Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2021"
TL;DR: This paper investigated differences in the dynamics of retrieval in value-directed remembering tasks with younger adults under full and divided attention during encoding as well as in older adults and found that older adults were able to maximise retrieval operations despite displaying impairments in temporal binding during encoding and an overall recall deficit.
Abstract: For memory to be efficient, people need to remember important information. This involves selective encoding and retrieval operations to maximise the recall of valuable information at the expense of less important information. While past research has examined this in terms of strategic encoding operations, we investigated differences in the dynamics of retrieval in value-directed remembering tasks with younger adults under full and divided attention during encoding as well as in older adults. Participants typically initiated recall with the first presented, last presented, or highest valued words and also strategically organised retrieval according to information value such that high-value words tended to be recalled before low-value words. However, the average value of older adults' first recalled word was greater than that of younger adults, likely contributing to their enhanced selectivity. In addition, there were no differences in lag-conditional-response probabilities in younger adults under full or divided attention, but older adults showed impairments in the retrieval of items sharing contextual features with nearby items, while younger adults relied more on temporal-contextual cues to recall words. Together, this study suggests that both strategic encoding and strategic retrieval operations contribute to selectivity for valuable information and older adults may be able to maximise retrieval operations despite displaying impairments in temporal binding during encoding and an overall recall deficit.
25 citations
TL;DR: The regularity of musical beat makes it a powerful stimulus promoting movement synchrony among people as discussed by the authors, which can increase interpersonal trust, affiliation, and cooperation in a group of people.
Abstract: The regularity of musical beat makes it a powerful stimulus promoting movement synchrony among people. Synchrony can increase interpersonal trust, affiliation, and cooperation. Musical pieces can b...
20 citations
TL;DR: The immersive virtual reality paradigm may induce profound changes of cross-sex perspective-taking and provide novel tools for promoting empathy and comprehension of sex-related diversity and may have important implications on people's attitudes and implicit reactivity to touch-mediated interactions.
Abstract: Immersive virtual reality enables people to undergo the experience of owning an artificial body and vicariously feeling tactile stimuli delivered to it. However, it is currently unknown how such ex...
19 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that misinterpretation effects do not indicate parsing errors and therefore cannot serve as evidence for non-algorithmic processing, and models of the HPM that assume algorithmic processing only are supported.
Abstract: This article addresses the question of whether the human parsing mechanism (HPM) derives sentence meaning always from representations that are computed algorithmically or whether the HPM sometimes ...
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the relationship between cognitive offloading and subsequent memory for the offloaded information as well as the interplay of this relationship with the goal to acquire new memory representations.
Abstract: Modern technical tools such as tablets allow for the temporal externalisation of working memory processes (i.e., cognitive offloading). Although such externalisations support immediate performance on different tasks, little is known about potential long-term consequences of offloading behaviour. In the current set of experiments, we studied the relationship between cognitive offloading and subsequent memory for the offloaded information as well as the interplay of this relationship with the goal to acquire new memory representations. Our participants solved the Pattern Copy Task, in which we manipulated the costs of cognitive offloading and the awareness of a subsequent memory test. In Experiment 1 (N = 172), we showed that increasing the costs for offloading induces reduced offloading behaviour. This reduction in offloading came along with lower immediate task performance but more accurate memory in an unexpected test. In Experiment 2 (N = 172), we confirmed these findings and observed that offloading behaviour remained detrimental for subsequent memory performance when participants were aware of the upcoming memory test. Interestingly, Experiment 3 (N = 172) showed that cognitive offloading is not detrimental for long-term memory formation under all circumstances. Those participants who were forced to offload maximally but were aware of the memory test could almost completely counteract the negative impact of offloading on memory. Our experiments highlight the importance of the explicit goal to acquire new memory representations when relying on technical tools as offloading did have detrimental effects on memory without such a goal.
17 citations
TL;DR: Findings demonstrate that, although older adults have poorer visual working memory overall, the ability to strategically direct attention to more valuable items in working memory is preserved across ageing.
Abstract: Visual working memory for features and bindings is susceptible to age-related decline. Two experiments were used to examine whether older adults are able to strategically prioritise more valuable i...
13 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that mental imagery can play a role in gesture production, as the younger adults used relatively higher proportions of representational gestures than the older adults only in the address description task.
Abstract: Ageing has effects both on language and gestural communication skills. Although gesture use is similar between younger and older adults, the use of representational gestures (e.g., drawing a line w...
12 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that men have an advantage in concurrent multitasking, which may be a result of the individual differences in cognitive abilities.
Abstract: There is a widespread stereotype that women are better at multitasking. Previous studies examining gender difference in multitasking used either a concurrent or sequential multitasking paradigm and offered mixed results. This study examined a possibility that men were better at concurrent multitasking while women were better at task switching. In addition, men and women were also compared in terms of multitasking experience, measured by a computer monitoring software, a self-reported Media Use Questionnaire, a laboratory task-switching paradigm, and a self-reported Multitasking Prevalence Inventory. Results showed a smaller concurrent multitasking (dual-task) cost for men than women and no gender difference in sequential multitasking (task-switching) cost. Men had more experience in multitasking involving video games while women were more experienced in multitasking involving music, instant messaging, and web surfing. The gender difference in dual-task performance, however, was not mediated by the gender differences in multitasking experience but completely explained by difference in the processing speed. The findings suggest that men have an advantage in concurrent multitasking, which may be a result of the individual differences in cognitive abilities.
11 citations
TL;DR: Theory of mind (ToM) is an essential ability for social competence and communication, and it is necessary for understanding behaviours that differ from our own as discussed by the authors. But it is not a sufficient ability for bilingual children.
Abstract: Theory of mind (ToM) is an essential ability for social competence and communication, and it is necessary for understanding behaviours that differ from our own. Research on bilingual children has r...
10 citations
TL;DR: Two experiments further test the mechanisms found in NST—priming, activation, and satiation—as an account of the speech to song illusion and demonstrate that once lexical nodes are satiated the higher level semantic information associated with the word cannot differentially influence song-like ratings to lists of words varying in emotional arousal.
Abstract: In the speech to song illusion, a spoken phrase begins to sound as if it is being sung after several repetitions. Castro et al. (2018) used Node Structure Theory (NST; MacKay, 1987), a model of speech perception and production, to explain how the illusion occurs. Two experiments further test the mechanisms found in NST-priming, activation, and satiation-as an account of the speech to song illusion. In Experiment 1, words varying in the phonological clustering coefficient influenced how quickly a lexical node could recover from satiation, thereby influencing the song-like ratings to lists of words that were high versus low in phonological clustering coefficient. In Experiment 2, we used equivalence testing (i.e., the TOST procedure) to demonstrate that once lexical nodes are satiated the higher level semantic information associated with the word cannot differentially influence song-like ratings to lists of words varying in emotional arousal. The results of these two experiments further support the NST account of the speech to song illusion.
10 citations
TL;DR: In social contexts, people experience a "vicarious" sense of agency over other humans' actions; however, the phenomenology of the so-called "feeling of agency" is not well understood as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one’s actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a “vicarious” SoA over other humans’ actions; however, the phenomeno...
TL;DR: A dynamic aspect of language-processing system shows a selective adaptation to morphosyntactic violations and little evidence was found in favour of adaptation to semantic violations in that the processing cost associated with the N400 did not decrease over the course of the experiment.
Abstract: In this study, two event-related potential experiments were conducted to investigate whether readers adapt their expectations to morphosyntactically (Experiment 1) or semantically (Experiment 2) anomalous sentences when they are repeatedly exposed to them. To address this issue, we experimentally manipulated the probability of occurrence of grammatical sentences and syntactically and semantically anomalous sentences through experiments. For the low probability block, anomalous sentences were presented less frequently than grammatical sentences (with a ratio of 1 to 4), while they were presented as frequently as grammatical sentences in the equal probability block. Experiment 1 revealed a smaller P600 effect for morphosyntactic violations in the equal probability block than in the low probability block. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine how the size of the P600 effect changed as the experiment went along. The results showed that the smaller P600 effect of the equal probability block resulted from an amplitude's decline in morphosyntactically violated sentences over the course of the experiment, suggesting an adaptation to morphosyntactic violations. In Experiment 2, semantically anomalous sentences elicited a larger N400 effect than their semantically natural counterparts regardless of probability manipulation. Little evidence was found in favour of adaptation to semantic violations in that the processing cost associated with the N400 did not decrease over the course of the experiment. Therefore, a dynamic aspect of language-processing system was demonstrated in this study. We will discuss why the language-processing system shows a selective adaptation to morphosyntactic violations.
TL;DR: One of the most replicated effects in the contemporary word recognition literature is the transposed-letter effect (TL effect), pseudowords created by the transposition of two letters (e.g., MOHTER) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: One of the most replicated effects in the contemporary word recognition literature is the transposed-letter effect (TL effect): pseudowords created by the transposition of two letters (e.g., MOHTER...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assessed the relationship between perception-based threat assessment and behaviour-based threats and found that perceived threat became a poor predictor for threat response relative to the omnibus test.
Abstract: Deciding when to use lethal force inherently depends on assessing threat, a process that itself incorporates numerous perceptual factors. This study assessed this relationship between perception-based threat assessment and behaviour-based threat response. Specifically, participants completed multiple tasks designed to elicit either a threat rating (e.g., perception-informed threat assessment) or a binary behavioural response (e.g., shoot/don't-shoot). Actor posture and weapon presence significantly affected the threat assessment, which was an extremely powerful omnibus predictor of threat response. However, for ambiguous threat stimuli, perceived threat became a poor predictor for threat response relative to the omnibus test. Participants appeared to adopt additional rules to inform behaviour independent of the threat assessment when faced with an ambiguous situation. These results demonstrate an intriguing disparity between subjective threat assessment and the behavioural response to use force that does not apply well to ambiguous cases or adequately explain errors in lethal force decisions.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others, and that this can be interpreted as a sign that humans are capable of understanding the visual perspective of others.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In this study, w...
TL;DR: Analysis of response times, accuracies, and signal detection theoretic measures showed that information about mother is processed as well as self in experiment 1A, but this effect is not present with friend in Experiment 1B, indicating that self-information processing is dynamically dependent on the categorical contexts in which such processing takes place.
Abstract: Information associated with the self is preferentially processed compared to information associated with others. However, cultural differences appear to exist in the way information is processed ab...
TL;DR: Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human qualities to non-human objects, is believed to be a natural tendency which may serve several adaptive functions as discussed by the authors, and one possibility is that anthropomorphism pr...
Abstract: Anthropomorphism—the attribution of human qualities to non-human objects—is believed to be a natural tendency which may serve several adaptive functions. One possibility is that anthropomorphism pr...
TL;DR: A within-individual comparison revealed that auditory and visual attention are similar in terms of the false alarm rate and dynamic properties including fluctuation frequency, and suggest that fluctuations of visual and auditory attention are underpinned by common principles and support models with a more central, modality-general controller.
Abstract: Sustained attention plays an important role in adaptive behaviours in everyday activities. As previous studies have mostly focused on vision, and attentional resources have been thought to be specific to sensory modalities, it is still unclear how mechanisms of attentional fluctuations overlap between visual and auditory modalities. To reduce the effects of sudden stimulus onsets, we developed a new gradual-onset continuous performance task (gradCPT) in the auditory domain and compared dynamic fluctuation of sustained attention in vision and audition. In the auditory gradCPT, participants were instructed to listen to a stream of narrations and judge the gender of each narration. In the visual gradCPT, they were asked to observe a stream of scenery images and indicate whether the scene was a city or mountain. Our within-individual comparison revealed that auditory and visual attention are similar in terms of the false alarm rate and dynamic properties including fluctuation frequency. Absolute timescales of the fluctuation in the two modalities were comparable, notwithstanding the difference in stimulus onset asynchrony. The results suggest that fluctuations of visual and auditory attention are underpinned by common principles and support models with a more central, modality-general controller.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe word recognition as a compressive task across two sensory modalities: auditory (spoken words) and visual (written words) while each faces different challenges.
Abstract: Word recognition occurs across two sensory modalities: auditory (spoken words) and visual (written words). While each faces different challenges, they are often described in similar terms as a comp...
TL;DR: Whether social anxiety modulates gaze-cueing effects for angry, fearful, and neutral expressions is examined, while controlling for other individual-differences variables that may modulate gaze cueing: trait anxiety, depression, and autistic-like traits.
Abstract: Gaze direction is a powerful social cue, and there is considerable evidence that we preferentially direct our attentional resources to gaze-congruent locations. While a number of individual differe...
TL;DR: The authors showed that acute aerobic exercise may, potentially, enhance episodic memory function post-exercise, but limited research has evaluated whether acute resista attenuated the effect of acute resistance.
Abstract: Accumulating research provides suggestive evidence that acute aerobic exercise may, potentially, enhance episodic memory function post-exercise Limited research has evaluated whether acute resista
TL;DR: The findings illustrate the complex relationship between emotion recognition and veracity judgements, with abilities for facial cue detection being high yet unrelated to deception accuracy.
Abstract: People hold strong beliefs about the role of emotional cues in detecting deception. While research on the diagnostic value of such cues has been mixed, their influence on human veracity judgements is yet to be fully explored. Here, we address the relationship between emotional information and veracity judgements. In Study 1, the role of emotion recognition in the process of detecting naturalistic lies was investigated. Decoders' veracity judgements were compared based on differences in trait empathy and their ability to recognise microexpressions and subtle expressions. Accuracy was found to be unrelated to facial cue recognition and negatively related to empathy. In Study 2, we manipulated decoders' emotion recognition ability and the type of lies they saw: experiential or affective (emotional and unemotional). Decoders received either emotion recognition training, bogus training, or no training. In all scenarios, training did not affect veracity judgements. Experiential lies were easier to detect than affective lies; however, affective unemotional lies were overall the hardest to judge. The findings illustrate the complex relationship between emotion recognition and veracity judgements, with abilities for facial cue detection being high yet unrelated to deception accuracy.
TL;DR: Compared to concrete concepts, like book, abstract concepts expressed by words like "justice" are more detached from sensorial experiences, even though they are also grounded in sensorial modalit...
Abstract: Compared to concrete concepts, like “book,” abstract concepts expressed by words like “justice” are more detached from sensorial experiences, even though they are also grounded in sensorial modalit...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how inhibitory control impacts shoot/don't decisions using realistic simulations to better translate the findings to military and law enforcement settings, using multiple cognitive control tasks incorporating discrete judgements in go/no-go and stop signal tasks.
Abstract: Previous work has demonstrated a link between cognitive abilities, specifically inhibitory control and lethal force decision-making performance. However, many previously used approaches to simulating shoot/don't shoot scenarios have lacked ecological validity. There is a need to investigate how inhibitory control impacts shoot/don't decisions using realistic simulations to better translate the findings to military and law enforcement settings. This study used multiple cognitive control tasks incorporating discrete judgements in go/no-go and stop signal tasks as well as subjective judgements in go/no-go tasks with both colour stimuli and emotional faces. These combined tasks provided a comprehensive evaluation of inhibitory control abilities. To ensure ecological validity in shooting performance, existing military training scenarios incorporated realistic weaponry and aiming behaviours across different shoot/don't-shoot simulations. The inhibitory control battery identified five principal components from the various tasks, including: stopping ability, response speed, emotion detection, colour detection, and emotional biases. These principal inhibitory control components were entered into hierarchical linear regressions with the dependent variables of unintended casualties inflicted and lethal rounds fired, respectively. Stopping ability better predicted the likelihood of inflicting an unintended casualty, whereas response speed better predicted the number of lethal rounds fired. These regression models included baseline metrics of marksmanship and shots fired, which supports a role for inhibitory control above and beyond basic shooting abilities or strategy. These collective findings provide mechanistic support for the relationship between inhibitory control and errors in shoot/don't-shoot decision-making while using realistic military training scenarios.
TL;DR: It is suggested that the basic unit used in phonological encoding in Korean is different from Germanic languages such as English and Dutch and also from Japanese and possibly also Chinese.
Abstract: We investigated the “proximate unit” in Korean, that is, the initial phonological unit selected in speech production by Korean speakers. Previous studies have shown mixed evidence indicating either...
TL;DR: The authors compared affirmative and negative counterfactuals, "if she had not) arrived early, she would (not) have bought roses" and affirmative and negation-based causal assertions, "Because she arrived (did not arrive) early, he bought(did not buy) roses." They found that participants looked on screen at words corresponding to its conjecture ("roses"), and its presupposed facts ("no roses"), whereas for a causal assertion, they looked only at words correspond to the facts.
Abstract: Two eye-tracking experiments compared affirmative and negative counterfactuals, "if she had (not) arrived early, she would (not) have bought roses" and affirmative and negative causal assertions, "Because she arrived (did not arrive) early, she bought (did not buy) roses." When participants heard a counterfactual, they looked on screen at words corresponding to its conjecture ("roses"), and its presupposed facts ("no roses"), whereas for a causal assertion, they looked only at words corresponding to the facts. For counterfactuals, they looked at the conjecture first, and later the presupposed facts, and at the latter more than the former. The effect was more pronounced for negative counterfactuals than affirmative ones because the negative counterfactual's presupposed facts identify a specific item ("she bought roses"), whereas the affirmative counterfactual's presupposed facts do not ("she did not buy roses"). Hence, when participants were given a binary context, "she did not know whether to buy roses or carnations," they looked primarily at the presupposed facts for both sorts of counterfactuals. We discuss the implications for theories of negation, the dual meaning of counterfactuals, and their relation to causal assertions.
TL;DR: In this paper, a key prediction of motivational theories of automatic imitation is that people imitate in-group over out-group members, however, research on this topic has provided mixed results.
Abstract: A key prediction of motivational theories of automatic imitation is that people imitate in-group over out-group members. However, research on this topic has provided mixed results. Here, we investi...
TL;DR: In this paper, there has been an increase in research concerning individual differences in readers' eye movements, but this body of work is almost exclusively concerned with the reading of s....
Abstract: In recent years, there has been an increase in research concerning individual differences in readers’ eye movements. However, this body of work is almost exclusively concerned with the reading of s...
TL;DR: It is shown that language production (as used in reading aloud) can be used to facilitate prediction and whether prediction benefits from production only in particular contexts is considered.
Abstract: Language comprehension depends heavily upon prediction, but how predictions are generated remains poorly understood. Several recent theories propose that these predictions are in fact generated by ...
TL;DR: Cross-correlation results showed that the intensity of frisson was closely linked to the acoustic features of auditory stimuli, including their amplitude, spectral centroid, and spectral bandwidth, which suggests that proximal sounds with dark and compact timbre trigger frisson.
Abstract: Frisson is characterised by tingling and tickling sensations with positive or negative feelings. However, it is still unknown what factors affect the intensity of frisson. We conducted experiments ...