Steven B Most
Biographic Data
| ID | 5449294 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven B Most |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven B |
| FAMILY NAME | Most |
| SIGNATURE | MOST S B |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9458-9597 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Taking the path of least resistance now, but not later
Effort discounting describes the devaluation of rewards that require effort to obtain. The present study investigated whether discounting of cognitive effort depends on how near the effort is in time. The present study also investigated whether effort discounting, and its modulation by temporal distance to the effort, might depend on need for cognition , a personality trait that describes how much one enjoys cognitively demanding tasks. Participa…
Emotional stimuli similarly disrupt attention in both visual fields
People often need to filter relevant from irrelevant information. Irrelevant emotional distractors interrupt this process. But does the degree to which emotional distractors disrupt attention depend on which visual field they appear in? We thought it might for two reasons: (1) people pay slightly more attention to the left than the right visual field, and (2) some research suggests the right-hemisphere (which, in early visual processing, receives…
Gone for good
Emotionally negative stimuli are perceptually prioritized to such a degree that they can cause people to miss seeing subsequent targets that appear in front of their eyes. It is unclear whether this effect (known as emotion-induced blindness) reflects postperceptual interference, in which case unseen targets might still impact later responses, as in the seemingly similar "attentional blink". An alternative is that emotional distractors prevent ta…
On the relative sensitivity of spatial and nonspatial measures of attentional bias
Attentional biases toward negative information are implicated in various emotional disorders. The literature probing this relationship relies on assumptions that the tasks used to measure attentional biases are sensitive to the negative emotional qualities of stimuli; but are such assumptions justified? We assessed the degree to which two widely used tasks-the dot probe and emotion-induced blindness-displayed sensitivity to gradations in valence …
Cognition
Delayed disengagement of attention from distractors signalling reward
Failures of executive function when at a height
An elusive deficit
Emotional stimuli are typically prioritized in competition for attention in healthy individuals. In contrast, there is evidence that individuals high in psychopathic traits fail to similarly prioritize emotional stimuli. With aberrant attention to emotional stimuli implicated in the development and maintenance of other psychopathologies, attentional insensitivity to emotional stimuli may also be important in the callous-unemotional responding see…
Two roads diverged
Attentional biases to threatening stimuli have been implicated in various emotional disorders. Theoretical approaches often carry the implicit assumption that various attentional bias measures tap into the same underlying construct, but attention itself is not a unitary mechanism. Most attentional bias tasks-such as the dot probe (DP)-index spatial attention, neglecting other potential attention mechanisms. We compared the DP with emotion-induced…
Proactive deprioritization of emotional distractors enhances target perception
There are many situations in which it is important to focus on a task in the face of emotional distraction. Yet, emotional distractors can impair our ability to report items that appear soon after them, an effect known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). To what degree does it help to know about emotional distractors ahead of time? Can we deprioritize emotional distractors when forewarned that they will appear? To address this question, we tested…
Perceptual, not memorial, disruption underlies emotion-induced blindness
Emotion-induced blindness refers to impaired awareness of stimuli appearing in the temporal wake of an emotionally arousing stimulus (S. B. Most, Chun, Widders, & Zald, 2005). In previous emotion-induced blindness experiments, participants withheld target responses until the end of a rapid stream of stimuli, even though each target appeared in the middle of the stream. The resulting interval between the targets' offset and participants' initiatio…
What’s “inattentional” about inattentional blindness
Blind jealousy? Romantic insecurity increases emotion-induced failures of visual perception
Does the influence of close relationships pervade so deeply as to impact visual awareness? Results from two experiments involving heterosexual romantic couples suggest that they do. Female partners from each couple performed a rapid detection task where negative emotional distractors typically disrupt visual awareness of subsequent targets; at the same time, their male partners rated attractiveness first of landscapes, then of photos of other wom…
An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli
The current study examines whether aversively conditioned stimuli can modulate attention to such a degree that they impair the perception of subsequently presented nonemotional targets. In the initial phase of this study, participants viewed 3 categories of photographs, 1 of which was paired with an aversive noise. Following conditioning, participants searched for a target embedded within a series of 17 rapidly presented images on each trial. Cri…
Auditory Stroop reveals implicit gender associations in adults and children
What You See Is What You Set
This article reports a theoretical and experimental attempt to relate and contrast 2 traditionally separate research programs: inattentional blindness and attention capture. Inattentional blindness refers to failures to notice unexpected objects and events when attention is otherwise engaged. Attention capture research has traditionally used implicit indices (e.g., response times) to investigate automatic shifts of attention. Because attention ca…
What You See Is What You Set
This article reports a theoretical and experimental attempt to relate and contrast 2 traditionally separate research programs: inattentional blindness and attention capture. Inattentional blindness refers to failures to notice unexpected objects and events when attention is otherwise engaged. Attention capture research has traditionally used implicit indices (e.g., response times) to investigate automatic shifts of attention. Because attention ca…
An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli
The current study examines whether aversively conditioned stimuli can modulate attention to such a degree that they impair the perception of subsequently presented nonemotional targets. In the initial phase of this study, participants viewed 3 categories of photographs, 1 of which was paired with an aversive noise. Following conditioning, participants searched for a target embedded within a series of 17 rapidly presented images on each trial. Cri…
Auditory Stroop reveals implicit gender associations in adults and children
What’s “inattentional” about inattentional blindness
Blind jealousy? Romantic insecurity increases emotion-induced failures of visual perception
Does the influence of close relationships pervade so deeply as to impact visual awareness? Results from two experiments involving heterosexual romantic couples suggest that they do. Female partners from each couple performed a rapid detection task where negative emotional distractors typically disrupt visual awareness of subsequent targets; at the same time, their male partners rated attractiveness first of landscapes, then of photos of other wom…
Perceptual, not memorial, disruption underlies emotion-induced blindness
Emotion-induced blindness refers to impaired awareness of stimuli appearing in the temporal wake of an emotionally arousing stimulus (S. B. Most, Chun, Widders, & Zald, 2005). In previous emotion-induced blindness experiments, participants withheld target responses until the end of a rapid stream of stimuli, even though each target appeared in the middle of the stream. The resulting interval between the targets' offset and participants' initiatio…
Two roads diverged
Attentional biases to threatening stimuli have been implicated in various emotional disorders. Theoretical approaches often carry the implicit assumption that various attentional bias measures tap into the same underlying construct, but attention itself is not a unitary mechanism. Most attentional bias tasks-such as the dot probe (DP)-index spatial attention, neglecting other potential attention mechanisms. We compared the DP with emotion-induced…
Proactive deprioritization of emotional distractors enhances target perception
There are many situations in which it is important to focus on a task in the face of emotional distraction. Yet, emotional distractors can impair our ability to report items that appear soon after them, an effect known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). To what degree does it help to know about emotional distractors ahead of time? Can we deprioritize emotional distractors when forewarned that they will appear? To address this question, we tested…
An elusive deficit
Emotional stimuli are typically prioritized in competition for attention in healthy individuals. In contrast, there is evidence that individuals high in psychopathic traits fail to similarly prioritize emotional stimuli. With aberrant attention to emotional stimuli implicated in the development and maintenance of other psychopathologies, attentional insensitivity to emotional stimuli may also be important in the callous-unemotional responding see…
Delayed disengagement of attention from distractors signalling reward
Failures of executive function when at a height
On the relative sensitivity of spatial and nonspatial measures of attentional bias
Attentional biases toward negative information are implicated in various emotional disorders. The literature probing this relationship relies on assumptions that the tasks used to measure attentional biases are sensitive to the negative emotional qualities of stimuli; but are such assumptions justified? We assessed the degree to which two widely used tasks-the dot probe and emotion-induced blindness-displayed sensitivity to gradations in valence …
Cognition
Gone for good
Emotionally negative stimuli are perceptually prioritized to such a degree that they can cause people to miss seeing subsequent targets that appear in front of their eyes. It is unclear whether this effect (known as emotion-induced blindness) reflects postperceptual interference, in which case unseen targets might still impact later responses, as in the seemingly similar "attentional blink". An alternative is that emotional distractors prevent ta…
Taking the path of least resistance now, but not later
Effort discounting describes the devaluation of rewards that require effort to obtain. The present study investigated whether discounting of cognitive effort depends on how near the effort is in time. The present study also investigated whether effort discounting, and its modulation by temporal distance to the effort, might depend on need for cognition , a personality trait that describes how much one enjoys cognitively demanding tasks. Participa…
Emotional stimuli similarly disrupt attention in both visual fields
People often need to filter relevant from irrelevant information. Irrelevant emotional distractors interrupt this process. But does the degree to which emotional distractors disrupt attention depend on which visual field they appear in? We thought it might for two reasons: (1) people pay slightly more attention to the left than the right visual field, and (2) some research suggests the right-hemisphere (which, in early visual processing, receives…
Psychology (16 works) · Cognitive psychology (15 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (10 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Neuroscience (8 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works) · Perception (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Blindness (5 works) · Visual perception and processing mechanisms (5 works)