In item-method directed forgetting, directed forgetting occurs when remember-cued items are better retained than forget-cued items, a result often attributable to the rehearsal of remember-cued items and cessation of rehearsal of forget-cued items. Such effects were found in Experiment 1 for happy White and Asian faces, but not when neutral and sad White or Asian faces were presented at study. These results were consistent with predictions from the affect-as-cognitive-feedback hypothesis, according to which positive stimuli promote task-relevant processing whereas negative stimuli stop or reverse those processes. Results of Experiment 2 suggest that Experiment 1 results are not easily attributed to dimensions associated with the photographs (e.g., attractiveness) used in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, recognition was examined for photographs of both Whites and Asians seen at study. Consistent with research on face recognition biases and the 'happy-face effect', more White than Asian faces and more happy than sad photographs were recognized at test. Directed forgetting was found when attention was directed to in-group or out-group faces but with increased task complexity or demands, stimulus attributes come to guide information processing. Suggestions for future studies are presented.

In light of the growing interest in studying the affective and aesthetic attributes of curvature, the present paper describes four digital image processing techniques that can be used to objectively discriminate between angular and curvilinear stimuli. MATLAB scripts for each of the techniques accompany the paper. Three studies are then reported that evaluate the efficacy of five metrics, derived from the four techniques, at quantifying the degree of angularity depicted in an image. Images of simple polygons (Study 1), artistic drawings of everyday objects (Study 2), and real-world objects, typefaces, and abstract patterns (Study 3) were analyzed. Logistic regression models were used to determine the relative importance of the metrics at distinguishing between angular and curvilinear items. With one exception, all of the metrics were capable of distinguishing between angular and curvilinear items at a level above chance, but some metrics were better at doing so than others, and their discriminative capacity was influenced by the characteristics of the image. The strengths and limitations of the metrics are discussed, as well as some practical recommendations.

Public Policy Relevance Statement This study found that movie posters, video game box art, and album covers from the horror and heavy metal genres are darker, less colorful, redder, and contain more angular shapes compared with their counterparts from the children's genre. As previous research has established that these visual properties can act as subtle threat cues, the present results suggest that marketers exploit these properties when there is a desire to communicate a clear threat signal. The present studies set out to characterize how subtle threat cues manifest in marketing horror and children's entertainment. Objective measures of luminance, colorfulness, redness, and angularity were calculated from images of movie posters (Study 1), album covers (Study 2), and video game box art (Study 3). The relative importance of these predictors at distinguishing between horror and children's items was assessed using logistic regression models. In an exploratory manner, three global image statistics that relate to spatial composition were hierarchically included as predictors. The results indicate that marketing materials in popular media exploit low-level visual properties that are implicated in threat appraisals when there is a desire to unambiguously communicate the presence or absence of threat. In general, horror items were darker, less colorful, featured a greater proportion of red, shapes with a greater degree of angularity, and included more complex and isotropic changes in luminance compared with their children's counterparts. The results provide insight into the tacit cues that are used to signal threat in popular media.

Metal music has a signifying visual aesthetic or so-called visual code. In this article, I examine the significance of four primitive visual properties that characterize the code. I propose that the propensity for visual artefacts of metal music to depict low luminance, low colourfulness, redness and angular shapes is because these properties can act as subtle threat cues. As metal music has a preoccupation with threatening themes and sounds, these four properties provide concordant visual information about the affective attributes of the genre. After reviewing the supporting psychological evidence, I conduct a quantitative test of this proposal by comparing album covers from extreme metal bands to those from children’s music, two genres that are opposed to one another in their embrace of a threatening atmosphere. The results indicate that extreme metal album covers are darker, less colourful, redder and feature more angular shapes compared with their children’s counterparts, which suggests that these properties are relied upon to communicate a clear threat signal.

Three experiments examined the influence of mood state on item-method directed forgetting. In Experiments 1 and 2, happy, sad or neutral mood states were induced before the study or in Experiment 3 before retrieval. There were no significant effects of mood on memory in Experiments 1 or directed forgetting costs and benefits in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, mood states influenced costs and benefits of directed forgetting among happy and neutral participants and costs alone among sad participants. There were no changes in the overall recall of remember-cued items when mood states were induced before or after the study. Explanations for the effect of mood on the retrieval of remember- or forget-cued items are discussed. Moods dissipate when induced prior to encoding, but appear to influence memory when induced prior to retrieval.

Holistic processing, which includes the integration of facial features and analysis of their relations to one another, is a hallmark of what makes faces 'special'. Various experimental paradigms purport to measure holistic processing but these have often produced inconsistent results. This has led researchers to question the nature and structure of the mechanism(s) underlying holistic processing. Using an individual differences approach, researchers have examined relations between various measures of holistic processing in an attempt to resolve these questions. In keeping with this, we examined relationships between four commonly used measures of holistic face processing in a large group of participants (N = 223): (1) The Face Inversion Effect, (2) the Part Whole Effect (PWE), (3) the Composite Face Effect, and (4) the Configural Featural Detection Task (CFDT). Several novel methodological and analytical elements were introduced, including the use of factor analysis and the inclusion of control conditions to confirm the face specificity of all of the effects measured. The four indexes of holistic processing derived from each measure loaded onto two factors, one encompassing the PWE and the CFDT, and one encompassing the CE. The 16 conditions tested across the four tasks loaded onto four factors, each factor corresponding to a different measure. These results, together with those of other studies, suggest that holistic processing is a multifaceted construct and that different measures tap into distinct but partially overlapping elements of it.

An item-method directed forgetting task was used in three studies to present photographs of happy, neutral and sad faces to participants who had been induced to adopt a happy, neutral or sad mood. At test remember, forget or new judgments of old and new photographs of happy, neutral or sad faces were collected. According to the affect-as-cognitive-feedback hypothesis positively valenced stimuli serve as ‘go signals’ validating the use of currently accessible cognitions to process task demands whereas negatively valenced stimuli serve as ‘stop signals’ inhibiting or reversing the use of those cognitions. Since directed forgetting tasks entail the cognitions (among others) that some stimuli should be remembered and others should be forgotten, happy faces should facilitate task demands whereas sad faces should not. As predicted, directed forgetting effects were found for happy but not sad faces in Experiments 1 and 3, and directed forgetting effects were found neutral valenced faces in Experiment 2. Across all three studies mood state did not influence directed forgetting. Findings are discussed in terms of the effects of facial valence cues on directed forgetting and some directions for future research.

This study examined whether latent facial signals of threat can be detected at more extreme ranges of spatial frequencies (SFs), and thus with fewer frequencies from an optimal middle band for face identification, compared with latent nonthreatening facial signals. Using an adaptive staircase procedure and a two-interval forced-choice same-different task, SF thresholds from the lower and higher ends of the SF spectrum were obtained for nonexpressive threatening and nonthreatening faces. Threatening faces were discriminated from neutral faces more quickly and accurately, and engendered more extreme SF thresholds, compared with nonthreatening faces. The results indicate that the components of latent threatening facial signals can be detected under a greater degree of impoverished visual information for face processing compared with their nonthreatening counterparts.

Many studies have shown a gender difference in wayfinding ability, including a related gender difference in global metacognitive self-assessment and spatial anxiety. However, few studies have examined whether there are gender differences in trial-by-trial self-assessment, or, what we term, local metacognition. We assessed trial-by-trial metacognitive performance in a sample of men and women engaging in a first-person goal-directed maze wayfinding task. Methods for assessing trial-by-trial metacognitive performance were adapted from Nelson and Narens' (1990, Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. The psychology of learning and motivation, 26, 125-141.) Metamemory framework. Results showed that men were more accurate at assessing their trial-by-trial performance than women when the assessment was made after performance. This suggests that women are more likely to err in assessing their past navigational performance, and thus may be less likely to undertake corrective control actions in the future.

Several lines of evidence suggest that angularity and curvilinearity are relied upon to infer the presence or absence of threat. This study examines whether angular shapes are more salient in threatening compared with nonthreatening emotionally neutral faces. The saliency of angular shapes was measured by the amount of local maxima in S(θ), a function that characterizes how the Fourier magnitude spectrum varies along specific orientations. The validity of this metric was tested and supported with images of threatening and nonthreatening real-world objects and abstract patterns that have predominantly angular or curvilinear features (Experiment 1). This metric was then applied to computer-generated faces that maximally correlate with threat (Experiment 2a) and to real faces that have been rated according to threat (Experiment 3). For computer-generated faces, angular shapes became increasingly salient as the threat level of the faces increased. For real faces, the saliency of angular shapes was not predictive of threat ratings after controlling for other well-established threat cues, however, other facial features related to angularity (e.g., brow steepness) and curvilinearity (e.g., round eyes) were significant predictors. The results offer preliminary support for angularity as a threat cue for emotionally neutral faces.

Occasionally, individuals perceive that someone is no longer paying attention to the discussion at hand even when there are no overt cues of inattentiveness. As a preliminary study of this phenomenon, we examined whether pupil diameter might be implicitly used to infer others' attentiveness. Forty participants (27 women, 13 men, M age = 19.7 year, SD = 2.8) were presented with images of male faces with either large or small pupils, and, in the context of a personnel selection scenario, participants then judged the attentiveness of the person in the image. Images of faces with large pupils were judged as more attentive, compared with images of faces with small pupils. Face recognition memory performance was not affected by depicted pupil size. Our results are consistent with the proposal that pupillary fluctuations can be an index of perceived attention, and they provide preliminary evidence that pupil dilation may be implicitly relied upon to infer attentional states.

We examined the effects of a brief (10 min) single-session mindfulness exercise on state mindfulness, executive attention, and recognition memory, and in an exploratory manner, investigated if these effects are moderated by trait mindfulness. Participants were randomly assigned to a brief mindfulness exercise condition, an attention exercise control condition, or an arithmetic exercise control condition. The Emotional Stroop task and a surprise old/new recognition test were used to measure executive attention and recognition memory, respectively. A measure of trait mindfulness was included as a moderator variable in regression models that predicted state mindfulness or task performance from exercise condition. Our results indicate that a brief single-session mindfulness exercise can increase levels of state mindfulness compared to an arithmetic exercise but not to an attention exercise. While subject to certain limitations, we found that trait mindfulness can moderate the efficacy of the mindfulness exercise at reducing emotional interference on a task of executive attention. Our results underscore the complex relationship between mindfulness and cognitive processes.

Previous work has shown mixed results regarding the role of different spatial frequency (SF) ranges in featural and configural processing of faces. Some studies suggest no special role of any given band for either type of processing, while others suggest that low SFs principally support configural analysis. Here we attempt to put this issue on a more rigorous footing by comparing human performance when making featural and configural discriminations with that of a model observer algorithm carrying out the same task. The model uses a simple algorithm that calculates the dot product of a stimulus image with each available potential match image to find the maximally likely match. It thus provides a principled way of analyzing available image information. We find human accuracy peaks at around 10 cycles per face (cpf) regardless of whether featural or configural manipulations are being detected. We also find accuracy peaks in the same part of the spectrum regardless of which feature is manipulated (ie eyes, nose, or mouth). Conversely, model observer performance, measured in terms of white noise tolerance, peaks at approximately 5 cpf, and this value again remains roughly constant regardless of the type of manipulation and feature manipulated. The ratio of the model's noise tolerance to a derived equivalent noise tolerance value for humans peaks at around 10 cpf, similar to the accuracy data. These results provide evidence that the human performance maxima at 10 cpf are not due simply to the physical characteristics of face stimuli, but rather arise due to an interaction between the available information in face images and human perceptual processing.

Are configural and holistic face processing distinct? There is a lack of consistency in terms and definitions across the literature, and it is not clear whether and how these processing types are distinct from one another. One way to investigate this is to examine patterns of performance across face recognition tasks that are thought to tap into one or the other processing type. For instance, performance patterns on the part-whole task and the composite face task are both thought to reflect holistic processing, so performance on them would be expected to positively correlate. Similarly, the face inversion effect and the configural/featural effect are both thought to arise due to eliciting deficits in configural processing, so performance patterns in these two tasks would be expected to correlate. To examine whether this pattern of correlations exist, we compared performance within-subjects (N=70) across these four commonly-used face perception tasks: face inversion, part-whole, composite face, and configural/featural. Performance data were calculated in terms of reaction time, accuracy, and efficiency scores (the sum of normalized accuracy and reaction time measures). This was done to address the fact that the various tasks might express their effects in terms of RT, accuracy, or some mixture of the two. Results revealed that performance data from the conditions within a given task are strongly correlated with each other. However, there was no evidence of correlations between different tasks that might suggest that they tap into the same mechanisms. A preliminary PCA analysis suggested a similar result, with one factor emerging for each task, and the four conditions within each task loading strongly onto that factor only. Thus, our data suggest that each of these four tasks measures a distinct face processing capacity, rather than tapping into common holistic or configural mechanisms. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013