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We were delighted that the first paper from Siobhan’s ESRC NINE DTP  grant finally came out in Attention, Perception and Psychophysics. The paper was a bit of a landmark for us both, as it was Siobhan first experiment and the first time either of us had tried to publish using the Registered Report format. This ended up being a very long processess, and towards the end we had a bit of scare becasue RRs were omitted from the JISC open access deal with Springer, but we got there in the end! The key take-home is that saccadic interference (making irrelvant eye-movements while trying to hold something in memory) causes a highly selective impairment spatial short term memory and does not affect visual short term memory. The novelty of our task was to (a) directly compare spatial and visual STM in the experiment using the same participants and the same task at encoding, but varying the task at recall (in one condition people recalled location, in the other they recalled colour) and (b) to show that, once you control for covert attention, the interference effect in spatial STM is explained by increased guessing. This is important, firstly because it suggests that saccadic interference increases the signal-to-noise of internal spatial maps that represent the memorised locations, rather than reducing the precision of memory representations per se. Secondly, the fact that visual STM was unaffected by saccadic interference is very hard to reconcile with slot models of VSWM. You can read the paper here, which is available gold open access, and

McAteer, S.M., McGregor, A. & Smith, D.T. Oculomotor rehearsal in visuospatial working memory. Atten Percept Psychophys (2022). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02601-4

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!