Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously…

The present study used the stimulus onset delay paradigm to investigate eye movement control in reading and in scene viewing in a within-participants design. Short onset delays (0, 25, 50, 200, and 350 ms) were chosen to simulate the type of natural processing difficulty encountered in reading and scene viewing. Fixation duration increased…

Affective evaluations of previously ignored visual stimuli are more negative than those of novel items or prior targets of attention or response. This has been taken as evidence that inhibition has negative affective consequences. But inhibition could act instead to attenuate or "neutralize" preexisting affective salience, predicting opposite…

To what degree does our representation of the immediate world depend solely on its relevance to what we are currently doing? We examined whether relevance per se can cause "blindness," even when there is no resource limitation. In a novel paradigm, people looked at a colored circle surrounded by a differently colored ring--the task…

Four experiments examined haptic perception of two distal spatial properties in a bypass event. A hook suspended a string held taut between the participant's finger and a weight. Moving their fingers laterally beneath the hook, participants estimated the finger's point of closest approach (PCA) to the hook and bypass distance (BPD; i.e., hook…

Observers pointing to a target viewed directly may elevate their fingertip close to the line of sight. However, pointing blindfolded, after viewing the target, they may pivot lower, from the shoulder, aligning the arm with the target as if reaching to the target. Indeed, in Experiment 1 participants elevated their arms more in visually monitored…

The law of prior entry states that attended objects come to consciousness more quickly than unattended ones. This has been well established in spatial cueing paradigms, where two task-relevant stimuli are presented near-simultaneously at two different locations. Here, we suggest that prior entry also plays a pivotal role in temporal attention…

In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching…

Prior knowledge shapes our experiences, but which prior knowledge shapes which experiences? This question is addressed in the domain of music perception. Three experiments were used to determine whether listeners activate specific musical memories during music listening. Each experiment provided listeners with one of two musical contexts that was…

Eye movements were monitored to examine search efficiency and infer how color is mentally represented to guide search for multiple targets. Observers located a single color target very efficiently by fixating colors similar to the target. However, simultaneous search for 2 colors produced a dual-target cost. In addition, as the similarity between…

It is well known that timing of rhythm production is disrupted by delayed auditory feedback (DAF), and that disruption varies with delay length. We tested the hypothesis that disruption depends on the state of the movement trajectory at the onset of DAF. Participants tapped isochronous rhythms at a rate specified by a metronome while hearing DAF…

Lavie and Torralbo (2010) present a response to the critique of load theory put forward by Tsal and Benoni (2010). We note that this response includes long discussions that dilute the major points of the debate and deals only with the first experiment in Tsal and Benoni, and we question whether it covers the broader critique we offer. In our…

In tool use, a transformation rule defines the relation between an operating movement and its distal effect. This rule is determined by the tool structure and requires no explicit definition. The present study investigates how humans represent and apply compatible and incompatible transformation rules in tool use. In Experiment 1, participants had…

Configural coding is known to take place between the parts of individual objects but has never been shown between separate objects. We provide novel evidence here for configural coding between separate objects through a study of the effects of action relations between objects on extinction. Patients showing visual extinction were presented with…

We examined whether the apparent size of an object is scaled to the morphology of the relevant body part with which one intends to act on it. To be specific, we tested if the visually perceived size of graspable objects is scaled to the extent of apparent grasping ability for the individual. Previous research has shown that right-handed…