Investigations of concurrent task and modality switching effects have to date been studied under conditions of uni-modal stimulus presentation. As such, it is difficult to directly compare resultant task and modality switching effects, as the stimuli afford both tasks on each trial, but only one modality. The current study investigated task and…

Damage to the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) can lead to Optic Ataxia (OA), in which patients misreach to peripheral targets. Recent research suggested that the PPC might be involved not only in simple reaching tasks toward peripheral targets, but also in changing the hand movement trajectory in real time if the target moves. The present study…

Two experiments extend the ecological validity of tests of hemispheric interaction in three novel ways. First, we present a broad class of naturalistic stimuli that have not yet been used in tests of hemispheric interaction. Second, we test whether probable differences in complexity within the class of stimuli are supported by outcomes from…

An issue of continued debate in the visuomotor control literature surrounds whether a 2D object serves as a representative proxy for a 3D object in understanding the nature of the visual information supporting grasping control. In an effort to reconcile this issue, we examined the extent to which aperture profiles for grasping 2D and 3D objects…

The neural correlates of cognitive control for typically developing 9-year-old children were examined using dense-array ERPs and estimates of cortical activation (LORETA) during a go/no-go task with two conditions: a neutral picture condition and an affectively charged picture condition. Activation was estimated for the entire cortex after which…

In this study we quantify for the first time electrophysiological components associated with incorporating long-term semantic knowledge with visuo-spatial information using two variants of a traditional matrix patterns task. Results indicated that the matrix task with greater semantic content was associated with enhanced accuracy and RTs in a…

Developmental studies have demonstrated that cognitive processes such as attention, suppression of interference and memory develop throughout childhood and adolescence. However, little is currently known about the development of top-down control mechanisms and their influence on cognitive performance. In the present study, we used functional…

Keeping aware of the locations of objects while one is moving requires the updating of spatial representations. As long as the objects are visible, attentional tracking is sufficient, but knowing where objects out of view went in relation to one's own body involves an updating of spatial working memory. Here, multiple object tracking was employed…

Category training can induce category effects, whereby color discrimination of stimuli spanning a newly learned category boundary is enhanced relative to equivalently spaced stimuli from within the newly learned category (e.g., categorical perception). However, the underlying mechanisms of these acquired category effects are not fully understood.…

Theories of human action control deal with the question of how cognitive control is dynamically adjusted to task demands. The conflict monitoring theory of anterior cingulate (ACC) function suggests that the ACC monitors for response conflicts in the ongoing processing stream thereby triggering the mobilization of cognitive control. Alternatively,…

Participants made categorical or coordinate spatial judgments on the global or local elements of shapes. Stimuli were composed of a horizontal line and two dots. In the Categorical task, participants judged whether the line was above or below the dots. In the Coordinate task, they judged whether the line would fit between the dots. Stimuli were…

Despite the fact that hemispheric asymmetry of attention has been widely studied, a clear picture of this complex phenomenon is still lacking. The aim of the present study was to provide an efficient and reliable measurement of potential hemispheric asymmetries of three attentional networks, i.e. alerting, orienting and executive attention.…

The role of frontal cortex in selective attention to visual distractors was examined in an attentional capture task in which participants searched for a unique shape in the presence or absence of an additional colour singleton distractor. The presence of the additional singleton was associated with slower behavioural responses to the shape target,…

The present study examined a visual field asymmetry in the contingent capture of attention that was previously observed by Du and Abrams (2010). In our first experiment, color singleton distractors that matched the color of a to-be-detected target produced a stronger capture of attention when they appeared in the left visual hemifield than in the…

A number of human brain areas showing a larger response to faces than to objects from different categories, or to scrambled faces, have been identified in neuroimaging studies. Depending on the statistical criteria used, the set of areas can be overextended or minimized, both at the local (size of areas) and global (number of areas) levels. Here…