Aperiodic neural activity (1/f EEG) has been proposed to reflect the balance between excitatory and inhibitory (E:I) inputs, with steeper spectral slopes reflecting increased inhibition and flatter slopes indicating excitation. This activity also reflects the temporal coordination of neural firing, offering insights into fundamental brain dynamics. Recent studies have shown that the 1/f slope is sensitive to stimulus onset, characterized by initial inhibitory shifts followed by excitatory rebounds, which may reflect cognitive control mechanisms involved in suppressing distractions and preparing goal-directed responses. However, previous works have relied on fixed temporal windows and insufficient control of ERP contamination, limiting our understanding of rapid control dynamics. Here we used newly developed time-resolved analyses to study 1/f spectral slope modulation during a Picture-Word Interference task, focusing on two canonical cognitive control markers: the Congruency Effect (CE) and Congruency Sequence Effect (CSE). Forty-nine participants categorized pictures while ignoring congruent or incongruent words. Behaviorally, we replicated robust CE and CSE patterns. Spectral slope analyses showed that incongruent trials elicited steeper slopes - consistent with increased inhibition - particularly in frontal and central regions, reflecting conflict-related control engagement. Moreover, CSE analyses revealed dynamic slope modulations across frontal, central, and occipital components over time, suggesting control adjustments influenced by previous trial congruency. These results provide the first fine-grained evidence that aperiodic 1/f EEG activity can track both immediate conflict resolution and cognitive adjustments, offering a temporally sensitive neural marker of cognitive control through modulation of E:I balance.

IntroductionSatisfaction in interactions with Artificial Intelligence-based Decision Support Systems (DSSs) is a key determinant for their adoption and continued use. DSSs provide advice to support human decision-making and are increasingly implemented in domains such as healthcare, finance, and logistics. However, user satisfaction may depend on several factors, including the outcomes produced by the DSS (i.e., desirable or undesirable), its agreement with the user’s decision (i.e., confirmation or disagreement) and its consistency over time (i.e., correspondence between the system habitual behavior and its behavior in a single decision).MethodsIn an online experiment (N = 101, ages 19–57, M = 26, SD = 8.58; 38.8% M), we simulated four DSSs that cooperated with humans in solving everyday decision-making problems, manipulating agreement, efficiency and consistency.ResultsWe observed that user satisfaction depended not only on the features of a single decision (i.e., whether the outcome was positive/negative, and whether it agreed or disagreed with the user), but also on the consistency between the overall DSS behavior and its behavior in individual decisions.DiscussionThese findings suggest that users gradually develop broader mental representations of the DSS, and that satisfaction is influenced not only by isolated interactions but also by the consistency between the system’s behavior and user expectations. These insights have important implications for the design of DSSs aimed at maintaining user satisfaction over repeated interactions.

Viewing emotional pictures modulates electrocortical activity during the first second, with functional properties that reflect the type of processing that is being carried out. Recently, the investigation of electrocortical activity has been aided by machine learning techniques, such as multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA). Building on previous studies that used MVPA to classify between emotional and neutral stimuli, here we investigate electroencephalographic (EEG) changes while a sample of n = 15 participants viewed emotional and neutral scenes that could be presented in color or in grayscale, and for either a short (24 ms) or a long (6 s) exposure time. A linear classifier was used to classify EEG patterns as consequential to the viewing of emotional (pleasant, unpleasant) vs. neutral scenes, and to assess the extent to which scalp activation patterns are specific to the perceptual conditions under which a scene is viewed (i.e., color or greyscale, short vs. long exposure time) or generalize across viewing conditions. We observed that emotional content could be significantly decoded through MVPA, with earlier classification onset for pleasant-neutral vs. unpleasant-neutral classification. Moreover, this classification generalized across perceptual conditions, indicating that the symbolic meaning of natural scenes drives the emotional modulation of scalp activity. These results further indicate that, within the first second after the onset of natural scenes, emotional states can be decoded from the EEG signal, and that such learning can be applied to flexibly classify emotional states under perceptually different conditions.

Natural scenes are typically well-categorized in meaning and efficiently recognized, even under perceptually degraded conditions. The present study investigated whether the perceptual quality of a retrieval cue influences the long-term reconsolidation of visual memory. Participants were initially exposed to a series of images varying in emotional content. After a short delay, they completed an intermediate recognition memory test in which previously seen ("old") and novel ("new") images were presented in either a blurred or intact format. One week later, participants performed a final recognition task involving only intact old images-some of which had been tested previously (as blurred or intact), and others not tested at all. Recognition performance was generally enhanced for old pictures that had been previously tested, relative to non-tested pictures, with a greater benefit observed for images tested in intact form. Although emotional images were overall better remembered than neutral images, the benefit of testing with intact cues was more pronounced for neutral than for emotional pictures. Event-related potentials during the final task revealed a larger late positive component (LPC) for correctly recognized old versus new images, regardless of prior testing or emotional content. These findings suggest that recognition memory for natural scenes-while already robust-can be further strengthened through a single re-presentation within an active retrieval context. Critically, the perceptual quality of the retrieval cue plays a key role, likely by promoting continued visual processing. Implications are discussed in relation to desirable difficulty and global/local processing theories in scene perception and memory.

Values learned through previous experiences of reward can later modulate attentional capture if associated with a distractor in singleton search tasks (value-driven attentional capture; VDAC). Moreover, it has been shown that re-encountering distractor features can facilitate performance or reduce attentional capture (sequential effects). However, little is known about how sequential effects and attentional capture are jointly modulated by learned distractor value. Here, we examined the role of learned reward in sequential modulation of attentional capture. In two experiments we used a VDAC paradigm, varying the type of reward (monetary vs. sustainability-related). After associating letter colors with a high or low reward, or none at all, in a flanker task (learning phase), in a subsequent singleton task (test phase) we manipulated the effects of distractor value of the present and of the previous trial on attentional capture. In both experiments repetition of the same distractor value from trial N-1 to trial N was associated with faster responses, and reward value did not modulate this facilitation. In addition, attentional capture by rewarded, compared with unrewarded, distractors was observed when the preceding trial was unrewarded. Value-signaling distractors, if re-encountered, reduced attentional capture in the current trial, and this happened even for rewarded distractors of different values (e.g., high value followed by low value, and vice versa). These results suggest that, for different forms of incentives, repetition of previously rewarded distractors and attentional capture by the current reward interact in modulating the processing of learned values.

Previous studies observed that emotional scenes, presented as distractors, capture attention and interfere with an ongoing task. This behavioral interference has been shown to be elicited by the semantic rather than by the perceptual properties of a scene, as it resisted the application of low-pass spatial frequency filters. Some studies observed that the visual system can adapt to perceptual conditions; however, little is known concerning whether attentional capture by emotional stimuli can also be modulated by the sequential repetition of viewing conditions or of emotional content. In the present study, we asked participants to perform a parity task while viewing irrelevant natural scenes, which could be either emotional or neutral. These scenes could be either blurred (low-pass filter) or perceptually intact, and the order of presentation was balanced to study the effects of sequential repetition of perceptual conditions. The results indicate that affective modulation was most pronounced when the same viewing condition (either intact or blurred) was repeated, with faster responses when perceptual conditions were repeated for neutral distractors, but to a lesser extent for emotional ones. These data suggest that emotional interference in an attentional task can be modulated by serial sensitization in the processing of spatial frequencies.

Cognitive control abilities include maintaining goal-directed behaviors in spite of the incongruence between habitual and desired responses. In interference paradigms, slower responses to incongruent compared to congruent trials are observed; this interference is reduced after incongruent trials (congruence sequential effect, CSE), suggesting that the control exerted to counteract interference in the previous trial also propagates into the following trial. Moreover, a larger CSE is observed when trial features are repeated. Binding-retrieval accounts suggest that trial features that occur in the same time frame are bound together in an episodic representation; if a feature is repeated in the next trial, the control state that was active in the previous trial is also reactivated, resulting in a modulation of congruence effects. However, previous studies that used stimulus sets characterized by intracategory variability (e.g., faces and scenes) observed CSE modulation by the repetition of response categories but were inconclusive concerning whether repeating the identity of a stimulus may modulate CSE. The present study investigates whether episodic stimulus representations include both stimulus identity and response category information, by comparing the impact of the repetition of novel pictures (no identity repetition) and of frequent pictures (in which identity is repeated over trials) in a picture-word interference task. Results indicated that stimulus identity was not critical in the modulation of CSE, and that CSE was little affected by response-stimulus interval. Altogether, the present results contribute to the understanding and theoretical specification of sequential effects.

It is debated whether emotional processing and response depend on semantic identification or are preferentially tied to specific information in natural scenes, such as global features or local details. The present study aimed to further examine the relationship between scene understanding and affective response while manipulating visual content. To this end, we presented affective and neutral natural scenes which were progressively band-filtered to contain global features (low spatial frequencies) or local details (high spatial frequencies) and assessed both affective response and scene understanding. We observed that, if scene content was correctly reported, subjective ratings of arousal and valence were modulated by the affective content of the scene, and this modulation was similar across spatial frequency bands. On the other hand, no affective modulation of subjective ratings was observed if picture content was not correctly reported. The present results indicate that subjective affective response requires content understanding, and it is not tied to a specific spatial frequency range.

IntroductionResearch has recently shown that behavioral interference prompted by emotional distractors is subject to habituation when the same exemplars are repeated, but promptly recovers in response to novel stimuli. The present study investigated whether prolonged experience with distractors that were all novel was effective in shaping the attentional filter, favoring stable and generalizable inhibition effects.MethodsTo test this, the impact of emotional distractors was measured before and after a sustained training phase with only novel distractor pictures, and that for a group of participants depicted only a variety of neutral contents, whereas a different group was exposed only to emotional contents.ResultsResults showed that emotional interference on reaction times was attenuated after the training phase (compared to the pre-test), but emotional distractors continued to interfere more than neutral ones in the post-test. The two groups did not differ in terms of training effect, suggesting that the distractor suppression mechanism developed during training was not sensitive to the affective category of natural scenes with which one had had experience. The affective modulation of neither the LPP or Alpha-ERD showed any effect of training.DiscussionAltogether, these findings suggest that sustained experience with novel distractors may attenuate attention allocation toward task irrelevant emotional stimuli, but the evaluative processes and the engagement of motivational systems are always needed to support the monitoring of the environment for significant cues.

Past work has shown that when a peripheral sound captures our attention, it activates the contralateral visual cortex as revealed by an event-related potential component labelled the auditory-evoked contralateral occipital positivity (ACOP). This cross-modal activation of the visual cortex has been observed even when the sounds were not relevant to the ongoing task (visual or auditory), suggesting that peripheral sounds automatically activate the visual cortex. However, it is unclear whether top-down factors such as visual working memory (VWM) load and endogenous attention, which modulate the impact of task-irrelevant information, may modulate this spatially-specific component. Here, we asked participants to perform a lateralized VWM task (change detection), whose performance is supported by both endogenous spatial attention and VWM storage. A peripheral sound that was unrelated to the ongoing task was delivered during the retention interval. The amplitude of sound-elicited ACOP was analyzed as a function of the spatial correspondence with the cued hemifield, and of the memory array set-size. The typical ACOP modulation was observed over parieto-occipital sites in the 280-500 ms time window after sound onset. Its amplitude was not affected by VWM load but was modulated when the location of the sound did not correspond to the hemifield (right or left) that was cued for the change detection task. Our results suggest that sound-elicited activation of visual cortices, as reflected in the ACOP modulation, is unaffected by visual working memory load. However, endogenous spatial attention affects the ACOP, challenging the hypothesis that it reflects an automatic process.

Although alpha-band activity has long been a focus of psychophysiological research, its modulation by emotional value during picture perception has only recently been studied systematically. Here, we review these studies and report that the most consistent alpha oscillatory pattern indexing emotional processing is an enhanced desynchronization (ERD) over posterior sensors when viewing emotional compared with neutral pictures. This enhanced alpha ERD is not specific to unpleasant picture content, as previously proposed for other measures of affective response, but has also been observed for pleasant stimuli. Evidence suggests that this effect involves a desynchronization of the upper alpha band and of the lower beta frequencies (10-20 Hz). The emotional modulation of alpha ERD occurs even after massive stimulus repetition and when emotional cues serve as task-irrelevant distractors, consistent with the hypothesis that evaluative processes are mandatory in emotional picture processing. A similar enhanced ERD has been observed for other significant cues (e.g., conditioned aversive stimuli, or in anticipation of a potential threat), suggesting that it reflects cortical excitability associated with the engagement of the motivational systems. We review studies on alpha-band activity during picture perception, and report that the most consistent alpha oscillatory pattern indexing emotional processing is an enhanced desynchronization (ERD) over posterior sensors when viewing emotional compared with neutral pictures. Consistent with other measures of emotional reactivity, alpha ERD is modulated by highly arousing picture contents, suggesting that it reflects cortical excitability associated with the engagement of the motivational systems.

Visual exploration of the world is supported by eye movements which can be speeded up or delayed depending on bottom-up stimulation, top-down goals, and prior associations. Previous studies observed faster initiation of saccades toward emotional than neutral natural scenes; however, less is known concerning saccades which originate from emotional, compared with neutral, scenes. Here, we addressed this issue by examining a task in which participants continuously moved their gaze from and toward pictures (natural scenes), which could be emotional or neutral, and changed position in every trial. Saccades were initiated later when the starting picture was emotional compared to neutral, and this slowing was associated with the arousal value of the picture, suggesting that ocular disengagement does not vary with stimulus valence but is affected by engaging picture contents such as erotica and threat/injuries.

While information that is associated with inappropriate responses can interfere with an ongoing task and be detrimental to performance, cognitive control mechanisms and specific contextual conditions can alleviate interference from unwanted information. In the spatial correspondence (Simon) task, interference has been consistently shown to be reduced by spatial non-correspondence in the previous trial (i.e., correspondence sequence effect, CSE); however the mechanisms supporting this sequential effect are not well understood. Here we investigated the role of novelty and trial-to-trial changes in stimulus and response features in a Simon task, observing similar modulation of CSE for novel and non-novel stimulus changes. However, changing the response modality from trial to trial dampened CSE, and this dampening was more pronounced when the probability of switch trials was higher, suggesting a role for long-term learning. The results are consistent with recent accounts, which indicate that spatial interference can be prevented by cognitive control mechanisms triggered by learned bindings.

This dataset contains the data aggregated for the repeated measures univariate ANOVAs describe in the main text of the paper (under revision): ‘Visual-Cortical Enhancement by Acoustic Distractors: The Effects of Endogenous Spatial Attention and Visual Working Memory Load’. We analyzed the amplitude of sound-elicited ACOP as a function of visual working memory load and endogenous spatial attention. The files: ‘accuracy’, ‘reaction times’, and ‘k-capacity’ refer to behavioral performance. All these files contain data aggregated for the repeated measures univariate ANOVA with factors of correspondence (same/different side relative to sound location) and load (low/high). The other files refer to the ERP components of interest, namely the CDA, the N1 and the ACOP. Each row always corresponds to a participant. Column codes are described below for each file, together with further details: Accuracy: is reported on a scale 0-1. Column1= participant id number; Column2= High load/different; Column3= High load/same; Column4= Low load/different; Column5= Low load/same Reaction times: mean rts for trials with correct responses or responses that were within 2 SD from each observer’s mean. Column1= participant id number; Column2= High load/different; Column3= High load/same; Column4= Low load/different; Column5= Low load/same k-capacity: estimate of participants’ visual working memory capacity, computed using Pashler’s formula. Column1= participant id number; Column2= High load/different; Column3= Low load/different; Column4= High load/same; Column5= Low load/same CDA: it corresponds to the file ANOVA with factors of hemisphere (contralateral/ipsilateral in relation to where the cue arrow pointed) and load (low/high) for the mean CDA amplitudes (300-900 ms time window, time-locked to the memory array onset). Column1= participant id number; Column2= Low load/ ipsilateral; Column3= Low load/ contralateral; Column4= High load/ ipsilateral; Column5= High load/ contralateral ACOP: it corresponds to the file ANOVA with factors of hemisphere (contralateral/ipsilateral to side of sound), load (low/high), and correspondence with cued side (same/different) for the mean ACOP amplitudes (280-500 ms time window, time-locked to the sound onset). Column1= participant id number; Column2= Low load/same/ipsilateral; Column3= Low load/different/ipsilateral; Column4= High load/same/ipsilateral; Column5= High load/different/ipsilateral; Column6= Low load/same/contralateral; Column7= Low load/different/contralateral; Column8= High load/same/contralateral; Column9= High load/different/contralateral N1: it corresponds to the file ANOVA with factors of hemisphere (contralateral/ipsilateral to side of sound), load (low/high), and correspondence with cued side (same/different) for the mean N1 amplitudes (80-150 ms time window, time-locked to the sound onset). Column1= participant id number; Column2= Low load/same/ipsilateral; Column3= Low load/different/ipsilateral; Column4= High load/same/ipsilateral; Column5= High load/different/ipsilateral; Column6= Low load/same/contralateral; Column7= Low load/different/contralateral; Column8= High load/same/contralateral; Column9= High load/different/contralateral

Abstract While information that is associated with inappropriate responses can interfere with an ongoing task and be detrimental to performance, cognitive control mechanisms and specific contextual conditions can alleviate interference from unwanted information. In the spatial correspondence (Simon) task, interference has been consistently shown to be reduced by spatial non-correspondence in the previous trial (i.e., correspondence sequence effect, CSE); however the mechanisms supporting this sequential effect are not well understood. Recent proposals highlight the role of learning mechanisms, which bind perceptual, response, and control processes together in determining the level of performance. Here we investigated the role of stimulus novelty (stimulus level; i.e., repeated, novel) and response modality (response level; i.e., manual, vocal) in a Simon task. The probability of novel trials was manipulated so that the frequency of perceptual/motor changes determined weaker or stronger memory associations that might engage cognitive control mechanisms, resulting in weaker interference. We examined the effects of novelty, probability, and spatial correspondence at the behavioral level as well as in the modulation of pupil dilation as an index of arousal. The results are consistent with recent accounts, which indicate that spatial interference can be prevented by cognitive control mechanisms triggered by learned associations.

Over the years the general awareness of the health costs associated with tobacco smoking has motivated scientists to apply the measurement of eye movements to this form of addiction. On one hand they have investigated whether smokers attend and look preferentially at smoking related scenes and objects. In parallel, on the other hand eye tracking has been used to test how smokers and nonsmokers interact with the different types of health warning that policymakers have mandated in tobacco advertisements and packages. Here we provide an overview of the main findings from the different lines of research, such as the evidence related to the attentional bias for smoking cues in smokers and the evidence that graphic warning labels and plain packages measurably increase the salience of the warning labels. We point to some open questions, such as the conditions that determine whether heavy smokers exhibit a tendency to actively avoid looking at graphic warning labels. Finally we argue that the research applied to gaze exploration of warning labels would benefit from a more widespread use of the more naturalistic testing conditions (e.g. mobile eye tracking or virtual reality) that have been introduced to study the smokers' attentional bias for tobacco-related objects when freely exploring the surrounding environment.

In the study of visual cognition, accurate control of stimulus presentation is of primary importance yet is complicated by hardware malfunctioning, software variability, and visual materials used.Here, we describe VISTO 2.0, a low-cost and open-source device which is capable to measure the timing and temporal luminance profile of visual stimuli.This device represents a major improvement over VISTO (De Cesarei, Marzocchi, & Loftus, 2021), as it is only sensitive to a light spectrum in the visible range, is easier to assemble, and has a modular design that can be extended to other sensory modalities.

Novel distractors are prioritized for attentional selection. When distractors also convey emotional content, they divert attention from the primary task more than neutral stimuli do. In the present study, while participants were engaged in a central task, we examined the impact of peripheral distractors that varied for emotional content and novelty. Results showed that emotional interference on reaction times completely habituated with repetition and promptly recovered with novelty. The enhanced LPP for emotional pictures was attenuated by repetitions and, interestingly, stimulus novelty only affected emotional, but not neutral distractors, in both the RTs and LPP. Alpha-ERD was similarly reduced for repeated emotional and neutral distractors. Altogether, these findings suggest that the impact of peripheral distractors can be attenuated through a non-strategic learning mechanism mediated by mere stimulus repetition, which is fine-tuned to detect changes in emotional distractors only, supporting the hypothesis that novelty and emotion share the same motivational circuits.