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Abstract: Studies in cognitive psychology have shown that the deployment of visual attention operates under spatial limitations, rendering its assignment to multiple locations difficult or costly. This study explored whether this conventional understanding applies to human metaattention as well. I measured the spatial distribution of metaattention during viewing of natural scenes and found that participants believed they could attend to multiple locations simultaneously. Study 2 tested whether this tendency could be modified by information about the tendency to overestimation. After participants were informed of this tendency toward overestimation with both verbal instruction and demonstrations of attentional blindness and blindness to these phenomena, the selectivity of metaattention increased. Study 3 demonstrated that participants overestimated their attentional abilities by comparing the metaattentional drawings and the actual behavioral performances of the same participants. These results were consistent with recent findings of metaattentional overestimation in change detection and suggested human insensitivity in monitoring attentional limitations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We examined the effects of unconscious priming on temporal-interval production. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to keep visual displays on a screen for 2500ms intervals. Half of the displays were repeated across blocks throughout the entire experiment, and the others were newly generated from trial to trial. The displays consisted of patterns so complex that the participants could not intentionally memorize them. The results showed that significantly more time elapsed for old displays than for new displays before participants indicated that a 2500ms interval had elapsed. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and excluded an alternative account based on perceived pattern complexity. The effect of repetitive presentation was obtained despite the fact the participants did not recognize the repetition, suggesting that unconscious priming increased temporal production. These results suggest that time perception is affected by an unconscious process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We describe herein the preparation of polypeptide (poly(γ-benzyl-l-glutamate)) monolayer-covered gold nanoparticles (PBLG(n)SS–Au). Two types of PBLG(n)SS having PBLG segment length and 50 were synthesized and successfully attached to the gold nanoparticle surface using the Brust–Schiffern method. The mean sizes of PBLG(n)SS–Au particles and their gold cluster cores in CHCl3, which were evaluated by means of dynamic light scattering and TEM, respectively, demonstrated that the gold cluster surfaces were covered with PBLG monolayers, and their conformation was found to be mainly in α-helix on the basis of FT-IR spectroscopy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Distractors presented prior to a critical target in a rapid sequence of visually-presented items induce a lag-dependent deficit in target identification, particularly when the distractor shares a task-relevant feature of the target. Presumably, such capture of central attention is important for bringing a target into awareness. The results of the present investigation suggest that greater capture of attention by a distractor is not accompanied by greater awareness of it. Moreover, awareness tends to be limited to superficial characteristics of the target such as colour. The findings are interpreted within the context of a model that assumes sudden increases in arousal trigger selection of information for consolidation in working memory. In this conceptualization, prolonged analysis of distractor items sharing task-relevant features leads to larger target identification deficits (i.e., greater capture) but no increase in awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Infants above 7 months identify the face during rapid visual stream at 100 ms/item. • Infants above 7 months fail to identify the inverted face during a visual stream. • 7- to 8-month-olds could process the face selectively among nontargets in 100 ms. • Infants below 7 months showed no ability to detect the rapidly presented face. • Rapid serial visual presentation is available in preverbal infants. Our visual system can rapidly process stimuli relevant to our current behavioral goal within various irrelevant stimuli in natural scenes. This ability to detect and identify target stimuli during nontarget stimuli has been mainly studied in adults, so that the development of this high-level visual function has been unknown among infants, although it has been shown that 15-month-olds' temporal thresholds of face visibility are close to those of adults. However, we demonstrate here that infants younger than 15 months can identify a target face among nontarget but meaningful scene images. In the current study, we investigated infants' ability to detect and identify a face in a rapid serial visual presentation. Experiment 1 examined whether 5- to 8-month-olds could discriminate the difference in the presentation duration of visual streams (100 vs. 11 ms). Results showed that 7- and 8-month-olds successfully discriminated between the presentation durations. In Experiment 2, we examined whether 5- to 8-month-olds could detect the face presented for 100 ms and found that 7- and 8-month-olds could detect the face embedded in rapid serial visual streams. To further clarify the face processing at this age of infants, we tested whether infants could identify upright and inverted faces in rapid visual streams in Experiments 3a and 3b. The results showed that 7- and 8-month-olds identified upright faces, but not inverted faces, during the visual stream, which reflected face inversion effects. Overall, we suggest that the temporal speed of face processing at 7 and 8 months of age would be comparable to that of adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]