Semantic incongruity attracts attention at a pre-conscious level: Evidence from a TMS study

Ortiz-Tudela, Javier; Martín-Arévalo, Elisa; Chica, Ana B.; Lupiáñez, Juan

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2017.08.035

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…More simply, our conflict condition makes participants do more high-level attentional work, and in our semantic priming conditions, this work is directly focused on the meaning or essential category information of the stimulus itself. In contrast, in the change blindness studies (Ortiz-Tudela et al., 2017, 2018), the incongruent condition provides a strong automatic (and presumably rapid, pre-volitional) cue, both that something does not match, and also possibly a spatial cue to where the contextually inappropriate object is in the scene. In this case, it is the congruent condition that requires more deliberate attentional work and controlled processing to find the changing object.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…A more stage- and process-specific approach to considering conflict effects on memory may also help us align other recent findings in this emerging literature. Several recent studies (Ortiz-Tudela et al., 2017, 2018) have shown what on the surface appears to be an opposite memory effect of incongruency for objects displayed in congruent versus incongruent background scene contexts – incongruent items were quicker to be identified and localized (though with more error) in a change detection task, but showed worse later memory compared to congruent items. The authors discuss their findings as being at odds with theories of conflict-elicited learning (Verguts and Notebaert, 2008, 2009), but compatible with more general principles such as desirable difficulty or depth of processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Congruency Encoding Effects on Recognition Memory: A Stage-Specific Account of Desirable Difficulty

et al. 2019

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Recent research suggests that selectively attending to relevant stimuli while having to ignore or resist conflicting stimuli can lead to improvements in learning. While mostly discussed within a broader “desirable difficulty” framework in the memory and education literatures, some recent work has focused on more mechanistic questions of how processing conflict (e.g., from incongruent primes) might elicit increased attention and control, producing enhanced incidental encoding of high-conflict stimuli. This encoding benefit for high-control-demand or high-difficulty situations has been broadly conceptualized as a task-general property, with no strong prediction of what particular task elements should produce this effect. From stage processing models of single- and dual-task performance, we propose that memory-enhancing difficulty manipulations should strongly depend on inducing additional cognitive control at particular processing stages. Over six experiments, we show that a memory benefit is produced when increased cognitive control ( via incongruency priming) focuses additional processing on the core meaning of to-be-tested stimuli at the semantic categorization stage. In contrast, incongruency priming targeted at response selection within the same task produces similar effects on initial task performance, but gives no memory benefit for high-conflict trials. We suggest that a simple model of limited-capacity and stage-specific cognitive control allocation can account for and predict where and when conflict/difficulty encoding benefits will occur, and may serve as a model for desirable difficulty effects more broadly.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Congruency Encoding Effects on Recognition Memory: A Stage-Specific Account of Desirable Difficulty

et al. 2019

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“…Using a spatial-probe method, for instance, Gordon (2004) demonstrated that within a short visual glance, attention is preferentially allocated to contextually inconsistent objects rather than to consistent objects within a scene. Furthermore, studies using the change detection flicker paradigm (Rensink et al, 1997) have repeatedly shown an earlier detection of a rapid change to inconsistent than to consistent objects (Hollingworth & Henderson, 2000;LaPointe & Milliken, 2016;Mack et al, 2017;Ortiz-Tudela et al, 2017). Interestingly, however, opposite findings (in which a consistency advantage was observed) have been obtained when object identification rather than mere detection was assessed (LaPointe et al, 2013;Mack et al, 2017;Ortiz-Tudela et al, 2017).…”

Section: Processing Scene-object Associative Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, studies using the change detection flicker paradigm (Rensink et al, 1997) have repeatedly shown an earlier detection of a rapid change to inconsistent than to consistent objects (Hollingworth & Henderson, 2000;LaPointe & Milliken, 2016;Mack et al, 2017;Ortiz-Tudela et al, 2017). Interestingly, however, opposite findings (in which a consistency advantage was observed) have been obtained when object identification rather than mere detection was assessed (LaPointe et al, 2013;Mack et al, 2017;Ortiz-Tudela et al, 2017). And yet, studies using eye movement measures have further provided evidence that scene-object inconsistencies may attract eye fixations when a contextually inconsistent object appears at an extrafoveal location (Becker et al, 2007;Bonitz & Gordon, 2008;Cornelissen & Võ, 2017;LaPointe & Milliken, 2016;Loftus & Mackworth, 1978;Underwood & Foulsham, 2006;Underwood et al, 2008; see VISUAL-SEMANTIC ASSOCIATIVE PROCESSING AND ATTENTION 9 also Brockmole & Henderson, 2008).…”

Section: Processing Scene-object Associative Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

To grasp the world at a glance: The role of attention in visual and semantic associative processing

Gronau¹

2021

Preprint

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Associative relations among words, concepts and percepts are the core building blocks of high-level cognition. When viewing the world ‘at a glance’, the associative relations between objects in a scene, or between an object and its visual background are extracted rapidly. The extent to which such relational processing requires attentional capacity, however, has been heavily disputed over the years. In the present manuscript I review studies investigating scene-object and object-object associative processing. I then present a series of studies in which I assessed the necessity of spatial attention to various types of visual-semantic relations within a scene. Importantly, in all studies, the spatial and temporal aspects of visual attention were tightly controlled in an attempt to minimize unintentional attention shifts from ‘attended’ to ‘unattended’ regions. Pairs of stimuli - either objects, scenes, or a scene and an object - were briefly presented on each trial, while participants were asked to detect a pre-defined category of stimuli (e.g., an animal, a nonsense shape). Response times (RTs) to the target detection task were registered when visual attention spanned both stimuli in a pair vs. when attention was focused on only one of two stimuli. Findings consistently demonstrated rapid associative processing when stimuli were fully attended, i.e., shorter RTs to associated than unassociated pairs. Focusing attention on a single stimulus only, however, largely impaired this relational processing. The only exception to this result pattern was observed with the target stimuli that were prioritized by task demands: such stimuli continued to affect performance even when positioned at an unattended location, indicating that their relations with the attended items were well processed and analyzed. Our findings suggest that attention plays a critical role in processing visual-associative relations when these involve stimuli that are irrelevant to one's immediate goals.

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“…Other evidence, however, has demonstrated that incongruent, schema-inconsistent information is sometimes remembered better, likely because of its novelty. Accordingly, several studies have highlighted that out-of-context targets tend to capture attentional resources ([ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]; though, for inconsistent findings, see [ 43 , 44 ]). Contextually mismatching objects are also more likely to be retrieved successfully after a short delay period [ 42 , 45 , 46 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crossmodal Semantic Congruence Interacts with Object Contextual Consistency in Complex Visual Scenes to Enhance Short-Term Memory Performance

et al. 2021

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Object sounds can enhance the attentional selection and perceptual processing of semantically-related visual stimuli. However, it is currently unknown whether crossmodal semantic congruence also affects the post-perceptual stages of information processing, such as short-term memory (STM), and whether this effect is modulated by the object consistency with the background visual scene. In two experiments, participants viewed everyday visual scenes for 500 ms while listening to an object sound, which could either be semantically related to the object that served as the STM target at retrieval or not. This defined crossmodal semantically cued vs. uncued targets. The target was either in- or out-of-context with respect to the background visual scene. After a maintenance period of 2000 ms, the target was presented in isolation against a neutral background, in either the same or different spatial position as in the original scene. The participants judged the same vs. different position of the object and then provided a confidence judgment concerning the certainty of their response. The results revealed greater accuracy when judging the spatial position of targets paired with a semantically congruent object sound at encoding. This crossmodal facilitatory effect was modulated by whether the target object was in- or out-of-context with respect to the background scene, with out-of-context targets reducing the facilitatory effect of object sounds. Overall, these findings suggest that the presence of the object sound at encoding facilitated the selection and processing of the semantically related visual stimuli, but this effect depends on the semantic configuration of the visual scene.

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Semantic incongruity attracts attention at a pre-conscious level: Evidence from a TMS study

Cited by 17 publications

References 67 publications

Congruency Encoding Effects on Recognition Memory: A Stage-Specific Account of Desirable Difficulty

Congruency Encoding Effects on Recognition Memory: A Stage-Specific Account of Desirable Difficulty

To grasp the world at a glance: The role of attention in visual and semantic associative processing

Crossmodal Semantic Congruence Interacts with Object Contextual Consistency in Complex Visual Scenes to Enhance Short-Term Memory Performance

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