Successful interactions between people are dependent on rapid recognition of social cues. We investigated whether head direction – a powerful social signal – is processed in the absence of conscious awareness. We used continuous flash interocular suppression to render stimuli invisible and compared the reaction time for face detection when faces were turned towards the viewer and turned slightly away. We found that faces turned towards the viewer break through suppression faster than faces that are turned away, regardless of eye (...) direction. Our results suggest that detection of a face with attention directed at the viewer occurs even in the absence of awareness of that face. While previous work has demonstrated that stimuli that signal threat are processed without awareness, our data suggest that the social relevance of a face, defined more broadly, is evaluated in the absence of awareness. (shrink)

Change blindness illustrates a remarkable limitation in visual processing by demonstrating that substantial changes in a visual scene can go undetected. Because these changes can ultimately be detected using top–down driven search processes, many theories assign a central role to spatial attention in overcoming change blindness. Surprisingly, it has been reported that change blindness can occur during blink-contingent changes even when observers fixate the changing location [O’Regan, J. K., Deubel, H., Clark, J. J., & Rensink, R. A. . Picture changes (...) during blinks: Looking without seeing and seeing without looking. Visual Cognition, 7, 191–212]. However, eye blinks produce a transient disruption of vision that is independent of any associated changes in the retinal image. We determined whether these ‘attentive blank stares’ could occur in the absence of blink-mediated visual suppression. Using a flicker change-blindness paradigm we confirm that despite direct attentive fixations, obvious scene changes often remain undetected. We conclude that change detection involves object or feature based attentional mechanisms, which can be ‘misdirected’ despite the allocation of spatial attention to the position of the change. (shrink)

A letter from Howard C. Berkowitz about “Impact of a Clinical Trials Information Handbook on Patient Knowledge, Perceptions, and Likelihood of Participation”.

All students of the classical languages are aware that, in referring to intervals of time, the Greeks and Romans often employed a method of reckoning which was inclusive and consequently different from our own. The Greeks, for example, refer to the period between two celebrations of the Olympic games as a though we should call it a four-year interval. One instance of this kind of usage in Latin is the stereotyped formula employed in expressing a date: ante diem quintum Id. (...) Mai. is 11 May, though we should say that there was an interval of four days only between 11 and 15 May. Another instance is the use of tertiana and quartana as applied to fevers which recur on alternate days and on every third day respectively. The ramifications of this mode of expression are extensive, but I am only concerned here with one, namely the use of quisque with ordinals. (shrink)

I Consider first line 58, though its interpretation cannot be separated from that of the ensuing lines. The editors put a comma after iuuenem and must therefore intend propiorque iubenti to be taken with conticuit. It seems more natural, however, to take it with what precedes. The obvious function of propior in such a case is to qualify or amplify an idea already stated, as in Stat. Ach. 2. 94–95.

Although sensorimotor contingencies may explain visual perception, it is difficult to extend this concept to speech perception. However, the basic concept of perception as active hypothesis testing using attention does extend well to speech perception. We propose that the concept of sensorimotor contingencies can be broadened to sensory-attentional contingencies, thereby accounting for speech perception as well as vision.

I Consider first line 58, though its interpretation cannot be separated from that of the ensuing lines. The editors put a comma after iuuenem and must therefore intend propiorque iubenti to be taken with conticuit. It seems more natural, however, to take it with what precedes. The obvious function of propior in such a case is to qualify or amplify an idea already stated, as in Stat. Ach. 2. 94–95.

The definitive biography of Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar and Harvard PhD in philosophy, Howard University philosophy scholar, and architect of the Harlem Renaissance, who mentored a generation of artists including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Nurston and promoted the work of African Americans as the quintessential creators of American modernism. This biography explores his professional and private life, including his relationships with white patrons and his lifelong search for love as a gay man.