Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

We hypothesized that people of different language backgrounds (English vs. Mandarin Chinese) might think about evolutionary relationships among living things differently. In particular, some reasoning heuristics may come from how living things are named. Our research examined if sub-word and sub-lexical elements in written Chinese influence people's inferences. Some taxon names in Chinese are conjunctive concepts that include another taxon: e.g., panda is called bear cat in Chinese, and the skunk character has a semantic radical (semantic component of a character) that means mouse. These conjunctions might influence Chinese readers to infer that conjunctive concepts share biological characteristics with their constituents (e.g., that skunks share biological properties with mice). Readers in a language (English) without lexical activation from constituents of conjunctive concepts would not be expected to show such effects. This research provided insights into how differences in prior knowledge due to different language backgrounds affect thinking and reasoning.

No abstract.

The ability to spontaneously access knowledge of relational concepts acquired in one domain and apply it to a novel domain has traditionally been explored in the analogy literature via the problem-solving paradigm (cf. Gick & Holyoak, 1980, 1983). In the present work, we propose a novel procedure based on categorization as a complementary approach to assess spontaneous analogical transfer-using one category learning task to enhance learning of the same underlying category structures in another domain. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate larger improvements in classification performance across blocks of training in a Target Category Learning task among participants that underwent a Base Category Learning task relative to a separate group of participants learning the Target category structures for the first time; thus providing evidence for spontaneous transfer of the category structures. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate similar evidence of spontaneous transfer for participants that underwent a comparison-based Base Category Learning task under a more rigorous context-shift between the Base and Target Category Learning tasks. Additional exploratory analyses across both experiments showcase ways in which this paradigm can be used to answer questions regarding the analogical transfer of relational category structures and generate promising paths for future work.

Although cochlear implants (CI) successfully replace the sense of hearing, they do not restore natural hearing. Still, CI users adapt to this novel signal, reaching meaningful levels of speech recognition in clinical tests that focus on repetition of words and short sentences. However, many patients who score above average in clinical speech perception tests complain that everyday speech interactions are both difficult and cognitively draining. In part this difficulty may be due to the naturally rapid pace of everyday discourse. We report a study in which 12 CI users aged 23 to 77, recalled multi-sentence discourse presented without interruption, or in the condition of interest, when passages were paused at major linguistic boundaries, with participants given control of when to initiate the next segment. Comprehension of the discourse structure was based on a formalized representational system that organizes discourse elements hierarchically to index the relative importance of different elements to the overall understanding of the discourse. Results showed (a) better recall when CI users were allowed to control the discourse pace, (b) an overall effect of aging, with older CI users recalling discourse less accurately, (c) better recall for passages with higher average inter-word predictability, (d) a "semantic hierarchy effect" reflected by better recall of main ideas versus minor details, (e) an attenuation of the semantic hierarchy effect for low predictability passages. Results underscore the benefits of extra processing time in addressing CI listening challenges and highlight the limited ecological validity of single-word or single-sentence speech recognition tests.

Multi-stage accounts of Stroop effects suggest that Stroop effects result from different conflict and facilitation components. Consistent with these accounts, Augustinova et al. (2019) reported evidence for task, semantic and response components in Stroop effects. They also investigated how vocal and manual responses impacted the magnitude of each of the conflict and facilitation components. However, the role of phonological components in Stroop effects was not investigated in their study. The impact of phonology on Stroop effects has been observed in several studies (Besner & Stolz, 1998; Parris et al., 2019; Spinks et al., 2000). However, these studies did not investigate the role of different conflict/facilitation components in Stroop effects. To investigate the impact of phonological components as well as task, semantic, and response components on Stroop effects, a vocal and manual Stroop task was for the first time conducted with Chinese speakers using a design similar to that of Augustinova et al. (2019). The data revealed only in the vocal Stroop task phonological conflict and facilitation, whereas semantic and response conflicts were found with vocal and manual responses. Implications of the findings for response modality effects and the measures of facilitation/conflict components are discussed.

As trained educational and developmental psychologists who study the role of working memory in educational outcomes, we know the various assumptions made about definitions and measurements of this cognitive ability. Considering the popularity of the Baddeley and Hitch working memory model (1974) in these fields, we raise challenges related to measurement, overlap with executive function, and adopting working memory measurement approaches from adult models. We propose that researchers consider how working memory tasks might tap multiple other abilities. This is problematic in the context of child cognitive development and in understanding which factors explain educational outcomes in children. We recommend giving greater attention to the central executive, acknowledging the overlap between the central executive and executive function in study design, and investigating a developmental model in the context of the broader abilities evoked in measurement. These recommendations may provide a fuller understanding of working memory's mechanistic role in children's learning and development and assist in developing reasonable adjustments for specific aspects of working memory for children who struggle.

The present study addressed the role of motor representations in declarative memory (i.e., semantic and episodic). Based on embodied and grounded theories of cognition, it is often suggested that motor representations contribute to declarative memory. According to the action priming effect, graspable objects are categorized faster when primed by pictures of a congruent hand grip, as motor representations (how to grasp it) and semantic information (what it is) are closely related. Moreover, motor representations may contribute to episodic memory functioning. We immobilized participants' dominant hand for 24 hours to impair their processing of hand-related motor representations. This method is known to elicit rapid updating of cortical hand representations, and a slowdown in cognitive tasks linked to hand-related motor cognition. We expected to observe a decreased action priming effect following short-term hand nonuse. We further predicted that in a subsequent recognition task, objects that had been encoded following congruent action priming would be recognized faster by controls, but not by previously immobilized participants. Results did not show any effect of hand nonuse on action priming, suggesting that motor representations are not a decisive factor for this effect. Nonetheless, prime congruence influenced subsequent recognition. Immobilized participants were slower to recognize objects previously seen with an unrelated hand grip prime compared to a congruent one. This result suggests a contribution of motor representation to declarative memory, in particular when the sensorimotor system has previously been impaired.

When asked to judge the duration of a face people typically overestimate the duration of angry compared with neutral faces. A novel feature of the current research was the inclusion of secondary manipulations designed to distort timing performance namely the effects of visual cues (Experiment 1) and action preparedness (Experiment 2). Furthermore, to establish whether the effects are multiplicative with duration, the effects were examined across two duration ranges (200-800 and 400-1,600 ms). Visual cues and instructions to prepare to act increased the tendency to judge faces as lasting longer. Experiment 1 revealed an unexpected underestimation effect for angry faces presented for short durations (200-800 ms). However, the effect was not replicated in Experiment 2 where the results were generally consistent with either an increase the speed of a pacemaker mechanism that resides within an internal clock or the widening of an attentional gate-the temporal overestimation effect for angry faces grew in magnitude from the short to long duration. Experiment 2 also showed that the temporal overestimation for angry faces was reduced in magnitude when participants were asked to prepare to either push or pull a joystick.

It has been proposed that autistic people experience a temporal distortion whereby the temporal binding window of multisensory integration is extended. Research to date has focused on autistic children so whether these differences persist into adulthood remains unknown. In addition, the possibility that the previous observations have arisen from between-group differences in response bias, rather than perceptual differences, has not been addressed. Participants completed simultaneity judgements of audiovisual speech stimuli across a range of stimulus-onset asynchronies. Response times and accuracy data were fitted to a drift-diffusion model so that the drift rate (a measure of processing efficiency) and starting point (response bias) could be estimated. In Experiment 1, we tested a sample of non-autistic adults who completed the Autism Quotient questionnaire. Autism Quotient score was not correlated with either drift rate or response bias, nor were there between-group differences when splitting based on the first and third quantiles of scores. In Experiment 2, we compared the performance of autistic with a group of non-autistic adults. There were no between-group differences in either drift rate or starting point. The results of this study do not support the previous suggestion that autistic people have an extended temporal binding window for audiovisual speech. In addition, exploratory analysis revealed that operationalising the temporal binding window in different ways influenced whether a group difference was observed, which is an important consideration for future work.

Public transport disruptions are conducive to disorientation narratives in which the temporal aspects of the experience are central, but it is difficult to collect psychometric data at the moment of disruption to quantify the occurring underlying feelings. We propose a new real-time survey distribution method based on travellers' interaction with disruption announcements on social media. We analyse 456 responses in the Paris area and find that travellers experience time slowing down and their destination feeling temporally farther away when undergoing traffic disruptions. Time dilation is more pronounced for people filling out the survey while still presently experiencing the disruption, suggesting that over time people remember a compressed version of their disorientation. Conflicted time feelings about the disruption, e.g., both faster and slower feelings of the passage of time, appear the longer the recollection delay. Travellers in a stopped train seem to change their itinerary not because the alternative journey feels shorter (it does not), but because it makes time pass faster. Time distortions are phenomenological hallmarks of public transport disruptions, but these distortions are poor predictors of confusion per se. Public transport operators can alleviate the time dilation experienced by their travellers by clearly stating whether they should reorient or wait for recovery when incidents occur. Our real-time survey distribution method can be used for the psychological study of crises, where a timely and targeted distribution is of paramount importance.