Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

The cylinder model of interpersonal sensemaking predicts that cooperation emerges in interactions where speakers are matched on motivational frames and cooperative rather than competitive in orientation. The purpose of the current study was to provide the first evidence of a causal link between motivational frame matching and cooperation and trust in an investigative interviewing context. Over two pre-registered experiments (N = 776), participants took the role of a suspect during an interaction with an interviewer. During the interaction, the interviewer and suspect either matched motivational frames (in an instrumental, relational or identity motivational frame) or not, in either a cooperative or competitive way. It was found that within a cooperative orientation interaction, motivational frame matching led to significantly higher willingness to cooperate and greater feelings of being understood among the participants. In contrast, within a competitive orientation interaction, motivational frame matching led to significantly less willingness to cooperate and identify with the interviewer.

Pain perception can be described as a process of Bayesian inference, which generates sensory estimates based on prior expectations and afferent information. The inference is affected by within-individual variations in the precision (inverse variance) of the distribution of centrally predicted ascending noxious signals. While the top-down effect of priors (expectations and beliefs) on pain perception has received much attention within the Bayesian framework, there remains a lack of validated quantitative measures that capture within-individual variations in the likelihood function. Using a 2 × 2 fully factorial within-individual design, we measured and compared the precision of the likelihood function in four tasks administered to 57 healthy adults: the cued pain task (CPT) and the Focused Analgesia Selection Test (FAST), in two noxious modalities, thermal and electrical. A hierarchical Bayesian model was applied to the CPT, and the FAST was employed as a validation criterion, given that it is known to correlate with clinical pain reports and the placebo response. Individuals with a more precise representation of ascending sensory signals in the CPT produced less variable pain reports in the FAST. We validated the result by replicating this correlation across thermal and electrical pain. These results support the validity of our approach to the measurement of the precision of ascending noxious signals. Their correlation with FAST scores supports their criterion validity, and their correlation across noxious sub-modalities supports the concurrent validity of this measurement. Quantifying the precision of noxious inputs could inform work on placebo sensitivity and strengthen the assay sensitivity of randomized clinical trials involving pain.

The hybrid dual processing model maintains that humans possess an extensive intuitive logic featuring multiple deductive inference forms. One basis for this claim is the presence of a logic bias effect on the dual instructional set paradigm. Implicit logical processing interferes with efforts to respond on the basis of belief to a greater extent than belief-based processing interferes with efforts to respond on the basis of logical validity. An important question for the hybrid model is whether there are limits to intuitive logic. Across two experiments, we manipulated inference complexity (defined by inference direction and the presence or the absence of negation) on a conditional reasoning task by crossing conditional inference type (modus ponens, modus tollens) and conclusion wording (normal, contrary). We found that the presence or the absence of the logic bias effect depended on the complexity of processing required by the inference. In particular, the extent to which logical processing interfered with efforts to respond according to belief was a function of inference complexity. We also provide evidence that the logic bias effect is positively related to analytical thinking disposition and negatively related to working memory capacity. These results suggest that there are limitations to intuitive logic even within everyday inferences.

Research suggests that static depictions of social interactions preferentially capture our attention compared to non-interactions. Research also suggests that motion captures attention. To date, therefore, it is unknown whether dynamic social interactions preferentially capture attention relative to non-interactions, over and above motion cues. The present study captured 81 participants' eye-gaze when viewing 4-s video clips of social interactions compared to motion-matched non-interactions. We hypothesised that participants would spend more time looking at the two agents in the videos relative to the background when viewing social interactions compared to non-interactions. Results confirmed our hypothesis and demonstrated that this effect was stronger for individuals with greater empathy and lower autistic traits. These results add to the growing body of research investigating the processing of social interactions in complex, naturalistic stimuli and demonstrate that social interactions do preferentially capture attention, even when motion cues are present.

IIn visual crowding, perception of an element deteriorates in the presence of clutter. The mechanism(s) underlying crowding have been controversially discussed for decades. Whereas it is well established that grouping determines which elements are prone to interference, it is unclear what causes interference, e.g., feature pooling, lateral inhibition, or substitution. To address this question, we presented an array of lines of which the central line was offset (vernier offset). Observers were asked to report this offset. The flanking lines were straight or had the same (pro-vernier) or opposite (anti-vernier) offset direction compared to the target vernier. Participants' performance was hardly influenced by a single pro-vernier contrary to what is expected both from pooling and substitution mechanisms, which predict increased performance. When the number of pro- as well as anti-verniers increased, performance significantly increased or decreased, respectively. When the flankers were presented closer to the fovea, the influence of the flankers was larger than when presented further away, contrary to the well-known in-out anisotropy. We show that there are processes at work, which can hardly be captured by any existing model of crowding.

Colour preferences are not random - many people like blue but dislike brownish yellows. The Ecological Valence Theory (EVT; Palmer & Schloss, 2010, PNAS, 107, 8877-8882) posits that colour preferences arise from affective experiences with similarly coloured objects, such as liking blue because of clear skies or disliking brown due to rotten foods. While the EVT should apply broadly, empirical tests have used very similar approaches and the same pre-selected colours. We tested the central prediction of the EVT using an alternative approach. Participants (N = 135) selected their favourite and least favourite colours from an unrestricted range using a computerised colour picker. They also provided reasons for these preferences and listed free associations with the chosen colours. Results supported the central prediction of the EVT but also revealed important asymmetries. Support was strong for favourite colours. We found more consistent, object-based, and almost exclusively positive associations (90%). For least favourite colours, responses were more diverse and yielded a surprising amount of positive associations (38%). These findings demonstrate that colour preferences arise from broad influences, including abstract concepts and personal meanings, while revealing fundamental asymmetries between favourite and least favourite colours.

High prior knowledge facilitates learning of new related material by providing structures enhancing comprehension and facilitating recall. Previous studies examining the effects of prior knowledge used single-event stimuli while neglecting the repetitive nature of everyday experience and the potential of repetition to generate knowledge structures. In the current study, we used the repeated event paradigm to investigate the interaction between the effects of prior knowledge and repetition on event memory. In Experiment 1, we validated three sets of stimuli in which we manipulated prior knowledge. Participants viewed and later recalled four instances of a repeated event (e.g., four variations of a story). As predicted, participants recalled more correct details and rated their level of understanding higher for instances where prior knowledge was high than low. In Experiment 2, we extended the examination by comparing the effect of prior knowledge on recall of a single event and instances of a repeated event. We replicated findings from previous research (typically using high prior knowledge stimuli): participants recalled more correct details of a single event compared to the final instance of a repeated event, and contrary to our expectations, this pattern was consistent across prior knowledge conditions. Exploratory comparison of recall between the single event and the first instance of a repeated event showed a small and nonsignificant difference. Findings of this study inform us about the underlying processes that impact recall of instances of repeated events for different levels of prior knowledge.

Perceivers consistently extract information from faces to judge whether others are attractive, trustworthy, or dominant. However, there is also substantial variability among perceivers when making these face-judgements. Here, we investigated whether dyadic similarities in participants' personalities are related to similarities in their face-judgements. 307 participants based in the UK rated 24 faces on six traits. Participants also rated themselves on social-traits and completed a personality questionnaire. We computed dissimilarities between pairs of participants for face-judgements, self-rated-social-traits, and personality-traits, resulting in three separate dissimilarity matrices. Using representational similarity analysis, we showed that both the self-rated-social-traits and personality-traits matrices were significantly correlated with the face-judgements matrix. Importantly, these associations were stable when controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and location. These findings show that people who are more similar to each other also perceive others in a similar manner, and could form the basis for how we gravitate towards others and build friendships.

The study aims to understand how the impact of social presence on task performance (social facilitation effect), usually measured in face-to-face settings, can be generalised towards remote videoconferencing. The social facilitation effect is expressed in the improvement of task performance on easy tasks, and detriment on difficult tasks, during a social situation versus when performing alone. We tested which videoconferencing channels are responsible for this performance change. The interaction occurred within an experimentally controlled naturalistic videoconferencing setting. The participants performed visual-reasoning tasks as quickly and accurately as possible under several conditions: when screen-sharing their task performance, having their video on, seeing the video of the researchers' interactive avatar, and with all these channels on or all off. Based on two social facilitation effect phenomena, we predicted that participants' performance might change when it is watched (audience effect) by the researcher through screen-sharing and when participants or the researcher co-share their videos during videoconferencing (mere presence effect). We found that having participant video visible to the companion improved participants' performance accuracy on difficult tasks, whilst task screen-sharing improved speed on correct easy tasks, with no significant effect from the researchers' visual presence. We entertain the notion of soft-presence and propose ways forward.

Becoming a skilled reader requires that children accumulate extensive experience with text through independent reading. Research shows that greater text experience is associated with stronger reading skills, better comprehension, and improved spelling, and, consequently, higher reading motivation. Reliable objective measures of children's reading experience are therefore essential; however, because such measures are typically highly sensitive to temporal and cultural contexts, none of the existing tests are suitable for capturing the reading experience of British children today. We address this gap by introducing a new Author Recognition Test (ART) and Title Recognition Test (TRT) designed specifically for primary school children in the United Kingdom and validated with a large cohort of British pupils. The battery also includes a new multiple-choice spelling test that can be easily administered online. We further demonstrate that single-word reading and sentence reading efficiency tests from the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) can be adapted for use with British children and provide valid measures of reading proficiency. Together, these tools offer a much-needed, freely available resource for both researchers and practitioners, enabling reliable measurement of children's text experience and basic literacy skills. The test battery is openly available on https://osf.io/gmv72/.