Psychonomic Bulletin & Review最新文献

During conversations, there is often a short silence between the end of one turn and the beginning of the next. These silences tend to be brief. If a speaker waits too long before starting their turn it may trigger a negative interpretation (e.g., that the speaker is lying). We investigated whether the sense that a response took too long is related to the time it typically takes speakers in general to respond to a given question, participants' tendency to over- or underestimate temporal durations, and participants' level of general and social anxiety. Average response time for individual questions was related to variation in participants' sense that a response has taken too long, but biases in time perception, general anxiety, and social anxiety were not.

Intertemporal choices constitute a significant topic of interest in both psychological and behavioral-economics research. While many studies focus on decisions with precisely known reward delivery times, real-world situations typically involve only an imprecise knowledge of these timings (i.e., the delivery times are ambiguous). The current study uses a large size dataset (sample size N > 669) consisting of both risky and intertemporal ambiguous and nonambiguous choices and aims (i) to clarify the relationship between probability-ambiguity and time-ambiguity effects on choice, and (ii) to evaluate different computational models (attribute-wise and integrated-value models) across risky and intertemporal choice domains using a drift-diffusion model (DDM) framework. Analysis of the choice data revealed a significant association: Individuals who were more averse to time ambiguity also exhibited a stronger aversion to probability ambiguity, as indicated by a correlation of r = .28. The DDM analyses revealed that (i) DDMs incorporating ambiguity preferences outperformed models without ambiguity preferences in both the time and probability domain for most participants. Interestingly, (ii) while time-ambiguity aversion was best explained by an attribute-wise model, probability-ambiguity aversion was best explained by an integrated-value model. Finally, we found that (iii) if an individual's intertemporal decisions were best explained by a DDM incorporating ambiguity, then their risky decisions were also most likely best explained by a DDM incorporating ambiguity.Taken together, our results are evidence that ambiguity preferences across the time and probability domains are not independent but show some consistency despite the differing-attribute-wise versus integrated-value-decision strategies in each domain.

Our everyday experiences unfold continuously, yet we segment them into distinct memory units-a phenomenon known as event segmentation. Although extensively studied, the underlying mechanisms of event segmentation remain controversial. This study addresses this by comparing the two contrasting theories: prediction error and contextual stability. Across four experiments, we manipulated these factors separately to examine their distinct impacts on event segmentation, measured by temporal order and distance tasks. Experiments 1-3 demonstrate that contextual stability leads to more pronounced event segmentation than prediction errors in unstable contexts, underscoring its critical role. Experiment 4 further supported this by providing strong evidence for equally robust event segmentation for predicted and unpredicted transitions across stable contexts. We conclude that contextual stability plays a pivotal role in driving event segmentation, outweighing the effect of prediction errors. This study sheds new light on how our minds encode continuous experiences into coherent and meaningful memory units.

Return-sweeps, which move the reader's gaze from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, typically result in shorter line-final fixations and longer accurate line-initial fixations compared to intra-line fixations. The mechanisms underlying these differences have been the subject of debate. To assess the linguistic and oculomotor contributions to these return-sweep fixation differences, we compared the eye movements of 41 participants during reading and z-string scanning, an oculomotor control condition that is devoid of useful linguistic content. Our results indicate that line-final fixations are shorter than intra-line fixations, while accurate line-initial fixations are longer than intra-line fixations, under both tasks, underscoring the significant role of the oculomotor system in determining fixation durations across tasks. Notably, the reduction in line-final fixation durations compared to intra-line fixations did not differ between tasks. This suggests that oculomotor coordination or visual processing, rather than linguistic processing, drives shorter line-final fixations. In contrast, the difference in the increase in duration for accurate line-initial fixations between reading and z-string scanning implies that longer accurate line-initial fixations are likely a result of lexical processing, oculomotor coordination, and visual processing. These findings advance our understanding of eye movement control by highlighting the combined influence of linguistic and oculomotor processes on return-sweep fixation durations.

Statistical learning of spatial regularities during visual search leads to prioritization of target-rich locations. The resulting attentional bias may subsequently affect orienting and search behavior in similar tasks but its transfer to free viewing has not been demonstrated. We exploited a novel closed-loop paradigm where human observers searched for invisible target locations on a screen only guided by real-time auditory feedback conveying gaze-target distance. Unbeknownst to participants, location probability was biased towards one hemifield. Free viewing during rest, free image viewing, and spatial judgments were assessed before and after the search task. Search performance systematically improved and peaked in the biased hemifield, showing the unfolding of statistical learning. Importantly, the spatial bias transferred to both free-viewing conditions in terms of mean horizontal fixation position, while it did not transfer to spatial judgments. Exploratory results suggest that search performance was influenced by participants' viewing pattern, whereas transfer was modulated by pre-existing (natural) spatial biases. Our results demonstrate that task-based statistical learning transfers to ecological scenarios, paving the way for future research and clinical applications aimed at ameliorating pathological spatial biases.

Citation frequency is widely recognized as a crucial metric for assessing academic impact. Previous studies analyzing data from citation databases have observed a surname order bias-a phenomenon where the alphabetical ordering of researchers' surnames negatively impacts their citation counts. However, the underlying mechanisms driving this bias, the causality behind it, and its implications for in-text citation practices remain poorly understood. Therefore, the present research aims to address these gaps through two preregistered studies. Study 1 replicates and extends the work of Stevens and Duque (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 1020-1026, 2019), using a larger sample of 446,755 articles and controlling for surname initial frequency and publication year. Study 2 is an experiment with 307 valid responses from academics holding doctoral degrees, manipulating both citation systems and surname alphabetical order. Consistent and robust findings emerged across both studies: articles authored by individuals with surnames appearing earlier in the alphabet were more likely to be cited. This effect was especially pronounced in the context of alphabetical citation systems, compared with numerical citation systems. The current research provides a testable, reliable explanation for the surname order bias and establishes a causal link between surname alphabetical order and citation frequency. Implications for theory and academic practice are discussed.

Recent studies of short-term source amnesia demonstrated that source information is rapidly forgotten in memory, reflecting a highly selective mode of memory encoding. In this study, we explored the flexibility of memory selection by investigating whether short-term source amnesia is affected by expectation violations. In seven experiments, we first replicated the short-term source amnesia phenomenon and then induced various forms of expectation violations. The results consistently showed that the short-term source amnesia was significantly reduced or attenuated when expectation violation occurred, indicating a strengthening effect of expectation violation on short-term source memory. This effect occurred quite quickly, nearly at the same time as the occurrence of unexpected events. Moreover, the source memory was improved even when the unexpected events were completely irrelevant to the task set or target stimuli. These findings suggest that short-term memory tends to encode and maintain more detailed source information when encountering expectation violations, which might be an adaptive mechanism for handling unexpected environmental changes.

In real-life social exchanges, people synchronize movements via visuomotor information. How synchronizing voluntarily ('planned' synchronization) or involuntary ('emergent' synchronization) affects differently the variability of spatiotemporal movement parameters remains unclear. Here, we explored changes in the kinematics of pairs of participants performing a finger-tapping task in four full-within experimental conditions. In solo-pre and solo-post conditions, participants listened to a target tempo and individually reproduced it (unpaced) while blindfolded. In two social conditions, both participants had full vision of the partner's hand and concomitantly reproduced the target tempo while voluntarily synchronizing together (Synch condition) or resisting synchronization with the partner (Resist condition). Results revealed that participants co-adjusted taps and correlated finger movement peaks spatiotemporally in the social conditions and, crucially, individual variability lowered compared with the solo-pre condition. Moreover, the Synch condition revealed larger correlations and lower variability than the Resist one. Last, the partners' parameters no longer correlated in the solo-post condition and variability was similar to that of the solo-pre condition. This work unveils the importance of minimizing spatiotemporal variability for facilitating perception-action coupling during both emergent and planned interpersonal synchronization.

Research into the effects of contextual diversity on lexical processing has flourished in the past 20 years, encompassing different tasks, populations, and languages, and informing influential theories of word learning. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of the field. Eighty-six articles (145 experiments) composed of three distinct study types (behavioural [N = 111], computational modelling [N = 20], and corpus validations [N = 14]) met preregistered inclusion criteria. Across experiments, the terminology used for different diversity metrics has been inconsistently applied. We classify all metrics into four categories (count-based, computational, composite, unspecified) to standardise comparisons. Four key findings emerge from this review: Experiments that assessed the impact of diversity on word-form processing (N = 85) show a consistent high-diversity advantage, possibly because high-diversity words are more likely to be 'needed' in the future. Effects of diversity on word-meaning processing (N = 13) were more mixed, showing both low- and high-diversity benefits. We attribute these inconsistencies to varying task demands. Specifically, we conclude that selecting highly precise semantic information can be challenging for words that occur in variable contexts. Computational modelling studies indicate that diversity metrics that quantify the distinctiveness of contexts in which words occur better predict behaviour than simple context counts. Corpus validations show that diversity effects are consistent across languages. This review confirms that diversity in linguistic experience is a key organizational principle of the lexicon but indicates that current theories lack specificity when describing the underlying mechanisms. We make specific recommendations for future research within a structured research cycle.

The present study investigated how hierarchically related word features, such as language and modality, are encoded in episodic memory. Spanish-English bilingual participants (N = 96) studied a randomly intermixed sequence of English and Spanish words presented visually or auditorily. Picture cues were used to test memory for the language and modality of the original presentation. Bilinguals remembered language more accurately than modality. Memory for both features was more accurate for low-frequency than high-frequency words. However, language proficiency did not correlate with performance. Memory for language and modality were associated at the item level, with a stronger association for low- than high-frequency words. However, modality discrimination was above chance even when language responses were incorrect, showing that access to modality information in episodic memory does not require access to language information. Memory traces for these two features are separately linked to word-encoding episodes, but both depend on item-encoding strength.