Paper 1: Anderson, B.A., Laurent, P.A., & Yantis, S. (2011): Value-driven attentional capture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 10367-10371.

Background: It is known that attention can be attracted automatically by salient stimuli, i.e., stimuli that have a high feature contrast (e.g., a red item among all-green items has a high colour contrast). It is also known that attention can be attracted by stimuli that are similar to sought-after stimuli. For instance, when looking for a woman in a red dress, attention is tuned to red, so that all red items can attract attention. As this mechanism is contingent on the goals (sought-after item), it is often contrasted with saliency capture, which is stimulus-driven. In the present paper, the authors argue that there is a 3^rd mechanism that can guide attention, which is contingent on reward.

Questions for Study 1:

1. a) 2 marks. How was reward operationalised in the study? And how did the authors test the effects of reward on attention/distraction? In describing how the authors tested the research question, include the main prediction. (200 words max).
2. b) 1 mark. Specify the design of Experiment 1 (as within, between, etc.). Depict the design of Experiment 1 with a design diagram. Include a legend. Remember that you need one design diagram for each DV.
3. c) 1 mark. Highlight in the design diagram(s), which DVs were correlated with other DVs in Experiment 1 by marking the respective DVs yellow. Briefly describe which of the DVs could be predicted by the predictors and which not (or which were not reported). In the descriptions, use the words ‘positively correlated’ and ‘negatively correlated’ (100 words max).
4. d) 2 marks. Provide design diagram(s) for the control experiment for Experiment 1, with a new legend. Briefly outline why the authors conducted the control experiment and computed the regression; i.e., what alternative explanation(s) the authors are trying to rule out with these results (100 words max).
5. e) 1 mark. Briefly state the aims of Experiment 2 and 3, and describe how their results strengthen the conclusions of the researchers (e.g., considering which alternative explanations of the results of Experiment 1 are ruled out by the results of Experiments 2 and 3). (100 words max).
6. f) 2 marks. What was the task for the participants in the training phase and test phase? And was it possible for participants to successfully complete these tasks by attending to a different feature than the ones they were instructed to attend to? If so, did this constitute a confound in the study, and if so, what type of confound? (150 words max).
7. g) 1 mark. Discuss whether the authors have provided the strongest possible evidence and backing for their claim that rewarding stimuli attract attention (e.g., state what you would regard as the most convincing result in this study and evaluate whether this was provided/fulfilled or not). (100 words max)

Paper 2: Koivisto, M., & Revensuo, A. (2007): How meaning shapes seeing. Psychological Science, 18, 845-849.

Questions for Study 2:

1. a) 1 mark. Specify the design (e.g., as within, between, etc.). Draw a design diagram of the study. Include both versions 1 and 2 of the experiment, but leave away the filler manipulation. Deviating from the design diagrams in previous lectures and tutorials, also include the number of participants with each IV in the design diagram (e.g., write N=XX next to each IV level). List all DVs in the legend, but draw only one design diagram (for one DV).
2. b) 1 mark. How was semantic congruence of the unexpected item operationalised, and why was the unexpected stimulus always a picture when participants attended to words and vice versa? Did this manipulation foster or impair construct validity, external validity, or internal validity? (100 words max)
3. c) 1.5 marks. Why did the authors include a filler condition, and would it have impaired construct validity, internal validity or external validity if they had failed to include that condition? (150 words max)
4. d) 1 mark. How many trials (per participant) were included in the analysis assessing the detection of unexpected stimuli, what was the scale of this DV, and what is the greatest danger of DVs that include only a few data points for the statistical analysis? (100 words max)
5. e) 1 mark. Describe the participants that were tested and discuss whether and to what extent the selection of participants may have impacted the external validity of the study. (100 words max)
6. f) 4.5 marks (0.5 for each confound). Assess the possibility that the confounds listed below played a part in the study, by (1) identifying where in the study this confound would have occurred, and (2) briefly estimating whether it is likely or unlikely that this particular confound played a role in the study. Below is an example for how you can solve this task. (100 words max per confound).

1) Differential Attrition: Differential Attrition would have been reflected in a high proportion of drop-outs in a subset of conditions. In the study, there were no drop-outs. Participants were excluded from all analyses when they could not name the word or stimulus in the full attention trial (n=11). It is not reported whether this selectively occurred in one condition, but it is unlikely that differential attrition was a confound, as this could not explain the main findings.

2) Person Variable Confound:

3) Testing Confound:

4) Sequencing Effects / Carryover:

5) Instrumentation Change:

6) Data Linkage:

7) Observer Expectancy/Bias:

8) Participant Expectancy/Demand Characteristics:

9) Experimenter Expectancy:

10) Differential Ceiling or Floor Compression: