David Irwin | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (original) (raw)

Papers by David Irwin

Visible persistence refers to the phenomenal impression that a stimulus is still present after it... more Visible persistence refers to the phenomenal impression that a stimulus is still present after its offset. A dispute exists whether visible persistence is due to temporal sluggishness in the visual pathway (neural hypothesis) or whether it is a byproduct of information-extraction processes under cognitive control (process hypothesis). This was investigated by manipulating stimulus complexity in five temporal integration experiments and one recognition memory experiment. According to the process hypothesis, complex stimuli should persist longer than simple stimuli because they require more information extraction. This prediction was not confirmed; in all six experiments, complexity was found to have no reliable effect on the duration of visible persistence. By contrast, and in accordance with earlier findings, complexity was shown to have a significant effect on a short-lived, nonvisible form of memory known as schematic persistence. This pattern of results supports two major conclusions: First, that the effects of complexity reported in earlier research were probably on schematic—rather than visible—persistence; and second, that visible persistence must be regarded as a residual neural trace of an extinguished stimulus, rather than as a byproduct of information-extraction processes.

Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, Jan 1, 1986

The traditional view of iconic memory as a precategorical, high-capacity, quickly decaying visibl... more The traditional view of iconic memory as a precategorical, high-capacity, quickly decaying visible memory has recently come under attack (e.g., Coltheart, 1980). Specifically, distinctions have been drawn between visible persistence, or the phenomenal trace of an extinguished stimulus, and informational persistence, knowledge about the visual properties of the stimulus. In the present research we tested two alternative conceptions of informational persistence. One conception is that visual information persists in a visual memory that begins at stimulus offset and lasts for 150-300 ms, independently of exposure duration. The second is that informational persistence arises from a nonvisual memory that contains spatial coordinates for displayed items along with identity codes for those items. Three experiments were conducted in which 3 X 3 letter arrays were presented for durations ranging from 50 to 500 ms. A single character mask presented at varying intervals after array offset cued report of an entire row of the array. Comparison of the cued row's masked and unmasked letters revealed that spatially-specific visual (i.e., maskable) information persisted after stimulus offset, regardless of exposure duration. This result favors the visual conception of informational persistence. But there was also support for the nonvisual conception: Accuracy increased and item intrusion errors decreased as stimulus duration increased. The implications of these results for models of informational persistence and for transsaccadic integration during reading are discussed.

Biological Psychology, 1988

Mental chronometry, in which conclusions about human information processing are reached through m... more Mental chronometry, in which conclusions about human information processing are reached through measures of subjects' reaction time, has contributed substantially to studies of cognition and action. During the evolution of the chronometric paradigm, several key issues have emerged. The issues concern (a) the existence of separable processing stages, (b) the degree to which various stages of processing produce partial outputs before they are completed, and (c) the discrete versus continuous form of the outputs. To obtain added temporal resolution, new reaction-time procedures have been developed, including special response-priming and speed-accuracy decomposition techniques that focus on quantitative patterns of reaction-time distributions and error rates. The present article summarizes these developments, starting with a historical review of chronometric research and proceeding to a survey of recent empirical and theoretical innovations. We also discuss the relevance and potential future impact of complementary work by cognitive psychophysiologists on event-related brain potentials and other physiological variables.

Psychological Review, 1988

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2002

Using a temporal integration task, subjects in 5 experiments were expected to combine information... more Using a temporal integration task, subjects in 5 experiments were expected to combine information from temporally separated visual presentations. Evidence from these experiments indicated that perceptual information can be integrated with previously generated and currently maintained visual images to form a representation that contains information from each source. Properties and limitations of this integration process were also explored, including the time required to generated the image, the speed at which percepts were integrated with images, and the capacity of the representation. Implications for theories of visual processing and memory are discussed.

Psychological Science, 1998

Observers make rapid eye movements to examine the world around them. Before an eye movement is ma... more Observers make rapid eye movements to examine the world around them. Before an eye movement is made, attention is covertly shifted to the location of the object of interest. The eyes typically will land at the position at which attention is directed. Here we report that a goal-directed eye movement toward a uniquely colored object is disrupted by the appearance of a new but task-irrelevant object, unless subjects have a sufficient amount of time to focus their attention on the location of the target prior to the appearance of the new object. In many instances, the eyes started moving toward the new object before gaze started to shift to the color-singleton target. The eyes often landed for a very short period of time (25-150 ms) near the new object. The results suggest parallel programming of two saccades: one voluntary, goal-directed eye movement toward the colorsingleton target and one stimulus-driven eye movement reflexively elicited by the appearance of the new object. Neuroanatomical structures responsible for parallel programming of saccades are discussed.

Perception & Psychophysics, 2007

Advances in Psychology, 2001

Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2004

Visual Memory, 2008

Page 19. Chapter 2 Visual Sensory Memory David E. Irwin and Laura E. Thomas University of Illinoi... more Page 19. Chapter 2 Visual Sensory Memory David E. Irwin and Laura E. Thomas University of Illinois 2.1 PHENOMENOLOGY OF VISUAL PERSISTENCE Visual stimuli remain visible for some time after their physical offset. This ...

Science, 1983

APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1988

The visual world appears unified, stable, and continuous despite rapid changes in eye position. H... more The visual world appears unified, stable, and continuous despite rapid changes in eye position. How this is accomplished has puzzled psychologists for over a century. One possibility is that visual information from successive eye fixations is fused in memory according to environmental or spatiotopic coordinates. Evidence supporting this hypothesis was provided by Davidson, Fox, and Dick (1973). They presented a letter array in one fixation and a mask at one letter position in a subsequent fixation and found that the mask inhibited report of the letter that shared its retinal coordinates but appeared to occupy the same position as the letter that shared its spatial coordinates. This suggests the existence of a retinotopic visual persistence at which transsaccadic masking occurs and a spatiotopic visual persistence at which transsaccadic integration, or fusion, occurs. Using a similar procedure, we found retinotopic masking and retinotopic integration: The mask interfered with the letter that shared its retinal coordinates, but also appeared to cover that letter. In another experiment, instead of a mask we presented a bar marker over one letter position, and subjects reported the letter that appeared underneath the bar; subjects usually reported the letter with the same retinal coordinates as the bar, again suggesting retinotopic rather than spatiotopic integration across saccades. In Experiment 3 a bar marker was again presented over one letter position, but in addition a visual landmark was presented after the saccade so that subjects could localize the bar's spatial position; subjects still reported that the letter that shared the bar's retinal coordinates appeared to be under it, but they were also able to accurately specify the bar's spatial position. This ability could have been based on retinal information (the visual landmark) present in the second fixation only, however, rather than spatiotopic visual persistence. Because such a visual landmark was present in the Davidson et al. (1973) experiments, we conclude that their findings can be explained solely in retinotopic terms and provide no convincing evidence for spatiotopic visual persistence. But the exposure parameters that Davidson et al. (1973) and we used were biased in favor of retinotopic, rather than spatiotopic, coding: The stimuli were presented very briefly just before a saccadic eye movement, and subjects are poor at spatially localizing stimuli under these conditions. Thus, in Experiment 4 we presented the letter array about 200 ms before the saccade; then, subjects reported that the letter with the same spatial coordinates as the bar appeared under it.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Journal of Experimental Psychology-learning Memory and Cognition, 1995

Page 1. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1995, Vol. 21, No. 6,... more Page 1. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1995, Vol. 21, No. 6,1441-1458 Copyright 1995 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0278-7393/95/S3.00 Memory for Structural Information Across Eye Movements ...

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2003

Temporal integration is a process by which two serially presented visual stimuli are mentally int... more Temporal integration is a process by which two serially presented visual stimuli are mentally integrated to form a composite representation. In the present research, we explored how spatial selective attention is used during the delay separating stimuli, in order to determine the contents of spatial working memory in this task. A two-task situation was created. On the primary task, two

Journal of Experimental Psychology-learning Memory and Cognition, 1992

Page 1. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1992, Vol. 18, No. 2,... more Page 1. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1992, Vol. 18, No. 2, 307-317 Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0278-7393/92/S3.00 Memory for Position and Identity Across Eye Movements ...

Journal of Memory and Language, 1994

... point. After some probe delay, the partial report cue was presented, and the subject attempte... more ... point. After some probe delay, the partial report cue was presented, and the subject attempted to report the identity of the cued letter. An array of 10 letters (2 rows of 5), rather than 6, was used to avoid potential ceiling effects. To ...