Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

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.

Working memory allows us to store information in mind over brief time periods while engaging in other information-processing activities. As such, this system supports cognitive dual-tasking, that is, remembering information while performing a concurrent processing task. Age-related dual-task deficits have been proposed as a critical feature of lifespan cognitive decline. However, evidence regarding such deficits has been mixed, and knowledge of the conditions under which such deficits appear remains elusive. Moreover, several studies have suggested that different aspects of working memory decline at different rates with age and that age-related change is not necessarily linear. We explored lifespan changes in 539 participants (aged 15-90 years) on several memory, processing, and dual (combined) tasks. We addressed two research questions: (1) Does the magnitude of dual-task costs change across the lifespan? (2) Do different measures of memory, processing and dual-tasking, all decline at the same rate with age? We found that younger-young adults outperformed all other participants on dual-task measures. However, deficits did not appear to increase from the age of 35 years into older age, suggesting that dual-task ability declined in early adulthood but not thereafter between midlife and older age. Processing performance appeared to decline linearly and more rapidly with age than memory performance. Our finding that for some measures, the largest changes occurred in the transition from early to middle adulthood provides an interesting contrast to the widely held assumption that cognition declines continuously across the adult lifespan.

The reading of external negated disjunctions (a disjunction as a clause is externally negated) is an interdisciplinary issue addressed by logic, linguistics, and psychology. For external negated disjunctions, we investigated how their possibility judgments varied with their two expression forms: NTSs (not-true sentences) with the form It is not true that p or q or both versus DSs (deny-sentences) with the form Someone denied that p or q or both). We propose the semantic negation scope account for the question with the hypothesis of the effect of expression form of negation that a NTS will more often elicit the weak local negation strategy that people consider cases negating at least one of the disjuncts as possible, and judge p¬q, ¬pq, and ¬p¬q as possible; while a DS will more often elicit the strong global negation strategy that people consider only cases negating all disjuncts as possible, and judge only ¬p¬q as possible. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the hypothesis in verbal and pictural scenarios, respectively. Both experiments exhibited the effect of expression form of negation that DSs more often elicited the strong global negation strategy, while in conversational and non-conversational contexts, NTSs more often elicited the weak local negation strategy, as favoring the semantic negation scope account over the alternative accounts. The effect of expression form of negation suggests that there seems no unified mental mechanism of the reading of external negated disjunctions with different expression forms.

Animal studies show that novelty boosts memory for unrelated information encountered shortly after. Evidence for this effect is lacking in humans. Using Virtual Reality (VR) to simulate spatial novelty has yielded conflicting results. Schomaker et al. found that word recall was higher when encoding followed novel rather than familiar exploration, which we failed to replicate in two prior studies. Instead, we observed enhanced recall after initial VR exposure. This study examined the broader effect of VR experience on memory. As VR could improve memory, we included 35 younger adults and 32 older adults to directly investigate whether the effect is maintained when episodic memory declines. We compared memory performance on word lists encoded after exploring a VR environment, watching a documentary (a more common experience), or completing a control condition that involved no exploration. Recall was better after VR than after both the control condition and the documentary, suggesting that the effects of VR go beyond spatial novelty. Both age groups benefited from the VR effect on memory. The effect of VR on subsequent memory was modulated by novelty judgments: the more participants experienced VR as a novel experience, the larger the memory boost. We discuss how VR could constitute itself another type of novelty that could be taken into consideration in future studies.

Time-to-contact (TTC) estimation is critical for daily activities, assessing when a moving object will reach a location. TTC tasks are used to study motion processing. In the TTC tasks, time structure (T) refers to the ratio of the durations of the motions in two phases: (a) one in which the stimulus is visible before it reaches occlusion point and (b) one in which it is invisible after it reaches occlusion point. The condition of T = 1.0, which indicates that the time spent moving is the same across the two segments, is called an equal time structure; otherwise, it is called an unequal time structure condition (T ≠ 1.0). The present study investigated the effect of cognitive load on TTC estimation across different time structures using a dual-task paradigm across two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that when visual velocity was available, high cognitive load enhanced participants performance in T ≠ 1.0, but had no effect on T = 1.0. Experiment 2, isolating visual velocity information, showed no significant differences in performance across different cognitive loads. These findings indicated that cognitive load could have a differential effect on TTC estimation in relation to visual velocity cues and time structure, offering insights into optimizing cognitive processes associated with time judgments.

Some studies suggest that people automatically adopt others' perspectives without realizing it, based on the Dot Perspective Task. In this task, participants and a virtual person may see the same or different numbers of red dots, and participants judge the number of dots more quickly when the numbers match, known as the self-consistency effect. However, it remains unclear whether this effect truly stems from implicit perspective-taking or from a domain-general attentional cueing mechanism. This study conducted two experiments to explore this mechanism. Experiment 1 utilized visual adaptation to examine whether persons, arrows, and fans shared the same task mechanism. Results showed that fans, despite lacking social attributes, exhibit the same task mechanisms as person and arrows due to their directional cues. Experiment 2 employed eye-tracking to further compare person and fan tasks, revealing that fans also produced the self-consistency effect and exhibited the same eye movement patterns as person. Overall, these findings indicate that attentional cueing may play a more crucial role in the Dot Perspective Task, and the accuracy of the task in measuring implicit perspective-taking abilities remains a topic for further consideration.

Perceptual illusions of having extra body parts offer an experimental method to investigate the limits of body perception. It is well established that the illusory perception of an artificial hand as one's own is dependent on spatial congruency. That is, the seen hand needs to be in a posture congruent with the actual hand. In this study, we aimed to investigate how constrained the representation of a supernumerary body part is by systematically varying the perceived rotation of an illusory sixth finger. Surprisingly, participants felt a sixth finger on their hand consistently for all induced orientations of finger extension and abduction (0°, 90°, 135°, 180°). The illusion showed no apparent decrease with increased induced rotation of the extra finger. We also measured the perceived orientation of the sixth finger, and our results show that participants felt an extended and an abducted sixth finger increasingly more rotated as the induced rotation also increased, while feeling their actual little finger in a normal position. Our results indicate that one can feel a supernumerary finger in an incongruent spatial location from one's actual fingers and hand, to an extent of 180° of extension (finger up) and 180° of abduction (finger to the side). We therefore propose that the representation of the supernumerary finger has a strong independence from the actual finger and hand-frame reference.

The current paper presents three experimental studies of relative clause processing in German, French and Russian. The participants' eye movements were tracked on the visual display while they listened to subject or object relative clauses (SRC vs. ORC) with transitive verbs. Three characters were shown on the display: the target (the referent of the relative clause head), the syntactic competitor (the referent of the relative clause head with the reverse semantic role) and the embedded NP (the second argument of the verb). Subsequently, one of the characters was shown again, and the participants were asked to indicate whether it was the one designated by the relative clause. The looks towards the target showed a clear subject-object asymmetry in all the three languages, which is consistent with previous findings related to the subject advantage for languages under investigation. Additionally, we examined two types of non-target processing and response patterns: involving the syntactic competitor and the embedded NP. In German and Russian, there was a significant difference in fixation probabilities towards the embedded NP character. In French, more looks to the syntactic competitor were the dominant non-target response pattern. We argue that the commitment to the embedded NP might be indicative of cross-linguistic differences in the reliability of morphological cues to structure building. We suggest that the processing pattern for ORCs is modulated by the use of case morphology as a late-occurring cue to structure building due to a weak initial activation of the target.