Studying the dynamics of visual search behavior using RT hazard and micro-level speed-accuracy tradeoff functions: A role for recurrent object recognition and cognitive control processes

Priming of natural scene categorization during continuous flash suppression

Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) reduces conscious awareness of stimuli. Whether stimuli suppressed by CFS are processed at categorical or semantic levels is still debated. Here, we approached this question using a large set of indoor and outdoor scene photographs in a priming paradigm. Perceptually suppressed primes were followed by visible targets. Participants rapidly reported whether the targets showed an indoor or an outdoor scene. Responses were faster (and fast responses more accurate) when primes and targets came from a congruent superordinate category (e.g., both were outdoor scenes). During CFS, priming effects were relatively small (up to 10 ms) and modulated by prime visibility and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target. Without CFS, the stimuli elicited consistent and more robust priming effects (about 24 ms). Our results imply that scene category is processed during CFS, although some residual prime visibility is likely necessary for significant priming effects to occur.

When does “inhibition of return” occur in spatial cueing tasks? Temporally disentangling multiple cue-triggered effects using response history and conditional accuracy analyses

Research on spatial cueing has shown that uninformative cues often facilitate mean response time (RT) performance in valid- compared to invalid-cueing conditions at short cue-target stimulus-onset-asynchronies (SOAs), and robustly generate a reversed or inhibitory cueing effect at longer SOAs that is widely known as inhibition-of-return (IOR). To study the within-trial time course of the IOR and facilitation effects we employ discrete-time hazard and conditional accuracy analyses to analyze the shapes of the RT and accuracy distributions measured in two experimental tasks. Our distributional analyses show that (a) IOR is present only from ~160 ms to ~280 ms after target onset for cue-target SOAs above ~200 ms, (b) facilitation does not precede IOR, but co-occurs with it, (c) the cue-triggered motor response activation is selectively and actively inhibited before target onset, (d) the presence of a central cue causes a temporary negative cueing effect in the conditional accuracy functions, (e) the IOR effect consists of a facilitatory and an inhibitory component when compared to central cueing, and (f) the within-trial time course of IOR is not affected much by the task employed (detection or localization). We conclude that the traditional mean performance measures conceal crucial information on behavioral dynamics in spatial cueing paradigms.

Response inhibition in the Negative Compatibility Effect in the absence of inhibitory stimulus features

The Negative Compatibility Effect (NCE) is a reversal in priming effects that can occur when a masked arrow prime is followed by an arrow target at a long stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). To test the explanation that the NCE is actually a positive priming effect elicited by mask features associated with the prime-opposed response, we devise masks that always point in the same direction as the prime, eliminating all antiprime features. We find large positive priming effects for arrow primes without masks and for arrow masks without primes. When a neutral mask is introduced, priming effects turn negative at long SOAs. In the critical case where the mask is an arrow in the same direction as the prime, the prime does not add to the positive priming effect from the mask shape, but instead strongly diminishes it and induces response errors even though all stimuli point in the same direction. No such feature-free inhibition is seen when arrows are replaced by color stimuli. We conclude that even though response activation by stimulus features plays a role in the NCE, there is a strong inhibitory component (though perhaps not in all feature domains) that is not based on visual features.

Beyond information rate, the capacity of cognitive control predicts response criteria in perceptual decision-making

Recent studies indicate that higher capacity of cognitive control (CCC) represents higher processing efficiency (i.e., high accuracy with fast speed). However, the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) exists ubiquitously in decision-making, and little is known about whether and how the CCC is associated with SAT and whether the CCC-SAT relationship would be affected by changes in information entropy. In this study, fifty-nine college students performed a majority function task in which accuracy and response speed were equally emphasized. A Bayesian-based hierarchical drift diffusion modeling method was used to estimate three parameters of boundary separation, drift rate, and nondecision time for each participant in this task. In addition, the CCC of each participant was estimated. The results showed that the CCC was positively correlated with the SAT represented by jointly increasing accuracy and reaction time (RT), which was modulated by the change in task-relevant information entropy. Multiple mediation analyses indicated that drift rate served as the key mediator in the positive CCC-accuracy relationship while boundary separation played the major mediating role in the positive CCC-RT relationship. These findings suggest that the CCC reflects not only the rate of information processing but also decision strategies for achieving current goals.

Analyzing Response Times and Other Types of Time-to-Event Data Using Event History Analysis: A Tool for Mental Chronometry and Cognitive Psychophysiology

In this Methods article, we discuss and illustrate a unifying, principled way to analyze response time data from psychological experiments—and all other types of time-to-event data. We advocate the general application of discrete-time event history analysis (EHA) which is a well-established, intuitive longitudinal approach to statistically describe and model the shape of time-to-event distributions. After discussing the theoretical background behind the so-called hazard function of event occurrence in both continuous and discrete time units, we illustrate how to calculate and interpret the descriptive statistics provided by discrete-time EHA using two example data sets (masked priming, visual search). In case of discrimination data, the hazard analysis of response occurrence can be extended with a microlevel speed-accuracy trade-off analysis. We then discuss different approaches for obtaining inferential statistics. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of a principled use of discrete-time EHA for time-to-event data compared to (a) comparing means with analysis of variance, (b) other distributional methods available in the literature such as delta plots and continuous-time EHA methods, and (c) only fitting parametric distributions or computational models to empirical data. We conclude that statistically controlling for the passage of time during data analysis is equally important as experimental control during the design of an experiment, to understand human behavior in our experimental paradigms.

Temporal dynamics of sequential motor activation in a dual-prime paradigm: Insights from conditional accuracy and hazard functions

In response priming experiments, a participant has to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible to a target stimulus preceded by a prime. The prime and the target can either be mapped to the same response (consistent trial) or to different responses (inconsistent trial). Here, we investigate the effects of two sequential primes (each one either consistent or inconsistent) followed by one target in a response priming experiment. We employ discrete-time hazard functions of response occurrence and conditional accuracy functions to explore the temporal dynamics of sequential motor activation. In two experiments (small-N design, 12 participants, 100 trials per cell and subject), we find that (1) the earliest responses are controlled exclusively by the first prime if primes are presented in quick succession, (2) intermediate responses reflect competition between primes, with the second prime increasingly dominating the response as its time of onset is moved forward, and (3) only the slowest responses are clearly controlled by the target. The current study provides evidence that sequential primes meet strict criteria for sequential response activation. Moreover, it suggests that primes can influence responses out of a memory buffer when they are presented so early that participants are forced to delay their responses.