Strongly-motivated positive affects induce faster responses to local than global information of visual stimuli: an approach using large-size Navon letters

Both cute and threatening images drive narrowing of attention in men and women

Appraisal theories of emotion sustain that stimuli containing high biological relevance preferentially capture our attention, regardless of their valence. In this work, we study the priming effect of both cute and threatening pictures on global/local visual processing. Seventy-eight males and 168 females in different menstrual cycle phases performed the global/local Navon letter task immediately after observing cute (infants and baby animals), threatening (animals in aggressive poses) or neutral pictures. Hierarchical stimuli were made up of global and local letters that could be either congruent (e.g. global H, local_H) or incongruent (e.g. global H, local_S). While we observed no interaction between affective primes and sex/menstrual cycle phase, each of these variables did have an independent effect on the global/local task. Thus, letter identification was significantly slower in the global task (only) after cute vs. neutral primes. Relevantly, the local-minus-global RT index revealed an attentional narrowing after both cute and threatening primes (vs. neutral primes) in incongruent trials. As for sex effects, a facilitation of global vs. local processing was observed in both sexes. However, women registered slower RTs than men, whereas women in the luteal phase showed faster RTs than those in follicular phase in the local task. This suggests that women, mainly those in their luteal menstrual phase, tend to rely on a more analytical style of processing while attending to hierarchical stimuli. Most importantly, stimuli containing high biological significance drive narrowing of the attentional focus in global/local visual processing, especially in conditions of higher attentional demand.

The Effects of Viewing Cute Pictures on Performance During a Basketball Free-Throw Task

Previous studies have shown that viewing cute pictures leads to performance improvement in a subsequent fine motor task. We examined the beneficial effects of viewing cute pictures in a more complex sporting skill (i.e., basketball free throws) by comparing three conditions (viewing baby animal pictures, adult animal pictures, and no pictures) and two tests (no-pressure and pressure). The participants, all of whom were college basketball players, performed 16 free throws in each condition. In the no-pressure test, male participants improved performance after viewing pictures of baby animals but not after adult animals and no pictures. In the pressure test, no significant improvement was observed. For female participants, the cuteness-viewing effect was not observed in both tests. The results suggest that viewing cute pictures may improve performance during basketball free throws in a low-pressure situation by narrowing the breadth of attentional focus and inducing approach motivation and caregiving behaviors.

Global precedence changes by environment: A systematic review and meta-analysis on effect of perceptual field variables on global-local visual processing

Perceptual organization and, in particular, visual processing have been debated for many years. The global precedence effect in local-global visual processing, as introduced by David Navon, refers to the condition that global aspects of a scene are processed more rapidly than are local details. This perceptual dynamic is influenced by many factors that can be divided into two major categories: subjective or internal factors (e.g., age, disorder, culture) and the external factors called perceptual field variables (PFVs; e.g., stimulus size, eccentricity, sparsity). The aim of the current study was to identify the latter factors using a meta-analysis followed by a systematic literature review. In accordance of the standard framework suggested by PRISMA, 28 PFVs were observed through a literature search on articles published from 1982 to 2019, among which 10 factors have been qualified to be included in a meta-analysis. Subsequently, the random effects model proposed by Hedges and Olkin was used to estimate pooled effect sizes of PFVs. These effect sizes were used to compare and sort the PFVs on the basis of their intensity. According to Cohen's index, our analyses show that relevance, sparsity, and solidness type are categorized as small effects; visual field, level repetition, spatial frequency, and shape type are categorized as medium effects; and congruency, eccentricity, and size as large effect PFVs on global precedence.

Effects of Viewing Cute Pictures on Quiet Eye Duration and Fine Motor Task Performance

We investigated if viewing cute pictures could improve fine motor skills and prolong quiet eye (QE) duration. QE is a gaze phenomenon, and its duration (i.e., the period between fixation onset preceding a critical movement and fixation offset) is thought to represent attention control. As it has been reported that QE duration is longer for expert athletes than for novice athletes in various sports and becomes shorter even for experts who choke under pressure during games, resulting in performance deterioration, QE prolongation is important to prevent choking under pressure. Separately, several studies have confirmed that viewing cute pictures can induce focal attention, thus improving performance in fine motor tasks. We hypothesized that viewing cute pictures may modulate attention control and prolong QE duration. We also tested if the beneficial effects of viewing cute pictures could be obtained in a high-pressure situation in which participant performance was evaluated by an experimenter. We used a fine-motor task requiring participants to use a pair of tweezers to remove 12 small pieces from holes in a game board. We randomly assigned participants to either the baby-animal pictures group or the adult-animal pictures group, based on pictures viewed prior to the task. Participants executed the task in a pre-test, post-test, and pressure test. In both the post-test and the pressure test, participants viewed seven photographs of either baby animals or adult animals before execution of the task. In accordance with previous research, task precision increased after viewing pictures of baby animals in both the post-test and pressure test. Furthermore, QE duration was also prolonged after viewing cute pictures in the post-test, but not in the pressure test. Neither performance improvement nor QE prolongation was found after viewing pictures of adult animals. These results suggested that simply viewing cute pictures could prolong QE duration without pressure and might provide a beneficial effect on performance, even in a high-pressure situation.