Experimental psychology最新文献

Acute social stress has been shown to influence social decision-making. This study aimed to examine how social distance modulates the influence of acute social stress on young male moral decision-making. Sixty healthy male college students were randomly divided to be exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a placebo version of the TSST (P-TSST) before they performed moral decision-making tasks. The results showed that participants under acute social stress showed obvious increases in subjective stress perception, negative affect, salivary cortisol, and alpha-amylase and made more altruistic choices for others compared to the control group. However, social distance regulates the promotion of this acute social stress, with the promotion effect being stronger in socially distant others. Furthermore, the interpersonal order difference of different social distances in altruistic decisions is smaller in low-conflict dilemmas than in high-conflict dilemmas. In addition, an increase in salivary cortisol was positively correlated with altruistic choices toward both acquaintances and strangers, whereas an increase in salivary alpha-amylase was only positively correlated with altruistic choices toward friends. The results suggest that social distance modulates the promotion of acute social stress on moral decision-making, which might stem from the divergent effects of cortisol and alpha-amylase.

Selective attention might be space-, feature-, and/or object-based. Clear support for the involvement of an object-based mechanism is rather scarce, possibly because the predictions of models from these different classes often overlap. Yet, only object-based models can account for a larger congruency effect (CE) in the Eriksen flanker task when flankers are more (vs. less) strongly grouped to the target, but spacing and other response-irrelevant features of target and flankers are held constant. Exactly this was observed by Kramer and Jacobson (1991). So far, this theoretically relevant finding has not been replicated closely. We replicated the finding in two web-based experiments. Specifically, CEs were larger when flanker lines were connected to the central target line (vs. to outer neutral lines). We also successfully fitted the Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks (DMC) to the experimental data. Critically, diffusion modeling (DMC) and distributional analyses (delta functions) revealed that object membership primarily affected target processing strength rather than strength or timing of flanker processing. This challenges the prominent attentional spreading (sensory enhancement) account of object-based selective attention and motivates an alternative target attenuation account.

Current research describes a particular component of the self-concept that influences a wide variety of cognitive processes while it depicts a rather basic component of the self-concept. However, this minimal self seems to be anything but simple; in fact, it seems to be highly functional. Based on previous findings on newly formed self-associations, we put the postulated functionality of this minimal self to another test by retesting its protection mechanisms against negative content. In a pilot experiment, we did not find an overall reduction of negative self-assignments against neutral self-assignments. However, the results indicated an initial difference (as hypothesized) between negative and neutral self-assignments, which decreases over the course of the experiment. We put this interactive effect of valence and block to test in our main experiment, which replicated the data pattern of the pilot experiment. In sum, the results indicate a mandatory integration of stimuli into the self-concept and also a reduction of the integration due to negative valence, thereby supporting a robust protection mechanism.

As political information becomes increasingly prevalent in all forms of media, it is becoming increasingly important to understand when and why biases in remembering such information occur. Using an item-method directed forgetting procedure, we conducted two online experiments to determine the efficacy of admonitions to forget politically charged stimuli that were either congruent or incongruent with participants' political beliefs. Participants viewed slideshows wherein each item combined the face of a famous politician (Donald Trump or Joe Biden) with a word that was positive, negative, or neutral in emotional valence. Each slide was followed by an instruction to remember or forget. After a brief filler task, a recognition test assessed their memory for both remember and forget slides and (in Experiment 2) assessed their beliefs about the truth of each word/face pairing and beliefs about the accuracy of their memory. The results showed that for both liberal and conservative participants, politically congruent stimuli were more conducive to recognition memory and more resistant to directed forgetting than politically incongruent or neutral stimuli. There were small asymmetries wherein conservatives showed greater biases in memory and other cognitive measures. We discuss possible explanations of the results and their implications.

Existing studies have shown that direct exposure to a real nature environment has a restorative effect on attentional resources after a mentally fatiguing task. However, it remains unclear whether virtual nature simulations can serve as a substitute for real nature experienced in the outdoors to restore executive attention. Given the mixed findings in the literature, the present study sought to examine if viewing videos with natural scenery (vs. a control with urban scenery) restores participants' working memory capacity - measured by an operation span task - in a high-powered pre-registered within-subject experimental study. Overall, our within-subject experiment did not find any evidence to support the benefit of watching videos with natural scenery on restoration of executive attention. Moreover, the results from our Bayesian analyses further showed substantial support for the null hypothesis. Our study suggests that virtual nature simulations, even with the use of videos, may not be able to replicate the experiences of nature in the outdoors and restore attentional resources.

A conditional statement If P then Q is formed by combining the two propositions P and Q together with the conditional connective If ··· then ···. When embedded under the conditional connective, the two propositions P and Q describe hypothetical events that are not actualized. It remains unclear when such hypothetical thinking is activated in the real-time comprehension of conditional statements. To tackle this problem, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment using the visual world paradigm. Participants' eye movements on the concurrent image were recorded when they were listening to the auditorily presented conditional statements. Depending on when and what critical information is added into the auditory input, there are four possible temporal slots to observe in the online processing of the conditional statement: the sentential connective If, the antecedent P, the consequent Q, and the processing of the sentence following the conditional. We mainly focused on the first three slots. First, the occurrence of the conditional connective should trigger participants to search in the visual world for the event that could not assign a truth-value to the embedded proposition. Second, if the embedded proposition P can be determined as true by an event, the hypothetical property implied by the connective would prevent the participants from excluding the consideration of other events. The consideration of other events would yield more fixations on the events where the proposition is false.

Two experiments examined effects of including an information about a disability in a person description on memory about that person's traits. In Experiment 1, this information impaired correct recognition of traits of a person that had been described in correspondence to gender stereotypes. In Experiment 2, it induced false memories in accordance with stereotypes about people with disabilities. Participants' false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of warmth increased, whereas false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of competence decreased. Thus, activating stereotypes through a disability prime influenced what could be recognized correctly or falsely was assumed to be recognized about a person.

Two distinct literatures have evolved to study within-person changes in affect over time. One literature has examined affect dynamics with millisecond-level resolution under controlled laboratory conditions, and the second literature has captured affective dynamics across much longer timescales (e.g., hours or days) within the relatively uncontrolled but more ecologically valid conditions of daily life. Despite the importance of linking these literatures, very little research has been done so far. In the laboratory, peak affect intensities and reaction durations were quantified using a paradigm that captures second-to-second changes in subjective affect elicited by provocative images. In two studies, analyses attempted to link these micro-dynamic indexes to fluctuations in daily affect ratings collected via daily protocols up to 4 weeks later. Although peak intensity and reaction duration scores from the laboratory did not consistently relate to daily scores pertaining to affect variability or instability, the total magnitude of changes in affect following images did display relationships of this type. In addition, higher peaks in the laboratory predicted larger intensity reactions to salient daily events. Together, the studies provide insights into the mechanisms through which correspondences and noncorrespondences between laboratory reactivity indices and daily affect dynamic measures can be expected.

The dual-route model explains the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect assuming two routes of parallel information processing: the unconditional route (automatic activation of pre-existing links) and the conditional route (activation of task-specific links). To test predictions derived from this model, we evaluated whether response latency in superficial number processing modulates the SNARC effect in a color task (participants judged the color of a number). In Experiment 1, participants performed a parity task, an easy color task (short RTs), and a difficult color task (RTs similar to those of the parity task). A SNARC effect emerged only in the parity task. In Experiment 2, participants performed a color task and a secondary task under four conditions chosen to orthogonally manipulate response latency (short vs. long) and processing depth (semantic vs. perceptual). Only the long-latency perceptual-processing condition elicited a SNARC effect. To explain these results, we suggest that the cognitive resources required by a secondary task might dilute the SNARC effect. Our results indicate that the dual-route model should be modified to take into account additional factors (e.g., working memory load) that influence the level of activation of the unconditional route.

The close link between number and space is illustrated by the Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. The current research focuses on the flexibility of the SNARC across three dimensions. Shaki and Fischer (2018) pointed out that spatial attributes of stimuli and response effectors can favor an ad hoc spatial representation. In this paper, we aimed to broaden this perspective using two Go/NoGo experiments with digits being presented at two spatial locations while a central response was required. In Experiment 1, stimuli appeared either to the left or right (horizontal) and below or above fixation (vertical). In Experiment 2, as the monitor was laying down flat on the desk, stimuli appeared either to the left or right (horizontal) and either close or far from the observer (midsagittal). The results of Experiment 1 show significant effects for the two dimensions (horizontal, vertical), while in Experiment 2, we observe only a barely significant effect for the sagittal axis. We interpret these findings as showing (1) the importance of motor response spatialization in eliciting the SNAs and (2) the dominance of the vertical axis over the horizontal when the spatial component of the motor response is removed.