Author: DanSmith

Dan has teamed up with Edwin Dalmaijer from Bristol to guest edit a SI of MDPI Vision focused on web-based studies of vision.  This SI was inspired by the recent expansion in the use of online research in vision science, which has been accelerated by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Using web-based studies offers may opportunities in terms of sizes and diversity of samples, but comes with challenges to scientists who are used to exerting a high degree of control in the lab. This special issue hopes to bring together web-based studies of vision and visual cognition to better understand how scholars have adapted to

this new paradigm, and what successes (and failures!) there have been in translating from the lab to the virtual world. Empirical, methodological and theoretical  are welcome, and they are particularly keen to encourage multi-experiment papers and review papers. More information about the SI and APC can be found here:  https://www.mdpi.com/journal/vision/special_issues/cybervision.

MDPI have also knidly offered a number of APC discounts for multi-experiment emprical and review papers, if you are considering submitting a paper please get in touch with Dan (daniel.smith2@durham.ac.uk) to see if it will be eligible for the discount.

It was a busy week for the MotorBias project last week as we had a flurry of conference paper acceptances. First up was Siobhan, whose abstract on oculomotor rehearsal in spatial WM was accepted for a talk at the upcoming Experimental Psychology Society meeting in Stirling. Given how fast the programme filled up, we think Siobhan must have gone the full Glastonbury to get a slot! Dan and Soazig will be heading up there too for moral support. It’s going to be our first post-covid meeting so we’re all really looking forward to it! Later in the summer Soazig will be heading to Leicester for a talk at ECEM 2022 on her recent work on the Remote Distractor Effect and Dan & Siobhan will be doing poster presentations at ECVP 2022 in Nijmegen. Siobhan will also be heading off to Poland for a workshop on modelling, so it’s going to be a hectic summer!

EPS Stirling

• Wednesday 13th: Siobhan McAteer, Anthony McGregor and Daniel Smith. “Oculomotor rehearsal in visuospatial working memory.”

ECEM Leicester:

• Soazig Casteau, Robin Walker and Daniel Smith, “Nasal-temporal differences in the Remote Distractor Effect: how the presence of placeholders affects saccade latencies”

ECVP Nijmegen: 

• Tuesday 30th: Siobhan McAteer, Anthony McGregor and Daniel Smith. “Oculomotor rehearsal in visuospatial working memory.”
• Wednesday 31st : Daniel Smith, Soazig Casteau and Neil Archibald. “Spatial attention and spatial short term memory in PSP and Parkinson’s disease”

 

We’re delighted to welcome Emma Smedley to the Motorbias Project. Emma is currently studying for a BSc in Psychology here in Durham and will be working with Soazig and Dan to examine how motor preparation interacts with other cognitive processes such as working memory to guide attention.  The aim  is to better understand how attention is allocated when the oculomotor system and memory-guided attention systems are activated simultaneously. Several possible outcomes can be sketched out. Firstly, it may be that the motor system dominates, in which case attention should be allocated to the saccade goal and not the item in VWM. Alternatively, memory-guided attention could dominate, in which case attention should be allocated to the object that shares a feature with the memory item. A 3^rd possibility is that the systems interact, in which case we should observe an additive effect when the content of VWM and saccade goal are congruent and a subtractive effect when they are incongruent. This research project is supported by an EPS Small Grant to Soazig & Dan.

We’re delighted to welcome Dr Alexis Cheviet to the team! Alexis joins us from INSERM in Lyon where he worked on oculomotor function in people with brain injuries with Prof Denis Pelisson, and will lead on the Dunhill Medical Trust project examining attention and memory in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and Parkinson’s disease.  Welcome to Durham Alexis!

I’m delighted to say that, despite the challenges of coronavirus, 12 excellent papers have been published as part of our special issue of Cortex “Cognitive and Motor Processes in Visuospatial Attention”. Some of these papers draw on the work presented at our 2019 workshop, but there are also many excellent contributions from other scholars. The range and quality of the work is a testament to the resilience of all the contributors in the face of the huge challenges we faced during the last year, and we’re also very grateful to the many reviewers who made time in their packed schedules to provide thoughtful and constructive reviews.  Many of the articles are available open access, as are the vast majority of the data, so you can even have a rummage around the raw data if you feel so inclined!

The articles fall into several broad categories. There are theoretical viewpoints papers from Olivers & Roelfsema on “Attention for action in visual working memory“, Tsotsos & colleagues on “On the control of attentional processes in vision“, and Redden, MacInnes and Klein on “Inhibition of return: An information processing theory of its natures and significance“. Neuroimaging papers explore the “Modulation of anticipatory visuospatial attention in sustained and transient tasks” (Di Russo et al.,) and demonstrate the existence of “Distinct saccade planning and endogenous visuospatial attention maps in parietal cortex: A basis for functional differences in sensory and motor attention” (Huddlestone and colleagues). Neuropsychological studies give new insight into the links between attention and motor control in a diverse range of disorders, including work on Optic Ataxia by Aguilar-Ros et al., Complex Regional Pain Syndrome by Ten Brink & colleagues, Developmental Coordination Disorder by Buckingham, Arthur & Harris,  my own work with Soazig on Spatial attention and spatial short term memory in PSP and Parkinson’s disease, and Thomas and Karin’s paper on rehabilitation of Neglect . Experimental work is also well represented with papers by Kreyenmeier, Deubel and Hanning on “Theory of visual attention (TVA) in action: Assessing premotor attention in simultaneous eye-hand movements” and Aziz and colleagues on “Role of aging and working memory in performance on a naturalistic visual search task“. There are more papers in the pipeline and an editorial is on the way too, so keep an eye on our SI page!

Finally, I’d like to say a big thank you to Prof Sergio Della Salla, the EiC of Cortex, for giving us the chance to edit our own special issue, and Cheryl Philips for her invaluable assistance with the editorial process.

Dan