Previous research has shown that people can implicitly learn repeated visual contexts and use this information when locating relevant items. For example, when people are presented with repeated spatial configurations of distractor items or distractor identities in visual search, they become faster to find target stimuli in these repeated contexts over time (Chun and Jiang, 1998; 1999). Given that people learn these repeated distractor configurations and identities, might they also implicitly encode semantic information about distractors, if this information is predictive of the target location? We investigated this question with a series of visual search experiments using real-world stimuli within a contextual cueing paradigm (Chun and Jiang, 1998). Specifically, we tested whether participants could learn, through experience, that the target images they are searching for are always located near specific categories of distractors, such as food items or animals. We also varied the spatial consistency of target locations, in order to rule out implicit learning of repeated target locations. Results suggest that participants implicitly learned the target-predictive categories of distractors and used this information during search, although these results failed to reach significance. This lack of significance may have been due the relative simplicity of the search task, however, and several new experiments are proposed to further investigate whether repeated category information can benefit search.

Decades of visual attention research have predominantly used pictorial search paradigms that cue participants with the exact perceptual details of the target. However, in everyday life, people often search for categories rather than specific items (i.e., any pen rather than a specific pen). To study visual attention in a more realistic context, researchers can use categorical search paradigms that cue participants with text indicating the target category. In these instances, one must rely on long-term memory to retrieve categorical features of the target. Both experiments in this study were a reanalysis of experiments previously designed and collected by Schmidt and colleagues at Stony Brook University. In Experiment One, participants completed a pictorial or categorical search. Eye movements were used to assess search performance and electrophysiological data were assessed in response to the target cue and RI before search to evaluate the encoding and maintenance of the target. Although participants in the categorical condition were slower and exhibited weaker guidance, as measured by initial saccade direction (to the target, strong; to a distractor, weak), no differences in power or synchronous activity were observed when compared across target cue types. However, when the data were separated by guidance (strong or weak), categorical cues produced significantly more frontal-posterior theta synchrony before good guidance trials compared to bad guidance trials. In Experiment Two, participants were given categorical and specific text cues (i.e., the text always corresponded to a single target item). Specific text cues were expected to behave similarly to pictorial cues because participants knew the exact target features. Whereas specific text cues resulted in superior search performance across several measures, minimal neural differences were observed. The results from Experiment One implicate frontal-posterior theta synchrony as a potential neural marker of categorical information used to direct attention during visual.

Visual search is a critical skill that is impacted by a target's physical traits and a viewer's prior knowledge of what those traits are. An open question in visual search concerns the nature of the target template, an internal cognitive representation of the target one is searching for and that is used to guide search. Target templates are created from knowledge about the target; in research settings this information is typically conferred to a searcher in the form of a cue. A more detailed target template is known to lead to the best search, but how a cue that lacks specific or accurate details forms a target template is not well explored. The current study examines how categorical cues impact target template creation, specifically aiming to resolve the controversy of whether and under what conditions a word cue can perform as well as an image cue. Participants searched for real world objects in an array, cued by various pictures or words. In Experiment 1, participants experienced written and auditory label cues in addition to exact target previews and visually similar image (type picture) cues; type picture cues performed significantly better than either of the word cues, which did not differ from each other. In Experiment 2, a specific label condition was added and visually heterogenous type picture cues were used. The specific auditory label resulted in reduced search times compared to basic labels and the new type cues. These results highlight the importance of specificity in target template creation and demonstrate constraints under which some verbal cues can be more effective than image cues.

Since the first edition was published in 1951, The Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology has been recognized as the standard reference in the field. The most recent (3rd) edition of the handbook was published in 2004, and it was a success by any measure. But the field of experimental psychology has changed in dramatic ways since then. Throughout the first 3 editions of the handbook, the changes in the field were mainly quantitative in nature. That is, the size and scope of the field grew steadily from 1951 to 2004, a trend that was reflected in the growing size of the handbook itself: the 1-volume first edition (1951) was succeeded by a 2-volume second edition (1988) and then by a 4-volume third edition (2004). Since 2004, however, this still-growing field has also changed qualitatively in the sense that, in virtually every subdomain of experimental psychology, theories of the mind have evolved into theories of the brain. Research methods in experimental psychology have changed accordingly and now include not only venerable EEG recordings (long a staple of research in psycholinguistics) but also MEG, fMRI, TMS, and single-unit recording. The trend towards neuroscience is an absolutely dramatic, worldwide phenomenon that is unlikely to ever be reversed. Thus, the era of purely behavioral experimental psychology is already long gone, even though not everyone has noticed. Experimental psychology and "cognitive neuroscience" (an umbrella term that includes behavioral neuroscience, social neuroscience and developmental neuroscience) are now inextricably intertwined. Nearly every major psychology department in the country has added cognitive neuroscientists to its ranks in recent years, and that trend is still growing. A viable handbook of experimental psychology should reflect the new reality on the ground. There is no handbook in existence today that combines basic experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, this despite the fact that the two fields are interrelated – and even interdependent – because they are concerned with the same issues (e.g., memory, perception, language, development, etc.). Almost all neuroscience-oriented research takes as its starting point what has been learned using behavioral methods in experimental psychology. In addition, nowadays, psychological theories increasingly take into account what has been learned about the brain (e.g., psychological models increasingly need to be neurologically plausible). These considerations explain why this edition of: The Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology is now called The Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. The title serves as a reminder that the two fields go together and as an announcement that the Stevens' Handbook covers it all. The 4th edition of the Stevens’ Handbook is a 5-volume set structured as follows: I. Learning & Memory: Elizabeth Phelps & Lila Davachi (Volume Editors) Topics include fear learning; time perception; working memory; visual object recognition; memory and future imagining; sleep and memory; emotion and memory; attention and memory; motivation and memory; inhibition in memory; education and memory; aging and memory; autobiographical memory; eyewitness memory; and category learning. II. Sensation, Perception & Attention: John Serences (Volume Editor) Topics include attention; vision; color vision; visual search; depth perception; taste; touch; olfaction; motor control; perceptual learning; audition; music perception; multisensory integration; vestibular, proprioceptive, and haptic contributions to spatial orientation; motion perception; perceptual rhythms; the interface theory of perception; perceptual organization; perception and interactive technology; perception for action. III. Language & Thought: Sharon Thompson-Schill (Volume Editor) Topics include reading; discourse and dialogue; speech production; sentence processing; bilingualism; concepts and categorization; culture and cognition; embodied cognition; creativity; reasoning; speech perception; spatial cognition; word processing; semantic memory; moral reasoning. IV. Developmental & Social Psychology: Simona Ghetti (Volume Editor) Topics include development of visual attention; self-evaluation; moral development; emotion-cognition interactions; person perception; memory; implicit social cognition; motivation group processes; development of scientific thinking; language acquisition; category and conceptual development; development of mathematical reasoning; emotion regulation; emotional development; development of theory of mind; attitudes; executive function. V. Methodology: E. J. Wagenmakers (Volume Editor) Topics include hypothesis testing and statistical inference; model comparison in psychology; mathematical modeling in cognition and cognitive neuroscience; methods and models in categorization; serial versus parallel processing; theories for discriminating signal from noise; Bayesian cognitive modeling; response time modeling; neural networks and neurocomputational modeling; methods in psychophysics analyzing neural time series data; convergent methods of memory research; models and methods for reinforcement learning; cultural consensus theory; network models for clinical psychology; the stop-signal paradigm; fmri; neural recordings; open science.

In the past few years, there has been an explosion of eye movement research in cognitive science and neuroscience. The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements provides the first comprehensive review of the entire field of eye movement research. This book is the definitive reference work in this field.

Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom offers a unique five-prong (theoretical, empirical, methodological, pedagogical, and model building) approach to the issue of explicit learning in the L2 classroom from a student-centered perspective. To achieve this five-prong objective, the book reports the theoretical underpinnings, empirical studies, and the research designs employed in current research to investigate the constructs of attention and awareness in SLA with the objectives to (1) propose a model of the L2 learning process in SLA that accounts for the cognitive processes employed during this process and (2) provide pedagogical and curricular implications for the L2 classroom. The book also provides a comprehensive treatise of research methodology that is aimed at not only underscoring the major features of conducting robust research designs with high levels of internal validity but also preparing teachers to become critical readers of published empirical research.

During the last three decades, there have been enormous advances in our understanding of the neural mechanisms of selective attention at the network as well as the cellular level. The Oxford Handbook of Attention brings together the different research areas that constitute contemporary attention research into one comprehensive and authoritative volume. In 40 chapters, it covers the most important aspects of attention research from the areas of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, human and animal neuroscience, computational modelling, and philosophy. The book is divided into 4 main sections. Following an introduction from Michael Posner, the books starts by looking at theoretical models of attention. The next two sections are dedicated to spatial attention and non-spatial attention respectively. Within section 4, the authors consider the interactions between attention and other psychological domains. The last two sections focus on attention-related disorders, and finally, on computational models of attention. Aimed at both scholars and students, the Oxford Handbook of Attention provides a concise and state-of-the-art review of the current literature in this field.