Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

Mentalizing involves a number of psychological processes designed to appraise self and others from different points of view. Factors affecting the flexibility in the ability to switch between self-other representations and perspectives remain yet unclear. In this study, we sought to (a) assess individual variability in processing and switching between self and other-oriented mental representations and perspectives in a sample of typically developing youths and (b) examine how age and executive functioning may affect this switching process. A total of 88 adolescents and 163 young adults completed the Self-Other Switching Task, a new computerised personality trait attribution paradigm. Measures of sustained attention, working memory, and inhibition were used to assess executive functioning. Linear mixed models showed that participants were faster at making attributions from the self-perspective and when referring to the self. They were also slower to disengage/switch from the self-perspective and the self-representation. Whereas there were no age differences in self-other switching efficiency per se, adolescents were slower than adults on trials involving appraisals of the other from the self-perspective. Importantly, higher verbal working memory scores were associated with better performance on incongruent trials and with switching scores. This study demonstrates the utility of a new experimental task permitting to tease apart the effects of self-other appraisal and perspective switching within a single paradigm. Our behavioural results highlight a self-cost observed in switching between representations and perspectives and emphasise the roles of age and working memory in the simultaneous processing of self- and other-oriented information.

A crucial aspect of human memory concerns the ability to retrieve analogous situations whose individual objects do not resemble those of the cues (distant analogues). Recent studies using a cued-recall paradigm suggest that distant analogues are more frequently retrieved than disanalogous situations that maintain a small set of object similarities with the cues (objects-only (OO) matches). In the first experiment of the present study, one condition had a distant analogue compete in long-term memory with an OO match involving a higher number of object similarities than in prior research. In another condition, the distant analogue competed in memory with a situation whose individual objects and first-order relations resembled those of the target (R+O matches) but yielded partial structural similarities that were insufficient for projecting meaningful inferences. Experiment 2 replicated this procedure with distant analogues whose similarity with the target only became apparent at higher levels of abstraction. In both experiments, retrieval rates of distant analogues were similar to those of OO matches, lower than those of R+O matches, and lower when competing against R+O matches than against OO matches. These results bear important implications for the current debate about the adequacy of our memory systems for the prospects of analogical transfer.

In everyday life, when we have to formulate judgements, we often end up being influenced by information that is not directly related to the matter at hand. This happens both when we encounter the person in the real-life world, but also in the cyber-world, when, for example, we use social networks. In both cases, indeed, based simply on a few images or short stories, we may start to believe fake news or judge someone by generalising limited information to the overall judgement of that person/situation, as it happens in the halo effect. Even moral assessment can be influenced by limited, non-moral information; however, little is known on how this influence can affect our moral inferences about someone's virtues. We conduct three experiments, in which we assess how aspects non-directly connected to moral information, such as looks or fortuitous events, can affect our judgement about someone's morality. The experiments focus on the use of very limited information (e.g., attractiveness and/or short anecdotes), to reproduce the typical information available on a social network (e.g., people post selfies, or brief personal stories about their thoughts and feelings, or brief descriptions of personal events). In all experiments, the participants were asked to judge the moral virtues (honesty, courage, wisdom, and hope) of the person in the picture/narrative. Results show that pictures and narratives significantly affect the judgement of virtues. Moreover, the third experiment reveals a combined effect, by enhancing the influence of non-moral aspects on evaluation of someone's moral dispositions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing became prominent or required worldwide as a predominant preventive strategy up until and even after vaccines became widely available. Because masks make emotion recognition more challenging for both the face and voice, medical and behavioural/mental health providers became aware of the disruptions this generated in practitioner-patient relationships. The current set of studies utilised two adult samples, first from United States college students (N = 516) and second from the U.S. American general public (N = 115), to document the severity and types of errors in facial expression recognition that were exacerbated by medical mask occlusion. Using a within-subjects experimental design and a well-validated test of emotion recognition that incorporated multiethnic adult facial stimuli, both studies found that happy, sad, and angry faces were significantly more difficult to interpret with masks than without, with lesser effects for fear. Both high- and low-intensity emotions were more difficult to interpret with masks, with a greater relative change for high-intensity emotions. The implications of these findings for medical and behavioural/mental health practitioners are briefly described, with emphasis on strategies that can be taken to mitigate the impact in health care settings.

People often cannot remember the source of their memories despite recalling other elements of a remembered event correctly. Observation inflation is one such error of source monitoring. It refers to remembering the actions of another agent as self-performed. While the existence of this memory error is well documented, it is not clear how it relates to other errors of source attribution: It is not evident whether the phenomenon reflects (1) a specific tendency to appropriate the actions of other agents, (2) a general confusion of sources with overlapping features, or (3) whether it is a confound induced by the complex structure of the conventionally used experimental paradigm. We conducted two online experiments to assess these potential contributions to observation inflation. Crucially, administering a full source monitoring test revealed a symmetrical pattern: Recognising other's actions as one's own occurred at the same rate as misattributing one's own actions to another agent. The findings resonate with source-monitoring frameworks by suggesting that source attribution errors arise due to the similarity of the sources, whereas the evidence speaks against a special status for appropriating observed actions.

Studies on eye movements during reading have primarily focussed on the processing of content words (CWs), such as verbs and nouns. Those few studies that have analysed eye movements on function words (FWs), such as articles and prepositions, have reported that FWs are typically skipped more often and, when fixated, receive fewer and shorter fixations than CWs. However, those studies were often conducted in languages where FWs contain comparatively little information (e.g., the in English). In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), FWs can carry gender and number marking. In the present study, we analysed data from the RASTROS corpus of natural reading in BP and examined the effects of word length, predictability, frequency and word class on eye movements. Very limited differences between FWs and CWs were observed mostly restricted to the skipping rates of short words, such that FWs were skipped more often than CWs. For fixation times, differences were either nonexistent or restricted to atypical FWs, such as low frequency FWs, warranting further research. As such, our results are more compatible with studies showing limited or no differences in processing speed between FWs and CWs when influences of word length, frequency and predictability are taken into account.

People learn new words in narrative contexts, but little is known about how the emotional valence of the narrative influences word learning. In a pre-registered experiment, 76 English-speaking adults read 30 novel adjectives embedded in 60 short narratives (20 positive, 20 negative, and 20 neutral valence). Both immediately after and 24 hr later, participants completed a series of post-tests, including speeded recognition, sentence completion, meaning generation, and valence judgement. Results showed that participants learned both the novel word form and its meaning. Compared with novel words experienced in the neutral contexts, those read in the emotional contexts (both positive and negative) showed better learning of orthographic form in the immediate post-test, but only those read in the negative context were recognised with greater accuracy in the delayed post-test. Furthermore, the valence of the context was reflected in the word meanings participants generated for each novel word, suggesting that word valence can be inferred from the valence of the contexts. Results from sentence completion and valence judgement were mixed, depending on the task demands. These findings are discussed with reference to theories of affective embodiment and the implications for learning abstract words are considered.

The dark triad encompasses socially aversive personality traits-narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism-and has been shown to be associated with expression recognition difficulties. Alexithymia has been shown to be associated with the dark triad, and recent evidence has suggested that co-occurring alexithymia may explain facial expression recognition difficulties found in the autism spectrum. Here, I tested this alexithymia hypothesis for individuals on the dark triad spectrum. Using an individual difference approach, I assessed whether trait alexithymia was able to predict unique variance in facial expression discrimination ability and facial expression labelling ability above and beyond an individual's level of dark triad traits. Results showed that autistic traits, alexithymic traits, and dark triad traits all correlated with expression recognition ability. However, linear regression models showed that an individual's level of dark triad traits, their level of autistic traits, and a brief measure of general cognitive ability each predicted unique variance in facial expression discrimination and facial expression labelling ability, but an individual's level of alexithymic traits predicted no additional unique variance. Results suggest that dark triad and autistic traits each contribute to expression recognition ability in unique ways alongside general cognitive ability.

There is evidence to suggest that variations in difficulty during learning can moderate long-term retention. However, the direction of this effect is under contention throughout the literature. According to both the Desirable Difficulties Framework (DDF) and the Retrieval Effort Hypothesis (REH), increasing difficulty (thus relative effort) during retrieval-based learning can help achieve superior long-term retention. One reason for this is due to improved schema formation following a deeper encoding strategy, allowing for more efficient retrieval techniques. A conflicting theory discussed in this review is the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). The CLT states that conditions for learning are best when extraneous load is reduced, and intrinsic load is optimised. By doing this, germane resources can focus on schema formation. While both theories consider schema formation key to successful retention, the way in which it is best achieved is conflicting. To date, both theories have yet to be compared despite their commonalities. This review evaluates the aforementioned theories, before proposing a new model of difficulty in learning. The proposed model integrates principles from the DDF, REH, and CLT, incorporating insights from Perceptual Load Theory (PLT). It suggests that task difficulty should be adjusted based on the material's complexity and the learner's expertise. Increasing difficulty benefits low-element-interactivity tasks by enhancing focus and retention, while reducing difficulty in high-element-interactivity tasks prevents cognitive overload.

This study investigates whether estimates of familiarity, valence, arousal, and concreteness based on artificial intelligence (AI) are useful alternatives to word counts and human ratings in Spanish. We replicate and extend previous findings in English and show that GPT-4o is effective in estimating these word features. Validity checks even suggest that AI-generated estimates sometimes outperform traditional measurements. The ability to generate AI estimates for large numbers of words at low cost simplifies the process of obtaining word features and provides a new resource for researchers working in Spanish. We provide Excel lists of the collected word features, which can be freely used for research and teaching.