It is well known that visual search for a mirror target (i.e., a horizontally flipped item) is more difficult than search for other-oriented items (e.g., vertically flipped items). Previous studies have typically attributed costs of mirror search to early, attention-guiding processes but could not rule out contributions from later processes. In the present study we used eye tracking to distinguish between early, attention-guiding processes and later target identification processes. The results of four experiments revealed a marked human weakness in identifying mirror targets: Observers appear to frequently fail to classify a mirror target as a target on first fixation and to continue with search even after having directly looked at the target. Awareness measures corroborated that the location of a mirror target could not be reported above chance level after it had been fixated once. This mirror blindness effect explained a large proportion (45-87%) of the overall costs of mirror search, suggesting that part of the difficulties with mirror search are rooted in later, object identification processes (not attentional guidance). Mirror blindness was significantly reduced but not completely eliminated when both the target and non-targets were held constant, which shows that perfect top-down knowledge can reduce mirror blindness, without completely eliminating it. The finding that non-target certainty reduced mirror blindness suggests that object identification is not solely achieved by comparing a selected item to a target template. These results demonstrate that templates that guide search toward targets are not identical to the templates used to conclusively identify those targets.

Background There is evidence that drinking alcohol increases the risk of recurrent breast cancer. It is unclear whether Australian women with breast cancer are aware of this evidence or modify their alcohol intake accordingly. Objective This article reports a secondary analysis of data from the Women's Wellness after Cancer Program (WWACP) randomized controlled trial (N = 351). The WWACP aimed to enhance quality of life and reduce chronic disease risk in women previously treated for cancer through lifestyle modification. Here we provide the alcohol-related data from the study's breast cancer participants (n = 269). We analyzed baseline alcohol consumption, the variables associated with alcohol intake, and intervention effect on intake at weeks 12 (end of intervention) and 24 (to determine sustainability). Interventions/Methods Measures included the Dietary Questionnaire for Epidemiological Studies, Short Form-36, International Physical Activity Questionnaire, Green Climacteric Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Results Most participants practiced safe alcohol consumption. Among drinkers, drinking caffeine, smoking, emotional and physical role limitations, and greater discomfort with vasomotor symptoms were associated with increased intake. Relative to baseline, alcohol consumption decreased from 5.22 g/d to 4.18 g/d in the intervention group, whereas consumption increased among control subjects at 12 weeks. No difference between groups was observed at week 24. Conclusion The intervention was associated with less alcohol intake at week 12 among drinkers, but this reduction was not sustained at the 24-week follow-up. Implications for Practice Future iterations of the WWACP will emphasize stronger messaging and supports regarding alcohol consumption after breast cancer treatment.

Background There is evidence that drinking alcohol increases the risk of recurrent breast cancer. It is unclear whether Australian women with breast cancer are aware of this evidence or modify their alcohol intake accordingly. Objective This article reports a secondary analysis of data from the Women's Wellness after Cancer Program (WWACP) randomized controlled trial (N = 351). The WWACP aimed to enhance quality of life and reduce chronic disease risk in women previously treated for cancer through lifestyle modification. Here we provide the alcohol-related data from the study's breast cancer participants (n = 269). We analyzed baseline alcohol consumption, the variables associated with alcohol intake, and intervention effect on intake at weeks 12 (end of intervention) and 24 (to determine sustainability). Interventions/Methods Measures included the Dietary Questionnaire for Epidemiological Studies, Short Form-36, International Physical Activity Questionnaire, Green Climacteric Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Results Most participants practiced safe alcohol consumption. Among drinkers, drinking caffeine, smoking, emotional and physical role limitations, and greater discomfort with vasomotor symptoms were associated with increased intake. Relative to baseline, alcohol consumption decreased from 5.22 g/d to 4.18 g/d in the intervention group, whereas consumption increased among control subjects at 12 weeks. No difference between groups was observed at week 24. Conclusion The intervention was associated with less alcohol intake at week 12 among drinkers, but this reduction was not sustained at the 24-week follow-up. Implications for Practice Future iterations of the WWACP will emphasize stronger messaging and supports regarding alcohol consumption after breast cancer treatment.

Burnout and attrition are issues facing many professions. In a bid to better understand this phenomenon and ways to address it, this paper explores experiences of praxis shock, well-being, burnout, and self-efficacy during teachers’ careers. Regression and mediation analyses of 836 responses to a questionnaire reveal that praxis shock may occur at multiple points in a music teachers’ career. Findings reveal that praxis shock predicts patterns of reported burnout, well-being and self-efficacy. This impacts on the development of productive professional identities, career satisfaction and success. Evidence is presented regarding praxis shock and its impact across a teaching career.

In the context of visual search, surprise is the phenomenon by which a previously unseen and unexpected stimulus exogenously attracts spatial attention. Capture by such a stimulus occurs, by definition, independent of task goals and is thought to be dependent on the extent to which the stimulus deviates from expectations. However, the relative contributions of prior-exposure and explicit knowledge of an unexpected event to the surprise response have not yet been systematically investigated. Here observers searched for a specific color while ignoring irrelevant cues of different colors presented prior to the target display. After a brief familiarization period, we presented an irrelevant motion cue to elicit surprise. Across conditions we varied prior exposure to the motion stimulus - seen versus unseen - and top-down expectations of occurrence - expected versus unexpected - to assess the extent to which each of these factors contributes to surprise. We found no attenuation of the surprise response when observers were pre-exposed to the motion cue and or had explicit knowledge of its occurrence. Our results show that it is neither sufficient nor necessary that a stimulus be new and unannounced to elicit surprise and suggest that the expectations that determine the surprise response are highly context specific.

An organism's survival depends on the ability to rapidly orient attention to unanticipated events in the world. Yet, the conditions needed to elicit such involuntary capture remain in doubt. Especially puzzling are spatial cueing experiments, which have consistently shown that involuntary shifts of attention to highly salient distractors are not determined by stimulus properties, but instead are contingent on attentional control settings induced by task demands. Do we always need to be set for an event to be captured by it, or is there a class of events that draw attention involuntarily even when unconnected to task goals? Recent results suggest that a task-irrelevant event will capture attention on first presentation, suggesting that salient stimuli that violate contextual expectations might automatically capture attention. Here, we investigated the role of contextual expectation by examining whether an irrelevant motion cue that was presented only rarely (∼3–6% of trials) would capture attention when observers had an active set for a specific target colour. The motion cue had no effect when presented frequently, but when rare produced a pattern of interference consistent with attentional capture. The critical dependence on the frequency with which the irrelevant motion singleton was presented is consistent with early theories of involuntary orienting to novel stimuli. We suggest that attention will be captured by salient stimuli that violate expectations, whereas top-down goals appear to modulate capture by stimuli that broadly conform to contextual expectations.

New and unannounced color singletons have been shown to capture attention and induce surprise during visual search; a phenomenon referred to as 'surprise capture' (Horstmann, 2005). Interestingly, it has been reported that the temporal profile of capture by new and unannounced stimuli is distinct from that of capture by expected stimuli (Horstmann, 2002; 2005; 2006). Specifically, it has been argued that attention shifts to unexpected stimuli are delayed relative to expected stimuli. This claim is interesting because it points to separate underlying attentional control mechanisms for expected and unexpected stimuli. However, much of the work investigating capture by the unexpected has done so using behavioral measures such as response time and response accuracy; measures that can be affected by decision and response level processes that are often unrelated to search. Here we used eye-movements as the primary index of attentional selection to explore the temporal profile of surprise capture and to investigate the claim that shifts of attention to unexpected stimuli are delayed relative to expected stimuli. Across two experiments we found little evidence to support the claim that shifts of attention are delayed to unexpected stimuli during visual search. Rather, the temporal profile of surprise capture appears to reflect delays that manifest post attentional selection that are likely associated with decision and response level processes. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.

n nThe human cognitive system is severely capacity limited. As such, only a select subset of visual input to the retina is fully processed by the cognitive system at any one point in time. To compensate, mechanisms of visual attention allow us to distribute these limited resources throughout the visual field according to properties of the visual input and our goals and intentions. Establishing the exact criteria by which visual input is selected to undergo further processing is central to understanding the processes that determine visual selection; processes that ultimately contribute to our conscious experience of the world. In this thesis, I focus on stimulus novelty and the role that task-expectancies play in determining visual selection. It is well documented that that which is new and unexpected often appears to standout in the environment and can attract visual attention (Horstmann, 2005; Meyer, Niepel, Rudolph a Schűtzwohl, 1991; Ranganath a Rainer, 2003; Yantis a Jonides 1990). However, the conditions under which this is the case and the mechanism by which we come to be sensitive to novel stimuli require some elucidation. n nHere I present 3 empirical chapters that explore the conditions under which novel and unexpected stimuli attract visual attention. In Chapter 2, I investigated whether attentional capture by unexpected stimuli reflects a form of stimulus driven capture and occurs contrary to the immediate goals on an observer. Across a series of experiments I found that an infrequent (~3-6% of trials) and irrelevant motion cue captured attention when observers had an active set for a specific target color. Critically, this effect was not observed when the same motion stimulus was presented frequently. Thus, task goals appear to modulate capture by stimuli that broadly conform to contextual expectations, while stimuli that violate these expectations appear to guide visual attention involuntarily. n nIn chapter 3, I examined what it means for a stimulus to be lunexpectedr. The first presentation of an unexpected stimulus during visual search has been associated with large RT cost. In chapter 3, I independently varied prior exposure to an unexpected and irrelevant motion distractor and explicit knowledge of its occurrence to assess the contributions of each of these factors in determining the unexpectedness of the stimulus. Neither prior exposure, nor knowledge of occurrence served to attenuate the response to the unexpected motion distractor. These results suggest that the task expectations, which deviant stimuli are evaluated against, are highly context specific and derived from a process of implicit learning about stimulus relevance, and are a not shaped by explicit top-down knowledge about the likelihood of occurrence. In Chapter 4, I examined the time-course of attention shifts to unexpected stimuli. Previous authors (e.g., Horstmann, 2005; 2006) have made the claim that shifts of attention to unexpected stimuli are delayed relative to expected stimuli and that this may suggest a dedicated orienting system for novel and unexpected events. n nIn Chapter 4, I used eye-movements as a proxy for attentional selection to evaluate this claim. Across two experiments I found oculomotor capture by an unannounced colour singleton that was rapid, and large RT costs that emerged once the eyes selected the unexpected colour singleton, but not before. This pattern of eye-movements and RT costs is not consistent with accounts that posit a delay in orienting to explain performance decrements that have been associated with unexpected stimuli. I propose an interference account whereby attention is deployed rapidly to an unexpected stimulus and performance decrements reflect the engagement of decision level processes that are recruited to resolve expectation violations. n nIn summary, I present 3 empirical chapters that show consistent effects of stimulus novelty on search performance. Based on these results I have proposed that the attentional set reflects a set of contextually specific expectations that describe both the target defining properties and the to-be-ignored properties of distractors. Sensitivity to stimulus novelty is born of a process whereby salient irrelevant stimuli are inhibited over repeated and frequent exposure in order to be ignored. Stimuli that occur infrequently cannot be inhibited and consequently capture visual attention.

The surprise capture hypothesis states that a stimulus will capture attention to the extent that it is preattentively available and deviates from task-expectancies. Interestingly, it has been noted by Horstmann (Psychological Science 13: 499–505. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00488 , 2002 , Human Perception and Performance 31: 1039–1060. doi: 10.1037/00961523.31.5.1039 , 2005 , Psychological Research, 70, 13-25, 2006 ) that the time course of capture by such classes of stimuli appears distinct from that of capture by expected stimuli. Specifically, attention shifts to an unexpected stimulus are delayed relative to an expected stimulus ( delayed onset account ). Across two experiments, we investigated this claim under conditions of unguided (Exp. 1 ) and guided (Exp. 2 ) search using eye-movements as the primary index of attentional selection. In both experiments, we found strong evidence of surprise capture for the first presentation of an unannounced color singleton. However, in both experiments the pattern of eye-movements was not consistent with a delayed onset account of attention capture. Rather, we observed costs associated with the unexpected stimulus only once the target had been selected. We propose an interference account of surprise capture to explain our data and argue that this account also can explain existing patterns of data in the literature.

Adaptation to high temporal frequencies can induce a localised reduction in the apparent duration of dynamic tests (Johnston et al., 2006). This effect is dissociable from apparent speed changes (Ayhan et al., 2009), and the specificity of the effect for high temporal frequency adaptation, coupled with its insensitivity to stimulus orientation, suggests a causal locus at an early (pre-cortical) magnocellular stage of analysis (Johnston et al., 2006). The absence of adaptation-induced time compression for isoluminant tests supports this claim (Ayhan et al., 2009). Here we further examined the determinants of adaptation-induced time compression by investigating interactions between 1st-order luminance defined and 2nd- order luminance-contrast defined motion signals. We found that adaptation to an 8Hz first order stimulus markedly reduced the apparent durations of 1st and 2nd order 4Hz tests, whereas adaptation to a 2Hz 1st order signal had little impact on either test type. In contrast, adaptation to 8Hz 2nd order motion shortened the perceived duration of 4Hz 1st and 2nd order tests, but adaptation to a 2Hz 2nd order signal had a selective effect on 4Hz 2nd order tests, with little impact on 4Hz 1st order tests. We believe the efficacy of both 1st order luminance and 2nd order luminance-contrast adaptation further implicates an early magnocellular locus as the critical site for time-compression adaptation. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014

One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.

When we move our eyes, images of objects are displaced on the retina, yet the visual world appears stable. Oculomotor activity just prior to an eye movement contributes to perceptual stability by providing information about the predicted location of a relevant object on the retina following a saccade. It remains unclear, however, whether an object's features are represented at the remapped location. Here, we exploited the phenomenon of visual crowding to show that presaccadic remapping preserves the elementary features of objects at their predicted postsaccadic locations. Observers executed an eye movement and identified a letter probe flashed just before the saccade. Flanking stimuli were flashed around the location that would be occupied by the probe immediately following the saccade. Despite being positioned in the opposite visual field to the probe, these flankers disrupted observers' ability to identify the probe. Crucially, this "remapped crowding" interference was stronger when the flankers were visually similar to the probe than when the flanker and probe stimuli were distinct. Our findings suggest that visual processing at remapped locations is featurally dependent, providing a mechanism for achieving perceptual continuity of objects across saccades.

Previous research has shown that while the number of elements in a search display affects the time to find a target, search can be more efficient if targets contain a unique feature, such as a particular colour, that can either be detected in parallel or can be used to confine search to elements with that property (Egeth, Virzi, & Garbart, 1984). Our study examined whether the effects of distracting elements could be similarly reduced by segmenting a conjunction search across two depth planes. Three important empirical findings emerged. First, we found evidence for parallel search when the target was a feature singleton on one depth plane, but a conjunction search given distractors on the non-target plane. This result indicates that parallel search is possible on an attended depth plane. Second, benefits of segmentation in depth were only observed when the target depth plane was known in advance. This result indicates that, unlike colour, segmentation in depth does not afford parallel access to information on separate depth planes. Third, no benefit of segmentation in depth was observed when both depth planes required serial search. This result can be accounted for by assuming that the act of attending to a depth plane draws on the same attentional processes required for serial search within a depth plane. We conclude that segmentation into two depth planes can facilitate visual search, but unlike colour or other elementary properties, does not provide an automatic, pre-attentive segmentation. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

When we move our eyes, images of objects are displaced on the retina, yet the visual world appears stable. Oculomotor activity just prior to an eye movement contributes to perceptual stability by providing information about the predicted location of a relevant object on the retina following a saccade [1, 2]. It remains unclear, however, whether an object’s features are represented at the remapped location. Here, we exploited the phenomenon of visual crowding [3] to show that presaccadic remapping preserves the elementary features of objects at their predicted postsaccadic locations. Observers executed an eye movement and identified a letter probe flashed just before the saccade. Flanking stimuli were flashed around the location that would be occupied by the probe immediately following the saccade. Despite being positioned in the opposite visual field to the probe, these flankers disrupted observers’ ability to identify the probe. Crucially, this ‘‘remapped crowding’’ interference was stronger when the flankers were visually similar to the probe than when the flanker and probe stimuli were distinct. Our findings suggest that visual processing at remapped locations is featurally dependent, providing a mechanism for achieving perceptual continuity of objects across saccades.

In the context of visual search, surprise is the phenomenon by which a previously unseen and unexpected stimulus exogenously attracts spatial attention. Capture by such a stimulus occurs, by definition, independent of tasks goals and is thought to be dependent on the extent to which the stimulus deviates from expectations (Horstmann, 2005, JEP:HPP). However, the relative contributions of prior exposure and expectation to the surprise response have not yet been systematically investigated. Here we investigated the extent to which surprise is related to never having seen a given stimulus before (exposure hypothesis) versus the extent to which a given stimulus violates task expectancies (expectation hypothesis). In a spatial cueing paradigm, observers had to search for a specific colour while ignoring irrelevant distractors of different colours presented prior to the target display (pre-cues). After a brief familiarization period, we presented an irrelevant motion cue to elicit surprise. Across conditions we varied prior exposure to the motion stimulus – seen versus unseen - and top-down expectations of occurrence – expected versus unexpected - to assess the extent to which each of these factors contributes to surprise. We found no difference in the magnitude of the surprise response associated with a previously seen but unexpected motion cue and a previously unseen but expected motion cue. These results suggest that the expectancies driving surprise may have different characteristics than previously thought and that surprise may be immune to cognitive strategies to attenuate it. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

In visual search, target detection times are relatively insensitive to set size when targets and distractors differ on a single feature dimension. Search can be confined to only those elements sharing a single feature, such as color (Egeth, Virzi, & Garbart, 1984). These findings have been taken as evidence that elementary feature dimensions support a parallel segmentation of a scene into discrete sets of items. Here we explored if relative depth (signaled by binocular disparity) could support a similar parallel segmentation by examining the effects of distributing distracting elements across two depth planes. Three important empirical findings emerged. First, when the target was a feature singleton on the target depth plane, but a conjunction search among distractors on the nontarget plane, search efficiency increased compared to a single depth plane. Second, benefits of segmentation in depth were only observed when the target depth plane was known in advance. Third, no benefit of segmentation in depth was observed when both planes required a conjunction search, even with prior knowledge of the target depth plane. Overall, the benefit of distributing the elements of a search set across two depth planes was observed only when the two planes differed both in binocular disparity and in the elementary feature composition of individual elements. We conclude that segmentation of the search array into two depth planes can facilitate visual search, but unlike color or other elementary properties, does not provide an automatic, preattentive segmentation.

Attending to visual stimuli associated with a high probability of procuring rewards is greatly adaptive. Exactly how reward interacts to guide visual attention is presently unclear. Recent research suggests high-value, but contextually irrelevant stimuli, capture attention as a consequence of reward learning and that this capture occurs independently of task goals and visual salience. Here we investigated whether stimulus reward associations learned in a visual search task, would influence performance in a subsequent spatial cueing task. The aim was to test whether reward learning would attached to specific features (feature hypothesis), or whether stimulus reward associations are specific to the context in which they are learned (context hypothesis). We further explored the conditions in which stimulus-value associations are formed by examining whether value learning requires rewarded features to be the explicit goal of search (explicit-reward hypothesis), or if value attaches to all features of an attended object (implicit-reward hypothesis). Consistent with previous reports of value-driven capture, we found significant cueing effects for high-reward stimuli (feature-hypothesis). Furthermore, significant cueing effects for high-reward stimuli were observed when the rewarded stimuli did not define the search target during the learning phase (implicit-reward hypothesis). Here we extend on previous finding by demonstrating that reward attaches to the feature defined in training, rather than the context and that these stimulus reward associations may be learned implicitly. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012

Immediately prior to an eye movement, spatial information about potentially relevant visual objects is updated to compensate for the retinal displacement caused by the saccade. Although much is known about the processes involved in such updating, it remains unclear whether predictive remapping preserves an object’s visual features across saccades. To investigate whether featural information of a probe object is updated during predictive remapping, we used a visual crowding paradigm. Observers executed a saccade to identify a probe letter presented at a known location in the periphery and at various intervals prior to the saccade. Flankers presented in the opposite visual field to the probe, but at screen positions that flanked the predicted post-saccadic location of the probe (the probe’s "remapped location") reduced observers’ ability to report the identity of the probe. This decrease was greater when probes and flankers shared elementary visual features compared with probes and flankers that were featurally distinct. Furthermore, probe identification was poorer when flankers appeared within the critical distance (half the eccentricity) of the probe’s remapped location, than when flankers appeared beyond this distance. Finally, the pre-saccadic time course of this "remapped crowding" effect closely matched the neurophysiological time course of activity in neurons that predictively remap spatial information, previously reported in single-cell studies. Our findings reveal a form of non-retinotopic crowding, in which visual features from different visual fields are integrated due to predictive remapping. Remapped crowding is consistent with the notion that predictive remapping not only updates location information, but also preserves an object’s featural information across saccades. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012