Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

Everyday behaviour is comprised of myriad components that must be seamlessly coordinated for action to be effective. Individual differences, specifically variation in mental health symptoms, influence how this challenge is navigated, however their impact in naturalistic settings remains unclear. Adopting a dynamical systems perspective, here we examined whether subclinical variation in symptoms associated with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) modulate individual movement dynamics during an everyday activity - walking on a university campus. Participants (n = 93) completed two walking trials, the second of which included an additional distractor task that they were either told to ignore or attend to. Gait dynamics were captured unobtrusively and assessed at both local (i.e., moment-to-moment) and global (i.e., time invariant) levels. The results revealed that subclinical variation symptoms of ASD were associated with less stable local dynamics, independent of task context. Further, exploratory analyses suggested that instructions to ignore the distractor were associated with changes to local dynamics for symptoms of SAD, but global dynamics for symptoms of ASD. Taken together, these findings highlight how individual differences in psychological factors can shape the dynamics of everyday behaviour in context-dependent ways.

Multiple-object tracking (MOT) involves monitoring the positions of multiple targets as they move among identical distractors. Pylyshyn proposed that the mechanisms employed to track targets in MOT are also integral to coordinated actions. In support of this, previous research demonstrates that MOT and visually guided touch interfere with one another. However, in these early studies, reporting the MOT targets at the end of the trial involved touching them, making it unclear whether interference reflected competition for a shared limited-capacity item individuation mechanism or similarity in the motor responses required by the two tasks. To address this issue, we had participants touch items that changed colour during MOT with the index finger of their dominant hand and manipulated how participants later reported MOT targets at the end of the trial. We compared performance when participants reported MOT targets by touching them with the index finger of their dominant hand with that when they identified targets verbally or by typing them in. Two findings emerged. First, the target report method had an effect on the size of the difference between single and dual task performance (general interference). Second, the target report method had no effect on differential interference (the size of the dual-task performance advantage when participants touched targets rather than distractors during MOT). The dissociation between the effects of target report on general and differential interference suggest these two types of interference reflect different processes. This research has implications for those who study the formation of action plans.

Two experiments investigated the role of task set in processing the direction indicated by arrows and words. In Experiment 1, in one block of trials, participants made S-R compatible manual responses to a left-or-right-pointing arrow in the presence of either a congruent or incongruent word (LEFT/ RIGHT); in another block, they responded to the direction signalled by a word in the presence of a congruent or incongruent arrow. Task set was, therefore, simple in each block-respond to only one of the two stimulus types. Yet an incongruent word did not interfere with responding to an arrow's direction whereas an incongruent arrow robustly interfered with responding to the direction signalled by a word. In Experiment 2, targets were instead defined in terms of a fixed location (for one group, the distractor appeared below the target; for another group, the distractor appeared above the target) such that the target on any trial could be either a word or an arrow. Task set now was more complex in that target type varied unpredictably across trials. Distractor words now interfered with arrows, and distractor arrows interfered with words more than they did in Experiment 1. These results require a more integrative account that embeds S-R compatibility within a larger framework involving contextually driven modulation of task set.

Chinese children aged 8-10 years can utilize character positional probability - the likelihood of a character appearing at initial or final word positions - as a cue to facilitate word segmentation and identification during novel word learning. Given the distinct roles of initial and final characters in Chinese word recognition, we conducted two parallel experiments to investigate how positional probability influences children's processing during reading. Sixteen two-character pseudowords were constructed as novel target words. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the positional probability of the initial character while keeping the final character constant. In Experiment 2, we reversed this manipulation for the final characters. Each novel word was embedded in six semantically constrained sentence frames. Forty-five children's eye movements were recorded as they read these sentences. Results revealed that novel words containing characters with high positional probability in their preferred positions elicited shorter fixation durations compared to those with low positional probability characters. This effect emerged earlier for initial than for final characters, suggesting that Chinese children are sensitive to positional probability cues associated with both initial and final characters when learning new words during reading, but with a processing advantage for initial characters. Moreover, the positional probability effects remained stable across multiple exposures, indicating that children consistently rely sub-lexical cues such as positional probability before fully forming new lexical representations. Our findings highlight the protracted nature of lexical learning in children and their extended reliance on statistical positional information during early stage of lexical acquisition.

The ability to be objective about the perspectives of others is often compromised by interference from our own knowledge, beliefs and perceptions - an egocentric bias. However, recent research in visual perspective taking has found that this bias is eliminated immediately following a trial in which an alternative visual perspective is taken, suggesting egocentricity is flexible and can be eliminated under certain conditions. We examined such flexibility in relation to manual action. In contrast to other domains of perspective taking where egocentricity is usually problematic, egocentricity in manual action, even in the context of perspective taking, is usually useful, enabling accurate goal-directed movements based on real spatial relationships between the self and the environment (rather than on an imagined perspective). Eliminating egocentricity in manual action would thus make a particularly strong case for the flexibility of perspective taking. In four experiments, we assessed whether this 'useful' egocentric bias is compromised by practice on visual perspective taking tasks. Results showed that practice disambiguating stimuli from other perspectives makes manual actions consistent with second-person perspectives as easy as actions based on the first-person perspective for an equivalent time period afterwards.

Serial order is an essential but still poorly understood component of verbal working memory (WM). This study examined the role of spatial versus temporal codes for the representation of serial order information by presenting spatial or temporal secondary tasks during the completion of a verbal WM task. The secondary tasks were dot detection tasks designed to impact spatial processing (the dots appeared in random vs. left-to-right spatial order) or temporal processing (the dots appeared in regular vs. irregular temporal order). In two experiments, we observed an exclusive, interfering impact of the temporal secondary task on serial order WM while evidence for the null was observed for the impact of the spatial secondary task. These data provide support for an intervention of temporal processes in the encoding of serial order information in WM. Furthermore, the effect of temporal interference was not limited to WM for serial order information but also disrupted WM for item information. These findings highlight the role of temporal processes in encoding both item and serial order information in WM, possibly by allowing binding of the two types of information.

Duration judgement is a central component of cognitive functioning; however, a substantial body of evidence suggests that time perception is impaired in individuals with schizophrenia and schizotypy, respectively. Conclusions about the similar aetiology of both are constrained by empirical evidence with no evidence about the performance of schizotypy in the temporal estimation task. For the first time, a temporal estimation task examined the impact of schizotypy on both the retrospective and prospective paradigms for visual stimuli. The task involved subjects estimating one of three durations (15 s, 30 s, or 45 s) of a kitten video in either a retrospective or prospective paradigm in Experiment 1 and a video of the River Nene in Northampton, United Kingdom, in Experiment 2. Critical findings that emerged from this study are that high schizotypy subjects appear to have a greater degree of accuracy estimating durations, which is driven by the context of the stimulus. This finding implies that the pacemaker/accumulator component of scalar expectancy theory can be used to further explore timing deficits in schizophrenic subjects and might further imply that timing deficits in schizophrenia are driven by attentional deficits.

We investigated strategies to avoid referential ambiguity in pronoun use. The non-linguistic competition account suggests that speakers avoid pronouns when referential candidates share the same gender, as increased similarity between them triggers a need for more specific referential information. We tested this hypothesis in Hindi and Mandarin Chinese, both of which use non-gendered pronouns. In Hindi, gender similarity between referential candidates reduced pronoun usage, supporting the account. In spoken Mandarin, where null pronouns are common, the use of overt pronouns was unaffected by either gender-based or situation-based similarity (i.e., whether more than one entity in the visual display could serve as a potential referent), while situation-based competition reduced the use of null pronouns. In written Mandarin, overt pronouns were preferred over null pronouns, and both gender- and situation-based competition influenced their use, although the gender effect was marginal. Null pronouns were unaffected by gender-based competition regardless of modality. These findings suggest that gender-based competition depends on pronoun features (e.g., null vs. overt) and the communication mode that influences pronoun preferences and susceptibility to similarity-based competition.

The choice similarity effect (CSE), first demonstrated by Tulving, shows that forced-choice recognition memory decisions are more accurate but made with lower confidence when the distractor (A') is similar to the target (A) on that test trial, relative to when the target (A) is paired with a distractor, B', that is similar to a studied but untested item, B. Following Tulving, Experiments 1a to 1c examined variation in the CSE as a function of response times and deadline versus self-paced responding. Results showed that the accuracy advantage for A-A' test trials was most pronounced for the fastest responses and disappeared or reversed for slower responses, providing evidence for Tulving's prediction that A-A' pairs facilitate access to memory. These results also suggest that the A-A' advantage may be moderated by the use of response deadlines. Experiment 2 evaluated a prediction of matching models of recognition memory-specifically that the magnitude of the A-A' advantage increases with stronger encoding of studied items. Consistent with those models, Experiment 2 showed a larger A-A' advantage for items studied three times than for items studied once.

Novel experiences appear to benefit memory for unrelated information encoded shortly before or after. Other research suggests that memory is impaired by effortful tasks following encoding, compared to simply resting. This registered report explicitly tested the proactive and retroactive effects of novel exploration and wakeful rest. Four groups of participants explored a novel or familiarised virtual environment, either shortly before or shortly after encoding a list of unrelated words. A fifth 'wakeful rest' group performed a low-effort attention task before and after encoding. Memory was tested with immediate free recall, delayed (next day) free recall and delayed recognition with confidence judgements (from which recollection and familiarity were estimated). Bayes factors provided evidence against both proactive and retroactive benefits of novelty across all measures of memory, but provided evidence for a retroactive benefit of rest for immediate recall. In exploratory analysis, we also found evidence for a proactive benefit of rest on immediate recall. We argue that the bidirectional benefits of wakeful rest are more easily explained by Temporal Distinctiveness theory than Consolidation theory. Overall, wakeful rest surrounding learning may represent a useful intervention for improving memory, while novel exploration may not.