The current study focuses on the relationship between alerting and executive attention. Previous studies reported an increased flanker congruency effect following alerting cues. In the first two experiments, we found that the alertness-congruency interaction did not exist for all executive tasks (it appeared for a flanker task but not for a Stroop…

The type of visual information needed for categorizing faces and nonface objects was investigated by manipulating spatial frequency scales available in the image during a category verification task addressing basic and subordinate levels. Spatial filtering had opposite effects on faces and airplanes that were modulated by categorization level. The…