Exploring the power and the politics of the glass-framed gaze, this thesis addresses interconnections between capitalism, voyeurism, and surveillance in American literature. Existing studies of the relationship between glass and capitalism, such as Bowlby's Just Looking, focus on explicitly commodity contexts. My research extends such analyses of the commercial gaze to reflect upon sexual and criminal contexts. Transparent and reflective, glass both proffers and withholds what it displays, magnifying both desirous and destructive passions. It presents a unified image of the viewer and the viewed, potentially assimilating and objectifying to enhance self-image. Working through a series of representations. I explore the "mirroring effects" of windows. lenses and spectacles. How, for example. do Holgraves daguerreotypes inform perceptions of past and present Pyncheons? What is the significance of Dr T. Ecklebergs gargantuan spectacles, and how might they frame Gatsby as the 'advertisement of the man") How do Marlowes musings on the 'oriental junk' in the window of a seedy bookstore reflect upon his own sexuality') ( suggest that, collectively. the various representations of windows, lenses and spectacles comprise a metaphorical "hall of mirrors", transfiguring the identities of both viewer and viewed Intensifying the gaze. these forms of glass art' both causes of and remedies to visionary distortion. They figure sight as potentially flawed and correctable, not only commodifying the objects they display. but also becoming commodities in themselves. Drawing upon critical insights provided by Marx, Lacan. and Debord, this thesis inter-relates the perspectives of the consumer, the photographer. and the detective. It traces the development of the consumer gaze in the US, examining the reciprocal complex of mediated presentations and receptions 10 show, literally, how Americans have envisioned themselves through glass.

This thesis reports six experiments that examine the influence of complex distractors in the Remote Distractor Paradigm. Experiment 1 examined whether linguistic distractors modulated the RDE in any systematic way under bilateral target presentation. This was found not to be the case, but all types of linguistic distractors produced prolonged saccades for central versus peripheral distractor location. Non-linguistic distractors produced equivalent saccade onset latencies for central and peripheral presentation and these were significantly shorter than those produced for all types of linguistic distractors. This unexpected finding was investigated in Experiment 2, which showed that repeated presentation of a distractor resulted in shorter saccade latencies at central presentation, compared to those distractors that changed on every trial. This was termed the 'constancy' effect. Experiments 3 and 4 employed only repeated non-linguistic distractors under different target presentation conditions. Under bilateral target presentation peripheral distractors produced longer saccade latencies and greater RDE magnitudes compared to central distractors. Under unilateral target presentation RDE magnitudes for peripheral distractors were of a similar order to those produced by Walker et al, (1997). This replicated for linguistic and non-linguistic distractors, and for repeated and changing distractors in Experiment 5. Thus repeated distractors result in shorter saccade onset latencies compared to changing distractors at central presentation, and RDE magnitudes of a similar order to those obtained for central and peripheral distractors in the Walker et al., (1997) study only occur under unilateral target presentation, hi Experiment 6 a difference was obtained between two different types of linguistic distractors for saccade onset latencies and RDE magnitudes at an intermediate dish-actor location, and the 'constancy' effect was reproduced for same category repeated and changing distractors. Taken together the findings show that saccade onset latencies and RDE magnitudes can, under some circumstances be modulated by higher-level cognitive factors.

This thesis examines object-guided actions. Recently, micro-affordance effects have shown that a visual object affords actions automatically. These effects are observed when the grasp type (precision and power grasp) is facilitated by size (small and large) of the categorized object (the object-size effect), or when right or left hand responses are facilitated by object orientation (the object-orientation effect). It has been shown elsewhere that attentional mechanisms have a vital role in visually guided movements. In addition, visually guided movements have associated with hemispheric lateralization. Thus, the central focus of the thesis was the role of different components of attention (location-based-, object-based-, endogenous-, exogenous-, focused attention) in micro-affordance effects, and the hemispheric lateralisation of these effects. Using the stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) paradigm, a set of nine experiments (six that employed the object-orientation effect and three that employed the object-size effect) investigated aspects of attention and lateralization in visuomotor integration. A participant performed bi-manual keypresses or precision/power grip responses according to the identity of a target that was displayed over the task-irrelevant prime. Size or orientation properties of the prime object were manipulated, and outcome of interest was how those object properties effected corresponding or non-corresponding responses. The data showed that both micro-affordance effects could be observed when the allocation of endogenous attention to the prime is minimal or absent. However, the generation of both effects were observed to need resources of focused attention. In addition, the data supported the view that the object-orientation effect is generated by the orientation of the entire object and not by a shift of attention to the object’s handle location. Finally, manual asymmetries in these effects suggested that visually guided precision grips are computed predominantly in the left hemisphere whereas power grips are computed in the right hemisphere.

No description available.

The thesis examines how spatial expectations affect endogenous attention using visual psychophysics and information theoretic models. We consider three main questions (1) how probabilistic cues affect response latencies and discrimination accuracy and whether these effects exhibit the behavioural hallmarks of decision under risk. (2) Whether there are limitations to how spatial attention is distributed across multiple locations. We consider specifically the role of working memory capacity in setting these limitations when attending multiple locations. (3) Finally we investigate whether the reliability of endogenous, attentional cues can be learned. We carried out a number of experiments using central endogenous cues indicating one or more locations. Each location contained a random dot kinematogram (RDK) but only one RDK contained coherent motion. Experiment 2 was a simple reaction time task requiring a simple, speeded response to the appearance of supra-threshold expanding coherent motion. Experiment 6 employed a fine motion discrimination task. In all other experiments, a coarse discrimination task was used. Experiments 1 and 2 used probabilistic cues, ranging from a non-informative 25% to a highly informative 86% reliability, in a motion discrimination accuracy task and a motion detection reaction time task, respectively. We found that cue reliability modulated the size of the validity effect for both accuracy and reaction times. However, a two-process model was consistent with a probability matching strategy in the motion discrimination task but an under-matching strategy in the speeded task. Experiments 3-5 compared motion discrimination performance following probabilistic one location cues and multiple location cues, which provided the same amount of spatial information. With four RDKs performance was very similar for single and multiple location cues. We concluded that attention could be flexibly distributed over multiple locations with no costs or limitations. However, when six RDKs were used, motion discrimination accuracy was lower following cues indicating multiple locations than information matched, one location probabilistic cues, suggesting that limitations in distributing spatial attention do occur with more locations. When participants were required, in the same block of trails, to either recall the cued locations or discriminate motion at the cued locations, their recall of the cue locations was worse than blocks when they were only required to recall the cued locations. We conclude that attention to the cued locations interferes with spatial working memory of those same locations. Experiment 6 used a probabilistic cue, whose reliability was not explicitly communicated to the participants and which changed several times across an experimental session. We find that only some of the participants showed behavioural evidence that they had learned changes in cue reliability. In those participants, who showed evidence oflearning, learning took place over sequences greater than four trials.

No description available.

The experiments in this thesis were designed to examine the consequences of endogenous and exogenous spatial cueing in a dual-task set-up. The first experiments, presented in Chapters 2 and 3, explored whether spatial attention generalises across dimensions in the same location. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 contain a second series of experiments using exogenous cues, in which cue properties were manipulated. A dual-task set-up was used in all studies in this thesis, with a display of four random dot kinematograms containing motion and colour features. In order to examine whether endogenous attention may be spatially oriented to only one feature dimension, a central cue was presented that was 70% valid for the location of only one task. Both tasks showed validity effects, but the task for which the cue was informative showed larger attentional modulation. This suggests that spatial attention is not a single 'spotlight' but can be biased in favour of expected features. There was also asymmetry in the tasks, whereby the validity effect was modulated for motion, but comparable for colour regardless of the task for which the cue was informative. This asymmetry was also evident when using uninformative exogenous cues preceding the same tasks. Peripheral luminance and colour cues affected the validity effects for the motion and colour tasks differently, suggesting that the relationship between cue properties and proceeding stimuli modulates attentional effects. The size of a frame cue leads to different attentional effects on tasks of different sizes. These experiments make a considerable contribution to the spatial attention literature, by showing that spatial attention may be biased either by cue properties or cue information, suggesting that spatial attention and feature-based attention may interact. They also provide further evidence that motion is better represented than colour in visual attention.

This thesis explores a current dominant theory of attention - the load theory of selective attention and cognitive control (Lavie et al., 2004). Load theory has been posited as a potential resolution to the long-running debate over the locus of selection in attention. Numerous studies confirm that high visual perceptual load in a relevant task leads to reduced interference from task-relevant distractors; whereas high working memory load leads to increased interference from task-irrelevant distractors in a relevant task. However, very few studies have directly tested perceptual and working memory load effects on the processing of task-relevant stimuli, and even fewer studies have tested the impact of load on processing both within and between different sensory modalities. This thesis details several novel experiments that test both visual and auditory perceptual and working memory load effects on task-relevant change detection in a change-blindness “flicker” task. Results indicate that both high visual and auditory perceptual load can impact on change detection, which implies that the perceptual load model can account for load effects on change detection, both within and between different sensory modalities. Results also indicate that high visual working memory load can impact on change detection. By contrast, high auditory working memory load did not appear to impact change detection. These findings do not directly challenge load theory per-se, but instead highlight how working memory load can have markedly different effects in different experimental paradigms. The final part of this thesis explores whether high perceptual load can attenuate distraction from highly emotionally salient stimuli. The findings suggest that potent emotional stimuli can “breakthrough” and override the effects of high perceptual load - a result that presents a challenge to load theory. All findings are discussed with reference to new challenges to load theory, particularly the “dilution” argument.

No description available.

Sounds are often experienced as being spatially higher or lower in congruence with their frequency ‘height’ (i.e. pitch register). The term ‘spectral spatiality’ refers to this impression of spatial height and vertical depth as evoked by the perceived occupancy of evolving sound-shapes (spectromorphologies) within the continuum of audible frequencies. Chapters One and Two draw upon a diverse body of literature to explore the cognitive and physiological processes involved in human spatial hearing in general, and spectral spatiality in particular. Thereafter the potential pertinence of a spectral space consciousness in the acousmatic listening experience is highlighted, particularly with regard to more abstract acousmatic contexts where sounds do not directly invoke familiar source identities. Chapters Three and Four further elaborate aspects of spectral space consciousness and propose a terminological framework for discussing musical contexts in terms of their spectral space design. Consequently, it is argued that in acousmatic music, spectral spatiality must be considered as an inseparable aspect of spatiality in general, although its pertinence only becomes directly highlighted in particular musical contexts. The recurring theme in this thesis is that, in acousmatic music, 'space' is not a parameter but a multifaceted quality that is inherent to all sounds. As well as providing an analytical framework for discussing spatiality in acousmatic music, this thesis highlights the compositional potentials offered by spectral spatiality, particularly in relation to the creation of perspectival image in multichannel works. For instance, the possibility of (re)distributing the spectral components of a sound around the listener (circumspectral image) is discussed in context, and a software tool is presented that enables an intuitive and experimental approach to the composition of circumspectral sounds for 6 and 8 channel loudspeaker configurations. This thesis is useful for both composers and analysts interested in aspects of spatiality in acousmatic music. It also offers some insight into spectral space consciousness in non-acousmatic music, and may therefore contribute towards a more general understanding of the nature of our spatial experience in music.