Geänderte Inhalte

Edited (or cut) dynamical images are created by changing perspectives in imaging devices, such as videos, or graphical animations. They are abundant in everyday and working life. However little is known about how attention is steered with regard to this material. Here we propose a simple two-step architecture of gaze control for this situation. This model relies on (1) a down-weighting of repeated information contained in optic flow within takes (between cuts), and (2) an up-weighting of repeated information between takes (across cuts). This architecture is both parsimonious and realistic. We outline the evidence speaking for this architecture and also identify the outstanding questions.

Understanding the factors that determine human attention in videos is important for many applications, such as user interface design in interactive television (iTV), continuity editing, or data compression techniques. In this article, we identify the demands that cinematic cuts impose on human attention. We hypothesize, test, and confirm that after cuts the viewers' attention is quickly attracted by repeated visual content. We conclude with a recommendation for future models of visual attention in videos and make suggestions how the present results could inspire designers of second screen iTV applications to optimise their interfaces with regard to a maximally smooth viewing experience.

Unconscious visual stimuli can be processed by human observers and modulate their behavior. This has been shown for masked prime stimuli that influence motor responses to subsequent target stimuli. Beyond this, masked stimuli can also affect participants’ behavior when they are free to choose one of two response alternatives. This finding demonstrates that an apparently free-choice between alternative behaviors can be subject to influences that are outside of awareness. We report three experiments which exhibit that the temporal dynamic of free-choice priming effects corresponds to that of forced-choice priming effects. Forced-choice priming effects were relatively robust against variations of prime stimuli but sensitive to physical features of target stimuli. Free-choice priming effects, in contrast, depended largely on the stimulus–response compatibility of the prime. A simple accumulator model which accounts for forced-choice response priming can also explain free-choice priming effects by the assumption that unconscious stimuli can initiate motor responses when participants are engaged in a speeded choice-reaction time task. According to our analyses free-choice priming results from a response selection mechanism which integrates conscious and unconscious information from external, stimulus driven sources and also from internal sources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Studied visual distractibility in 18 schizophrenic inpatients (aged 19–45 yrs). Ss had to respond to target stimuli while they ignored the visual context, which was either congruent, neutral, or incongruent with respect to the target stimulus. Schizophrenic Ss and 18 healthy controls performed this flanker task. Schizophrenic Ss did not show increased distractibility compared with controls, and both groups showed the same attenuation of visual context effects when the spatial distance between target and flanker stimuli was increased. The 2 groups showed the same amount of interference by incongruent visual context. When flanker and target stimuli were redundant, the responses of schizophrenic Ss were less accelerated than those of controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Die folgenden zentralen Annahmen des ``Continuous-Flow''-Modells (CFM) von C. W. Eriksen und D. W. Schultz werden in einem Experiment überprüft: (1) Aufgrund der Annahme der kontinuierlichen Übertragung der Information der Kontextreize von der Perzeption zur Reaktionsvorbereitung sagt das CFM vorher, dass Beginn und Verlauf des Effekts der Kontextreize auf die kortikale und muskuläre Aktivierung nicht von der Verzögerung der Zielreizdarbietung bereinflußt werden sollten. (2) Aufgrund der Annahme eines Reaktionswettbewerbs zur Erklärung des Kontexteffekts sagt das CFM vorher, dass das Ausmaß des Kontexteffekts mit dem Ausmaß der Aktivierung der falschen Hand zunehmen sollte. Daten wurden an einer Stichprobe von 60 Versuchspersonen erhoben. Es zeigte sich, dass Beginn und Verlauf des Kontexteffekts von der Verzögerung des Zielreizes beeinflusst werden. Das Ausmaß des Kontexteinflusses auf die Reaktionszeit war unabhängig vom Ausmaß der Aktivität auf der falschen Hand. Die Befunde werden insgesamt als Beleg dafür gewertet, dass das Ende des kontinuierlichen Flusses der Informationsübertragung zwischen Perzeption und motorischem System schon vor dem motorischen System erreicht ist.

Visual stimuli (primes) that are made invisible by masking can affect motor responses to a subsequent target stimulus. When a prime is followed by a mask which is followed by a target stimulus, an inverse priming effect (or negative compatibility effect) has been found: Responses are slow and frequently incorrect when prime and target stimuli are congruent, but fast and accurate when prime and target stimuli are incongruent. To functionally localize the origins of inverse priming effects, we applied the psychological refractory period (PRP-) paradigm which distinguishes a perceptual level, a central bottleneck, and a level of motor execution. Two dual-task experiments were run with the PRP-paradigm to localize the inverse priming effect relative to the central bottleneck. Together, results of the Effect-Absorption and the Effect-Propagation Procedure suggest that inverse priming effects are generated by perceptual mechanisms. We suggest two perceptual mechanisms as the source of inverse priming effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Motor responses can be affected by visual stimuli that have been made invisible by masking. Can masked visual stimuli also affect nonmotor operations that are necessary to perform the task? Here, the author reports priming effects of masked stimuli on operations that were cued by masking stimuli. Cues informed participants about operations that had to be executed with a forthcoming target stimulus. In five experiments, cues indicated (1) the required response, (2) part of the motor response, (3) the stimulus modality of the target stimulus, or (4) the task to be performed on a multidimensional stimulus. Motor and nonmotor priming effects followed comparable time courses, which differed from those of prime recognition. Experiment 5 demonstrated nonmotor priming without prime awareness. Results suggest that motor and nonmotor operations are similarly affected by masked stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

When a rapidly rotating ring of dots was briefly flashed, observers saw only a solid ring with no discriminable rotation. However, when this stimulus served as a prime that was followed by a target that consisted of a clearly rotating ring of dots, response times (RTs) to report the target's rotation were shorter when the prime and target directions were congruent than when they were incongruent. In accord with shape priming data, this priming effect increased monotonically with the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). The prime also biased the perceived direction of an ambiguous apparent motion target, but only at an intermediate SOA. At the same SOA, we also found that target presentations enabled above-chance discrimination of prime's rotation direction. These outcomes demonstrate the processing of motion direction information that is not phenomenally represented. They suggest a common mechanism may mediate the priming of RTs by shape and motion, whereas a different mechanism mediates perceptual measures of motion priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Unconscious stimuli can influence participants’ motor behavior as well as more complex mental processes. Previous cue-priming experiments demonstrated that masked cues can modulate endogenous shifts of spatial attention as measured by choice reaction time tasks. Here, we applied a signal detection task with masked luminance targets to determine the source and the scope of effects of masked stimuli. Target-detection performance was modulated by prime-cue congruency, indicating that prime-cue congruency modulates signal enhancement at early levels of target processing. These effects, however, were only found when the prime was perceptually similar to the cue indicting that primes influence early target processing in an indirect way by facilitating cue processing. Together with previous research we conclude that masked stimuli can modulate perceptual and post-central levels of processing. Findings mark a new limit of the effects of unconscious stimuli which seem to have a smaller scope than conscious stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)