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Daniel Smilek
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2010) 22 (1): 124–138.
Published: 01 January 2010
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We know that human neurocognitive systems rapidly and implicitly evaluate emotionally charged stimuli. But what about more everyday, frequently encountered kinds of objects, such as computer desktop icons and business logos? Do we rapidly and implicitly evaluate these more prosaic visual images, attitude objects that might only engender a mild sense of liking or disliking, if at all? To address this question, we asked participants to view a set of unfamiliar commercial logos in the context of a target identification task as brain electrical responses to these objects were recorded via event-related potentials (ERPs). Following this task, participants individually identified those logos that were most liked or disliked, allowing us to then compare how ERP responses to logos varied as a function of hedonic evaluation—a procedure decoupling evaluative responses from any normative classification of the logos themselves. In Experiment 1, we found that visuocortical processing manifest a specific bias for disliked logos that emerged within the first 200 msec of stimulus onset. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect while dissociating normative- and novelty-related influences. Taken together, our results provide direct electrophysiological evidence suggesting that we rapidly and implicitly evaluate commercial branding images at a hedonic level.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2009) 21 (2): 246–258.
Published: 01 February 2008
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For individuals with grapheme–color synesthesia, achromatic letters and digits elicit vivid perceptual experiences of color. We report two experiments that evaluate whether synesthesia influences overt visual attention. In these experiments, two grapheme–color synesthetes viewed colored letters while their eye movements were monitored. Letters were presented in colors that were either congruent or incongruent with the synesthetes' colors. Eye tracking analysis showed that synesthetes exhibited a color congruity bias—a propensity to fixate congruently colored letters more often and for longer durations than incongruently colored letters—in a naturalistic free-viewing task. In a more structured visual search task, this congruity bias caused synesthetes to rapidly fixate and identify congruently colored target letters, but led to problems in identifying incongruently colored target letters. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for perception in synesthesia.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2007) 19 (6): 981–992.
Published: 01 June 2007
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We report a case study of an individual (TE) for whom inanimate objects, such as letters, numbers, simple shapes, and even furniture, are experienced as having rich and detailed personalities. TE reports that her object-personality pairings are stable over time, occur independent of her intentions, and have been there for as long as she can remember. In these respects, her experiences are indicative of synesthesia. Here we show that TE's object-personality pairings are very consistent across test-retest, even for novel objects. A qualitative analysis of TE's personality descriptions revealed that her personifications are extremely detailed and multi-dimensional, and that her personifications of familiar and novel objects differ in specific ways. We also found that TE's eye movements can be biased by the emotional associations she has with letters and numbers. These findings demonstrate that synesthesia can involve complex semantic personifications, which can influence visual attention. Finally, we propose a neural model of normal personification and the unusual personifications that accompany object-personality synesthesia.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2001) 13 (7): 930–936.
Published: 01 October 2001
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When C, a digit-color synaesthete, views black digits, she reports that each digit elicits a highly specific color (a photism), which is experienced as though the color was externally projected onto the digit. We evaluated this claim by assessing whether C's photisms influenced her ability to perceive visually presented digits. C identified and localized target digits presented against backgrounds that were either congruent or incongruent with the color of her photism for the digits. The results showed that C was poorer at identifying and localizing digits on congruent than incongruent trials. Such differences in performance between congruent and incongruent trials were not found with nonsynaesthete control participants. These results suggest that C's colored photisms influence her perception of black digits. We propose a model in which color information influences the perception of digits through reentrant pathways in the visual system.