Stephen Darling

Why are average faces attractive? The effect of view and averageness on the attractiveness of female faces

Images of faces manipulated to make their shapes closer to the average are perceived as more attractive. The influences of symmetry and averageness are often confounded in studies based on full-face views of faces. Two experiments are reported that compared the effect of manipulating the averageness of female faces in profile and full-face views. Use of a profile view allows a face to be ”morphed“ toward an average shape without creating an image that becomes more symmetrical. Faces morphed toward the average were perceived as more attractive in both views, but the effect was significantly stronger for full-face views. Both full-face and profile views morphed away from the average shape were perceived as less attractive. It is concluded that the effect of averageness is independent of any effect of symmetry on the perceived attractiveness of female faces.

Behavioural evidence for separating components within visuo-spatial working memory

Several different sources of evidence support the idea that visuo-spatial working memory can be segregated into separate cognitive subsystems. However, the nature of these systems remains unclear. Recently we reported data from neurological patients suggesting that information about visual appearance is retained in a different subsystem from information about spatial location. In this paper we report latency data from neurologically intact participants showing an experimental double dissociation between memory for appearance and memory for location. This was achieved by use of a selective dual task interference technique. This pattern provides evidence supporting the segregation of visuo-spatial memory between two systems, one of which supports memory for stimulus appearance and the other which supports memory for spatial location.

Dissociation between appearance and location within visuo-spatial working memory.

Previous research has demonstrated separation between systems supporting memory for appearance and memory for location. However, the interpretation of these results is complicated by a confound occurring because of the simultaneous presentation of objects in multiple-item arrays when assessing memory for appearance and the sequential presentation of items when assessing memory for location. This paper reports an experiment in which sequential or simultaneous modes of presentation were factorially manipulated with memory for visual appearance or memory for location. Spatial interference (tapping) or visual interference (dynamic visual noise) were presented during retention. Appearance versus location interacted with the type of interference task, but mode of presentation did not. These results are consistent with the view that different subsystems within visuo-spatial working memory support memory for appearance and memory for location.

Representational Pseudoneglect: A Review

Pseudoneglect, the tendency to be biased towards the left-hand side of space, is a robust and consistent behavioural observation best demonstrated on the task of visuospatial line bisection, where participants are asked to centrally bisect visually presented horizontal lines at the perceived centre. A number of studies have revealed that a representational form of pseudoneglect exists, occurring when participants are asked to either mentally represent a stimulus or explore a stimulus using touch in the complete absence of direct visuospatial processing. Despite the growing number of studies that have demonstrated representational pseudoneglect there exists no current and comprehensive review of these findings and no discussion of a theoretical framework into which these findings may fall. An important gap in the current representational pseudoneglect literature is a discussion of the developmental trajectory of the bias. The focus of the current review is to outline studies that have observed representational pseudoneglect in healthy participants, consider a theoretical framework for these observations, and address the impact of lifespan factors such as cognitive ageing on the phenomenon.

Intraindividual reaction time variability affects P300 amplitude rather than latency

The neural correlates of intraindividual response variability were investigated in a serial choice reaction time (CRT) task. Reaction times (RTs) from the faster and slower portions of the RT distribution for the task were separately aggregated and associated P300 event-related potentials computed. Independent behavioral measures of executive function and IQ were also recorded. Across frontal, fronto-central, central, centro-parietal and parietal scalp regions, P300 amplitudes were significantly greater for faster relative to slower behavioral responses. However, P300 peak amplitude latencies did not differ according to the speed of the behavioral RT. Importantly, controlling for select independent measures of executive function attenuated shared variance in P300 amplitude for faster and slower trials. The findings suggest that P300 amplitude rather than latency is associated with the speed of behavioral RTs, and the possibility that fluctuations in executive control underlie variability in speeded responding.

Items on the left are better remembered

Neurologically intact individuals show a spatial processing bias in perception tasks, specifically showing a bias towards the left in bisecting lines. We present evidence for a novel finding that a leftwards bias occurs in short-term memory for recently presented arbitrary bindings of visual features. Three experiments are reported, two of which involve a total of over 60,000 participants with a small number of trials for each. Experiment 3 involved a larger number of trials for each of 144 participants. Participants reproduced from immediate memory arrays of shape–colour–location bindings. In all three experiments, significantly more errors were observed in reproduction of items presented on the right of the array than on the left. Results could not be accounted for by perceptual errors, or by order of presentation or order of reproduction. Findings suggest that items presented on the left are better remembered, indicating a spatial asymmetry in forming or retrieving feature bindings in visual short-term memory.

Processing orientation and Emotion Recognition

There is evidence that some emotional expressions are characterized by diagnostic cues from individual face features. For example, an upturned mouth is indicative of happiness, whereas a furrowed brow is associated with anger. The current investigation explored whether motivating people to perceive stimuli in a local (i.e., feature-based) rather than global (i.e., holistic) processing orientation was advantageous for recognizing emotional facial expressions. Participants classified emotional faces while primed with local and global processing orientations, via a Navon letter task. Contrary to previous findings for identity recognition, the current findings are indicative of a modest advantage for face emotion recognition under conditions of local processing orientation. When primed with a local processing orientation, participants performed both significantly faster and more accurately on an emotion recognition task than when they were primed with a global processing orientation. The impacts of this finding for theories of emotion recognition and face processing are considered.

Visuospatial bootstrapping: Long-term memory representations are necessary for implicit binding of verbal and visuospatial working memory

It has recently been shown that presenting additional visuospatial information alongside to-be-remembered numbers in a digit span task enhances participants’ memory for those items. However, the mechanisms behind this visuospatial bootstrapping effect have remained unspecified. In this article, we report evidence that this effect involves an integration of information from verbal and visuospatial temporary memory with long-term-memory (LTM) representations and that the existence of a relevant LTM representation is necessary for bootstrapping to occur.

Adaptive memory: fitness relevant stimuli show a memory advantage in a game of pelmanism

A pelmanism (matched-pairs) game was used in order to test the hypothesis that survival-relevant stimuli that are likely to have been present during human evolution (e.g., a snake in attack position) enjoy a memory advantage over other survival-relevant (but “modern”) stimuli (e.g., a threatening image of a gunman). Survival-relevant stimuli were matched for arousal and presented in one of two 5 x 4 grids, along with filler items. Participants were asked to match the pairs in the grids by clicking on successive squares to reveal stimuli. Participants made significantly fewer errors when matching evolutionarily relevant survival stimuli than when matching the other stimuli. Additionally, on incorrect trials, the attempted matches were significantly closer to the actual locations of evolutionarily relevant targets than to those of other stimuli. The results suggest that objects that likely posed a consistent threat throughout human evolutionary history are better remembered than other, equally arousing and survival-relevant, stimuli. [corrected]

Visuospatial bootstrapping: Evidence for binding of verbal and spatial information in working memory

Traditionally, working memory is held to comprise separate subcomponents dedicated to the temporary storage of visuospatial and verbal information. More recently, the addition of an episodic buffer has been proposed where information from multiple memory systems is integrated. We report an experiment designed to investigate the effects of providing additional visuospatial information in a verbal working memory task. When to-be-remembered digits were arranged in a horizontal line, performance was no better than when digits were presented in a single location. However, when digits were presented in a keyboard array, performance was significantly better. It is argued that this pattern is hard to reconcile with the traditional model of working memory, and that the “spatial bootstrapping” effect provides evidence towards models of working memory that incorporate an episodic buffer.