Eyes in a schematic face and arrows can each cue an upcoming target such that responses to a target are faster to a valid than an invalid cue. These effects are sometimes claimed to reflect “automatic” orienting. One test of an automatic process concerns the extent to which it can be interfered with by another process. The present experiment investigates the ability of eyes and arrows to cue an upcoming target when both cues are present at the same time. On some trials they are congruent (both cues signal the same direction); on other trials they are incongruent (the two cues signal opposite directions). When the cues are congruent a valid cue produced faster RTs than an invalid cue. In the incongruent case arrows are resistant to interference from eyes, whereas an incongruent arrow eliminates a cueing effect for eyes. The discussion elaborates briefly on the theoretical implications.

Recent research has suggested that introducing a disfluency in the context of written composition (i.e., typing with one hand) can increase lexical sophistication. In the current study, we provide a strong test between two accounts of this phenomenon, one that attributes it to the delay caused by the disfluency and one that attributes it to the disruption of typical finger-to-letter mappings caused by the disfluency. To test between these accounts, we slowed down participants' typewriting by introducing a small delay between keystrokes while individuals wrote essays. Critically, this manipulation did not disrupt typical finger-to-letter mappings. Consistent with the delay-based account, our results demonstrate that the essays written in this less fluent condition were more lexically diverse and used less frequent words. Implications for the temporal dynamics of lexical selection in complex cognitive tasks are discussed.

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Additive effects of Stimulus Quality and Word Frequency on RT in the context of lexical decision when the foils are orthographically legal were first reported more than 4 decades ago, and subsequently replicated numerous times. Two accounts are considered that make different a priori predictions when the foils are orthographically illegal. Yap and Balota's (2007) Familiarity Discrimination account predicts additive effects of these two factors on mean RT and across the RT distribution because it assumes a staged normalization process that deals with the effect of low Stimulus Quality; a subsequent process produces the effect of Word Frequency. In contrast, O'Malley and Besner's ( 2008) context-dependent thresholding/ cascading account predicts an interaction because the use of illegal foils eliminates the need for thresholding at the letter level normally used to protect against lexical capture (identifying a nonword as a word) in experiments where Stimulus Quality is a factor, and hence the system reverts to processes in cascade. Critically, the present experiment yielded an interaction in which low-frequency words were more impaired by low Stimulus Quality than were high-frequency words. These data are inconsistent with the Familiarity Discrimination account as currently constituted, but consistent with a context-specific cascaded account. Further discussion considers how the Familiarity account may be modified so as to accommodate these data. Most generally, these data add to the view that processing is highly malleable (context dependent) rather than the received view, especially in regard to computational accounts, in which interactive-activation dynamics dominate. Public Significance StatementThis study (a) reviewed the history of a 45-year-old effect that has been replicated numerous times since. In turn, (b) these findings are overdue to be treated as a benchmark that computational models need to provide an account of, in efforts to understand some of the mental machinery underlying how we identify a word. The theoretical work identifies two different a priori accounts that could explain how this effect arises and submits it to a simple experimental test. The results support one account and not the other.

It is a widely held view that the determination of eye gaze direction is "automatic" in various senses (e.g., innate; informationally encapsulated; triggered without intent). The determination of arrow direction is also held to be automatic (following a certain amount of learning) despite not being innate. The present experiments evaluate the automaticity assumption of both eyes and arrows in terms of an interference criterion. The results of 10 experiments support the inference that explicit judgements of eye gaze direction, when participants respond with a lateralized key press, are (a) neither automatic in the strong sense (they are interfered with by an uninformative, incongruent arrow in the display) and (b) nor are they are automatic in a weaker sense (uninformative, incongruent arrows interfere more strongly with the determination of eye gaze direction than uninformative, incongruent eyes interfere with the arrow direction task). However, the determination of arrow direction is also not strongly automatic, given that it is interfered with by irrelevant eyes. At least with respect to an interference criterion, the determination of eye gaze direction appears less prepotent than the determination of arrow direction, which itself is only weakly automatic. Public Significance StatementThe determination of eye gaze direction is widely seen as innate, and often described as automatic in being triggered without intent, and implied to be impervious to interference from other mental processes. Indeed, it is so widely understood in this way that it has not been subjected to any strong tests such as whether it escapes competition from countervailing cues like arrow direction (which are themselves learned later in development, are symbolic and hence need an interpretation, at least during the learning phase, and after learning are themselves also seen as "automatic"). The results of the present work suggest (a) that the most widely accepted view about the determinants of one of the most basic of mental processes grounded in biology that service both social ends and survival in our ancestral past calls for a more nuanced account and (b) that judgements about arrow direction are only weakly automatic, given that they are interfered with by irrelevant eyes.