modified BRIRs. Monaural reverberation cues were found to be sufficient for the externalization of a lateral sound source. In contrast, for a frontal source, an increased amount of binaural cues from reflections was required in order to obtain well externalized sound images. It was demonstrated that the interaction between the interaural cues of the direct sound and the reverberation strongly affects the perception of externalization. An analysis of the short-term binaural cues showed that the amount of fluctuations of the binaural cues corresponded well to the externalization ratings obtained in the listening tests. The results further suggested that the precedence effect is involved in the auditory processing of the dynamic binaural cues that are utilized for externalization perception.

Contextual Cueing in Multiconjunction Visual Search Is Dependent on Color- and Configuration-Based Intertrial Contingencies

Science.gov (United States)

Geyer, Thomas; Shi, Zhuanghua; Muller, Hermann J.

2010-01-01

Three experiments examined memory-based guidance of visual search using a modified version of the contextual-cueing paradigm (Jiang & Chun, 2001). The target, if present, was a conjunction of color and orientation, with target (and distractor) features randomly varying across trials (multiconjunction search). Under these conditions, reaction times…

Suicidal ideation is associated with individual differences in prescription opioid craving and cue-reactivity among chronic pain patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Garland, Eric L; Riquino, Michael R; Priddy, Sarah E; Bryan, Craig J

2017-01-01

Given that chronic pain patients experience significant rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, access to prescription opioids compounds the risk of death by suicide. These patients may experience heightened opioid craving and exhibit increased cue-reactivity to stimuli associated with past opioid use when suicidal ideation produces negative affective states. Because both opioids and suicidal behavior are used to alleviate emotional and physical pain through a process of negative reinforcement, elucidating factors that mediate this association may yield insight into suicide risk among chronic pain patients. This study examined the relationship between suicidal ideation and opioid craving and cue-reactivity, and tested opioid self-medication as a mediator of associations between those factors after controlling for the impact of pain severity. A sample of 115 chronic pain patients provided demographic and clinical information on the Obsessive Compulsive Drug Use Scale, the Current Opioid Misuse Measure, and the Brief Pain Inventory before completing an opioid dot probe task in which heart rate variability was recorded. As hypothesized, suicidal ideation was positively correlated with subjective opioid craving and physiological cue-reactivity. Self-medication significantly mediated the association between suicidal ideation, craving, and cue-reactivity. As opioids relieve the emotional pain linked with suicidal thoughts, chronic pain patients with higher levels of suicidal ideation may experience more intense opioid craving and exhibit heightened physiological cue-reactivity when compared to patients with low levels of suicidal ideation.

Contextual cueing by global features

Science.gov (United States)

Kunar, Melina A.; Flusberg, Stephen J.; Wolfe, Jeremy M.

2008-01-01

In visual search tasks, attention can be guided to a target item, appearing amidst distractors, on the basis of simple features (e.g. find the red letter among green). Chun and Jiang’s (1998) “contextual cueing” effect shows that RTs are also speeded if the spatial configuration of items in a scene is repeated over time. In these studies we ask if global properties of the scene can speed search (e.g. if the display is mostly red, then the target is at location X). In Experiment 1a, the overall background color of the display predicted the target location. Here the predictive color could appear 0, 400 or 800 msec in advance of the search array. Mean RTs are faster in predictive than in non-predictive conditions. However, there is little improvement in search slopes. The global color cue did not improve search efficiency. Experiments 1b-1f replicate this effect using different predictive properties (e.g. background orientation/texture, stimuli color etc.). The results show a strong RT effect of predictive background but (at best) only a weak improvement in search efficiency. A strong improvement in efficiency was found, however, when the informative background was presented 1500 msec prior to the onset of the search stimuli and when observers were given explicit instructions to use the cue (Experiment 2). PMID:17355043

Pictures as cues or as support to verbal cues at encoding and execution of prospective memories in individuals with intellectual disability

OpenAIRE

Levén, Anna; Lyxell, Björn; Andersson, Jan; Danielsson, Henrik

2013-01-01

This study focused on prospective memory in persons with intellectual disability and age-matched controls. Persons with intellectual disability have limited prospective memory function. We investigated prospective memory with words and pictures as cues at encoding and retrieval. Prospective and episodic memory was estimated from Prospective Memory Game performance. Pictures at retrieval were important for prospective memory in particular in the intellectual disability group. Prospective memor...

Exogenous Social Identity Cues Differentially Affect the Dynamic Tracking of Individual Target Faces

Science.gov (United States)

Allen, Roy; Gabbert, Fiona

2013-01-01

We report on an experiment to investigate the top-down effect of exogenous social identity cues on a multiple-identity tracking task, a paradigm well suited to investigate the processes of binding identity to spatial locations. Here we simulated an eyewitness event in which dynamic targets, all to be tracked with equal effort, were identified from…

Effect of rhythmic auditory cueing on gait in people with Alzheimer disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Wittwer, Joanne E; Webster, Kate E; Hill, Keith

2013-04-01

To determine whether rhythmic music and metronome cues alter spatiotemporal gait measures and gait variability in people with Alzheimer disease (AD). A repeated-measures study requiring participants to walk under different cueing conditions. University movement laboratory. Of the people (N=46) who met study criteria (a diagnosis of probable AD and ability to walk 100m) at routine medical review, 30 (16 men; mean age ± SD, 80±6y; revised Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination range, 26-79) volunteered to participate. Participants walked 4 times over an electronic walkway synchronizing to (1) rhythmic music and (2) a metronome set at individual mean baseline comfortable speed cadence. Gait spatiotemporal measures and gait variability (coefficient of variation [CV]). Data from individual walks under each condition were combined. A 1-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare uncued baseline, cued, and retest measures. Gait velocity decreased with both music and metronome cues compared with baseline (baseline, 110.5cm/s; music, 103.4cm/s; metronome, 105.4cm/s), primarily because of significant decreases in stride length (baseline, 120.9cm; music, 112.5cm; metronome, 114.8cm) with both cue types. This was coupled with increased stride length variability compared with baseline (baseline CV, 3.4%; music CV, 4.3%; metronome CV, 4.5%) with both cue types. These changes did not persist at (uncued) retest. Temporal variability was unchanged. Rhythmic auditory cueing at comfortable speed tempo produced deleterious effects on gait in a single session in this group with AD. The deterioration in spatial gait parameters may result from impaired executive function associated with AD. Further research should investigate whether these instantaneous cue effects are altered with more practice or with learning methods tailored to people with cognitive impairment. Copyright © 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights

Cue-induced craving among inhalant users: Development and preliminary validation of a visual cue paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Jain, Shobhit; Dhawan, Anju; Kumaran, S Senthil; Pattanayak, Raman Deep; Jain, Raka

2017-12-01

Cue-induced craving is known to be associated with a higher risk of relapse, wherein drug-specific cues become conditioned stimuli, eliciting conditioned responses. Cue-reactivity paradigm are important tools to study psychological responses and functional neuroimaging changes. However, till date, there has been no specific study or a validated paradigm for inhalant cue-induced craving research. The study aimed to develop and validate visual cue stimulus for inhalant cue-associated craving. The first step (picture selection) involved screening and careful selection of 30 cue- and 30 neutral-pictures based on their relevance for naturalistic settings. In the second step (time optimization), a random selection of ten cue-pictures each was presented for 4s, 6s, and 8s to seven adolescent male inhalant users, and pre-post craving response was compared using a Visual Analogue Scale(VAS) for each of the picture and time. In the third step (validation), craving response for each of 30 cue- and 30 neutral-pictures were analysed among 20 adolescent inhalant users. Findings revealed a significant difference in before and after craving response for the cue-pictures, but not neutral-pictures. Using ROC-curve, pictures were arranged in order of craving intensity. Finally, 20 best cue- and 20 neutral-pictures were used for the development of a 480s visual cue paradigm. This is the first study to systematically develop an inhalant cue picture paradigm which can be used as a tool to examine cue induced craving in neurobiological studies. Further research, including its further validation in larger study and diverse samples, is required. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Motivating contributions to online forums: can locus of control moderate the effects of interface cues?

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Hyang-Sook; Sundar, S Shyam

2016-01-01

In an effort to encourage users to participate rather than lurk, online health forums provide authority badges (e.g., guru) to frequent contributors and popularity indicators (e.g., number of views) to their postings. Studies have shown the latter to be more effective, implying that bulletin-board users are motivated by external validation of their contributions. However, no consideration has yet been given to individual differences in the influence of such popularity indicators. Personality psychology suggests that individuals with external, rather than internal, locus of control are more likely to be other-directed and therefore more likely to be motivated by interface cues showing the bandwagon effect of their online posts. We investigate this hypothesis by analyzing data from a 2 (high vs. low authority cue) × 2 (strong vs. weak bandwagon cue) experiment with an online health community. Results show that strong bandwagon cues promote sense of community among users with internal, rather than external, locus of control. When bandwagon cues are weak, bestowal of high authority serves to heighten their sense of agency. Contrary to prediction, weak bandwagon cues appear to promote sense of community and sense of agency among those with external locus of control. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Explaining Entrepreneurial Status and Success from Personality: An Individual-Level Application of the Entrepreneurial Orientation Framework

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tim Vantilborgh

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Entrepreneurial orientation is defined as an organization’s strategy, describing its innovativeness, proactivity, risk taking, autonomy and competitiveness. We argue that this concept can be translated to the individual level as a constellation of five personality traits that characterize entrepreneurs. We examine the usefulness of these five traits in explaining entrepreneurial status and success. Our results show that entrepreneurs score higher than non-entrepreneurs on innovativeness, proactivity, and risk taking. In addition, latent growth curve modeling revealed that the individual EO traits were related to objective venture performance, albeit only after introducing venture life cycle as a moderator. In line with a differentiation perspective, risk taking, innovativeness, need for achievement, and need for autonomy were positively related to revenue and number of employees when venture life cycle was high. In line with a situation strength perspective, need for autonomy was positively related with growth in number of employees when venture life cycle was low. We conclude that individual entrepreneurial orientation offers a useful framework to understanding entrepreneurship once situational factors, such as venture life cycle, are taken into consideration.

The spiral of distrust: (Non-)cooperation in a repeated trust game is predicted by anger and individual differences in negative reciprocity orientation.

Science.gov (United States)

Harth, Nicole S; Regner, Tobias

2017-12-01

This study investigated state anger and individual differences in negative reciprocity orientation as predictors of individuals' willingness to cooperate with strangers. In order to observe real behaviour, we used a trust game that was played over six periods. In the trust game, a first player (sender) determines how much of a certain endowment she/he wants to share with a second player (trustee), who then can give something back. We varied whether participants received feedback [feedback (yes, no)] about the trustee's behavioural decision (amount sent back). Supporting our hypotheses, the results suggest that feedback compared with no feedback about the trustee's behaviour increased anger. Specifically, information about low back transfers triggered anger and non-cooperation in return. Importantly, participants with a strong negative reciprocity orientation reported higher levels of anger and were less willing to cooperate with the trustee compared with those with low negative reciprocity orientation. Moreover, even when anger was low, individuals with a strong negative reciprocity orientation were less willing to cooperate compared with those with a low negative reciprocity orientation. Thus, negative reciprocity orientation seems to arouse a spiral of distrust. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

A cocaine context renews drug seeking preferentially in a subset of individuals.

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Saunders, Benjamin T; O'Donnell, Elizabeth G; Aurbach, Elyse L; Robinson, Terry E

2014-11-01

Addiction is characterized by a high propensity for relapse, in part because cues associated with drugs can acquire Pavlovian incentive motivational properties, and acting as incentive stimuli, such cues can instigate and invigorate drug-seeking behavior. There is, however, considerable individual variation in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. Discrete and localizable reward cues act as much more effective incentive stimuli in some rats ('sign-trackers', STs), than others ('goal-trackers', GTs). We asked whether similar individual variation exists for contextual cues associated with cocaine. Cocaine context conditioned motivation was quantified in two ways: (1) the ability of a cocaine context to evoke conditioned hyperactivity and (2) the ability of a context in which cocaine was previously self-administered to renew cocaine-seeking behavior. Finally, we assessed the effects of intra-accumbens core flupenthixol, a nonselective dopamine receptor antagonist, on context renewal. In contrast to studies using discrete cues, a cocaine context spurred greater conditioned hyperactivity, and more robustly renewed extinguished cocaine seeking in GTs than STs. In addition, cocaine context renewal was blocked by antagonism of dopamine receptors in the accumbens core. Thus, contextual cues associated with cocaine preferentially acquire motivational control over behavior in different individuals than do discrete cues, and in these individuals the ability of a cocaine context to create conditioned motivation for cocaine requires dopamine in the core of the nucleus accumbens. We speculate that different individuals may be preferentially sensitive to different 'triggers' of relapse.

Discrimination and streaming of speech sounds based on differences in interaural and spectral cues.

Science.gov (United States)

David, Marion; Lavandier, Mathieu; Grimault, Nicolas; Oxenham, Andrew J

2017-09-01

Differences in spatial cues, including interaural time differences (ITDs), interaural level differences (ILDs) and spectral cues, can lead to stream segregation of alternating noise bursts. It is unknown how effective such cues are for streaming sounds with realistic spectro-temporal variations. In particular, it is not known whether the high-frequency spectral cues associated with elevation remain sufficiently robust under such conditions. To answer these questions, sequences of consonant-vowel tokens were generated and filtered by non-individualized head-related transfer functions to simulate the cues associated with different positions in the horizontal and median planes. A discrimination task showed that listeners could discriminate changes in interaural cues both when the stimulus remained constant and when it varied between presentations. However, discrimination of changes in spectral cues was much poorer in the presence of stimulus variability. A streaming task, based on the detection of repeated syllables in the presence of interfering syllables, revealed that listeners can use both interaural and spectral cues to segregate alternating syllable sequences, despite the large spectro-temporal differences between stimuli. However, only the full complement of spatial cues (ILDs, ITDs, and spectral cues) resulted in obligatory streaming in a task that encouraged listeners to integrate the tokens into a single stream.

Individual activities as an integrated part of project work - an innovative approach to project oriented and problem-based learning POPBL

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Moesby, Egon; Winther, Hans Henrik; Kørnøv, Lone

2006-01-01

in an individual activity to subsequently be separately assessed. The results of the individually oriented project work form the platform for final work with the project as a team. The students in each team are expected to evaluate the individual solutions and select the one solution to work on in the final phases......In this paper, the authors describe and, on the basis of a recently conducted survey, evaluate a way to increase student learning through the introduction of an individual project activity to the project oriented and problem-based and team-based project work - POPBL. This can be achieved not just...... by adding an individual activity outside or parallel to the project work, but by having the individual activity embedded as an integrated part of the overall team-based project work. In what the authors have deemed the extended project model, students work individually in the solution phase of the project...

Chemosensory anxiety cues moderate the experience of social exclusion – an fMRI investigation with Cyberball

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olga Anna Wudarczyk

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Recent evidence suggests that the experience of stress can be communicated between individuals via chemosensory cues. Little is known, however, about the impact of these cues on neurophysiological responses during a socially threatening situation. In the current investigation we implemented a widely used paradigm to study social exclusion—Cyberball—to examine whether chemosensory cues signalling anxiety modulate the neuronal effects of ostracism. In a double-blind, within-subjects design, 24 healthy, normosmic participants were presented with chemosensory cues of anxiety (or control samples and completed the Cyberball task while in a 3T fMRI scanner. Axillary sweat collected from male students awaiting an oral examination served as the anxiety cues while the chemosensory control stimuli consisted of sweat collected from the same individuals participating in an ergometer training session. The neuroimaging data revealed that under the control chemosensory condition, exclusion from Cyberball was associated with significantly higher orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex activity, which is consistent with previous studies in the field. However, when participants were primed with the anxiety sweat, the activity in these regions was not observed. Further, under exposure to anxiety cues during ostracism the participants showed deactivations in brain regions involved in memory (hippocampus, social cognition (middle temporal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus and processing of salience (inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that successful communication of anxiety via the chemosensory domain may moderate the experience of social exclusion. It is possible that the anxiety signals make it easier for the individuals to detach from the group, pointing to the communicative role of chemosensory anxiety cues in enhancing adjustment mechanisms in light of a distressing situation.

The Influence of Cue Reliability and Cue Representation on Spatial Reorientation in Young Children

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Lyons, Ian M.; Huttenlocher, Janellen; Ratliff, Kristin R.

2014-01-01

Previous studies of children's reorientation have focused on cue representation (e.g., whether cues are geometric) as a predictor of performance but have not addressed cue reliability (the regularity of the relation between a given cue and an outcome) as a predictor of performance. Here we address both factors within the same series of…

Inferences About Sexual Orientation: The Role of Stereotypes, Faces, and The Gaydar Myth

Science.gov (United States)

Cox, William T. L.; Devine, Patricia G.; Bischmann, Alyssa A.; Hyde, Janet S.

2015-01-01

In the present work, we investigate the pop cultural idea that people have a sixth sense, called “gaydar,” to detect who is gay. We propose that “gaydar” is an alternate label for using stereotypes to infer orientation (e.g., inferring that fashionable men are gay). Another account, however, argues that people possess a facial perception process that enables them to identify sexual orientation from facial structure (Rule et al., 2008). We report five experiments testing these accounts. Participants made gay-or-straight judgments about fictional targets that were constructed using experimentally-manipulated stereotypic cues and real gay/straight people’s face cues. These studies revealed that orientation is not visible from the face—purportedly “face-based” gaydar arises from a third-variable confound. People do, however, readily infer orientation from stereotypic attributes (e.g., fashion, career). Furthermore, the folk concept of gaydar serves as a legitimizing myth: Compared to a control group, people stereotyped more when led to believe in gaydar, whereas people stereotyped less when told gaydar is an alternate label for stereotyping. Discussion focuses on the implications of the gaydar myth and why, contrary to some prior claims, stereotyping is highly unlikely to result in accurate judgments about orientation. PMID:26219212

Implicit and explicit selective attention to smoking cues in smokers indexed by brain potentials.

Science.gov (United States)

Littel, Marianne; Franken, Ingmar H A

2011-04-01

Substance use disorders are characterized by cognitive processing biases, such as automatically detecting and orienting attention towards drug-related stimuli. However, it is unclear how, when and what kind of attention (i.e. implicit, explicit) interacts with the processing of these stimuli. In addition, it is unclear whether smokers are hypersensitive to emotionally significant cues in general or to smoking-related cues in particular. The present event-related potential study aimed to enhance insight in drug-related processing biases by manipulating attention for smoking and other motivationally relevant (emotional) cues in smokers and non-smokers using a visual oddball task. Each of the stimulus categories served as a target (explicit attention; counting) or as a non-target (implicit attention; oddball) category. Compared with non-smokers, smokers' P300 (350-600 ms) was enhanced to smoking pictures under both attentional conditions. P300 amplitude did not differ between groups in response to positive, negative, and neutral cues. It can be concluded from this study that attention manipulation affects the P300 differently in smokers and non-smokers. Smokers display a specific bias to smoking-related cues, and this bias is present during both explicit and implicit attentional processing. Overall, it can be concluded that both explicit and implicit attentional processes appear to play an important role in drug-related processing bias.

A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of individually oriented Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for severe agressive behavior in adolescents

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoogsteder, L.M; Stams, G.J.J.M.; Figge, M.A.; Changoe, K.; van Horn, J.; Hendriks, J.; Wissink, I.B.

2015-01-01

This meta-analysis, including six studies (13 effect sizes) and 164 adolescents, examined the effectiveness of individually oriented treatment (which means that the intervention contained at least an individual component, possibly in combination with group and/or family therapy) with CBT-elements

A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of individually oriented Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT) for severe agressive behavior in adolescents

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoogsteder, L.M.; Stams, G.J.J.M.; Figge, M.A.; Changoe, K.; van Horn, J.E.; Hendriks, J.; Wissink, I.B.

2015-01-01

This meta-analysis, including six studies (13 effect sizes) and 164 adolescents, examined the effectiveness of individually oriented treatment (which means that the intervention contained at least an individual component, possibly in combination with group and/or family therapy) with CBT-elements

Automatic approach bias towards smoking cues is present in smokers but not in ex-smokers

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wiers, C.E.; Kühn, S.; Javadi, A.H.; Korucuoglu, O.; Wiers, R.W.; Walter, H.; Gallinat, J.; Bermpohl, F.

2013-01-01

Rationale :Drug-addicted individuals show automatic approach tendencies towards drug-related cues, i.e., an approach bias (ApB). Nevertheless, little is known about ApB in tobacco smokers and about the presence of ApB after smoking abstinence. Objectives: We investigated ApB to smoking cues in heavy

Gender and Impulsivity: Effects on Cue-Induced Alcohol Craving.

Science.gov (United States)

Yarmush, Devorah E; Manchery, Linda; Luehring-Jones, Peter; Erblich, Joel

2016-05-01

Numerous studies have demonstrated that trait impulsivity is linked to increased risk of developing alcohol-use disorders and other substance abuse. Impulsivity has also been shown in some studies to potentiate cue-induced drug cravings. Despite considerable evidence of gender differences in impulsivity and drug craving among individuals suffering from alcohol dependence and other drug use, little research has focused on these processes in healthy young men and women who may be at risk for developing alcohol-use disorders. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between impulsivity and cue-induced craving, as well as possible gender differences in these effects among healthy young adults. To that end, female (n = 22) and male (n = 14) social drinkers aged 18 to 25, recruited from an urban university campus, completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale and reported their alcohol cravings immediately before and after laboratory exposure to alcohol cues. Findings indicated that exposure to cues elicited increased alcohol cravings, but these effects did not differ by gender. Interestingly, a significant interaction of impulsivity and gender revealed that impulsivity predicted significantly higher cue-induced cravings in women, but not men. Findings underscore the importance of better understanding the interaction of situational factors (e.g., exposure to alcohol cues) and dispositional factors (e.g., impulsivity) as potential contributors to drinking motivation. Future prospective research is needed to identify gender-specific risk factors for the development of problem drinking. Copyright © 2016 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.

A focus on polarity: Investigating the role of orientation cues in mediating student performance on mRNA synthesis tasks in an introductory cell and molecular biology course.

Science.gov (United States)

Olimpo, Jeffrey T; Quijas, Daniel A; Quintana, Anita M

2017-11-01

The central dogma has served as a foundational model for information flow, exchange, and storage in the biological sciences for several decades. Despite its continued importance, however, recent research suggests that novices in the domain possess several misconceptions regarding the aforementioned processes, including those pertaining specifically to the formation of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) transcripts. In the present study, we sought to expand upon these observations through exploration of the influence of orientation cues on students' aptitude at synthesizing mRNAs from provided deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) template strands. Data indicated that participants (n = 45) were proficient at solving tasks of this nature when the DNA template strand and the mRNA molecule were represented in an antiparallel orientation. In contrast, participants' performance decreased significantly on items in which the mRNA was depicted in a parallel orientation relative to the DNA template strand. Furthermore, participants' Grade Point Average, self-reported confidence in understanding the transcriptional process, and spatial ability were found to mediate their performance on the mRNA synthesis tasks. Collectively, these data reaffirm the need for future research and pedagogical interventions designed to enhance students' comprehension of the central dogma in a manner that makes transparent its relevance to real-world scientific phenomena. © 2017 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 45(6):501-508, 2017. © 2017 The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Behavioral Recommendations in Health Research News as Cues to Action: Self-Relevancy and Self-Efficacy Processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Chingching

2016-08-01

This study argues that behavioral recommendations in health news function as cues to action. A proposed self-oriented model seeks to explore the impacts of behavioral recommendations in health research news as cues to action through their influences on self-relevancy and self-efficacy. A content analysis (Study 1) first establishes that health research news commonly features behavioral recommendations. A message experiment (Study 2) then explores the utility of behavioral recommendations as cues to action by demonstrating a self-relevancy effect: Health research news with, as opposed to without, behavioral recommendations increases the self-relevancy of advocated health behaviors, which then improve people's attitudes toward and intentions to adopt those behaviors. A second message experiment (Study 3) tests whether varying presentations of behavioral recommendations alter their effectiveness as cues to action and thus people's behavioral intentions through a dual effect process. In addition to the previously demonstrated self-relevancy effect, this experiment shows that concrete, as opposed to abstract, behavioral recommendations trigger a self-efficacy effect, increasing perceived self-efficacy and further improving behavioral intentions.

A severe capacity limit in the consolidation of orientation information into visual short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Becker, Mark W; Miller, James R; Liu, Taosheng

2013-04-01

Previous research has suggested that two color patches can be consolidated into visual short-term memory (VSTM) via an unlimited parallel process. Here we examined whether the same unlimited-capacity parallel process occurs for two oriented grating patches. Participants viewed two gratings that were presented briefly and masked. In blocks of trials, the gratings were presented either simultaneously or sequentially. In Experiments 1 and 2, the presentation of the stimuli was followed by a location cue that indicated the grating on which to base one's response. In Experiment 1, participants responded whether the target grating was oriented clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to vertical. In Experiment 2, participants indicated whether the target grating was oriented along one of the cardinal directions (vertical or horizontal) or was obliquely oriented. Finally, in Experiment 3, the location cue was replaced with a third grating that appeared at fixation, and participants indicated whether either of the two test gratings matched this probe. Despite the fact that these responses required fairly coarse coding of the orientation information, across all methods of responding we found superior performance for sequential over simultaneous presentations. These findings suggest that the consolidation of oriented gratings into VSTM is severely limited in capacity and differs from the consolidation of color information.

Neural correlates of contextual cueing are modulated by explicit learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Westerberg, Carmen E; Miller, Brennan B; Reber, Paul J; Cohen, Neal J; Paller, Ken A

2011-10-01

Contextual cueing refers to the facilitated ability to locate a particular visual element in a scene due to prior exposure to the same scene. This facilitation is thought to reflect implicit learning, as it typically occurs without the observer's knowledge that scenes repeat. Unlike most other implicit learning effects, contextual cueing can be impaired following damage to the medial temporal lobe. Here we investigated neural correlates of contextual cueing and explicit scene memory in two participant groups. Only one group was explicitly instructed about scene repetition. Participants viewed a sequence of complex scenes that depicted a landscape with five abstract geometric objects. Superimposed on each object was a letter T or L rotated left or right by 90°. Participants responded according to the target letter (T) orientation. Responses were highly accurate for all scenes. Response speeds were faster for repeated versus novel scenes. The magnitude of this contextual cueing did not differ between the two groups. Also, in both groups repeated scenes yielded reduced hemodynamic activation compared with novel scenes in several regions involved in visual perception and attention, and reductions in some of these areas were correlated with response-time facilitation. In the group given instructions about scene repetition, recognition memory for scenes was superior and was accompanied by medial temporal and more anterior activation. Thus, strategic factors can promote explicit memorization of visual scene information, which appears to engage additional neural processing beyond what is required for implicit learning of object configurations and target locations in a scene. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effectiveness of external sensory cues in improving functional performance in individuals with Parkinson's disease: a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Cassimatis, Constantine; Liu, Karen P Y; Fahey, Paul; Bissett, Michelle

2016-09-01

A systematic review with meta-analysis was performed to investigate the effect external sensory cued therapy on activities of daily living (ADL) performance that include walking and daily tasks such as dressing for individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). A detailed computer-aided search of the literature was applied to MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, EMBASE and PubMed. Studies investigating the effects of external sensory cued therapy on ADL performance for individuals with PD in all stages of disease progression were collected. Relevant articles were critically reviewed and study results were synthesized by two independent researchers. A data-analysis method was used to extract data from selected articles. A meta-analysis was carried out for all randomized-controlled trials. Six studies with 243 individuals with PD were included in this review. All six studies yielded positive findings in favour of external sensory cues. The meta-analysis showed that external sensory cued therapy improved statistically after treatment (P=0.011) and at follow-up (Psensory into a training programme focused on improving daily task performance.

Predicting Emotional Responses to Horror Films from Cue-Specific Affect.

Science.gov (United States)

Neuendorf, Kimberly A.; Sparks, Glenn G.

1988-01-01

Assesses individuals' fear and enjoyment reactions to horror films, applying theories of cognition and affect that predict emotional responses to a stimulus on the basis of prior affect toward specific cues included in that stimulus. (MM)

Effects of self-relevant cues and cue valence on autobiographical memory specificity in dysphoria.

Science.gov (United States)

Matsumoto, Noboru; Mochizuki, Satoshi

2017-04-01

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS) is a characteristic memory bias observed in depression. To corroborate the capture hypothesis in the CaRFAX (capture and rumination, functional avoidance, executive capacity and control) model, we investigated the effects of self-relevant cues and cue valence on rAMS using an adapted Autobiographical Memory Test conducted with a nonclinical population. Hierarchical linear modelling indicated that the main effects of depression and self-relevant cues elicited rAMS. Moreover, the three-way interaction among valence, self-relevance, and depression scores was significant. A simple slope test revealed that dysphoric participants experienced rAMS in response to highly self-relevant positive cues and low self-relevant negative cues. These results partially supported the capture hypothesis in nonclinical dysphoria. It is important to consider cue valence in future studies examining the capture hypothesis.

Limits to ambulatory displacement of coconut mites in absence and presence of food-related cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Melo, J W S; Lima, D B; Sabelis, M W; Pallini, A; Gondim, M G C

2014-04-01

Ambulatory movement of plant-feeding mites sets limits to the distances they can cover to reach a new food source. In absence of food-related cues these limits are determined by survival, walking activity, walking path tortuosity and walking speed, whereas in presence of food the limits are also determined by the ability to orient and direct the path towards the food source location. For eriophyoid mites such limits are even more severe because they are among the smallest mites on earth, because they have only two pairs of legs and because they are very sensitive to desiccation. In this article we test how coconut mites (Aceria guerreronis Keifer) are constrained in their effective displacement by their ability to survive in absence of food (meristematic tissue under the coconut perianth) and by their ability to walk and orient in absence or presence of food-related cues. We found that the mean survival time decreased with increasing temperature and decreasing humidity. Under climatic conditions representative for the Tropics (27 °C and 75 % relative humidity) coconut mites survived on average for 11 h and covered 0.4 m, representing the effective linear displacement away from the origin. Within a period of 5 h, coconut mites collected from old fruits outside the perianth moved further away from the origin than mites collected under the perianth of young fruits. However, in the presence of food-related cues coconut mites traveled over 30 % larger distances than in absence of these cues. These results show that ambulatory movement of eriophyoid mites may well bring them to other coconuts within the same bunch and perhaps also to other bunches on the same coconut palm, but it is unlikely to help them move from palm to palm, given that palms usually do not touch each other.

Dopamine D4 receptor polymorphism modulates cue-elicited heroin craving in Chinese.

Science.gov (United States)

Shao, Chunhong; Li, Yifeng; Jiang, Kaida; Zhang, Dandan; Xu, Yifeng; Lin, Ling; Wang, Qiuying; Zhao, Min; Jin, Li

2006-06-01

Subjective craving, which contributes to the continuation of drug use in active abuser and the occurrence of relapse in detoxified abusers, is considered to be a central phenomenon in addiction. Dopamine pathway has been implicated in the mechanism underlying the cue-elicited craving for a variety of addictive substances. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that heroin addicts carrying D4 dopamine receptor gene (DRD4) variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) long type allele would have higher craving after exposure to a heroin-related cue. Craving was induced by a series of exposure to neutral and heroin-related cue and were assessed in a cohort of Chinese heroin abusers (n=420) recruited from the Voluntary Drug Dependence Treatment Center at Shanghai. Significantly stronger cue-elicited heroin craving was found in individuals carrying DRD4 VNTR long type allele than the non-carriers (F=31.040, pcue-elicited craving in heroin dependence, indicating DRD4 VNTR represents one of potential genetic risk factors for cue-induced craving.

Visuo-spatial cueing in children with differential reading and spelling profiles.

Science.gov (United States)

Banfi, Chiara; Kemény, Ferenc; Gangl, Melanie; Schulte-Körne, Gerd; Moll, Kristina; Landerl, Karin

2017-01-01

Dyslexia has been claimed to be causally related to deficits in visuo-spatial attention. In particular, inefficient shifting of visual attention during spatial cueing paradigms is assumed to be associated with problems in graphemic parsing during sublexical reading. The current study investigated visuo-spatial attention performance in an exogenous cueing paradigm in a large sample (N = 191) of third and fourth graders with different reading and spelling profiles (controls, isolated reading deficit, isolated spelling deficit, combined deficit in reading and spelling). Once individual variability in reaction times was taken into account by means of z-transformation, a cueing deficit (i.e. no significant difference between valid and invalid trials) was found for children with combined deficits in reading and spelling. However, poor readers without spelling problems showed a cueing effect comparable to controls, but exhibited a particularly strong right-over-left advantage (position effect). Isolated poor spellers showed a significant cueing effect, but no position effect. While we replicated earlier findings of a reduced cueing effect among poor nonword readers (indicating deficits in sublexical processing), we also found a reduced cueing effect among children with particularly poor orthographic spelling (indicating deficits in lexical processing). Thus, earlier claims of a specific association with nonword reading could not be confirmed. Controlling for ADHD-symptoms reported in a parental questionnaire did not impact on the statistical analysis, indicating that cueing deficits are not caused by more general attentional limitations. Between 31 and 48% of participants in the three reading and/or spelling deficit groups as well as 32% of the control group showed reduced spatial cueing. These findings indicate a significant, but moderate association between certain aspects of visuo-spatial attention and subcomponents of written language processing, the causal status of

Visuo-spatial cueing in children with differential reading and spelling profiles.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chiara Banfi

Full Text Available Dyslexia has been claimed to be causally related to deficits in visuo-spatial attention. In particular, inefficient shifting of visual attention during spatial cueing paradigms is assumed to be associated with problems in graphemic parsing during sublexical reading. The current study investigated visuo-spatial attention performance in an exogenous cueing paradigm in a large sample (N = 191 of third and fourth graders with different reading and spelling profiles (controls, isolated reading deficit, isolated spelling deficit, combined deficit in reading and spelling. Once individual variability in reaction times was taken into account by means of z-transformation, a cueing deficit (i.e. no significant difference between valid and invalid trials was found for children with combined deficits in reading and spelling. However, poor readers without spelling problems showed a cueing effect comparable to controls, but exhibited a particularly strong right-over-left advantage (position effect. Isolated poor spellers showed a significant cueing effect, but no position effect. While we replicated earlier findings of a reduced cueing effect among poor nonword readers (indicating deficits in sublexical processing, we also found a reduced cueing effect among children with particularly poor orthographic spelling (indicating deficits in lexical processing. Thus, earlier claims of a specific association with nonword reading could not be confirmed. Controlling for ADHD-symptoms reported in a parental questionnaire did not impact on the statistical analysis, indicating that cueing deficits are not caused by more general attentional limitations. Between 31 and 48% of participants in the three reading and/or spelling deficit groups as well as 32% of the control group showed reduced spatial cueing. These findings indicate a significant, but moderate association between certain aspects of visuo-spatial attention and subcomponents of written language processing, the

Motivated Reasoning and Political Parties: Evidence for Increased Processing in the Face of Party Cues

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Petersen, Michael Bang; Skov, Martin; Serritzlew, Søren

2013-01-01

. As part of the latter processes, the presence of party cues would make individuals engage in effortful motivated reasoning to produce arguments for the correctness of their party’s position. Following psychological research, we use response latency to measure processing effort and, in support......Extant research in political science has demonstrated that citizens’ opinions on policies are influenced by their attachment to the party sponsoring them. At the same time, little evidence exists illuminating the psychological processes through which such party cues are filtered. From...... the psychological literature on source cues, we derive two possible hypotheses: (1) party cues activate heuristic processing aimed at minimizing the processing effort during opinion formation, and (2) party cues activate group motivational processes that compel citizens to support the position of their party...

Surface-illuminant ambiguity and color constancy: effects of scene complexity and depth cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Kraft, James M; Maloney, Shannon I; Brainard, David H

2002-01-01

Two experiments were conducted to study how scene complexity and cues to depth affect human color constancy. Specifically, two levels of scene complexity were compared. The low-complexity scene contained two walls with the same surface reflectance and a test patch which provided no information about the illuminant. In addition to the surfaces visible in the low-complexity scene, the high-complexity scene contained two rectangular solid objects and 24 paper samples with diverse surface reflectances. Observers viewed illuminated objects in an experimental chamber and adjusted the test patch until it appeared achromatic. Achromatic settings made tinder two different illuminants were used to compute an index that quantified the degree of constancy. Two experiments were conducted: one in which observers viewed the stimuli directly, and one in which they viewed the scenes through an optical system that reduced cues to depth. In each experiment, constancy was assessed for two conditions. In the valid-cue condition, many cues provided valid information about the illuminant change. In the invalid-cue condition, some image cues provided invalid information. Four broad conclusions are drawn from the data: (a) constancy is generally better in the valid-cue condition than in the invalid-cue condition: (b) for the stimulus configuration used, increasing image complexity has little effect in the valid-cue condition but leads to increased constancy in the invalid-cue condition; (c) for the stimulus configuration used, reducing cues to depth has little effect for either constancy condition: and (d) there is moderate individual variation in the degree of constancy exhibited, particularly in the degree to which the complexity manipulation affects performance.

The Effect of Reward on Orienting and Reorienting in Exogenous Cueing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bucker, B.; Theeuwes, J.

2014-01-01

It is thought that reward-induced motivation influences perceptual, attentional, and cognitive control processes to facilitate behavioral performance. In this study, we investigated the effect of reward-induced motivation on exogenous attention orienting and inhibition of return (IOR). Attention was

Multiple reward-cue contingencies favor expectancy over uncertainty in shaping the reward-cue attentional salience.

Science.gov (United States)

De Tommaso, Matteo; Mastropasqua, Tommaso; Turatto, Massimo

2018-01-25

Reward-predicting cues attract attention because of their motivational value. A debated question regards the conditions under which the cue's attentional salience is governed more by reward expectancy rather than by reward uncertainty. To help shedding light on this relevant issue, here, we manipulated expectancy and uncertainty using three levels of reward-cue contingency, so that, for example, a high level of reward expectancy (p = .8) was compared with the highest level of reward uncertainty (p = .5). In Experiment 1, the best reward-cue during conditioning was preferentially attended in a subsequent visual search task. This result was replicated in Experiment 2, in which the cues were matched in terms of response history. In Experiment 3, we implemented a hybrid procedure consisting of two phases: an omission contingency procedure during conditioning, followed by a visual search task as in the previous experiments. Crucially, during both phases, the reward-cues were never task relevant. Results confirmed that, when multiple reward-cue contingencies are explored by a human observer, expectancy is the major factor controlling both the attentional and the oculomotor salience of the reward-cue.

An Empirical Study on the Impact of Individual and Organizational Supply Chain Orientation on Supply Chain Management

OpenAIRE

Taehee Lee; Hyunjeong Nam

2016-01-01

This study empirically identifies individual supply chain orientation (SCO) components as antecedents of organizational SCO and analyzes the causal relationships between organizational SCO and supply chain management (SCM). A survey was conducted with Korean firms and the partial least squares method was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that individual SCO has a significant influence on organizational SCO. Organizational SCO has a significant influence on strategic SCM, ...

Distributed acoustic cues for caller identity in macaque vocalization.

Science.gov (United States)

Fukushima, Makoto; Doyle, Alex M; Mullarkey, Matthew P; Mishkin, Mortimer; Averbeck, Bruno B

2015-12-01

Individual primates can be identified by the sound of their voice. Macaques have demonstrated an ability to discern conspecific identity from a harmonically structured 'coo' call. Voice recognition presumably requires the integrated perception of multiple acoustic features. However, it is unclear how this is achieved, given considerable variability across utterances. Specifically, the extent to which information about caller identity is distributed across multiple features remains elusive. We examined these issues by recording and analysing a large sample of calls from eight macaques. Single acoustic features, including fundamental frequency, duration and Weiner entropy, were informative but unreliable for the statistical classification of caller identity. A combination of multiple features, however, allowed for highly accurate caller identification. A regularized classifier that learned to identify callers from the modulation power spectrum of calls found that specific regions of spectral-temporal modulation were informative for caller identification. These ranges are related to acoustic features such as the call's fundamental frequency and FM sweep direction. We further found that the low-frequency spectrotemporal modulation component contained an indexical cue of the caller body size. Thus, cues for caller identity are distributed across identifiable spectrotemporal components corresponding to laryngeal and supralaryngeal components of vocalizations, and the integration of those cues can enable highly reliable caller identification. Our results demonstrate a clear acoustic basis by which individual macaque vocalizations can be recognized.

The impact of age, ongoing task difficulty, and cue salience on preschoolers' prospective memory performance: the role of executive function.

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Mahy, Caitlin E V; Moses, Louis J; Kliegel, Matthias

2014-11-01

The current study examined the impact of age, ongoing task (OT) difficulty, and cue salience on 4- and 5-year-old children's prospective memory (PM) and also explored the relation between individual differences in executive function (working memory, inhibition, and shifting) and PM. OT difficulty and cue salience are predicted to affect the detection of PM cues based on the multiprocess framework, yet neither has been thoroughly investigated in young children. OT difficulty was manipulated by requiring children to sort cards according to the size of pictured items (easy) or by opposite size (difficult), and cue salience was manipulated by placing a red border around half of the target cues (salient) and no border around the other cues (non-salient). The 5-year-olds outperformed the 4-year-olds on the PM task, and salient PM cues resulted in better PM cues compared with non-salient cues. There was no main effect of OT difficulty, and the interaction between cue salience and OT difficulty was not significant. However, a planned comparison revealed that the combination of non-salient cues and a difficult OT resulted in significantly worse PM performance than that in all of the other conditions. Inhibition accounted for significant variance in PM performance for non-salient cues and for marginally significant variance for salient cues. Furthermore, individual differences in inhibition fully mediated the effect of age on PM performance. Results are discussed in the context of the multiprocess framework and with reference to preschoolers' difficulty with the executive demands of dividing attention between the OT and PM task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Presenting Your Best Self(ie): The Influence of Gender on Vertical Orientation of Selfies on Tinder.

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Sedgewick, Jennifer R; Flath, Meghan E; Elias, Lorin J

2017-01-01

When taking a self-portrait or "selfie" to display in an online dating profile, individuals may intuitively manipulate the vertical camera angle to embody how they want to be perceived by the opposite sex. Concepts from evolutionary psychology and grounded cognition suggest that this manipulation can provide cues of physical height and impressions of power to the viewer which are qualities found to influence mate-selection. We predicted that men would orient selfies more often from below to appear taller (i.e., more powerful) than the viewer, and women, from an above perspective to appear shorter (i.e., less powerful). A content analysis was conducted which coded the vertical orientation of 557 selfies from profile pictures on the popular mobile dating application, Tinder. In general, selfies were commonly used by both men (54%) and women (90%). Consistent with our predictions, a gender difference emerged; men's selfies were angled significantly more often from below, whereas women's were angled more often from above. Our findings suggest that selfies presented in a mate-attraction context are intuitively or perhaps consciously selected to adhere to ideal mate qualities. Further discussion proposes that biological or individual differences may also facilitate vertical compositions of selfies.

Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gagnon, Léa; Kupers, Ron; Schneider, Fabien C

2010-01-01

and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes....... Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience....

Effects of Age on the Neural Correlates of Retrieval Cue Processing Are Modulated by Task Demands

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Duverne, Sandrine; Motamedinia, Shahab; Rugg, Michael D.

2009-01-01

The electrophysiological correlates of retrieval orientation--the differential processing of retrieval cues according to the nature of the sought-for information--were investigated in healthy young (18-20 years old) and older (63-77 years old) adults. In one pair of study-test cycles, subjects studied either words or pictures presented in one of…

Cryptically patterned moths perceive bark structure when choosing body orientations that match wing color pattern to the bark pattern.

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Kang, Chang-Ku; Moon, Jong-Yeol; Lee, Sang-Im; Jablonski, Piotr G

2013-01-01

Many moths have wing patterns that resemble bark of trees on which they rest. The wing patterns help moths to become camouflaged and to avoid predation because the moths are able to assume specific body orientations that produce a very good match between the pattern on the bark and the pattern on the wings. Furthermore, after landing on a bark moths are able to perceive stimuli that correlate with their crypticity and are able to re-position their bodies to new more cryptic locations and body orientations. However, the proximate mechanisms, i.e. how a moth finds an appropriate resting position and orientation, are poorly studied. Here, we used a geometrid moth Jankowskia fuscaria to examine i) whether a choice of resting orientation by moths depends on the properties of natural background, and ii) what sensory cues moths use. We studied moths' behavior on natural (a tree log) and artificial backgrounds, each of which was designed to mimic one of the hypothetical cues that moths may perceive on a tree trunk (visual pattern, directional furrow structure, and curvature). We found that moths mainly used structural cues from the background when choosing their resting position and orientation. Our findings highlight the possibility that moths use information from one type of sensory modality (structure of furrows is probably detected through tactile channel) to achieve crypticity in another sensory modality (visual). This study extends our knowledge of how behavior, sensory systems and morphology of animals interact to produce crypsis.

Cannabis cue-induced brain activation correlates with drug craving in limbic and visual salience regions: Preliminary results

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Charboneau, Evonne J.; Dietrich, Mary S.; Park, Sohee; Cao, Aize; Watkins, Tristan J; Blackford, Jennifer U; Benningfield, Margaret M.; Martin, Peter R.; Buchowski, Maciej S.; Cowan, Ronald L.

2013-01-01

Craving is a major motivator underlying drug use and relapse but the neural correlates of cannabis craving are not well understood. This study sought to determine whether visual cannabis cues increase cannabis craving and whether cue-induced craving is associated with regional brain activation in cannabis-dependent individuals. Cannabis craving was assessed in 16 cannabis-dependent adult volunteers while they viewed cannabis cues during a functional MRI (fMRI) scan. The Marijuana Craving Questionnaire was administered immediately before and after each of three cannabis cue-exposure fMRI runs. FMRI blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal intensity was determined in regions activated by cannabis cues to examine the relationship of regional brain activation to cannabis craving. Craving scores increased significantly following exposure to visual cannabis cues. Visual cues activated multiple brain regions, including inferior orbital frontal cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, amygdala, superior temporal pole, and occipital cortex. Craving scores at baseline and at the end of all three runs were significantly correlated with brain activation during the first fMRI run only, in the limbic system (including amygdala and hippocampus) and paralimbic system (superior temporal pole), and visual regions (occipital cortex). Cannabis cues increased craving in cannabis-dependent individuals and this increase was associated with activation in the limbic, paralimbic, and visual systems during the first fMRI run, but not subsequent fMRI runs. These results suggest that these regions may mediate visually cued aspects of drug craving. This study provides preliminary evidence for the neural basis of cue-induced cannabis craving and suggests possible neural targets for interventions targeted at treating cannabis dependence. PMID:24035535

Changes in cue reactivity and attentional bias following experimental cue exposure and response prevention: a laboratory study of the effects of D-cycloserine in heavy drinkers.

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Kamboj, Sunjeev K; Massey-Chase, Rachel; Rodney, Lydia; Das, Ravi; Almahdi, Basil; Curran, H Valerie; Morgan, Celia J A

2011-09-01

The effects of D-cycloserine (DCS) in animal models of anxiety disorders and addiction indicate a role for N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in extinction learning. Exposure/response prevention treatments for anxiety disorders in humans are enhanced by DCS, suggesting a promising co-therapy regime, mediated by NMDA receptors. Exposure/response prevention may also be effective in problematic drinkers, and DCS might enhance habituation to cues in these individuals. Since heavy drinkers show ostensible conditioned responses to alcohol cues, habituation following exposure/response prevention should be evident in these drinkers, with DCS enhancing this effect. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of DCS on exposure/response prevention in heavy drinkers. In a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, heavy social drinkers recruited from the community received either DCS (125 mg; n = 19) or placebo (n = 17) 1 h prior to each of two sessions of exposure/response prevention. Cue reactivity and attentional bias were assessed during these two sessions and at a third follow-up session. Between-session drinking behaviour was recorded. Robust cue reactivity and attentional bias to alcohol cues was evident, as expected of heavy drinkers. Within- and between-session habituation of cue reactivity, as well as a reduction in attentional bias to alcohol cues over time was found. However, there was no evidence of greater habituation in the DCS group. Subtle stimulant effects (increased subjective contentedness and euphoria) which were unrelated to exposure/response prevention were found following DCS. DCS does not appear to enhance habituation of alcohol cue reactivity in heavy non-dependent drinkers. Its utility in enhancing treatments based on exposure/response prevention in dependent drinkers or drug users remains open.

Cross-modal cueing in audiovisual spatial attention

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blurton, Steven Paul; Greenlee, Mark W.; Gondan, Matthias

2015-01-01

effects have been reported for endogenous visual cues while exogenous cues seem to be mostly ineffective. In three experiments, we investigated cueing effects on the processing of audiovisual signals. In Experiment 1 we used endogenous cues to investigate their effect on the detection of auditory, visual......, and audiovisual targets presented with onset asynchrony. Consistent cueing effects were found in all target conditions. In Experiment 2 we used exogenous cues and found cueing effects only for visual target detection, but not auditory target detection. In Experiment 3 we used predictive exogenous cues to examine...

Sex differences in neural responses to stress and alcohol context cues.

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Seo, Dongju; Jia, Zhiru; Lacadie, Cheryl M; Tsou, Kristen A; Bergquist, Keri; Sinha, Rajita

2011-11-01

Stress and alcohol context cues are each associated with alcohol-related behaviors, yet neural responses underlying these processes remain unclear. This study investigated the neural correlates of stress and alcohol context cue experiences and examined sex differences in these responses. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, brain responses were examined while 43 right-handed, socially drinking, healthy individuals (23 females) engaged in brief guided imagery of personalized stress, alcohol-cue, and neutral-relaxing scenarios. Stress and alcohol-cue exposure increased activity in the cortico-limbic-striatal circuit (P left anterior insula, striatum, and visuomotor regions (parietal and occipital lobe, and cerebellum). Activity in the left dorsal striatum increased during stress, while bilateral ventral striatum activity was evident during alcohol-cue exposure. Men displayed greater stress-related activations in the mPFC, rostral ACC, posterior insula, amygdala, and hippocampus than women, whereas women showed greater alcohol-cue-related activity in the superior and middle frontal gyrus (SFG/MFG) than men. Stress-induced anxiety was positively associated with activity in emotion-modulation regions, including the medial OFC, ventromedial PFC, left superior-mPFC, and rostral ACC in men, but in women with activation in the SFG/MFG, regions involved in cognitive processing. Alcohol craving was significantly associated with the striatum (encompassing dorsal, and ventral) in men, supporting its involvement in alcohol "urge" in healthy men. These results indicate sex differences in neural processing of stress and alcohol-cue experiences and have implications for sex-specific vulnerabilities to stress- and alcohol-related psychiatric disorders. Copyright © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Effect of pictorial depth cues, binocular disparity cues and motion parallax depth cues on lightness perception in three-dimensional virtual scenes.

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Michiteru Kitazaki

2008-09-01

Full Text Available Surface lightness perception is affected by scene interpretation. There is some experimental evidence that perceived lightness under bi-ocular viewing conditions is different from perceived lightness in actual scenes but there are also reports that viewing conditions have little or no effect on perceived color. We investigated how mixes of depth cues affect perception of lightness in three-dimensional rendered scenes containing strong gradients of illumination in depth.Observers viewed a virtual room (4 m width x 5 m height x 17.5 m depth with checkerboard walls and floor. In four conditions, the room was presented with or without binocular disparity (BD depth cues and with or without motion parallax (MP depth cues. In all conditions, observers were asked to adjust the luminance of a comparison surface to match the lightness of test surfaces placed at seven different depths (8.5-17.5 m in the scene. We estimated lightness versus depth profiles in all four depth cue conditions. Even when observers had only pictorial depth cues (no MP, no BD, they partially but significantly discounted the illumination gradient in judging lightness. Adding either MP or BD led to significantly greater discounting and both cues together produced the greatest discounting. The effects of MP and BD were approximately additive. BD had greater influence at near distances than far.These results suggest the surface lightness perception is modulated by three-dimensional perception/interpretation using pictorial, binocular-disparity, and motion-parallax cues additively. We propose a two-stage (2D and 3D processing model for lightness perception.

Preconditioning of Spatial and Auditory Cues: Roles of the Hippocampus, Frontal Cortex, and Cue-Directed Attention

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Andrew C. Talk

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Loss of function of the hippocampus or frontal cortex is associated with reduced performance on memory tasks, in which subjects are incidentally exposed to cues at specific places in the environment and are subsequently asked to recollect the location at which the cue was experienced. Here, we examined the roles of the rodent hippocampus and frontal cortex in cue-directed attention during encoding of memory for the location of a single incidentally experienced cue. During a spatial sensory preconditioning task, rats explored an elevated platform while an auditory cue was incidentally presented at one corner. The opposite corner acted as an unpaired control location. The rats demonstrated recollection of location by avoiding the paired corner after the auditory cue was in turn paired with shock. Damage to either the dorsal hippocampus or the frontal cortex impaired this memory ability. However, we also found that hippocampal lesions enhanced attention directed towards the cue during the encoding phase, while frontal cortical lesions reduced cue-directed attention. These results suggest that the deficit in spatial sensory preconditioning caused by frontal cortical damage may be mediated by inattention to the location of cues during the latent encoding phase, while deficits following hippocampal damage must be related to other mechanisms such as generation of neural plasticity.

Preconditioning of Spatial and Auditory Cues: Roles of the Hippocampus, Frontal Cortex, and Cue-Directed Attention

Science.gov (United States)

Talk, Andrew C.; Grasby, Katrina L.; Rawson, Tim; Ebejer, Jane L.

2016-01-01

Loss of function of the hippocampus or frontal cortex is associated with reduced performance on memory tasks, in which subjects are incidentally exposed to cues at specific places in the environment and are subsequently asked to recollect the location at which the cue was experienced. Here, we examined the roles of the rodent hippocampus and frontal cortex in cue-directed attention during encoding of memory for the location of a single incidentally experienced cue. During a spatial sensory preconditioning task, rats explored an elevated platform while an auditory cue was incidentally presented at one corner. The opposite corner acted as an unpaired control location. The rats demonstrated recollection of location by avoiding the paired corner after the auditory cue was in turn paired with shock. Damage to either the dorsal hippocampus or the frontal cortex impaired this memory ability. However, we also found that hippocampal lesions enhanced attention directed towards the cue during the encoding phase, while frontal cortical lesions reduced cue-directed attention. These results suggest that the deficit in spatial sensory preconditioning caused by frontal cortical damage may be mediated by inattention to the location of cues during the latent encoding phase, while deficits following hippocampal damage must be related to other mechanisms such as generation of neural plasticity. PMID:27999366

Food approach conditioning and discrimination learning using sound cues in benthic sharks.

Science.gov (United States)

Vila Pouca, Catarina; Brown, Culum

2018-07-01

The marine environment is filled with biotic and abiotic sounds. Some of these sounds predict important events that influence fitness while others are unimportant. Individuals can learn specific sound cues and 'soundscapes' and use them for vital activities such as foraging, predator avoidance, communication and orientation. Most research with sounds in elasmobranchs has focused on hearing thresholds and attractiveness to sound sources, but very little is known about their abilities to learn about sounds, especially in benthic species. Here we investigated if juvenile Port Jackson sharks could learn to associate a musical stimulus with a food reward, discriminate between two distinct musical stimuli, and whether individual personality traits were linked to cognitive performance. Five out of eight sharks were successfully conditioned to associate a jazz song with a food reward delivered in a specific corner of the tank. We observed repeatable individual differences in activity and boldness in all eight sharks, but these personality traits were not linked to the learning performance assays we examined. These sharks were later trained in a discrimination task, where they had to distinguish between the same jazz and a novel classical music song, and swim to opposite corners of the tank according to the stimulus played. The sharks' performance to the jazz stimulus declined to chance levels in the discrimination task. Interestingly, some sharks developed a strong side bias to the right, which in some cases was not the correct side for the jazz stimulus.

The role of reverberation-related binaural cues in the externalization of speech

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Catic, Jasmina; Santurette, Sébastien; Dau, Torsten

2015-01-01

The perception of externalization of speech sounds was investigated with respect to the monaural and binaural cues available at the listeners’ ears in a reverberant environment. Individualized binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) were used to simulate externalized sound sources via headphones....... The measured BRIRs were subsequently modified such that the proportion of the response containing binaural vs monaural information was varied. Normal-hearing listeners were presented with speech sounds convolved with such modified BRIRs. Monaural reverberation cues were found to be sufficient...

Integration of multiple intraguild predator cues for oviposition decisions by a predatory mite

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Walzer, Andreas; Schausberger, Peter

2012-01-01

In mutual intraguild predation (IGP), the role of individual guild members is strongly context dependent and, during ontogeny, can shift from an intraguild (IG) prey to a food competitor or to an IG predator. Consequently, recognition of an offspring's predator is more complex for IG than classic prey females. Thus, IG prey females should be able to modulate their oviposition decisions by integrating multiple IG predator cues and by experience. Using a guild of plant-inhabiting predatory mites sharing the spider mite Tetranychus urticae as prey and passing through ontogenetic role shifts in mutual IGP, we assessed the effects of single and combined direct cues of the IG predator Amblyseius andersoni (eggs and traces left by a female on the substrate) on prey patch selection and oviposition behaviour of naïve and IG predator-experienced IG prey females of Phytoseiulus persimilis. The IG prey females preferentially resided in patches without predator cues when the alternative patch contained traces of predator females or the cue combination. Preferential egg placement in patches without predator cues was only apparent in the choice situation with the cue combination. Experience increased the responsiveness of females exposed to the IG predator cue combination, indicated by immediate selection of the prey patch without predator cues and almost perfect oviposition avoidance in patches with the cue combination. We argue that the evolution of the ability of IG prey females to evaluate offspring's IGP risk accurately is driven by the irreversibility of oviposition and the functionally complex relationships between predator guild members. PMID:23264692

Grasp cueing and joint attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Tschentscher, Nadja; Fischer, Martin H

2008-10-01

We studied how two different hand posture cues affect joint attention in normal observers. Visual targets appeared over lateralized objects, with different delays after centrally presented hand postures. Attention was cued by either hand direction or the congruency between hand aperture and object size. Participants pressed a button when they detected a target. Direction cues alone facilitated target detection following short delays but aperture cues alone were ineffective. In contrast, when hand postures combined direction and aperture cues, aperture congruency effects without directional congruency effects emerged and persisted, but only for power grips. These results suggest that parallel parameter specification makes joint attention mechanisms exquisitely sensitive to the timing and content of contextual cues.

Incubation of Cue-Induced Craving in Adults Addicted to Cocaine Measured by Electroencephalography.

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Parvaz, Muhammad A; Moeller, Scott J; Goldstein, Rita Z

2016-11-01

A common trigger for relapse in drug addiction is the experience of craving via exposure to cues previously associated with drug use. Preclinical studies have consistently demonstrated incubation of cue-induced drug-seeking during the initial phase of abstinence, followed by a decline over time. In humans, the incubation effect has been shown for alcohol, nicotine, and methamphetamine addictions, but not for heroin or cocaine addiction. Understanding the trajectory of cue-induced craving during abstinence in humans is of importance for addiction medicine. To assess cue-induced craving for cocaine in humans using both subjective and objective indices of cue-elicited responses. Seventy-six individuals addicted to cocaine with varying durations of abstinence (ie, 2 days, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year) participated in this laboratory-based cross-sectional study from June 19, 2007, to November 26, 2012. The late positive potential component of electroencephalography, a recognized marker of incentive salience, was used to track motivated attention to drug cues across these self-selected groups. Participants also completed subjective ratings of craving for cocaine before presentation of a cue, and ratings of cocaine "liking" (hedonic feelings toward cocaine) and "wanting" (craving for cocaine) after presentation of cocaine-related pictures. Data analysis was conducted from June 5, 2015, to March 30, 2016. The late positive potential amplitudes and ratings of liking and wanting cocaine in response to cocaine-related pictures were quantified and compared across groups. Among the 76 individuals addicted to cocaine, 19 (25%) were abstinent for 2 days, 20 (26%) were abstinent for 1 week, 15 (20%) were abstinent for 1 month, 12 (16%) were abstinent for 6 months, and 10 (13%) were abstinent for 1 year. In response to drug cues, the mean (SD) late positive potential amplitudes showed a parabolic trajectory that was higher at 1 (1.26 [1.36] µV) and 6 (1.17 [1.19] µ

Impact of DCS-facilitated cue exposure therapy on brain activation to cocaine cues in cocaine dependence.

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Prisciandaro, James J; Myrick, Hugh; Henderson, Scott; McRae-Clark, Aimee L; Santa Ana, Elizabeth J; Saladin, Michael E; Brady, Kathleen T

2013-09-01

The development of addiction is marked by a pathological associative learning process that imbues incentive salience to stimuli associated with drug use. Recent efforts to treat addiction have targeted this learning process using cue exposure therapy augmented with d-cycloserine (DCS), a glutamatergic agent hypothesized to enhance extinction learning. To better understand the impact of DCS-facilitated extinction on neural reactivity to drug cues, the present study reports fMRI findings from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of DCS-facilitated cue exposure for cocaine dependence. Twenty-five participants completed two MRI sessions (before and after intervention), with a cocaine-cue reactivity fMRI task. The intervention consisted of 50mg of DCS or placebo, combined with two sessions of cocaine cue exposure and skills training. Participants demonstrated cocaine cue activation in a variety of brain regions at baseline. From the pre- to post-study scan, participants experienced decreased activation to cues in a number of regions (e.g., accumbens, caudate, frontal poles). Unexpectedly, placebo participants experienced decreases in activation to cues in the left angular and middle temporal gyri and the lateral occipital cortex, while DCS participants did not. Three trials of DCS-facilitated cue exposure therapy for cocaine dependence have found that DCS either increases or does not significantly impact response to cocaine cues. The present study adds to this literature by demonstrating that DCS may prevent extinction to cocaine cues in temporal and occipital brain regions. Although consistent with past research, results from the present study should be considered preliminary until replicated in larger samples. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sexual orientation related differences in cortical thickness in male individuals.

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Christoph Abé

Full Text Available Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated sex and also sexual orientation related structural and functional differences in the human brain. Genetic information and effects of sex hormones are assumed to contribute to the male/female differentiation of the brain, and similar effects could play a role in processes influencing human's sexual orientation. However, questions about the origin and development of a person's sexual orientation remain unanswered, and research on sexual orientation related neurobiological characteristics is still very limited. To contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of sexual orientation, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI in order to compare regional cortical thickness (Cth and subcortical volumes of homosexual men (hoM, heterosexual men (heM and heterosexual women (heW. hoM (and heW had thinner cortices primarily in visual areas and smaller thalamus volumes than heM, in which hoM and heW did not differ. Our results support previous studies, which suggest cerebral differences between hoM and heM in regions, where sex differences have been reported, which are frequently proposed to underlie biological mechanisms. Thus, our results contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation related differences in cortical thickness in male individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Abé, Christoph; Johansson, Emilia; Allzén, Elin; Savic, Ivanka

2014-01-01

Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated sex and also sexual orientation related structural and functional differences in the human brain. Genetic information and effects of sex hormones are assumed to contribute to the male/female differentiation of the brain, and similar effects could play a role in processes influencing human's sexual orientation. However, questions about the origin and development of a person's sexual orientation remain unanswered, and research on sexual orientation related neurobiological characteristics is still very limited. To contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of sexual orientation, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order to compare regional cortical thickness (Cth) and subcortical volumes of homosexual men (hoM), heterosexual men (heM) and heterosexual women (heW). hoM (and heW) had thinner cortices primarily in visual areas and smaller thalamus volumes than heM, in which hoM and heW did not differ. Our results support previous studies, which suggest cerebral differences between hoM and heM in regions, where sex differences have been reported, which are frequently proposed to underlie biological mechanisms. Thus, our results contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of sexual orientation.

Reactivity to smoking- and food-related cues in currently dieting and non-dieting young women smokers.

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Jenks, Rebecca A; Higgs, Suzanne

2011-04-01

There is some evidence to suggest that young women dieters who smoke experience greater cigarette cravings in the presence of food-related related cues. The aim of this experiment was to examine reactivity to both smoking-related and water cues by dieting and non-dieting women smokers in the presence or absence of food cues. Eighteen female undergraduates attended two sessions (food present and food absent). At each session, participants were presented with a cigarette and water cue in a counterbalanced order. Pre- and post-cue measures included the brief version of the Questionnaire for Smoking Urges, heart rate and self-reported mood. All smokers showed enhanced reactivity (increased craving and heart rate) to smoking versus water cues. For dieters there was a larger increase in cigarette craving and heart rate in response to the smoking-related cues in the presence of food compared with the absence of food, whereas for non-dieters there was a smaller increase in cigarette craving and heart rate in response to the smoking-related cues in the presence of food compared with the absence of food. Mood and appetite ratings were not significantly affected by either cue type or session. The results suggest that cue reactivity to smoking-related cues is modulated by the presence of incentive stimuli relevant to the individual.

Cue integration vs. exemplar-based reasoning in multi-attribute decisions from memory: A matter of cue representation

OpenAIRE

Arndt Broeder; Ben R. Newell; Christine Platzer

2010-01-01

Inferences about target variables can be achieved by deliberate integration of probabilistic cues or by retrieving similar cue-patterns (exemplars) from memory. In tasks with cue information presented in on-screen displays, rule-based strategies tend to dominate unless the abstraction of cue-target relations is unfeasible. This dominance has also been demonstrated --- surprisingly --- in experiments that demanded the retrieval of cue values from memory (M. Persson \\& J. Rieskamp, 2009). In th...

Non-conscious visual cues related to affect and action alter perception of effort and endurance performance

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Anthony William Blanchfield

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The psychobiological model of endurance performance proposes that endurance performance is determined by a decision-making process based on perception of effort and potential motivation. Recent research has reported that effort-based decision-making during cognitive tasks can be altered by non-conscious visual cues relating to affect and action. The effect of these non-conscious visual cues on effort and performance during physical tasks is however unknown. We report two experiments investigating the effect of subliminal priming with visual cues related to affect and action on perception of effort and endurance performance. In Experiment 1 thirteen individuals were subliminally primed with happy or sad faces as they cycled to exhaustion in a counterbalanced and randomized crossover design. A paired t-test (happy vs. sad faces revealed that individuals cycled for significantly longer (178 s, p = .04 when subliminally primed with happy faces. A 2 x 5 (condition x iso-time ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of condition on rating of perceived exertion (RPE during the time to exhaustion (TTE test with lower RPE when subjects were subliminally primed with happy faces (p = .04. In Experiment 2, a single-subject randomization tests design found that subliminal priming with action words facilitated a significantly longer (399 s, p = .04 TTE in comparison to inaction words (p = .04. Like Experiment 1, this greater TTE was accompanied by a significantly lower RPE (p = .03. These experiments are the first to show that subliminal visual cues relating to affect and action can alter perception of effort and endurance performance. Non-conscious visual cues may therefore influence the effort-based decision-making process that is proposed to determine endurance performance. Accordingly, the findings raise notable implications for individuals who may encounter such visual cues during endurance competitions, training, or health related exercise.

The SPECT study on the regional cerebral blood flow of heroin addicts during cue-induced heroin craving

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Zhengqing; Liu Qinglong; Wang Yuhua; Wang Jinmin; Wang Shuo; Zhao Geyuan

2003-01-01

Objective: To explore the character of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) of heroin addicts during the exposure to the heroin-related cues. Methods: Twenty-five heroin dependent individuals undergoing detoxification for more than one month were enrolled in the present study. All subjects were exposed to the heroin-related cues for 15 min. The rCBF was measured in these patients before and after exposure to heroin-related cues. Result: The rCBF in the frontal, temporal cortex and amygdala was significantly increased during the exposure to heroin-related cues. Conclusion: The findings indicate that drug-related cues play a critical role in the relapse of drug dependence; and the frontal, temporal cortex and amygdala are involved in the relapsing process

An Eye Tracking Comparison of External Pointing Cues and Internal Continuous Cues in Learning with Complex Animations

Science.gov (United States)

Boucheix, Jean-Michel; Lowe, Richard K.

2010-01-01

Two experiments used eye tracking to investigate a novel cueing approach for directing learner attention to low salience, high relevance aspects of a complex animation. In the first experiment, comprehension of a piano mechanism animation containing spreading-colour cues was compared with comprehension obtained with arrow cues or no cues. Eye…

Food and drug cues activate similar brain regions: a meta-analysis of functional MRI studies.

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Tang, D W; Fellows, L K; Small, D M; Dagher, A

2012-06-06

In healthy individuals, food cues can trigger hunger and feeding behavior. Likewise, smoking cues can trigger craving and relapse in smokers. Brain imaging studies report that structures involved in appetitive behaviors and reward, notably the insula, striatum, amygdala and orbital frontal cortex, tend to be activated by both visual food and smoking cues. Here, by carrying out a meta-analysis of human neuro-imaging studies, we investigate the neural network activated by: 1) food versus neutral cues (14 studies, 142 foci) 2) smoking versus neutral cues (15 studies, 176 foci) 3) smoking versus neutral cues when correlated with craving scores (7 studies, 108 foci). PubMed was used to identify cue-reactivity imaging studies that compared brain response to visual food or smoking cues to neutral cues. Fourteen articles were identified for the food meta-analysis and fifteen articles were identified for the smoking meta-analysis. Six articles were identified for the smoking cue correlated with craving analysis. Meta-analyses were carried out using activation likelihood estimation. Food cues were associated with increased blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, bilateral orbital frontal cortex, and striatum. Smoking cues were associated with increased BOLD signal in the same areas, with the exception of the insula. However, the smoking meta-analysis of brain maps correlating cue-reactivity with subjective craving did identify the insula, suggesting that insula activation is only found when craving levels are high. The brain areas identified here are involved in learning, memory and motivation, and their cue-induced activity is an index of the incentive salience of the cues. Using meta-analytic techniques to combine a series of studies, we found that food and smoking cues activate comparable brain networks. There is significant overlap in brain regions responding to conditioned cues associated with natural and drug rewards

Competitive Stem Cell Recruitment by Multiple Cytotactic Cues

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Mendelson, Avital; Cheung, Yukkee; Paluch, Kamila; Chen, Mo; Kong, Kimi; Tan, Jiali; Dong, Ziming; Sia, Samuel K.; Mao, Jeremy J.

2014-01-01

A multitude of cytotactic cues direct cell migration in development, cancer metastasis and wound healing. However, our understanding of cell motility remains fragmented partially because current migration devices only allow the study of independent factors. We developed a cell motility assay that allows competitive recruitment of a given cell population simultaneously by gradients of multiple cytotactic cues, observable under real-time imaging. Well-defined uniform gradients of cytotactic cues can be independently generated and sustained in each channel. As a case study, bone marrow mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) were exposed to 15 cytokines that are commonly present in arthritis. Cytokines that induced robust recruitment of MSCs in multiple groups were selected to ‘compete’ in a final round to yield the most chemotactic factor(s) based on cell migration numbers, distances, migration indices and motility over time. The potency of a given cytokine in competition frequently differed from its individual action, substantiating the need to test multiple cytokines concurrently due to synergistic or antagonistic effects. This new device has the rare capacity to screen molecules that induce cell migration in cancer therapy, drug development and tissue regeneration. PMID:23364311

The visibility of social class from facial cues.

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Bjornsdottir, R Thora; Rule, Nicholas O

2017-10-01

Social class meaningfully impacts individuals' life outcomes and daily interactions, and the mere perception of one's socioeconomic standing can have significant ramifications. To better understand how people infer others' social class, we therefore tested the legibility of class (operationalized as monetary income) from facial images, finding across 4 participant samples and 2 stimulus sets that perceivers categorized the faces of rich and poor targets significantly better than chance. Further investigation showed that perceivers categorize social class using minimal facial cues and employ a variety of stereotype-related impressions to make their judgments. Of these, attractiveness accurately cued higher social class in self-selected dating profile photos. However, only the stereotype that well-being positively relates to wealth served as a valid cue in neutral faces. Indeed, neutrally posed rich targets displayed more positive affect relative to poor targets and perceivers used this affective information to categorize their social class. Impressions of social class from these facial cues also influenced participants' evaluations of the targets' employability, demonstrating that face-based perceptions of social class may have important downstream consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Introspective responses to cues and motivation to reduce cigarette smoking influence state and behavioral responses to cue exposure.

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Veilleux, Jennifer C; Skinner, Kayla D

2016-09-01

In the current study, we aimed to extend smoking cue-reactivity research by evaluating delay discounting as an outcome of cigarette cue exposure. We also separated introspection in response to cues (e.g., self-reporting craving and affect) from cue exposure alone, to determine if introspection changes behavioral responses to cigarette cues. Finally, we included measures of quit motivation and resistance to smoking to assess motivational influences on cue exposure. Smokers were invited to participate in an online cue-reactivity study. Participants were randomly assigned to view smoking images or neutral images, and were randomized to respond to cues with either craving and affect questions (e.g., introspection) or filler questions. Following cue exposure, participants completed a delay discounting task and then reported state affect, craving, and resistance to smoking, as well as an assessment of quit motivation. We found that after controlling for trait impulsivity, participants who introspected on craving and affect showed higher delay discounting, irrespective of cue type, but we found no effect of response condition on subsequent craving (e.g., craving reactivity). We also found that motivation to quit interacted with experimental conditions to predict state craving and state resistance to smoking. Although asking about craving during cue exposure did not increase later craving, it resulted in greater delaying of discounted rewards. Overall, our findings suggest the need to further assess the implications of introspection and motivation on behavioral outcomes of cue exposure. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nucleus accumbens response to food cues predicts subsequent snack consumption in women and increased body mass index in those with reduced self-control.

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Lawrence, Natalia S; Hinton, Elanor C; Parkinson, John A; Lawrence, Andrew D

2012-10-15

Individuals have difficulty controlling their food consumption, which is due in part to the ubiquity of tempting food cues in the environment. Individual differences in the propensity to attribute incentive (motivational) salience to and act on these cues may explain why some individuals eat more than others. Using fMRI in healthy women, we found that food cue related activity in the nucleus accumbens, a key brain region for food motivation and reward, was related to subsequent snack food consumption. However, both nucleus accumbens activation and snack food consumption were unrelated to self-reported hunger, or explicit wanting and liking for the snack. In contrast, food cue reactivity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was associated with subjective hunger/appetite, but not with consumption. Whilst the food cue reactivity in the nucleus accumbens that predicted snack consumption was not directly related to body mass index (BMI), it was associated with increased BMI in individuals reporting low self-control. Our findings reveal a neural substrate underpinning automatic environmental influences on consumption in humans and demonstrate how self-control interacts with this response to predict BMI. Our data provide support for theoretical models that advocate a 'dual hit' of increased incentive salience attribution to food cues and poor self-control in determining vulnerability to overeating and overweight. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of cue-exposure treatment on neural cue reactivity in alcohol dependence: a randomized trial.

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Vollstädt-Klein, Sabine; Loeber, Sabine; Kirsch, Martina; Bach, Patrick; Richter, Anne; Bühler, Mira; von der Goltz, Christoph; Hermann, Derik; Mann, Karl; Kiefer, Falk

2011-06-01

In alcohol-dependent patients, alcohol-associated cues elicit brain activation in mesocorticolimbic networks involved in relapse mechanisms. Cue-exposure based extinction training (CET) has been shown to be efficacious in the treatment of alcoholism; however, it has remained unexplored whether CET mediates its therapeutic effects via changes of activity in mesolimbic networks in response to alcohol cues. In this study, we assessed CET treatment effects on cue-induced responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a randomized controlled trial, abstinent alcohol-dependent patients were randomly assigned to a CET group (n = 15) or a control group (n = 15). All patients underwent an extended detoxification treatment comprising medically supervised detoxification, health education, and supportive therapy. The CET patients additionally received nine CET sessions over 3 weeks, exposing the patient to his/her preferred alcoholic beverage. Cue-induced fMRI activation to alcohol cues was measured at pretreatment and posttreatment. Compared with pretreatment, fMRI cue-reactivity reduction was greater in the CET relative to the control group, especially in the anterior cingulate gyrus and the insula, as well as limbic and frontal regions. Before treatment, increased cue-induced fMRI activation was found in limbic and reward-related brain regions and in visual areas. After treatment, the CET group showed less activation than the control group in the left ventral striatum. The study provides first evidence that an exposure-based psychotherapeutic intervention in the treatment of alcoholism impacts on brain areas relevant for addiction memory and attentional focus to alcohol-associated cues and affects mesocorticolimbic reward pathways suggested to be pathophysiologically involved in addiction. Copyright © 2011 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Global Repetition Influences Contextual Cueing

Science.gov (United States)

Zang, Xuelian; Zinchenko, Artyom; Jia, Lina; Li, Hong

2018-01-01

Our visual system has a striking ability to improve visual search based on the learning of repeated ambient regularities, an effect named contextual cueing. Whereas most of the previous studies investigated contextual cueing effect with the same number of repeated and non-repeated search displays per block, the current study focused on whether a global repetition frequency formed by different presentation ratios between the repeated and non-repeated configurations influence contextual cueing effect. Specifically, the number of repeated and non-repeated displays presented in each block was manipulated: 12:12, 20:4, 4:20, and 4:4 in Experiments 1–4, respectively. The results revealed a significant contextual cueing effect when the global repetition frequency is high (≥1:1 ratio) in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, given that processing of repeated displays was expedited relative to non-repeated displays. Nevertheless, the contextual cueing effect reduced to a non-significant level when the repetition frequency reduced to 4:20 in Experiment 3. These results suggested that the presentation frequency of repeated relative to the non-repeated displays could influence the strength of contextual cueing. In other words, global repetition statistics could be a crucial factor to mediate contextual cueing effect. PMID:29636716

Orienting Attention within Visual Short-Term Memory: Development and Mechanisms

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Shimi, Andria; Nobre, Anna C.; Astle, Duncan; Scerif, Gaia

2014-01-01

How does developing attentional control operate within visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Seven-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults (total n = 205) were asked to report whether probe items were part of preceding visual arrays. In Experiment 1, central or peripheral cues oriented attention to the location of to-be-probed items either prior to…

Visual selective attention in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

McLaughlin, Paula M; Anderson, Nicole D; Rich, Jill B; Chertkow, Howard; Murtha, Susan J E

2014-11-01

Subtle deficits in visual selective attention have been found in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). However, few studies have explored performance on visual search paradigms or the Simon task, which are known to be sensitive to disease severity in Alzheimer's patients. Furthermore, there is limited research investigating how deficiencies can be ameliorated with exogenous support (auditory cues). Sixteen individuals with aMCI and 14 control participants completed 3 experimental tasks that varied in demand and cue availability: visual search-alerting, visual search-orienting, and Simon task. Visual selective attention was influenced by aMCI, auditory cues, and task characteristics. Visual search abilities were relatively consistent across groups. The aMCI participants were impaired on the Simon task when working memory was required, but conflict resolution was similar to controls. Spatially informative orienting cues improved response times, whereas spatially neutral alerting cues did not influence performance. Finally, spatially informative auditory cues benefited the aMCI group more than controls in the visual search task, specifically at the largest array size where orienting demands were greatest. These findings suggest that individuals with aMCI have working memory deficits and subtle deficiencies in orienting attention and rely on exogenous information to guide attention. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Chemosensory anxiety cues enhance the perception of fearful faces - An fMRI study.

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Wudarczyk, Olga A; Kohn, Nils; Bergs, Rene; Goerlich, Katharina S; Gur, Raquel E; Turetsky, Bruce; Schneider, Frank; Habel, Ute

2016-12-01

Recent evidence suggests that humans can communicate emotion via chemosensory signals. Olfactory cues signaling anxiety can bias the perception of ambiguous stimuli, but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this effect are currently unknown. Here, we investigated the brain responses to subtle changes in facial expressions in response to anxiety chemosensory cues. Ten healthy individuals donated their sweat in two situations: while anticipating an important oral examination (anxiety condition) and during physical exercise (control condition). Subsequently, 24 participants completed a parametrically morphed (neutral to fearful) emotion recognition task under exposure to the olfactory cues of anxiety and sports, in the fMRI scanner. Behaviorally, the participants rated more discernible fearful faces as more fearful and neutral faces as more neutral under exposure to the anxiety cues. For brain response, under exposure to the anxiety cues, increased fearfulness of the face corresponded to increased activity in the left insula and the left middle occipital gyrus extending into fusiform gyrus. Moreover, with higher subjective ratings of facial fearfulness, participants additionally showed increased activity in the left hippocampus. These results suggest that chemosensory anxiety cues facilitate processing of socially relevant fearful stimuli and boost memory retrieval due to enhanced emotional context. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cryptically patterned moths perceive bark structure when choosing body orientations that match wing color pattern to the bark pattern.

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Chang-Ku Kang

Full Text Available Many moths have wing patterns that resemble bark of trees on which they rest. The wing patterns help moths to become camouflaged and to avoid predation because the moths are able to assume specific body orientations that produce a very good match between the pattern on the bark and the pattern on the wings. Furthermore, after landing on a bark moths are able to perceive stimuli that correlate with their crypticity and are able to re-position their bodies to new more cryptic locations and body orientations. However, the proximate mechanisms, i.e. how a moth finds an appropriate resting position and orientation, are poorly studied. Here, we used a geometrid moth Jankowskia fuscaria to examine i whether a choice of resting orientation by moths depends on the properties of natural background, and ii what sensory cues moths use. We studied moths' behavior on natural (a tree log and artificial backgrounds, each of which was designed to mimic one of the hypothetical cues that moths may perceive on a tree trunk (visual pattern, directional furrow structure, and curvature. We found that moths mainly used structural cues from the background when choosing their resting position and orientation. Our findings highlight the possibility that moths use information from one type of sensory modality (structure of furrows is probably detected through tactile channel to achieve crypticity in another sensory modality (visual. This study extends our knowledge of how behavior, sensory systems and morphology of animals interact to produce crypsis.

Selective attention to smoking cues in former smokers.

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Rehme, Anne K; Bey, Katharina; Frommann, Ingo; Mogg, Karin; Bradley, Brendan P; Bludau, Julia; Block, Verena; Sträter, Birgitta; Schütz, Christian G; Wagner, Michael

2018-02-01

Repeated drug use modifies the emotional and cognitive processing of drug-associated cues. These changes are supposed to persist even after prolonged abstinence. Several studies demonstrated that smoking cues selectively attract the attention of smokers, but empirical evidence for such an attentional bias among successful quitters is inconclusive. Here, we investigated whether attentional biases persist after smoking cessation. Thirty-eight former smokers, 34 current smokers, and 29 non-smokers participated in a single experimental session. We used three measures of attentional bias for smoking stimuli: A visual probe task with short (500ms) and long (2000ms) picture stimulus durations, and a modified Stroop task with smoking-related and neutral words. Former smokers and current smokers, as compared to non-smokers, showed an attentional bias in visual orienting to smoking pictures in the 500ms condition of the visual probe task. The Stroop interference index of smoking words was negatively related to nicotine dependence in current smokers. Former smokers and mildly dependent smokers, as compared to non-smokers, showed increased interference by smoking words in the Stroop task. Neither current nor former smokers showed an attentional bias in maintained attention (2000ms visual probe task). In conclusion, even after prolonged abstinence smoking cues retain incentive salience in former smokers, who differed from non-smokers on two attentional bias indices. Attentional biases in former smokers operate mainly in early involuntary rather than in controlled processing, and may represent a vulnerability factor for relapse. Therefore, smoking cessation programs should strengthen self-control abilities to prevent relapses. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP. All rights reserved.

Orienteering injuries

OpenAIRE

Folan, Jean M.

1982-01-01

At the Irish National Orienteering Championships in 1981 a survey of the injuries occurring over the two days of competition was carried out. Of 285 individual competitors there was a percentage injury rate of 5.26%. The article discusses the injuries and aspects of safety in orienteering.

Relevance of Spectral Cues for Auditory Spatial Processing in the Occipital Cortex of the Blind

Science.gov (United States)

Voss, Patrice; Lepore, Franco; Gougoux, Frédéric; Zatorre, Robert J.

2011-01-01

We have previously shown that some blind individuals can localize sounds more accurately than their sighted counterparts when one ear is obstructed, and that this ability is strongly associated with occipital cortex activity. Given that spectral cues are important for monaurally localizing sounds when one ear is obstructed, and that blind individuals are more sensitive to small spectral differences, we hypothesized that enhanced use of spectral cues via occipital cortex mechanisms could explain the better performance of blind individuals in monaural localization. Using positron-emission tomography (PET), we scanned blind and sighted persons as they discriminated between sounds originating from a single spatial position, but with different spectral profiles that simulated different spatial positions based on head-related transfer functions. We show here that a sub-group of early blind individuals showing superior monaural sound localization abilities performed significantly better than any other group on this spectral discrimination task. For all groups, performance was best for stimuli simulating peripheral positions, consistent with the notion that spectral cues are more helpful for discriminating peripheral sources. PET results showed that all blind groups showed cerebral blood flow increases in the occipital cortex; but this was also the case in the sighted group. A voxel-wise covariation analysis showed that more occipital recruitment was associated with better performance across all blind subjects but not the sighted. An inter-regional covariation analysis showed that the occipital activity in the blind covaried with that of several frontal and parietal regions known for their role in auditory spatial processing. Overall, these results support the notion that the superior ability of a sub-group of early-blind individuals to localize sounds is mediated by their superior ability to use spectral cues, and that this ability is subserved by cortical processing in

Initial test results of the Omron face cue entry system at the University of Missouri-Rolla Reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tokuhiro, Akira T.; Vaughn, Brian J.

2004-01-01

The University of Missouri-Rolla Reactor facility is testing, in collaboration with Omron Transaction Systems, Inc., the Omron Face Cue facial recognition system for access control to its restricted area. The installation of this system is the first of its kind at a security-relevant facility in the U.S. and within the research reactor community. The Face Cue is an on-demand device based on facial recognition and storage technology. The image processing methodology is as follows: (1) facial position detection, (2) background elimination, (3) facial features discrimination via application of a wavelet transform. The extracted facial feature values are compared to the data archived in its database and access is provided upon meeting the authorization criteria. The current test phase consisted of assessing the functionality of the Face Cue during daily use and in terms of its robustness (flexibility) as a function of the following physical parameters: (1) subject's distance away from the Face Cue, (2) ambient lighting conditions, (3) subject's facial orientation, (4) subject's facial expression and (5) peripheral facial features/modifications. The system has operated at nearly 100% reliability during several test intervals with approximately 7,000 entry attempts to date. (author)

Perception of social cues of danger in autism spectrum disorders.

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Nicole R Zürcher

Full Text Available Intuitive grasping of the meaning of subtle social cues is particularly affected in autism spectrum disorders (ASD. Despite their relevance in social communication, the effect of averted gaze in fearful faces in conveying a signal of environmental threat has not been investigated using real face stimuli in adults with ASD. Here, using functional MRI, we show that briefly presented fearful faces with averted gaze, previously shown to be a strong communicative signal of environmental danger, produce different patterns of brain activation than fearful faces with direct gaze in a group of 26 normally intelligent adults with ASD compared with 26 matched controls. While implicit cue of threat produces brain activation in attention, emotion processing and mental state attribution networks in controls, this effect is absent in individuals with ASD. Instead, individuals with ASD show activation in the subcortical face-processing system in response to direct eye contact. An effect of differences in looking behavior was excluded in a separate eye tracking experiment. Our data suggest that individuals with ASD are more sensitive to direct eye contact than to social signals of danger conveyed by averted fearful gaze.

Attentional bias to food-related visual cues: is there a role in obesity?

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Doolan, K J; Breslin, G; Hanna, D; Gallagher, A M

2015-02-01

The incentive sensitisation model of obesity suggests that modification of the dopaminergic associated reward systems in the brain may result in increased awareness of food-related visual cues present in the current food environment. Having a heightened awareness of these visual food cues may impact on food choices and eating behaviours with those being most aware of or demonstrating greater attention to food-related stimuli potentially being at greater risk of overeating and subsequent weight gain. To date, research related to attentional responses to visual food cues has been both limited and conflicting. Such inconsistent findings may in part be explained by the use of different methodological approaches to measure attentional bias and the impact of other factors such as hunger levels, energy density of visual food cues and individual eating style traits that may influence visual attention to food-related cues outside of weight status alone. This review examines the various methodologies employed to measure attentional bias with a particular focus on the role that attentional processing of food-related visual cues may have in obesity. Based on the findings of this review, it appears that it may be too early to clarify the role visual attention to food-related cues may have in obesity. Results however highlight the importance of considering the most appropriate methodology to use when measuring attentional bias and the characteristics of the study populations targeted while interpreting results to date and in designing future studies.

Assessing cue-induced brain response as a function of abstinence duration in heroin-dependent individuals: an event-related fMRI study.

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Qiang Li

Full Text Available The brain activity induced by heroin-related cues may play a role in the maintenance of heroin dependence. Whether the reinforcement or processing biases construct an everlasting feature of heroin addiction remains to be resolved. We used an event-related fMRI paradigm to measure brain activation in response to heroin cue-related pictures versus neutral pictures as the control condition in heroin-dependent patients undergoing short-term and long-term abstinence. The self-reported craving scores were significantly increased after cue exposure in the short-term abstinent patients (t = 3.000, P = 0.008, but no increase was found in the long-term abstinent patients (t = 1.510, P = 0.149. However, no significant differences in cue-induced craving changes were found between the two groups (t = 1.193, P = 0.850. Comparing between the long-term abstinence and short-term abstinence groups, significant decreases in brain activation were detected in the bilateral anterior cingulated cortex, left medial prefrontal cortex, caudate, middle occipital gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and right precuneus. Among all of the heroin dependent patients, the abstinence duration was negatively correlated with brain activation in the left medial prefrontal cortex and left inferior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that long-term abstinence may be useful for heroin-dependent patients to diminish their saliency value of heroin-related cues and possibly lower the relapse vulnerability to some extent.

Deficits in cue detection underlie event-based prospective memory impairment in major depression: an eye tracking study.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Siyi; Zhou, Renlai; Cui, Hong; Chen, Xinyin

2013-10-30

This study examined the cue detection in the non-focal event-based prospective memory (PM) of individuals with and without a major depressive disorder using behavioural and eye tracking assessments. The participants were instructed to search on each trial for a different target stimulus that could be present or absent and to make prospective responses to the cue object. PM tasks included cue only and target plus cue, whereas ongoing tasks included target only and distracter only. The results showed that a) participants with depression performed more poorly than those without depression in PM; b) participants with depression showed more fixations and longer total and average fixation durations in both ongoing and PM conditions; c) participants with depression had lower scores on accuracy in target-plus-cue trials than in cue-only trials and had a higher gaze rate of targets on hits and misses in target-plus-cue trials than did those without depression. The results indicate that the state of depression may impair top-down cognitive control function, which in turn results in particular deficits in the engagement of monitoring for PM cues. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Compound cueing in free recall

Science.gov (United States)

Lohnas, Lynn J.; Kahana, Michael J.

2013-01-01

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cueing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity effect should be greater when the two most recently recalled items were studied in contiguous list positions. A meta-analysis of published free recall experiments demonstrates evidence for compound cueing in both conditional response probabilities and inter-response times. To help rule out a rehearsal-based account of these compound cueing effects, we conducted an experiment with immediate, delayed and continual-distractor free recall conditions. Consistent with retrieved context theory but not with a rehearsal-based account, compound cueing was present in all conditions, and was not significantly influenced by the presence of interitem distractors. PMID:23957364

Prey responses to predator chemical cues: disentangling the importance of the number and biomass of prey consumed.

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Michael W McCoy

Full Text Available To effectively balance investment in predator defenses versus other traits, organisms must accurately assess predation risk. Chemical cues caused by predation events are indicators of risk for prey in a wide variety of systems, but the relationship between how prey perceive risk in relation to the amount of prey consumed by predators is poorly understood. While per capita predation rate is often used as the metric of relative risk, studies aimed at quantifying predator-induced defenses commonly control biomass of prey consumed as the metric of risk. However, biomass consumed can change by altering either the number or size of prey consumed. In this study we determine whether phenotypic plasticity to predator chemical cues depends upon prey biomass consumed, prey number consumed, or both. We examine the growth response of red-eyed treefrog tadpoles (Agalychnis callidryas to cues from a larval dragonfly (Anax amazili. Biomass consumed was manipulated by either increasing the number of prey while holding individual prey size constant, or by holding the number of prey constant and varying individual prey size. We address two questions. (i Do prey reduce growth rate in response to chemical cues in a dose dependent manner? (ii Does the magnitude of the response depend on whether prey consumption increases via number or size of prey? We find that the phenotypic response of prey is an asymptotic function of prey biomass consumed. However, the asymptotic response is higher when more prey are consumed. Our findings have important implications for evaluating past studies and how future experiments should be designed. A stronger response to predation cues generated by more individual prey deaths is consistent with models that predict prey sensitivity to per capita risk, providing a more direct link between empirical and theoretical studies which are often focused on changes in population sizes not individual biomass.

Visible propagation from invisible exogenous cueing.

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Zhicheng; Murray, Scott O

2013-09-20

Perception and performance is affected not just by what we see but also by what we do not see-inputs that escape our awareness. While conscious processing and unconscious processing have been assumed to be separate and independent, here we report the propagation of unconscious exogenous cueing as determined by conscious motion perception. In a paradigm combining masked exogenous cueing and apparent motion, we show that, when an onset cue was rendered invisible, the unconscious exogenous cueing effect traveled, manifesting at uncued locations (4° apart) in accordance with conscious perception of visual motion; the effect diminished when the cue-to-target distance was 8° apart. In contrast, conscious exogenous cueing manifested in both distances. Further evidence reveals that the unconscious and conscious nonretinotopic effects could not be explained by an attentional gradient, nor by bottom-up, energy-based motion mechanisms, but rather they were subserved by top-down, tracking-based motion mechanisms. We thus term these effects mobile cueing. Taken together, unconscious mobile cueing effects (a) demonstrate a previously unknown degree of flexibility of unconscious exogenous attention; (b) embody a simultaneous dissociation and association of attention and consciousness, in which exogenous attention can occur without cue awareness ("dissociation"), yet at the same time its effect is contingent on conscious motion tracking ("association"); and (c) underscore the interaction of conscious and unconscious processing, providing evidence for an unconscious effect that is not automatic but controlled.

Enhancing inhibitory learning to reduce overeating: Design and rationale of a cue exposure therapy trial in overweight and obese women.

Science.gov (United States)

van den Akker, Karolien; Schyns, Ghislaine; Jansen, Anita

2016-07-01

The prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased substantially over the last decades. Weight loss attempts in overweight individuals are common, though they seldom result in successful long-term weight loss. One very promising treatment is food cue exposure therapy, during which overweight individuals are repeatedly exposed to food-associated cues (e.g., the sight, smell and taste of high-calorie foods, overeating environments) without eating in order to extinguish cue-elicited appetitive responses to food cues. However, only few studies have tested the effectiveness of cue exposure, especially with regards to weight loss. For exposure treatment of anxiety disorders, it has been proposed that inhibitory learning is critical for exposure to be effective. In this RCT, we translated techniques proposed by Craske et al. (2014) to the appetitive domain and developed a novel cue exposure therapy for overeating aimed at maximizing inhibitory learning. The current RCT tested the effectiveness of this 8-session cue exposure intervention relative to a control intervention in 45 overweight adult (aged 18-60) females at post-treatment and 3-month follow-up, of which 39 participants completed the study. Weight loss, eating psychopathology, food cue reactivity, and snacking behaviour were studied as main treatment outcomes, and mediators and moderators of treatment effects were studied. The presented study design represents an innovative effort to provide valuable clinical recommendations for the treatment of overeating and obesity. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When sexual threat cues shape attitudes toward immigrants: the role of insecurity and benevolent sexism.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarrasin, Oriane; Fasel, Nicole; Green, Eva G T; Helbling, Marc

2015-01-01

Drawing on psychological and political science research on individuals' sensitivity to threat cues, the present study examines reactions to political posters that depict male immigrants as a sexual danger. We expect anti-immigrant attitudes to be more strongly predicted by feelings of insecurity or representations of men and women as strong and fragile when individuals are exposed to sexual threat cues than when they are not. Results from two online experiments conducted in Switzerland and Germany largely confirmed these assumptions. Comparing two anti-immigrant posters (general and non-sexual threat vs. sexual threat), Experiment 1 (n = 142) showed that feelings of insecurity were related to an increased support for expelling immigrants from the host country in both cases. However, only in the sexual threat cues condition and among female participants, were perceptions of women as fragile-as measured with benevolent sexism items-related to support for expelling immigrants. Further distinguishing between different forms of violence threat cues, Experiment 2 (n = 181) showed that collective feelings of insecurity were most strongly related to support for expelling immigrants when a male immigrant was presented as a violent criminal. In contrast, benevolent sexist beliefs were related to anti-immigrant stances only when participants were exposed to a depiction of a male immigrant as a rapist. In both cases attitudes were polarized: on the one hand, representations of immigrants as criminals provoked reactance reactions-that is, more positive attitudes-among participants scoring low in insecurity feelings or benevolent sexism. On the other hand, those scoring high in these dimensions expressed slightly more negative attitudes. Overall, by applying social psychological concepts to the study of anti-immigrant political campaigning, the present study demonstrated that individuals are sensitive to specific threat cues in posters.

Dorsolateral neostriatum contribution to incentive salience: Opioid or dopamine stimulation makes one reward cue more motivationally attractive than another

OpenAIRE

DiFeliceantonio, Alexandra G.; Berridge, Kent C.

2016-01-01

Pavlovian cues for rewards can become attractive incentives: approached and ‘wanted’ as the rewards themselves. The motivational attractiveness of a previously learned cue is not fixed, but can be dynamically amplified during re-encounter by simultaneous activation of brain limbic circuitry. Here we report that opioid or dopamine microinjections in the dorsolateral quadrant of the neostriatum (DLS) of rats selectively amplify attraction toward a previously learned Pavlovian cue in an individu...

The (unclear effects of invalid retro-cues.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcel eGressmann

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Studies with the retro-cue paradigm have shown that validly cueing objects in visual working memory long after encoding can still benefit performance on subsequent change detection tasks. With regard to the effects of invalid cues, the literature is less clear. Some studies reported costs, others did not. We here revisit two recent studies that made interesting suggestions concerning invalid retro-cues: One study suggested that costs only occur for larger set sizes, and another study suggested that inclusion of invalid retro-cues diminishes the retro-cue benefit. New data from one experiment and a reanalysis of published data are provided to address these conclusions. The new data clearly show costs (and benefits that were independent of set size, and the reanalysis suggests no influence of the inclusion of invalid retro-cues on the retro-cue benefit. Thus, previous interpretations may be taken with some caution at present.

Inactivation of the Lateral Entorhinal Area Increases the Influence of Visual Cues on Hippocampal Place Cell Activity

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Kristin M. Scaplen

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The hippocampus is important for both navigation and associative learning. We previously showed that the hippocampus processes two-dimensional (2D landmarks and objects differently. Our findings suggested that landmarks are more likely to be used for orientation and navigation, whereas objects are more likely to be used for associative learning. The process by which cues are recognized as relevant for navigation or associative learning, however, is an open question. Presumably both spatial and nonspatial information are necessary for classifying cues as landmarks or objects. The lateral entorhinal area (LEA is a good candidate for participating in this process as it is implicated in the processing of three-dimensional (3D objects and object location. Because the LEA is one synapse upstream of the hippocampus and processes both spatial and nonspatial information, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the LEA modulates how the hippocampus uses 2D landmarks and objects. To test this hypothesis, we temporarily inactivated the LEA ipsilateral to the dorsal hippocampal recording site using fluorophore-conjugated muscimol (FCM 30 min prior to three foraging sessions in which either the 2D landmark or the 2D object was back-projected to the floor of an open field. Prior to the second session we rotated the 2D cue by 90°. Cues were returned to the original configuration for the third session. Compared to the Saline treatment, FCM inactivation increased the percentage of rotation responses to manipulations of the landmark cue, but had no effect on information content of place fields. In contrast, FCM inactivation increased information content of place fields in the presence of the object cue, but had no effect on rotation responses to the object cue. Thus, LEA inactivation increased the influence of visual cues on hippocampal activity, but the impact was qualitatively different for cues that are useful for navigation vs. cues that may not be useful for

Measurement of Cue-Induced Craving in Human Methamphetamine- Dependent Subjects New Methodological Hopes for Reliable Assessment of Treatment Efficacy

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Zahra Alam Mehrjerdi

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Methamphetamine (MA is a highly addictive psychostimulant drug with crucial impacts on individuals on various levels. Exposure to methamphetamine-associated cues in laboratory can elicit measureable craving and autonomic reactivity in most individuals with methamphetamine dependence and the cue reactivity can model how craving would result in continued drug seeking behaviors and relapse in real environments but study on this notion is still limited. In this brief article, the authors review studies on cue-induced craving in human methamphetamine- dependent subjects in a laboratory-based approach. Craving for methamphetamine is elicited by a variety of methods in laboratory such as paraphernalia, verbal and visual cues and imaginary scripts. In this article, we review the studies applying different cues as main methods of craving incubation in laboratory settings. The brief reviewed literature provides strong evidence that craving for methamphetamine in laboratory conditions is significantly evoked by different cues. Cue-induced craving has important treatment and clinical implications for psychotherapists and clinicians when we consider the role of induced craving in evoking intense desire or urge to use methamphetamine after or during a period of successful craving prevention program. Elicited craving for methamphetamine in laboratory conditions is significantly influenced by methamphetamine-associated cues and results in rapid craving response toward methamphetamine use. This notion can be used as a main core for laboratory-based assessment of treatment efficacy for methamphetamine-dependent patients. In addition, the laboratory settings for studying craving can bridge the gap between somehow-non-reliable preclinical animal model studies and budget demanding randomized clinical trials.

Integration of Distinct Objects in Visual Working Memory Depends on Strong Objecthood Cues Even for Different-Dimension Conjunctions.

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Balaban, Halely; Luria, Roy

2016-05-01

What makes an integrated object in visual working memory (WM)? Past evidence suggested that WM holds all features of multidimensional objects together, but struggles to integrate color-color conjunctions. This difficulty was previously attributed to a challenge in same-dimension integration, but here we argue that it arises from the integration of 2 distinct objects. To test this, we examined the integration of distinct different-dimension features (a colored square and a tilted bar). We monitored the contralateral delay activity, an event-related potential component sensitive to the number of objects in WM. The results indicated that color and orientation belonging to distinct objects in a shared location were not integrated in WM (Experiment 1), even following a common fate Gestalt cue (Experiment 2). These conjunctions were better integrated in a less demanding task (Experiment 3), and in the original WM task, but with a less individuating version of the original stimuli (Experiment 4). Our results identify the critical factor in WM integration at same- versus separate-objects, rather than at same- versus different-dimensions. Compared with the perfect integration of an object's features, the integration of several objects is demanding, and depends on an interaction between the grouping cues and task demands, among other factors. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Visuospatial information processing load and the ratio between parietal cue and target P3 amplitudes in the Attentional Network Test.

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Abramov, Dimitri M; Pontes, Monique; Pontes, Adailton T; Mourao-Junior, Carlos A; Vieira, Juliana; Quero Cunha, Carla; Tamborino, Tiago; Galhanone, Paulo R; deAzevedo, Leonardo C; Lazarev, Vladimir V

2017-04-24

In ERP studies of cognitive processes during attentional tasks, the cue signals containing information about the target can increase the amplitude of the parietal cue P3 in relation to the 'neutral' temporal cue, and reduce the subsequent target P3 when this information is valid, i.e. corresponds to the target's attributes. The present study compared the cue-to-target P3 ratios in neutral and visuospatial cueing, in order to estimate the contribution of valid visuospatial information from the cue to target stages of the task performance, in terms of cognitive load. The P3 characteristics were also correlated with the results of individuals' performance of the visuospatial tasks, in order to estimate the relationship of the observed ERP with spatial reasoning. In 20 typically developing boys, aged 10-13 years (11.3±0.86), the intelligence quotient (I.Q.) was estimated by the Block Design and Vocabulary subtests from the WISC-III. The subjects performed the Attentional Network Test (ANT) accompanied by EEG recording. The cued two-choice task had three equiprobable cue conditions: No cue, with no information about the target; Neutral (temporal) cue, with an asterisk in the center of the visual field, predicting the target onset; and Spatial cues, with an asterisk in the upper or lower hemifield, predicting the onset and corresponding location of the target. The ERPs were estimated for the mid-frontal (Fz) and mid-parietal (Pz) scalp derivations. In the Pz, the Neutral cue P3 had a lower amplitude than the Spatial cue P3; whereas for the target ERPs, the P3 of the Neutral cue condition was larger than that of the Spatial cue condition. However, the sums of the magnitudes of the cue and target P3 were equal in the spatial and neutral cueing, probably indicating that in both cases the equivalent information processing load is included in either the cue or the target reaction, respectively. Meantime, in the Fz, the analog ERP components for both the cue and target

Effect of Cue Timing and Modality on Gait Initiation in Parkinson Disease With Freezing of Gait.

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Lu, Chiahao; Amundsen Huffmaster, Sommer L; Tuite, Paul J; Vachon, Jacqueline M; MacKinnon, Colum D

2017-07-01

To examine the effects of cue timing, across 3 sensory modalities, on anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) during gait initiation in people with Parkinson disease (PD). Observational study. Biomechanics research laboratory. Individuals with idiopathic PD (N=25; 11 with freezing of gait [FOG]) were studied in the off-medication state (12-h overnight withdrawal). Gait initiation was tested without cueing (self-initiated) and with 3 cue timing protocols: fixed delay (3s), random delay (4-12s), and countdown (3-2-1-go, 1-s intervals) across 3 sensory modalities (acoustic, visual, and vibrotactile). The incidence and spatiotemporal characteristics of APAs during gait initiation were analyzed, including vertical ground reaction forces and center of pressure. All cue timings and modalities increased the incidence and amplitude of APAs compared with self-initiated stepping. Acoustic and visual cues, but not vibrotactile stimulation, improved the timing of APAs. Fixed delay or countdown timing protocols were more effective at decreasing APA durations than random delay cues. Cue-evoked improvements in APA timing, but not amplitude, correlated with the level of impairment during self-initiated gait. Cues did not improve the late push-off phase in the FOG group. External cueing improves gait initiation in PD regardless of cue timing, modality, or clinical phenotype (with and without FOG). Acoustic or visual cueing with predictive timing provided the greatest improvements in gait initiation; therefore, these protocols may provide the best outcomes when applied by caregivers or devices. Copyright © 2016 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Presenting Your Best Self(ie: The Influence of Gender on Vertical Orientation of Selfies on Tinder

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Lorin J. Elias

2017-04-01

Full Text Available When taking a self-portrait or “selfie” to display in an online dating profile, individuals may intuitively manipulate the vertical camera angle to embody how they want to be perceived by the opposite sex. Concepts from evolutionary psychology and grounded cognition suggest that this manipulation can provide cues of physical height and impressions of power to the viewer which are qualities found to influence mate-selection. We predicted that men would orient selfies more often from below to appear taller (i.e., more powerful than the viewer, and women, from an above perspective to appear shorter (i.e., less powerful. A content analysis was conducted which coded the vertical orientation of 557 selfies from profile pictures on the popular mobile dating application, Tinder. In general, selfies were commonly used by both men (54% and women (90%. Consistent with our predictions, a gender difference emerged; men's selfies were angled significantly more often from below, whereas women's were angled more often from above. Our findings suggest that selfies presented in a mate-attraction context are intuitively or perhaps consciously selected to adhere to ideal mate qualities. Further discussion proposes that biological or individual differences may also facilitate vertical compositions of selfies.

Visual cues given by humans are not sufficient for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus to find hidden food.

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Joshua M Plotnik

Full Text Available Recent research suggests that domesticated species--due to artificial selection by humans for specific, preferred behavioral traits--are better than wild animals at responding to visual cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. \\Although this seems to be supported by studies on a range of domesticated (including dogs, goats and horses and wild (including wolves and chimpanzees animals, there is also evidence that exposure to humans positively influences the ability of both wild and domesticated animals to follow these same cues. Here, we test the performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus on an object choice task that provides them with visual-only cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. Captive elephants are interesting candidates for investigating how both domestication and human exposure may impact cue-following as they represent a non-domesticated species with almost constant human interaction. As a group, the elephants (n = 7 in our study were unable to follow pointing, body orientation or a combination of both as honest signals of food location. They were, however, able to follow vocal commands with which they were already familiar in a novel context, suggesting the elephants are able to follow cues if they are sufficiently salient. Although the elephants' inability to follow the visual cues provides partial support for the domestication hypothesis, an alternative explanation is that elephants may rely more heavily on other sensory modalities, specifically olfaction and audition. Further research will be needed to rule out this alternative explanation.

Visual cues given by humans are not sufficient for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to find hidden food.

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Plotnik, Joshua M; Pokorny, Jennifer J; Keratimanochaya, Titiporn; Webb, Christine; Beronja, Hana F; Hennessy, Alice; Hill, James; Hill, Virginia J; Kiss, Rebecca; Maguire, Caitlin; Melville, Beckett L; Morrison, Violet M B; Seecoomar, Dannah; Singer, Benjamin; Ukehaxhaj, Jehona; Vlahakis, Sophia K; Ylli, Dora; Clayton, Nicola S; Roberts, John; Fure, Emilie L; Duchatelier, Alicia P; Getz, David

2013-01-01

Recent research suggests that domesticated species--due to artificial selection by humans for specific, preferred behavioral traits--are better than wild animals at responding to visual cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. \\Although this seems to be supported by studies on a range of domesticated (including dogs, goats and horses) and wild (including wolves and chimpanzees) animals, there is also evidence that exposure to humans positively influences the ability of both wild and domesticated animals to follow these same cues. Here, we test the performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) on an object choice task that provides them with visual-only cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. Captive elephants are interesting candidates for investigating how both domestication and human exposure may impact cue-following as they represent a non-domesticated species with almost constant human interaction. As a group, the elephants (n = 7) in our study were unable to follow pointing, body orientation or a combination of both as honest signals of food location. They were, however, able to follow vocal commands with which they were already familiar in a novel context, suggesting the elephants are able to follow cues if they are sufficiently salient. Although the elephants' inability to follow the visual cues provides partial support for the domestication hypothesis, an alternative explanation is that elephants may rely more heavily on other sensory modalities, specifically olfaction and audition. Further research will be needed to rule out this alternative explanation.

Modulation of auditory spatial attention by visual emotional cues: differential effects of attentional engagement and disengagement for pleasant and unpleasant cues.

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Harrison, Neil R; Woodhouse, Rob

2016-05-01

Previous research has demonstrated that threatening, compared to neutral pictures, can bias attention towards non-emotional auditory targets. Here we investigated which subcomponents of attention contributed to the influence of emotional visual stimuli on auditory spatial attention. Participants indicated the location of an auditory target, after brief (250 ms) presentation of a spatially non-predictive peripheral visual cue. Responses to targets were faster at the location of the preceding visual cue, compared to at the opposite location (cue validity effect). The cue validity effect was larger for targets following pleasant and unpleasant cues compared to neutral cues, for right-sided targets. For unpleasant cues, the crossmodal cue validity effect was driven by delayed attentional disengagement, and for pleasant cues, it was driven by enhanced engagement. We conclude that both pleasant and unpleasant visual cues influence the distribution of attention across modalities and that the associated attentional mechanisms depend on the valence of the visual cue.

In the presence of conflicting gaze cues, fearful expression and eye-size guide attention.

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Carlson, Joshua M; Aday, Jacob

2017-10-19

Humans are social beings that often interact in multi-individual environments. As such, we are frequently confronted with nonverbal social signals, including eye-gaze direction, from multiple individuals. Yet, the factors that allow for the prioritisation of certain gaze cues over others are poorly understood. Using a modified conflicting gaze paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that fearful gaze would be favoured amongst competing gaze cues. We further hypothesised that this effect is related to the increased sclera exposure, which is characteristic of fearful expressions. Across three experiments, we found that fearful, but not happy, gaze guides observers' attention over competing non-emotional gaze. The guidance of attention by fearful gaze appears to be linked to increased sclera exposure. However, differences in sclera exposure do not prioritise competing gazes of other types. Thus, fearful gaze guides attention among competing cues and this effect is facilitated by increased sclera exposure - but increased sclera exposure per se does not guide attention. The prioritisation of fearful gaze over non-emotional gaze likely represents an adaptive means of selectively attending to survival-relevant spatial locations.

Craving and substance use among patients with alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or heroin addiction: a comparison of substance- and person-specific cues.

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Fatseas, Melina; Serre, Fuschia; Alexandre, Jean-Marc; Debrabant, Romain; Auriacombe, Marc; Swendsen, Joel

2015-06-01

It is well established that craving increases following exposure to substance-related 'cues', but the role of life-styles or substance use habits that are unique to each person remains poorly understood. This study examines the association of substance-specific and personal cues with craving and substance use in daily life. Ecological momentary assessment was used during a 2-week period. Data were collected in a French out-patient addiction treatment centre. A total of 132 out-patients beginning treatment for alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or opiate addiction were included. Using mobile technologies, participants were questioned four times per day relative to craving, substance use and exposure to either substance-specific cues (e.g. seeing a syringe) or personal cues unique to that individual (e.g. seeing the specific person with whom the substance is used). Craving intensity was associated with the number of concurrently assessed substance-specific cues (t = 4.418, P addictive substances, and the duration of this association may persist longer than for more general substance-specific cues. Mobile technologies provide new opportunities for understanding these person-specific risk factors and for providing individually tailored interventions. © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Perceived association between diagnostic and non-diagnostic cues of women's sexual interest: General Recognition Theory predictors of risk for sexual coercion.

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Farris, Coreen; Viken, Richard J; Treat, Teresa A

2010-01-01

Young men's errors in sexual perception have been linked to sexual coercion. The current investigation sought to explicate the perceptual and decisional sources of these social perception errors, as well as their link to risk for sexual violence. General Recognition Theory (GRT; [Ashby, F. G., & Townsend, J. T. (1986). Varieties of perceptual independence. Psychological Review, 93, 154-179]) was used to estimate participants' ability to discriminate between affective cues and clothing style cues and to measure illusory correlations between men's perception of women's clothing style and sexual interest. High-risk men were less sensitive to the distinction between women's friendly and sexual interest cues relative to other men. In addition, they were more likely to perceive an illusory correlation between women's diagnostic sexual interest cues (e.g., facial affect) and non-diagnostic cues (e.g., provocative clothing), which increases the probability that high-risk men will misperceive friendly women as intending to communicate sexual interest. The results provide information about the degree of risk conferred by individual differences in perceptual processing of women's interest cues, and also illustrate how translational scientists might adapt GRT to examine research questions about individual differences in social perception.

Laserlight cues for gait freezing in Parkinson's disease: an open-label study.

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Donovan, S; Lim, C; Diaz, N; Browner, N; Rose, P; Sudarsky, L R; Tarsy, D; Fahn, S; Simon, D K

2011-05-01

Freezing of gait (FOG) and falls are major sources of disability for Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and show limited responsiveness to medications. We assessed the efficacy of visual cues for overcoming FOG in an open-label study of 26 patients with PD. The change in the frequency of falls was a secondary outcome measure. Subjects underwent a 1-2 month baseline period of use of a cane or walker without visual cues, followed by 1 month using the same device with the laserlight visual cue. The laserlight visual cue was associated with a modest but significant mean reduction in FOG Questionnaire (FOGQ) scores of 1.25 ± 0.48 (p = 0.0152, two-tailed paired t-test), representing a 6.6% improvement compared to the mean baseline FOGQ scores of 18.8. The mean reduction in fall frequency was 39.5 ± 9.3% with the laserlight visual cue among subjects experiencing at least one fall during the baseline and subsequent study periods (p = 0.002; two-tailed one-sample t-test with hypothesized mean of 0). Though some individual subjects may have benefited, the overall mean performance on the timed gait test (TGT) across all subjects did not significantly change. However, among the 4 subjects who underwent repeated testing of the TGT, one showed a 50% mean improvement in TGT performance with the laserlight visual cue (p = 0.005; two-tailed paired t-test). This open-label study provides evidence for modest efficacy of a laserlight visual cue in overcoming FOG and reducing falls in PD patients. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Navigating the flow: individual and continuum models for homing in flowing environments.

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Painter, Kevin J; Hillen, Thomas

2015-11-06

Navigation for aquatic and airborne species often takes place in the face of complicated flows, from persistent currents to highly unpredictable storms. Hydrodynamic models are capable of simulating flow dynamics and provide the impetus for much individual-based modelling, in which particle-sized individuals are immersed into a flowing medium. These models yield insights on the impact of currents on population distributions from fish eggs to large organisms, yet their computational demands and intractability reduce their capacity to generate the broader, less parameter-specific, insights allowed by traditional continuous approaches. In this paper, we formulate an individual-based model for navigation within a flowing field and apply scaling to derive its corresponding macroscopic and continuous model. We apply it to various movement classes, from drifters that simply go with the flow to navigators that respond to environmental orienteering cues. The utility of the model is demonstrated via its application to 'homing' problems and, in particular, the navigation of the marine green turtle Chelonia mydas to Ascension Island. © 2015 The Author(s).

Analysis of Parallel and Transverse Visual Cues on the Gait of Individuals with Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease

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de Melo Roiz, Roberta; Azevedo Cacho, Enio Walker; Cliquet, Alberto, Jr.; Barasnevicius Quagliato, Elizabeth Maria Aparecida

2011-01-01

Idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) has been defined as a chronic progressive neurological disorder with characteristics that generate changes in gait pattern. Several studies have reported that appropriate external influences, such as visual or auditory cues may improve the gait pattern of patients with IPD. Therefore, the objective of this…

Studying the influence of race on the gaze cueing effect using eye tracking method

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Galina Ya. Menshikova

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The gaze direction of another person is an important social cue, allowing us to orient quickly in social interactions. The effect of short-term redirection of visual attention to the same object that other people are looking at is known as the gaze cueing effect. There is evidence that the strength of this effect depends on many social factors, such as the trust in a partner, her/his gender, social attitudes, etc. In our study we investigated the influence of race of face stimuli on the strength of the gaze cueing effect. Using the modified Posner Cueing Task an attentional shift was assessed in a scene where avatar faces of different race were used as distractors. Participants were instructed to fix the black dot in the centre of the screen until it changes colour, and then as soon as possible to make a rightward or leftward saccade, depending on colour of a fixed point. A male distractor face was shown in the centre of the screen simultaneously with a fixed point. The gaze direction of the distractor face changed from straight ahead to rightward or leftward at the moment when colour of a fixed point changed. It could be either congruent or incongruent with the saccade direction. We used face distractors of three race categories: Caucasian (own race faces, Asian and African (other race faces. Twenty five Caucasian participants took part in our study. The results showed that the race of face distractors influence the strength of the gaze cueing effect, that manifested in the change of latency and velocity of the ongoing saccades.

Counterbalancing in smoking cue research: a critical analysis.

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Sayette, Michael A; Griffin, Kasey M; Sayers, W Michael

2010-11-01

Cue exposure research has been used to examine key issues in smoking research, such as predicting relapse, testing new medications, investigating the neurobiology of nicotine dependence, and examining reactivity among smokers with comorbid psychopathologies. Determining the order that cues are presented is one of the most critical steps in the design of these investigations. It is widely assumed that cue exposure studies should counterbalance the order in which smoking and control (neutral) cues are presented. This article examines the premises underlying the use of counterbalancing in experimental research, and it evaluates the degree to which counterbalancing is appropriate in smoking cue exposure studies. We reviewed the available literature on the use of counterbalancing techniques in human smoking cue exposure research. Many studies counterbalancing order of cues have not provided critical analyses to determine whether this approach was appropriate. Studies that have reported relevant data, however, suggest that order of cue presentation interacts with type of cue (smoking vs. control), which raises concerns about the utility of counterbalancing. Primarily, this concern arises from potential carryover effects, in which exposure to smoking cues affects subsequent responding to neutral cues. Cue type by order of cue interactions may compromise the utility of counterbalancing. Unfortunately, there is no obvious alternative that is optimal across studies. Strengths and limitations of several alternative designs are considered, and key questions are identified to advance understanding of the optimal conditions for conducting smoking cue exposure studies.

Counterbalancing in Smoking Cue Research: A Critical Analysis

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Griffin, Kasey M.; Sayers, W. Michael

2010-01-01

Introduction: Cue exposure research has been used to examine key issues in smoking research, such as predicting relapse, testing new medications, investigating the neurobiology of nicotine dependence, and examining reactivity among smokers with comorbid psychopathologies. Determining the order that cues are presented is one of the most critical steps in the design of these investigations. It is widely assumed that cue exposure studies should counterbalance the order in which smoking and control (neutral) cues are presented. This article examines the premises underlying the use of counterbalancing in experimental research, and it evaluates the degree to which counterbalancing is appropriate in smoking cue exposure studies. Methods: We reviewed the available literature on the use of counterbalancing techniques in human smoking cue exposure research. Results: Many studies counterbalancing order of cues have not provided critical analyses to determine whether this approach was appropriate. Studies that have reported relevant data, however, suggest that order of cue presentation interacts with type of cue (smoking vs. control), which raises concerns about the utility of counterbalancing. Primarily, this concern arises from potential carryover effects, in which exposure to smoking cues affects subsequent responding to neutral cues. Conclusions: Cue type by order of cue interactions may compromise the utility of counterbalancing. Unfortunately, there is no obvious alternative that is optimal across studies. Strengths and limitations of several alternative designs are considered, and key questions are identified to advance understanding of the optimal conditions for conducting smoking cue exposure studies. PMID:20884695

Cueing vocabulary during sleep increases theta activity during later recognition testing.

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Schreiner, Thomas; Göldi, Maurice; Rasch, Björn

2015-11-01

Neural oscillations in the theta band have repeatedly been implicated in successful memory encoding and retrieval. Several recent studies have shown that memory retrieval can be facilitated by reactivating memories during their consolidation during sleep. However, it is still unknown whether reactivation during sleep also enhances subsequent retrieval-related neural oscillations. We have recently demonstrated that foreign vocabulary cues presented during sleep improve later recall of the associated translations. Here, we examined the effect of cueing foreign vocabulary during sleep on oscillatory activity during subsequent recognition testing after sleep. We show that those words that were replayed during sleep after learning (cued words) elicited stronger centroparietal theta activity during recognition as compared to noncued words. The reactivation-induced increase in theta oscillations during later recognition testing might reflect a strengthening of individual memory traces and the integration of the newly learned words into the mental lexicon by cueing during sleep. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Lateralization of magnetic compass orientation in a migratory bird

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Wiltschko, Wolfgang; Traudt, Joachim; Güntürkün, Onur; Prior, Helmut; Wiltschko, Roswitha

2002-10-01

Lateralization of brain functions, once believed to be a human characteristic, has now been found to be widespread among vertebrates. In birds, asymmetries of visual functions are well studied, with each hemisphere being specialized for different tasks. Here we report lateralized functions of the birds' visual system associated with magnetoperception, resulting in an extreme asymmetry of sensing the direction of the magnetic field. We found that captive migrants tested in cages with the magnetic field as the only available orientation cue were well oriented in their appropriate migratory direction when using their right eye only, but failed to show a significant directional preference when using their left eye. This implies that magnetoreception for compass orientation, assumed to take place in the eyes alongside the visual processes, is strongly lateralized, with a marked dominance of the right eye/left brain hemisphere.

Titmouse calling and foraging are affected by head and body orientation of cat predator models and possible experience with real cats.

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Book, D L; Freeberg, Todd M

2015-09-01

Although anti-predator behavior systems have been studied in diverse taxa, less is known about how prey species detect and assess the immediate threat posed by a predator based on its behavior. In this study, we evaluated a potential cue that some species may utilize when assessing predation threat-the predator's body and head orientation. We tested the effect of this orientation cue on signaling and predation-risk-sensitive foraging of a prey species, tufted titmice (Baeolophus bicolor). Earlier work revealed sensitivity of titmice and related species to the presence of predator stimuli. Here, we manipulated cat models to face either toward or away from a food source preferred by titmice and then measured titmouse calling and seed-taking behavior. Titmice showed greater feeder avoidance when the cat predator models faced the feeder, compared to when the models faced away from the feeder or when titmice were exposed to control stimuli. Titmouse calling was also sensitive to predator head/body orientation, depending upon whether titmice were from sites where real cats had been observed or not. This study experimentally demonstrated that both calling and foraging of prey species can be affected by the head and body orientation of an important terrestrial predator. Prey species may therefore signal in strategic ways to conspecifics not just about predator presence, but also urgency of threat related to the more subtle cue of the head and body orientation of the predator. These findings hold potential implications for understanding animal cognition and learning processes.

Brain activation for response inhibition under gaming cue distraction in internet gaming disorder

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Gin-Chung Liu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We evaluated neural substrates related to the loss of control in college students with internet gaming disorder (IGD. We hypothesized that deficit in response inhibition under gaming cue distraction was the possible mechanism for the loss of control internet use. Eleven cases of IGD and 11 controls performed Go/NoGo tasks with/without gaming distraction in the functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. When the gaming picture was shown as background while individuals were performing Go/NoGo tasks, the IGD group committed more commission errors. The control group increased their brain activations more over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC and superior parietal lobe under gaming cue distraction in comparison with the IGD group. Furthermore, brain activation of the right DLPFC and superior parietal lobe were negatively associated with performance of response inhibition among the IGD group. The results suggest that the function of response inhibition was impaired under gaming distraction among the IGD group, and individuals with IGD could not activate right DLPFC and superior parietal lobe to keep cognitive control and attention allocation for response inhibition under gaming cue distraction. This mechanism should be addressed in any intervention for IGD.

An Empirical Study on the Impact of Individual and Organizational Supply Chain Orientation on Supply Chain Management

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Taehee Lee

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This study empirically identifies individual supply chain orientation (SCO components as antecedents of organizational SCO and analyzes the causal relationships between organizational SCO and supply chain management (SCM. A survey was conducted with Korean firms and the partial least squares method was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that individual SCO has a significant influence on organizational SCO. Organizational SCO has a significant influence on strategic SCM, whereas only information technology for SCO affects operational SCM. Strategic SCM has a significant influence on operational SCM. This study extends our understanding of the social and behavioral elements of SCM by classifying SCO into individual and organizational SCO and identifying the causal relationships between them.

Which cue to ‘want’? Opioid stimulation of central amygdala makes goal-trackers show stronger goal-tracking, just as sign-trackers show stronger sign-tracking

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DiFeliceantonio, Alexandra G.; Berridge, Kent C.

2012-01-01

Pavlovian cues that have been paired with reward can gain incentive salience. Drug addicts find drug cues motivationally attractive and binge eaters are attracted by food cues. But the level of incentive salience elicited by a cue re-encounter still varies across time and brain states. In an animal model, cues become attractive and ‘wanted’ in an ‘autoshaping’ paradigm, where different targets of incentive salience emerge for different individuals. Some individuals (sign-trackers) find a predictive discrete cue attractive while others find a reward contiguous and goal cue more attractive (location where reward arrives: goal-trackers). Here we assessed whether central amygdala mu opioid receptor stimulation enhances the phasic incentive salience of the goal-cue for goal-trackers during moments of predictive cue presence (expressed in both approach and consummatory behaviors to goal cue), just as it enhances the attractiveness of the predictive cue target for sign-trackers. Using detailed video analysis we measured the approaches, nibbles, sniffs, and bites directed at their preferred target for both sign-trackers and goal-trackers. We report that DAMGO microinjections in central amygdala made goal-trackers, like sign-trackers, show phasic increases in appetitive nibbles and sniffs directed at the goal-cue expressed selectively whenever the predictive cue was present. This indicates enhancement of incentive salience attributed by both goal trackers and sign-trackers, but attributed in different directions: each to their own target cue. For both phenotypes, amygdala opioid stimulation makes the individual’s prepotent cue into a stronger motivational magnet at phasic moments triggered by a CS that predicts the reward UCS. PMID:22391118

Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular vs.Generic Reference

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Meyer, Meredith; Baldwin, Dare A.

2013-01-01

Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract kind categories ("Dogs" bark) rather than particular individuals ("Those dogs" bark). How do children distinguish these distinct kinds of reference? We examined the role of one socio-pragmatic cue, namely pointing, in producing and comprehending generic versus particular…

Extinction and renewal of cue-elicited reward-seeking.

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Bezzina, Louise; Lee, Jessica C; Lovibond, Peter F; Colagiuri, Ben

2016-12-01

Reward cues can contribute to overconsumption of food and drugs and can relapse. The failure of exposure therapies to reduce overconsumption and relapse is generally attributed to the context-specificity of extinction. However, no previous study has examined whether cue-elicited reward-seeking (as opposed to cue-reactivity) is sensitive to context renewal. We tested this possibility in 160 healthy volunteers using a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) design involving voluntary responding for a high value natural reward (chocolate). One reward cue underwent Pavlovian extinction in the same (Group AAA) or different context (Group ABA) to all other phases. This cue was compared with a second non-extinguished reward cue and an unpaired control cue. There was a significant overall PIT effect with both reward cues eliciting reward-seeking on test relative to the unpaired cue. Pavlovian extinction substantially reduced this effect, with the extinguished reward cue eliciting less reward-seeking than the non-extinguished reward cue. Most interestingly, extinction of cue-elicited reward-seeking was sensitive to renewal, with extinction less effective for reducing PIT when conducted in a different context. These findings have important implications for extinction-based interventions for reducing maladaptive reward-seeking in practice. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How hearing aids, background noise, and visual cues influence objective listening effort.

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Picou, Erin M; Ricketts, Todd A; Hornsby, Benjamin W Y

2013-09-01

The purpose of this article was to evaluate factors that influence the listening effort experienced when processing speech for people with hearing loss. Specifically, the change in listening effort resulting from introducing hearing aids, visual cues, and background noise was evaluated. An additional exploratory aim was to investigate the possible relationships between the magnitude of listening effort change and individual listeners' working memory capacity, verbal processing speed, or lipreading skill. Twenty-seven participants with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss were fitted with linear behind-the-ear hearing aids and tested using a dual-task paradigm designed to evaluate listening effort. The primary task was monosyllable word recognition and the secondary task was a visual reaction time task. The test conditions varied by hearing aids (unaided, aided), visual cues (auditory-only, auditory-visual), and background noise (present, absent). For all participants, the signal to noise ratio was set individually so that speech recognition performance in noise was approximately 60% in both the auditory-only and auditory-visual conditions. In addition to measures of listening effort, working memory capacity, verbal processing speed, and lipreading ability were measured using the Automated Operational Span Task, a Lexical Decision Task, and the Revised Shortened Utley Lipreading Test, respectively. In general, the effects measured using the objective measure of listening effort were small (~10 msec). Results indicated that background noise increased listening effort, and hearing aids reduced listening effort, while visual cues did not influence listening effort. With regard to the individual variables, verbal processing speed was negatively correlated with hearing aid benefit for listening effort; faster processors were less likely to derive benefit. Working memory capacity, verbal processing speed, and lipreading ability were related to benefit from visual cues. No

Interaction between scene-based and array-based contextual cueing.

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Rosenbaum, Gail M; Jiang, Yuhong V

2013-07-01

Contextual cueing refers to the cueing of spatial attention by repeated spatial context. Previous studies have demonstrated distinctive properties of contextual cueing by background scenes and by an array of search items. Whereas scene-based contextual cueing reflects explicit learning of the scene-target association, array-based contextual cueing is supported primarily by implicit learning. In this study, we investigated the interaction between scene-based and array-based contextual cueing. Participants searched for a target that was predicted by both the background scene and the locations of distractor items. We tested three possible patterns of interaction: (1) The scene and the array could be learned independently, in which case cueing should be expressed even when only one cue was preserved; (2) the scene and array could be learned jointly, in which case cueing should occur only when both cues were preserved; (3) overshadowing might occur, in which case learning of the stronger cue should preclude learning of the weaker cue. In several experiments, we manipulated the nature of the contextual cues present during training and testing. We also tested explicit awareness of scenes, scene-target associations, and arrays. The results supported the overshadowing account: Specifically, scene-based contextual cueing precluded array-based contextual cueing when both were predictive of the location of a search target. We suggest that explicit, endogenous cues dominate over implicit cues in guiding spatial attention.

"All of My Lovers Fit Into This Scale": Sexual Minority Individuals' Responses to Two Novel Measures of Sexual Orientation.

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Galupo, M Paz; Lomash, Edward; Mitchell, Renae C

2017-01-01

Previous qualitative research on traditional measures of sexual orientation raise concerns regarding how well these scales capture sexual minority individuals' experience of sexuality. The present research focused on the critique of two novel scales developed to better capture the way sexual and gender minority individuals conceptualize sexuality. Participants were 179 sexual minority (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, asexual) individuals who identified as cisgender (n = 122) and transgender (n = 57). Participants first completed the new scales, then provided qualitative responses regarding how well each scale captured their sexuality. The Sexual-Romantic Scale enabled the measurement of sexual and romantic attraction to each sex independently (same-sex and other-sex). Participants resonated with the way the Sexual-Romantic scale disaggregated sexual and romantic attraction. Although cisgender monosexual (lesbian/gay) individuals positively responded to the separation of same- and other-sex attraction, individuals with either plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, or fluid) or transgender identities found the binary conceptualization of sex/gender problematic. The Gender-Inclusive Scale incorporated same- and other-sex attraction as well as dimensions of attraction beyond those based on sex (attraction to masculine, feminine, androgynous, and gender non-conforming individuals). The incorporation of dimensions of sexual attraction outside of sex in the Gender-Inclusive Scale was positively regarded by participants of all identities. Findings indicate that the Sexual-Romantic and Gender-Inclusive scales appear to address some of the concerns raised in previous research regarding the measurement of sexual orientation among sexual minority individuals.

The Role of Individualism-Collectivism in the Individual Creative Process

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Yao, Xiang; Wang, Shuhong; Dang, Junhua; Wang, Lei

2012-01-01

This study is among the first to examine how individuals' cultural value orientations impact 2 separate stages of creativity: idea generation and idea implementation. A total of 247 Chinese employees completed questionnaires including individualism-collectivism culture orientation and their idea generation behavior. Supervisor ratings of idea…

Influencing Eating Choices: Biological Food Cues in Advertising and Packaging Alter Trajectories of Decision Making and Behavior.

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Bailey, Rachel L

2017-10-01

From an ecological perception perspective (Gibson, 1977), the availability of perceptual information alters what behaviors are more and less likely at different times. This study examines how perceptual information delivered in food advertisements and packaging alters the time course of information processing and decision making. Participants categorized images of food that varied in information delivered in terms of color, glossiness, and texture (e.g., food cues) before and after being exposed to a set of advertisements that also varied in this way. In general, items with more direct cues enhanced appetitive motivational processes, especially if they were also advertised with direct food cues. Individuals also chose to eat products that were packaged with more available direct food cues compared to opaque packaging.