The general goal of this research program is to analyze the relationship between different attentional limitations and attentional mechanisms. We will use fine-grained chronometric analyses and converging experimental designs to address four theoretical issues. The first is the relationship between the """"""""central bottleneck"""""""" that often arises in dual-task performance and the idea of a """"""""central executive"""""""" believed responsible for the control and coordination of task sets. A tight linkage between these concepts is sometimes assumed but with little empirical basis. We hypothesize that they may be dissociable, and will test this by asking whether controlled shifts in task set can occur in parallel with central processing in concurrent tasks. The second issue to be explored concerns the possibility of parallel memory retrievals. The literature offers seemingly contradictory suggestions regarding whether multiple memory retrievals can operate at the same time. We will test a number of hypotheses that might reconcile these apparent conflicts. Third, we will explore the relationship between affectively charged stimuli and central attentional limitations, asking, e.g., whether such inputs elicit expressive and autonomic reactions independent of the central bottleneck and looking at the effect of emotional stimuli on scheduling of central processes. Finally, we will explore a hypothesis termed consonance-driven orienting that describes a general principle that might govern the interaction of central cognitive processes and perceptual attention. Recent work from our laboratory provides tentative support for this hypothesis; new experiments, both visual and auditory, are proposed to further test and refine it.
| Huang, Liqiang; Pashler, Harold (2007) A Boolean map theory of visual attention. Psychol Rev 114:599-631 |
| Jones, Jason; Pashler, Harold (2007) Is the mind inherently forward looking? Comparing prediction and retrodiction. Psychon Bull Rev 14:295-300 |
| Vul, Edward; Pashler, Harold (2007) Incubation benefits only after people have been misdirected. Mem Cognit 35:701-10 |
| Huang, Liqiang; Pashler, Harold (2007) Working memory and the guidance of visual attention: consonance-driven orienting. Psychon Bull Rev 14:148-53 |
| Becker, Mark W; Pashler, Harold; Lubin, Jeffrey (2007) Object-intrinsic oddities draw early saccades. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 33:20-30 |
| Huang, Liqiang; Treisman, Anne; Pashler, Harold (2007) Characterizing the limits of human visual awareness. Science 317:823-5 |
| Pashler, Harold; Ramachandran, V S; Becker, Mark W (2006) Attending to a misoriented word causes the eyeball to rotate in the head. Psychon Bull Rev 13:954-7 |
| Pashler, Harold; Cepeda, Nicholas J; Wixted, John T et al. (2005) When does feedback facilitate learning of words? J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 31:3-8 |
| Becker, Mark W; Pashler, Harold (2005) Awareness of the continuously visible: information acquisition during preview. Percept Psychophys 67:1391-403 |
| Harris, Christine R; Pashler, Harold (2005) Enhanced memory for negatively emotionally charged pictures without selective rumination. Emotion 5:191-9 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 20 publications
