Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2018
The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar ... more The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar faces turned upside down (inverted), compared with familiar faces presented in their usual (upright) orientation. Recently, we have demonstrated that the inversion effect can also be found with checkerboards drawn from prototype-defined categories when the participants have been trained with these categories, suggesting that factors such as expertise and the relationships between stimulus features may be important determinants of this effect. We also demonstrated that the typical inversion effect on the N170 seen with faces is found with checkerboards, suggesting that modulation of the N170 is a marker for disruption in the use of configural information. In the present experiment, we first demonstrate that our scrambling technique greatly reduces the inversion effect in faces. Following this, we used Event-Related Potentials ( ERPs) recorded while participants performed an Old/New recogn...
Task-switching experiments have documented a puzzling phenomenon: Advance warning of the switch r... more Task-switching experiments have documented a puzzling phenomenon: Advance warning of the switch reduces but does not eliminate the switch cost. Theoretical accounts have posited that the residual switch cost arises when one selects the relevant stimulus–response mapping, leaving earlier perceptual processes unaffected. We put this assumption to the test by seeking electrophysiological markers of encoding a perceptual dimension. Participants categorized a colored letter as a vowel or consonant or its color as “warm” or “cold.” Orthogonally to the color manipulation, some colors were eight times more frequent than others, and the letters were in upper- or lowercase. Color frequency modulated the electroencephalogram amplitude at around 150 ms when participants repeated the color-classification task. When participants switched from the letter task to the color task, this effect was significantly delayed. Thus, even when prepared for, a task switch delays or prolongs encoding of the rel...
H. Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) S. Monsell (S.Monsell@exeter.ac.uk) I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.M... more H. Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) S. Monsell (S.Monsell@exeter.ac.uk) I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) Abstract Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be construed as requiring not selection of a task-set, just retrieval of a cue+stimulus->response (CSR) mapping. In this paper we considered performance in a task-cuing paradigm in which participants saw a color cue that indicated whether they should classify a digit as odd/even or high/low using one of two responses. Half the participants were instructed in terms of tasks (Task group) whilst the others were required to learn the CSR mappings without mention of tasks (CSR group). Predicted performance under CSR conditions was modeled using an APECS connectionist network. Both the model and CSR group produced small switch costs, mostly due to incongruent stimuli, and large congruency effects that reduced with practice. In contrast, the Task group produced a larger sw...
The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces comp... more The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Nevertheless, the demonstration that the inversion effect in recognition memory can be as strong with images of dogs as with faces when the subjects are experts in specific dog breeds (Diamond & Carey, 1986), suggests that there may be other factors, such as expertise, which give rise to the FIE. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed an Old/New recognition study on normal and scrambled faces presented in upright and inverted orientations. We obtained the standard result for normal faces: The electrophysiological activity corresponding to the N170 was larger and delayed for normal inverted faces as compared to normal upright ones. On the other hand, the ERPs for scrambled inverted faces were not significantly larger or delayed as compared ...
The topic of this thesis is cognitive control: how the brain organises itself to perform the many... more The topic of this thesis is cognitive control: how the brain organises itself to perform the many tasks it is capable of and how it switches flexibly among them. Task-switching experiments reveal a substantial cost in reaction time and accuracy after a switch in tasks. This "switch cost" is reduced by preparation (suggesting anticipatory task-set reconfiguration), but not eliminated. The thesis focuses on the sources of the "residual" cost. Most accounts attribute it to response selection being prolonged on a task-switch trial by task conflict, e.g. by 'task-set inertia' — persisting activation/inhibition of the previous task's S-R rules — or their associative reactivation by the stimulus. Four experiments used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine which stages of task processing are influenced by a change in tasks, looking for delays in process-specific markers in the ERP. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a prepared switch to a reading task fro...
The face inversion effect and evoked brain potentials: Complete loss of configural information af... more The face inversion effect and evoked brain potentials: Complete loss of configural information affects the N170 Ciro Civile (cc413@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Heike Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. R. McLaren (R.P.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Aureliu Lavric (A.Lavric@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Abstract The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Never...
Flexible behaviour requires a control system that can inhibit actions in response to changes in t... more Flexible behaviour requires a control system that can inhibit actions in response to changes in the environment. Recent studies suggest that people proactively adjust response parameters in anticipation of a stop signal. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that proactive inhibitory control involves adjusting both attentional and response settings, and we explored the relationship with other forms of proactive and anticipatory control. Subjects responded to the color of a stimulus. On some trials, an extra signal occurred. The response to this signal depended on the task context subjects were in: in the ‘ignore’ context, they ignored it; in the ‘stop’ context, they had to withhold their response; and in the ‘double-response’ context, they executed a secondary response. An analysis of event-related brain potentials for no-signal trials in the stop context revealed that proactive inhibitory control works by biasing the settings of lower-level systems that are involved in sti...
Among the issues examined by studies of cognitive control in multitasking is whether processes un... more Among the issues examined by studies of cognitive control in multitasking is whether processes underlying performance in the different tasks occur serially or in parallel. Here we ask a similar question about processes that pro-actively control task-set. In task-switching experiments, several indices of task-set preparation have been extensively documented, including anticipatory orientation of gaze to the task-relevant location (an unambiguous marker of reorientation of attention), and a positive polarity brain potential over the posterior cortex (whose functional significance is less well understood). We examine whether these markers of preparation occur in parallel or serially, and in what order. On each trial a cue required participants to make a semantic classification of one of three digits presented simultaneously, with the location of each digit consistently associated with one of three classification tasks (e.g., if the task was odd/even, the digit at the top of the display was relevant). The EEG positivity emerged following, and appeared time-locked to, the anticipatory fixation on the task-relevant location, which might suggest serial organisation. However, the fixation-locked positivity was not better defined than the cue-locked positivity; in fact, for the trials with the earliest fixations the positivity was better time-locked to the cue onset. This is more consistent with (re)orientation of spatial attention occurring in parallel with, but slightly before, the reconfiguration of other task-set components indexed by the EEG positivity.
Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be con... more Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be construed as requiring not selection of a task-set, just retrieval of a cue+stimulus-->response (CSR) mapping. In this paper we considered performance in a task-cuing paradigm in which participants saw a color cue that indicated whether they should classify a digit as odd/even or high/low using one of two responses. Half the participants were instructed in terms of tasks (Task group) whilst the others were required to learn the CSR mappings without mention of tasks (CSR group). Predicted performance under CSR conditions was modeled using an APECS connectionist network. Both the model and CSR group produced small switch costs, mostly due to incongruent stimuli, and large congruency effects that reduced with practice. In contrast, the Task group produced a larger switch-cost and a smaller, stable congruency effect.
Face recognition and brain potentials: Disruption of configural information reduces the face inve... more Face recognition and brain potentials: Disruption of configural information reduces the face inversion effect. CiroCivile (cc413@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Heike Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. R. McLaren (R.P.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. AureliuLavric (A.Lavric@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Abstract The face inversion effect (FIE) refers to the decline in performance in recognizing faces that are inverted compared to the recognition of faces in their normal upright orientation (Yin, 1969). Event- related potentials (ERP...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 2019
This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neuro-stimula... more This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neuro-stimulation procedure is able, in certain circumstances, to selectively increase the face inversion effect by enhancing recognition for upright faces, and argues that these effects can be understood in terms of the MKM theory of stimulus representation. We demonstrate how a specific transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) methodology can improve performance in circumstances where error-based salience modulation is making face recognition harder. The three experiments used an old/new recognition task involving sets of normal vs Thatcherised faces. The main characteristic of Thatcherised faces is that the eyes and the mouth are upside down, thus emphasizing features that tend to be common to other Thatcherised faces and so leading to stronger generalization making recognition worse. Experiment 1 combined a behavioural and ERP study looking at the N170 peak component, which helped us to cal...
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar ... more The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar faces turned upside down (inverted), compared with familiar faces presented in their usual (upright) orientation. Recently, we have demonstrated that the inversion effect can also be found with checkerboards drawn from prototype-defined categories when the participants have been trained with these categories, suggesting that factors such as expertise and the relationships between stimulus features may be important determinants of this effect. We also demonstrated that the typical inversion effect on the N170 seen with faces is found with checkerboards, suggesting that modulation of the N170 is a marker for disruption in the use of configural information. In the present experiment, we first demonstrate that our scrambling technique greatly reduces the inversion effect in faces. Following this, we used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) recorded while participants performed an Old/New recogni...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2015
The present study explores the link between attentional reorienting and response inhibition. Rece... more The present study explores the link between attentional reorienting and response inhibition. Recent behavioral and neuroscience work indicates that both might rely on similar cognitive and neural mechanisms. We tested 2 popular accounts of the overlap: The "circuit breaker" account, which assumes that unexpected events produce global suppression of motor output, and the "stimulus detection" account, which assumes that attention is reoriented to unexpected events. In Experiment 1, we presented standard and (unexpected) novel sounds in a go/no-go task. Consistent with the stimulus detection account, we found longer reaction times on go trials and higher rates of commission errors on no-go trials when these were preceded by a novel sound compared with a standard sound. In Experiment 2, novel and standard sounds acted as no-go signals. In this experiment, the novel sounds produced an improvement on no-go trials. This further highlights the importance of stimulus detection for response inhibition. Combined, the 2 experiments support the idea that attention is oriented to novel or unexpected events, impairing no-go performance if these events are irrelevant but enhancing no-go performance when they are relevant. Our findings also indicate that the popular circuit breaker account of the overlap between response inhibition and attentional reorienting needs some revision. (PsycINFO Database Record
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2018
The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar ... more The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar faces turned upside down (inverted), compared with familiar faces presented in their usual (upright) orientation. Recently, we have demonstrated that the inversion effect can also be found with checkerboards drawn from prototype-defined categories when the participants have been trained with these categories, suggesting that factors such as expertise and the relationships between stimulus features may be important determinants of this effect. We also demonstrated that the typical inversion effect on the N170 seen with faces is found with checkerboards, suggesting that modulation of the N170 is a marker for disruption in the use of configural information. In the present experiment, we first demonstrate that our scrambling technique greatly reduces the inversion effect in faces. Following this, we used Event-Related Potentials ( ERPs) recorded while participants performed an Old/New recogn...
Task-switching experiments have documented a puzzling phenomenon: Advance warning of the switch r... more Task-switching experiments have documented a puzzling phenomenon: Advance warning of the switch reduces but does not eliminate the switch cost. Theoretical accounts have posited that the residual switch cost arises when one selects the relevant stimulus–response mapping, leaving earlier perceptual processes unaffected. We put this assumption to the test by seeking electrophysiological markers of encoding a perceptual dimension. Participants categorized a colored letter as a vowel or consonant or its color as “warm” or “cold.” Orthogonally to the color manipulation, some colors were eight times more frequent than others, and the letters were in upper- or lowercase. Color frequency modulated the electroencephalogram amplitude at around 150 ms when participants repeated the color-classification task. When participants switched from the letter task to the color task, this effect was significantly delayed. Thus, even when prepared for, a task switch delays or prolongs encoding of the rel...
H. Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) S. Monsell (S.Monsell@exeter.ac.uk) I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.M... more H. Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) S. Monsell (S.Monsell@exeter.ac.uk) I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) Abstract Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be construed as requiring not selection of a task-set, just retrieval of a cue+stimulus->response (CSR) mapping. In this paper we considered performance in a task-cuing paradigm in which participants saw a color cue that indicated whether they should classify a digit as odd/even or high/low using one of two responses. Half the participants were instructed in terms of tasks (Task group) whilst the others were required to learn the CSR mappings without mention of tasks (CSR group). Predicted performance under CSR conditions was modeled using an APECS connectionist network. Both the model and CSR group produced small switch costs, mostly due to incongruent stimuli, and large congruency effects that reduced with practice. In contrast, the Task group produced a larger sw...
The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces comp... more The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Nevertheless, the demonstration that the inversion effect in recognition memory can be as strong with images of dogs as with faces when the subjects are experts in specific dog breeds (Diamond & Carey, 1986), suggests that there may be other factors, such as expertise, which give rise to the FIE. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed an Old/New recognition study on normal and scrambled faces presented in upright and inverted orientations. We obtained the standard result for normal faces: The electrophysiological activity corresponding to the N170 was larger and delayed for normal inverted faces as compared to normal upright ones. On the other hand, the ERPs for scrambled inverted faces were not significantly larger or delayed as compared ...
The topic of this thesis is cognitive control: how the brain organises itself to perform the many... more The topic of this thesis is cognitive control: how the brain organises itself to perform the many tasks it is capable of and how it switches flexibly among them. Task-switching experiments reveal a substantial cost in reaction time and accuracy after a switch in tasks. This "switch cost" is reduced by preparation (suggesting anticipatory task-set reconfiguration), but not eliminated. The thesis focuses on the sources of the "residual" cost. Most accounts attribute it to response selection being prolonged on a task-switch trial by task conflict, e.g. by 'task-set inertia' — persisting activation/inhibition of the previous task's S-R rules — or their associative reactivation by the stimulus. Four experiments used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine which stages of task processing are influenced by a change in tasks, looking for delays in process-specific markers in the ERP. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a prepared switch to a reading task fro...
The face inversion effect and evoked brain potentials: Complete loss of configural information af... more The face inversion effect and evoked brain potentials: Complete loss of configural information affects the N170 Ciro Civile (cc413@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Heike Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. R. McLaren (R.P.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Aureliu Lavric (A.Lavric@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Abstract The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Never...
Flexible behaviour requires a control system that can inhibit actions in response to changes in t... more Flexible behaviour requires a control system that can inhibit actions in response to changes in the environment. Recent studies suggest that people proactively adjust response parameters in anticipation of a stop signal. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that proactive inhibitory control involves adjusting both attentional and response settings, and we explored the relationship with other forms of proactive and anticipatory control. Subjects responded to the color of a stimulus. On some trials, an extra signal occurred. The response to this signal depended on the task context subjects were in: in the ‘ignore’ context, they ignored it; in the ‘stop’ context, they had to withhold their response; and in the ‘double-response’ context, they executed a secondary response. An analysis of event-related brain potentials for no-signal trials in the stop context revealed that proactive inhibitory control works by biasing the settings of lower-level systems that are involved in sti...
Among the issues examined by studies of cognitive control in multitasking is whether processes un... more Among the issues examined by studies of cognitive control in multitasking is whether processes underlying performance in the different tasks occur serially or in parallel. Here we ask a similar question about processes that pro-actively control task-set. In task-switching experiments, several indices of task-set preparation have been extensively documented, including anticipatory orientation of gaze to the task-relevant location (an unambiguous marker of reorientation of attention), and a positive polarity brain potential over the posterior cortex (whose functional significance is less well understood). We examine whether these markers of preparation occur in parallel or serially, and in what order. On each trial a cue required participants to make a semantic classification of one of three digits presented simultaneously, with the location of each digit consistently associated with one of three classification tasks (e.g., if the task was odd/even, the digit at the top of the display was relevant). The EEG positivity emerged following, and appeared time-locked to, the anticipatory fixation on the task-relevant location, which might suggest serial organisation. However, the fixation-locked positivity was not better defined than the cue-locked positivity; in fact, for the trials with the earliest fixations the positivity was better time-locked to the cue onset. This is more consistent with (re)orientation of spatial attention occurring in parallel with, but slightly before, the reconfiguration of other task-set components indexed by the EEG positivity.
Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be con... more Task-cuing paradigms are typically taken to explore control of task-set. However, they can be construed as requiring not selection of a task-set, just retrieval of a cue+stimulus-->response (CSR) mapping. In this paper we considered performance in a task-cuing paradigm in which participants saw a color cue that indicated whether they should classify a digit as odd/even or high/low using one of two responses. Half the participants were instructed in terms of tasks (Task group) whilst the others were required to learn the CSR mappings without mention of tasks (CSR group). Predicted performance under CSR conditions was modeled using an APECS connectionist network. Both the model and CSR group produced small switch costs, mostly due to incongruent stimuli, and large congruency effects that reduced with practice. In contrast, the Task group produced a larger switch-cost and a smaller, stable congruency effect.
Face recognition and brain potentials: Disruption of configural information reduces the face inve... more Face recognition and brain potentials: Disruption of configural information reduces the face inversion effect. CiroCivile (cc413@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Heike Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. R. McLaren (R.P.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. AureliuLavric (A.Lavric@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Abstract The face inversion effect (FIE) refers to the decline in performance in recognizing faces that are inverted compared to the recognition of faces in their normal upright orientation (Yin, 1969). Event- related potentials (ERP...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 2019
This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neuro-stimula... more This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neuro-stimulation procedure is able, in certain circumstances, to selectively increase the face inversion effect by enhancing recognition for upright faces, and argues that these effects can be understood in terms of the MKM theory of stimulus representation. We demonstrate how a specific transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) methodology can improve performance in circumstances where error-based salience modulation is making face recognition harder. The three experiments used an old/new recognition task involving sets of normal vs Thatcherised faces. The main characteristic of Thatcherised faces is that the eyes and the mouth are upside down, thus emphasizing features that tend to be common to other Thatcherised faces and so leading to stronger generalization making recognition worse. Experiment 1 combined a behavioural and ERP study looking at the N170 peak component, which helped us to cal...
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar ... more The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar faces turned upside down (inverted), compared with familiar faces presented in their usual (upright) orientation. Recently, we have demonstrated that the inversion effect can also be found with checkerboards drawn from prototype-defined categories when the participants have been trained with these categories, suggesting that factors such as expertise and the relationships between stimulus features may be important determinants of this effect. We also demonstrated that the typical inversion effect on the N170 seen with faces is found with checkerboards, suggesting that modulation of the N170 is a marker for disruption in the use of configural information. In the present experiment, we first demonstrate that our scrambling technique greatly reduces the inversion effect in faces. Following this, we used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) recorded while participants performed an Old/New recogni...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2015
The present study explores the link between attentional reorienting and response inhibition. Rece... more The present study explores the link between attentional reorienting and response inhibition. Recent behavioral and neuroscience work indicates that both might rely on similar cognitive and neural mechanisms. We tested 2 popular accounts of the overlap: The "circuit breaker" account, which assumes that unexpected events produce global suppression of motor output, and the "stimulus detection" account, which assumes that attention is reoriented to unexpected events. In Experiment 1, we presented standard and (unexpected) novel sounds in a go/no-go task. Consistent with the stimulus detection account, we found longer reaction times on go trials and higher rates of commission errors on no-go trials when these were preceded by a novel sound compared with a standard sound. In Experiment 2, novel and standard sounds acted as no-go signals. In this experiment, the novel sounds produced an improvement on no-go trials. This further highlights the importance of stimulus detection for response inhibition. Combined, the 2 experiments support the idea that attention is oriented to novel or unexpected events, impairing no-go performance if these events are irrelevant but enhancing no-go performance when they are relevant. Our findings also indicate that the popular circuit breaker account of the overlap between response inhibition and attentional reorienting needs some revision. (PsycINFO Database Record
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