The asymmetric mixed-category advantage in visual working memory: An attentional, not perceptual (face-specific) account.

The mixed-category advantage in visual working memory refers to improved memory for an image in a display containing two different categories relative to a display containing only one category (Cohen et al., 2014). Jiang, Remington, et al. (2016) found that this advantage characterizes mainly faces and suggested that face-only displays suffer from enhanced interference due to the unique configural nature of faces. Faces, however, possess social and emotional significance that may bias attention toward them in mixed-category displays at the expense of their counterpart category. Consequently, the counterpart category may suffer from little/no advantage or even an inversed effect. Using a change-detection task, we showed that a category that demonstrated a mixed-category disadvantage when paired with faces demonstrated a mixed-category advantage when paired with other nonfacial categories. Furthermore, manipulating the likelihood of testing a specific category (i.e., changing its task relevance) in mixed-category trials altered its advantaged/disadvantaged status, suggesting that the effect may be mediated by attention. Finally, to control for perceptual exposure factors, a sequential presentation experimental version was conducted. Whereas faces showed a typical mixed-category advantage, this pattern was again modulated (yielding an advantage for a nonfacial category) when inserting a task-relevance manipulation. Taken together, our findings support a central resource allocation account, according to which the asymmetric mixed-category effect likely stems from an attentional bias to one of the two categories. This attentional bias is not necessarily spatial in its nature, and it presumably affects processing stages subsequent to the initial perceptual encoding phase in working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Pain management for casualties receiving lifesaving interventions in the prehospital scenario: Raising awareness of our human nature.

BACKGROUND: Lifesaving interventions (LSIs) are the hallmark of medical care in trauma casualties, reducing mortality and morbidity. Analgesia is another essential treatment, which has been shown to improve outcomes and decrease long-term complications. However, oligoanalgesia is common, and information regarding its relation to the performance of LSIs is scarce. The purpose of this study was to assess the relation between the performance of LSIs and analgesia administration in the prehospital environment. METHODS: A retrospective database-based study was performed, including all trauma casualties treated by Israeli Defense Forces physicians and paramedics during 2006 to 2017 and admitted to hospitals participating in the Israeli National Trauma Registry. Included LSIs were tourniquet application, administration of tranexamic acid and freeze-dried plasma, and administration of chest decompression. Casualties treated with endotracheal intubation or cricothyroidotomy were excluded. RESULTS: In the multivariable logistic regression analysis, LSIs were associated with prehospital analgesia administration (odds ratio [OR], 3.59; confidence interval [CI], 2.56-5.08; p < 0.001). When assessing for the different LSIs, tourniquet application (OR, 2.83; CI, 1.89-4.27; p < 0.001) and tranexamic acid administration (OR, 4.307; CI, 2.42-8.04; p < 0.001) were associated with prehospital analgesia administration. CONCLUSION: A positive association exists between performance of LSIs and administration of analgesia in the prehospital environment. Possible explanations may include cognitive and emotional biases affecting casualty care providers. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Retrospective study, level IV.

Top-Down Processes Override Bottom-Up Interference in the Flanker Task.

Distractor interference in the flanker task is commonly viewed as an outcome of unintentional, involuntary processing, a by-product of attention-controlled processing of the target. An important implication of this notion is that the distractors are not subjected to top-down processing of their own. We tested this idea in a modified version of the flanker task, in which letter targets (S or O) were sometimes flanked by ambiguous distractors (a character that could be S or 5 or one that could be O or 0). Distractor interference was dependent on participants' expectations regarding the category of the distractors (i.e., letters or digits). For example, the O-0 distractor interfered with responding to S when it was perceived as a letter, but not when it was perceived as a digit. Hence, participants applied top-down processing to the peripheral distractors independently of the top-down processing applied to the targets. The fact that to-be-ignored peripheral distractors were processed to such a high level raises questions regarding the fundamental differences between target and distractor processing, and the quality of attentional filtering.