Psychonomic Bulletin & Review最新文献

Previous research has identified cultural differences in visual perception, where East Asians focus more on global object structure and display a larger breadth of attention compared with Westerners. East Asians rely on lower spatial frequencies (SFs) compared to Westerners for face recognition, which may be linked to this. Investigating whether such differences extend to other high-level stimulus categories would clarify if SF tuning differences reflect more general or face specific cognitive processes. The present study compared the SF tunings of Canadians and Chinese during object (Exp. 1; N = 50) and scene (Exp. 3; N = 47) categorization. In both experiments, results did not indicate a significant difference between groups. In Experiment 3 (N = 128), we conducted an online replication of Experiment 1 while measuring the SF tunings of the same participants during face perception. Again, no significant difference between the groups was found during object categorization, but the finding that East Asians rely on lower SF than Westerners was replicated. Together, these results suggest that unique mechanisms may underlie the cultural differences in face processing, though alternative explanations, such as the feature consistency of faces, could also account for these findings.

Written words presented within a sequence of words are identified more accurately when this sequence forms a correct sentence or phrase compared with an ungrammatical re-ordering of the same words. Here we examined if this sentence superiority effect (SSE) is modulated by the predictability of the target word given the sentence context. Target words were at positions 2 and 5 in five-word sequences, and either had high or low cloze probabilities (measured by an independent cloze test and further checked using the word-in-context probabilities obtained with a Large Language Model (LLM)). Given that predictability only made sense when considering grammatically correct sequences, we performed two separate analyses. We found: (1) an effect of grammaticality (i.e., we replicated the SSE), (2) a small effect of predictability on responses to grammatically correct sequences, and (3) no interaction between predictability and grammaticality. The impact of predictability on the SSE was then evaluated by comparing the magnitude of the SSE obtained with more predictable words versus less predictable words, with the SSE in each of these conditions being measured using identification accuracy for the same word at the same position in grammatical and ungrammatical sequences. Results revealed no significant modulation of the SSE by word predictability. We conclude that syntactic and semantic constraints, and not predictability per se (as measured by a cloze test or LLM statistics), contribute to the sentence superiority effect. Crucially, this provides evidence against guessing accounts of the SSE according to which predictability should play a key role.

Influential cognitive science theories postulate that decision-making is based on treating expected outcomes as incentives according to a reward function. Yet a systematic analysis of the learning processes that determine the reward function remains to be carried out. The paper fills this gap by examining the contribution of two fundamental learning processes: conditioned reinforcement, occurring either via direct or via vicarious experience, and imitative incentive learning, at play when an agent appropriates the incentives sought by another individual. From an evolutionary perspective, the two processes appear to be adaptive insofar as conditioned reinforcement might have evolved to simplify decision-making, while imitative incentive learning might have arisen to harness the full potential of social learning and to facilitate cooperation. The paper contributes to research on decision-making by offering a detailed analysis of the learning mechanisms that drive acquisition of the reward function.

People are not optimistic about the future of the USA. When reporting their thoughts about the future, people express more worries than excitement, a phenomenon known as the collective negativity bias, and widely replicated among people residing in the USA. However, we do not know whether this bias is malleable. In this study, we tested whether prior exposure to valenced examples of collective future projections - attributed to an unknown source or a social source - shifts the valence of collective future thinking. In Experiment 1, participants completed an unrelated task (standard control condition) or viewed neutral examples (a modified control condition) generated by an unknown source. In Experiment 2, participants viewed neutral examples from an unknown source (as in Experiment 1), positive examples from an unknown source, or positive examples from their peers. In Experiment 3, participants viewed negative examples instead of positive ones, before reporting future projections. Experiment 4 added more power to detect interactions, using as primers the neutral, negative, and positive unspecified examples. Across all experiments, the collective negativity bias persisted and was comparable regardless of the valence or source of primers. This consistency is striking given that collective future projections are unbounded by reality, yet they seem resistant to primers we used. We discuss how these findings may help inform us about the underlying mechanisms of the collective negativity bias and guide future research on testing its robustness.

A large and growing number of recent studies has embraced a statistical learning view of reading, revealing that readers utilize an array of regularities that are available in writing systems as they process printed words and texts. However, previous studies have focused on the impact of one regularity (or an otherwise small number of cues). Therefore, we currently have a limited understanding of (1) whether different regularities each carry unique explanatory power, beyond other (collinear) cues; (2) how do regularities at different levels of the input contribute to reading behavior; and (3) whether regularities vary in their contributions across processing stages. To answer these questions, we employ Random Forests analyses on a large-scale, eye-movement, passage-reading database from English first- and second-language readers, evaluating the relative importance of a large number of regularities on multiple eye-movement dependent variables. First, our findings demonstrate that, each regularity uniquely contributes to the model's performance. Second, we show that both text-level regularities (e.g., predictability) and word-level regularities (including print-speech and print-meaning regularities), contribute to continuous text reading. Third, we document varying contributions of some regularities over time, with later reading measures being more impacted by text-level regularities. These results support and extend statistical learning theories of reading, showing that readers are attuned to a range of regularities in their writing system, which jointly guide naturalistic reading behavior.

In our daily life, we encounter a wide array of objects. However, we have a limited understanding of how the stability of these objects influences how we allocate our attention. To address this, we have investigated how perceived stability interacts with our attentional system using a modified version of the cueless temporal order judgement task. Here, participants were presented with stable and unstable objects, separated by small temporal intervals, and asked to report which object appeared first in the display. Each of our experiments employed a different pair of stable (i.e., presented upright in its original state) and unstable (i.e., presented in an inverted and angled orientation to render the object unstable) stimuli. Participants' responses were fit into logistic regression models, and their point of subjective simultaneity was calculated using the fitted model. Experiment 1 used a common object, a traffic cone, and the stable traffic cone captured attention. To control for familiarity, Experiment 2 used a never-before-seen object, and there was no significant difference between the stable and unstable versions. Experiment 3 compared a vertical line against a tilted line to control for low-level features, and the vertical line captured attention. These findings suggest that stability per se does not capture attention. Rather, features that commonly signal stability, such as upright orientation and familiarity, may drive early attentional prioritization. We propose that the perception of stability is inferred from these underlying cues, rather than functioning as a guiding feature on its own.

The formation of new memories can be influenced by the activities that immediately follow learning. Previous research has shown that several minutes of wakeful resting after learning can enhance memory retention compared to engaging in unrelated tasks, likely by facilitating memory consolidation. However, the relative efficacy of wakeful resting compared to other potentially memory-enhancing post-learning activities, like post-learning repetition, remains unclear. We conducted two experiments examining the effects of wakeful resting and repetition on memory retention. Participants studied three auditorily presented word lists. Each word list was immediately followed by one of three 7-min post-learning interventions: (1) repetitive listening to the word list, (2) wakeful resting, or (3) engaging in a new task. Across both experiments, memory performance was highest in the repetition condition, followed by the wakeful resting condition, with the lowest performance observed in the distraction condition. These findings were observed 12 min after acquisition and remained stable after 1 day. Our results highlight the differential effects of post-learning activities on memory retention. Wakeful resting is an effective and easy-to-implement strategy for facilitating memory consolidation, but in direct comparison, repetition appears to be even more effective for optimising memory retention.

Gamified inoculation interventions such as the Bad News game are a widely adopted approach to mitigating the influence of misinformation. While Bad News has been predominately studied with participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, and Rich Democracies (WEIRD), one recent study (Iyengar et al., Applied Cognitive Psychology, 37:290-303, 2023) assessed its efficacy in an Indian sample. In that study, participants rated the reliability of a series of Indian news headlines in a pre-test, played Bad News, and completed a post-test with a different set of headlines. Participants showed better discrimination of true and fake headlines in the post-test than the pre-test. This finding contrasts with a meta-analysis showing that Bad News primarily produces a conservative response bias rather than improving discrimination (Modirrousta-Galian and Higham, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152:2411-2437, 2023). The current preregistered study used the same design as Iyengar et al., although participants of Indian nationality (N = 150) were recruited via Prolific and the allocation of news headlines to the pre-test and post-test was counterbalanced. When both counterbalancing conditions were included, no significant differences in discrimination or response bias appeared between the pre-test and post-test. When only the counterbalancing condition matching Iyengar et al.'s experiment was examined, no significant effect on discrimination was observed, but a conservative response bias shift was seen in the post-test. This finding suggests that the Bad News game may be less effective for improving discrimination than previously thought - an important consideration given its popularity as an intervention to combat misinformation.

A judgment of learning (JOL) refers to an individual's evaluation and prediction of their own learning. Converging evidence suggests that making JOLs is an inferential process, with individuals basing their judgments on a variety of cues that may or may not be diagnostic of future performance. Compared to such JOLs for oneself, considerably less is known about making JOLs for others, but the existing evidence on this topic also supports an inferential-based process. Importantly, although there appears to be substantial overlap regarding the cues used to inform both types of judgments, there are likely cues utilized when forming JOLs for others that are not used when making JOLs for oneself. In the current article, we (1) review the extant literature on JOLs for oneself to understand the characteristics and underlying mechanisms of such judgments; (2) review existing literature regarding JOLs for others, highlighting the similarities and differences between these judgments and those made for oneself; and (3) propose a new model, adapted from Koriat's (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 126 (4), 349-370, Koriat, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126:349-370, 1997) cue-utilization framework, to describe how JOLs for others are made. Our new model provides a substantial theoretical contribution to the literature that can inform both basic and applied research focusing on JOLs for others.

Acquiring non-adjacent dependencies (NADs) from continuous sequences can be challenging for adults, with prior research showing varied outcomes depending on the properties of the stimuli and methods of assessments. This study investigated whether different behavioral tasks vary in their ability to detect NAD learning. All participants (N = 322) underwent equivalent training phases involving exposure to NAD trigrams in a continuous speech stream. During the test phase, their learning of the grammatical NAD patterns was evaluated using either a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC, N = 200) task or a familiarity rating task (N = 122). Participants in the 2AFC task performed at chance, regardless of whether the ungrammatical trigram differed minimally or maximally from the grammatical trigram. In contrast, participants in the familiarity rating task rated grammatical trigrams as more familiar than ungrammatical ones, suggesting that the familiarity rating task may be more sensitive to subtle learning effects. These findings highlight the importance of task design in the detection of NAD learning, with implications for the broader field of statistical learning research.