Static items are automatically prioritized in a dynamic environment

The majority of studies investigating interactions between vision and touch have typically explored single events, presenting one object at a time. The present study investigates how tactile-visual interactions affect competition between multiple visual objects in more dynamic cluttered environments. Participants searched for a horizontal or vertical line segment among distractor line segments of various orientations, all continuously changing color. Search times and search slopes were substantially reduced when the target color change was accompanied by a tactile signal. These benefits were observed even though the tactile signal was uninformative about the location, orientation, or color of the visual target. We conclude that tactile-visual synchrony guides attention in multiple object environments by increasing the saliency of the visual event. 2 In our everyday life, we receive a bulk of information via different senses. These different sensory inputs often interact when presented in close temporal or spatial proximity [see 23, 36, 38, for reviews]. For instance, in a noisy environment, we can understand a speaker better when we observe his or her lip movements [27]. Most studies have focused on interactions between audition and vision, but interactions between vision and

It is well known that auditory and visual onsets presented at a particular location can capture our visual attention. However, the question whether or not such attentional capture disappears when attention is focused endogenously beforehand has not yet been answered. Moreover, previous studies have not differentiated between capture by onsets presented at a non-target (invalid) location and possible performance benefits occurring when the target location is (validly) cued. In this study we modulated the degree of attentional focus by presenting endogenous cues with varying reliability and by displaying placeholders indicating the precise areas where the target stimuli could occur. By using not only valid and invalid exogenous cues, but also neutral cues which provide temporal but no spatial information, we found performance benefits as well as costs when attention is not strongly focused. The benefits disappear when the attentional focus is increased. Our results indicate that there is bottom-up capture of visual attention by irrelevant auditory and visual stimuli that can not be suppressed by top-down attentional control. Key words: crossmodal; attentional capture; enhanced processing; exogenous; endogenous3

“The power of technology to change one's intellectual viewpoint is one of its greatest contributions, not merely to knowledge, but to something even more important: understanding... it goes beyond the limits of human perception. ” Arthur C. Clark [1973]. In every aspect of our knowledge-based society, fluency in understanding complex information spaces is an increasingly crucial skill [Dede & Lewis, 1995]. In research and industry, many processes depend on people utilizing complicated representations of information [Rieber, 1994]. Increasingly, workers must navigate complex information spaces to locate needed data, must find patterns in information for problem solving, and must use sophisticated representations of information to communicate their ideas [Kohn, 1994; Studt, 1995]. Further, to make informed decisions about public policy issues such as global warming and environmental contamination, citizens must comprehend the strengths and limits of scientific models based on multivariate interactions. In many academic areas, students ’ success now depends upon their ability to envision and manipulate abstract multidimensional information spaces [Gordin & Pea, 1995]. Fields in which students struggle with mastering these types of representations include math, science, engineering, statistics, and finance.

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erical impa ect elderly’s supported ulations with a recent neuro-computational model of num perception, where only the specific degradation of in processes produced a pattern that closely resembled older pants ’ performance. Numeracy seems therefore resilient to ageing but it is influenced by the decline of inhibitory processes

a r t i c l e i n f o formation of young languages, may depend crucially on the nature of language learning by young children.

Not for distribution, but comments welcome! Introduction: Selective pressures on cognitive mechanisms Traditional cognitive psychology, the study of the information processing mechanisms underlying human thought and behavior, is problematic from an evolutionary viewpoint: Humans were not directly

Cognitive psychology has a rich history of application. Applied cognitive psychology research is conducted in universities, and also many cognitive psychologists work in industry, educational settings, and the private sector. This chapter focuses on five domains of applied cognitive psychology