Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

Voluntary running in activity wheels by rats leads to a Pavlovian conditioned aversion to the flavour consumed immediately before the running, causing the rats to avoid that flavour. This learning process, known as running-based flavour avoidance learning (FAL), is weakened when the rats have had repeated exposure to the wheels before. According to the associative account, the association between the background context and running established during the preexposure phase blocks the conditioning of the target flavour because the running is highly predictable by the background context from the outset of the FAL phase. Experiments 1 and 2 examined this account by introducing another flavour as a cue signalling wheel access during the preexposure phase. In the framework of the associative account, the introduction of this cue should impede the formation of the context-running association during the preexposure phase, thereby hindering the contextual blocking of aversive conditioning for the target flavour in the FAL phase. This would result in unweakened FAL. Although the results of Experiment 1 align with this prediction, in Experiment 2, when highly distinct flavours were used as the target and second cues, the preexposure effect was not eliminated. This contradicts the predictions of the associative account, indicating that Experiment 1 may have been influenced by stimulus generalisation. In Experiment 3, changing background contexts between the preexposure and FAL phases had no impact on the preexposure effect, contrary to the predictions of the associative account. In general, the associative account was not supported.

The influences of shared orthography, semantics, and phonology on bilingual cognate processing have been investigated extensively. However, mixed results have been found regarding the effects of phonological similarity on L2 cognate processing. In addition, most existing studies examining the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing have been conducted on alphabetic scripts, in which phonology and orthography are always associated. Hence, in this study, we recruited Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals who used two logographic scripts, traditional Chinese and Japanese Kanji, to examine the influence of phonological similarity on L2 cognate lexical decision. Importantly, these scripts allow the manipulation of phonological similarity using identical characters across both languages. In addition, we examined how word frequency and L2 proficiency modulate cognate processing. Results showed that although word frequency and L2 proficiency played important roles in cognate processing, there was minimal overall influence of phonological similarity on cognate lexical decision. The latter finding suggests that theoretical models of bilingual word recognition may need to be refined to enhance our understanding of cognate processing regarding the role of phonology among diverse bilingual populations.

The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" (RMET) is one of the most used tests of theory of mind. Its principle is to match an emotion word to the corresponding face image. The performance at this test has been associated with multiple psychological variables including personality, loneliness and empathy. Recently, however, the validity of the RMET has been questioned. An alternative version of the test has been tested using eye-tracking (Russell et al., 2021) in addition to manual responses and was hypothesized to be more sensitive. Here, we put this hypothesis to the test by attempting to reproduce already-assessed correlational results between the performance at the classical RMET and the self-reported personality, loneliness and empathy, now using eye-gaze as an RMET performance index. Despite a marked eye-gaze bias towards the face image corresponding to the target word, the eye-gaze pattern correlated with none of the self-reported psychological variables. This result highlights the interest in using eye-tracking for theory of mind tests, while questioning the robustness of the association between psychological variables and RMET performance, and the validity of the RMET itself.

The word association task has been used extensively in psychological and linguistic research as a way of measuring connections between words in the mental lexicon. Interpretation of word association data has assumed that responses represent the strongest association between cue word and response, but there is evidence that participant behaviour can be affected by task instructions and design. This study investigated whether word association responses can be primed by the participants' own response to the preceding cue-that is, whether the order in which cues are presented alters the responses that are generated. Results showed that the proportion of participants who provide a particular association (e.g., acid-RAIN) is greater when their response to the previous cue in the list is also associated with rain (e.g., parasol-UMBRELLA). The same is not true when the two cues are presented non-consecutively. Word association tasks should be administered such that the order in which cues are presented is random for every participant so as to avoid unintentional contamination of associative strength data.

Facial attractiveness plays a significant role in interpersonal interactions, influencing various aspects of life. This study is the first to explore, from a neurological perspective, the impact of facial attractiveness on individual cooperative behavior in the context of the Stag Hunt game. 26 participants took part in a two-person Stag Hunt experimental task while their electroencephalogram (EEG) data was recorded. Participants had to decide whether to cooperate with or to defect from a virtual partner in the game, with photos of these partners (high or low attractiveness) shown before the decision. Analysis of the behavioral data indicates that faces with high attractiveness can promote individual cooperative behavior. EEG data analysis revealed that during the facial stimulus presentation phase, low attractiveness faces elicited more negative N2 amplitudes, smaller LPP amplitudes, and larger alpha oscillations compared to high attractiveness faces. During the outcome feedback phase, high attractiveness faces elicited smaller FRN amplitudes, larger P300 amplitudes, and stronger theta oscillations than low attractiveness faces, while loss feedback elicited more negative FRN amplitudes, smaller P300 amplitudes, and larger theta oscillations than gain feedback. These findings indicate that the processing of facial attractiveness occurs early and automatically, and it also influences individuals' evaluation of behavioral outcomes.

Lexico-semantic effects in lexical decision and semantic categorisation tasks have been investigated using the megastudy approach, but not with other traditional spoken word recognition tasks. To address this gap, this megastudy examined the single-word shadowing task, where 96 native English speakers repeated aloud each word they heard as quickly and as accurately as possible. Item-level hierarchical regression and linear mixed-effects analyses produced identical results: Words with longer token duration were associated with slower response times while high-frequency and phonologically distinctive words were repeated faster. These findings were consistent with previous studies and other tasks, which suggests that lexical effects are task-general in spoken word recognition. However, after controlling for lexical variables, six semantic variables did not account for any additional unique variance in response times. These results suggest that the single-word shadowing task is heavily dependent on lexical processing and can be completed without activating semantics. Cross-task comparisons with another megastudy's data on auditory lexical decision and semantic categorisation tasks further suggest that lexical effects are task-general, while semantic richness effects are task-specific in spoken word recognition.

Remembering together with others can facilitate memory for previously encountered contents, but can also prompt social contagion with information not previously encountered. This study examined whether these effects of collaborative remembering might serve a directive function and guide subsequent individual decisions. Participants were tested in groups of three and completed an adapted version of a prisoner's dilemma. They initially encountered faces of different players on a screen, who cooperated with them or acted as cheaters. Some of these players were encountered by all three participants, others by single participants only. An interpolated memory test on all players was completed individually or collaboratively. During a final decision game, participants were asked to decide whether to cooperate with each player or not. Three experiments were conducted, which additionally varied encoding, the retention interval before the interpolated memory test, and format and instructions for the interpolated memory test. The results consistently showed adaptive decision making. Participants were more likely to cooperate with players who had previously cooperated with them, relative to both new players and cheaters. Interpolated collaborative remembering had no benefit, however; neither for decisions towards directly encountered players, nor for decisions towards players encountered by other participants. Effects of collaborative remembering may thus not serve a directive function and guide future behavior, or at least they may not do so in this adapted version of a prisoner's dilemma.

If a searched-for target object is consistently encountered within repeating spatial distractor arrangements, target detection becomes more efficient relative to nonrepeated, that is, random arrangements (contextual cueing [CC] effect). However, target location changes within otherwise unchanged distractor arrays substantially weaken the cueing effect. Previous studies reported substantial variations in individual participants' abilities to learn and relearn invariant contexts. Therefore, the current study examined how individual differences in attentional control and focus, as indexed by the well-established Stroop and Navon tasks, respectively, relate to CC in a learning phase/relocation phase design. During the visual search, we recorded behavioural reaction times (RTs) and fixation locations, the latter permitting us to decompose search RTs into search- and motor-related substages. We could thus evaluate the processes responsible for CC and the lack thereof after target relocation while also testing whether search and motor components of CC are different for individuals depending on their Stroop/Navon scores. Repeated contexts yielded faster RTs (and reduced fixation numbers), though there was a substantial decrease in cueing from learning to adaptation, consistent with previous studies. Critically, contextual learning, but not relearning, varied across individuals: participants with high-Stroop interference displayed overall larger CC during early target search, while a more local Navon task bias was associated with increased CC during later processes of target response decisions. Our results demonstrate that analysing individual differences can help validate the processes responsible for CC in search tasks, particularly distinguishing between early search and later response-related mechanisms.

Recent studies have demonstrated hysteresis in studies of syntactic choice in language production. These studies further show that the hysteresis effects observed in syntactic choice are similar to the effects observed in motor choice tasks. Here, we examine whether hysteresis can be observed for a different kind of linguistic choice, namely the choice between the spatial demonstratives this and that. We further examine whether these hysteresis effects parallel the hysteresis effects found in a similar motor task. Our results demonstrate hysteresis in both spatial demonstrative choice and motor choice. Nevertheless, there were some effects that appeared in the motor task that did not appear in the language task (e.g., a response time advantage for repeated choices).

Learning-guided reactive control is the flexible biasing of attention that is triggered by external cues, such that more focused control settings are retrieved and executed in response to cues predicting higher attentional demands. We investigated whether race/ethnicity is harnessed as a cue to guide control using a social Stroop task in which participants named the race/ethnicity of a face (e.g., Asian) while ignoring a superimposed word that was congruent (e.g., Asian) or incongruent (e.g., White). In the first four experiments, we manipulated item-specific proportion congruence. Faces of some races/ethnicities (e.g., Asian; Black) were mostly congruent and faces of others (e.g., White; Latina) were mostly incongruent. We observed the item-specific proportion congruence effect showing a smaller Stroop effect for mostly incongruent faces. Critically, we found transfer of the effect to faces of each race/ethnicity that were 50% congruent, indicating control at the more abstract, category level (i.e., more focused control setting retrieved and executed for racial/ethnic categories associated with higher attentional demands). Individuating faces did not disrupt category-level control but recategorization of the faces into racially/ethnically diverse teams did, as indicated by the lack of transfer. In a final experiment, we associated proportion congruence (attentional demands) with the conjunction of two social categories (race/ethnicity and gender) and found novel evidence of conjunctive learning-guided control. The findings demonstrate that race/ethnicity (and conjunctions with gender) cues control adjustments, people transfer learned control settings to other members of race/ethnicity categories, and recategorization creates an important boundary condition for transfer.