Journal of Experimental Psychology: General最新文献

Visual working memory (VWM) performance fluctuates from moment to moment with occasional failures in maintaining accurate information in mind. While previous research suggests that individuals tend to be overconfident in their VWM performance during these failures, no study to date has examined whether individuals can predict upcoming reductions in VWM performance. To test the accuracy of both prospective and retrospective awareness on VWM performance, we developed a VWM bet task in which participants made trial-by-trial bets on their upcoming VWM performance prior to viewing a memory array of colored squares, followed by color reports paired with confidence ratings at test. Across two experiments (N = 87; N = 85), we demonstrate that retrospective awareness is more sensitive to VWM performance fluctuations than prospective awareness in young adults, though both metacognitive abilities are imperfect. Poor metacognitive abilities reflected a general tendency-particularly among low VWM capacity individuals-to overestimate upcoming VWM performance. When individuals overestimated their upcoming VWM performance (i.e., prospective failures), VWM performance significantly reduced compared to the preceding trials of a prospective failure. Moreover, this reduction in performance significantly lingered into subsequent trials. However, individuals' prospective and retrospective awareness better aligned to VWM performance after a prospective failure. This postfailure calibration occurred even without feedback signaling a prospective failure (Experiment 2), suggesting a metacognitive efficiency in recognizing the initial overestimation. Taken together, our results suggest that individuals, particularly low-capacity individuals, have a limited awareness toward upcoming VWM performance but exhibit metacognitive adjustments immediately following a prospective failure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The self-bias effect, characterized by the prioritization of self-related information in cognitive processing, is well-documented, yet its flexibility within social contexts remains underexplored. This study examined how interpersonal relationships (cooperation vs. competition), group membership (ingroup vs. outgroup), and mere social presence modulate self-bias in task performance. In three experiments, participants completed a shape-label matching task in which geometric shapes were arbitrarily associated with self, partner, or stranger identities. Perceptual sensitivity (d') and reaction times (RTs) were analyzed to assess self- and partner bias across social conditions. Results demonstrated that self-bias was selectively malleable: Competition significantly enhanced self-bias in d', whereas cooperation had no effect. Additionally, self-bias was more pronounced in the presence of an outgroup partner compared with an ingroup partner. By contrast, mere social presence did not alter self-bias, indicating that passive copresence alone is insufficient to modulate self-prioritization. RTs remained unaffected by social context, suggesting that social influences primarily impact perceptual sensitivity rather than processing speed. Partner bias was consistently observed across all experiments but remained unaffected by social contexts, implying that while brief interaction is enough to establish a basic level of social relevance, stronger social engagement may be required to further modulate partner-related processing. These findings suggest that self-bias is selectively malleable, responding to contexts that accentuate self-other distinctions, while remaining robust against cooperative incentives or passive copresence, and highlighting the stability of partner bias in minimal social contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).