Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

Research has found atypical counterfactual production in autistic children, yet intact counterfactual reasoning in autistic adults. To date, however, no research has investigated counterfactual production in autistic adults. The current study combined a counterfactual production task with eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm to examine how autistic and neurotypical adults plan and initiate counterfactual responses. Autistic participants showed slower speech initiation and more disfluencies, consistent with broader speech production patterns, but did not experience greater difficulties with counterfactual production itself. Both groups also showed a comparable preference to produce additive counterfactuals, suggesting developmental convergence by adulthood. In contrast, while both groups showed a strong preference to produce and fixate human causes, this bias was stronger among neurotypical adults than autistic participants, who more often considered physical causes and were less influenced by salient social cues. Additionally, speech-locked eye movements revealed group differences: neurotypical adults flexibly modulated their gaze to human causes depending on whether they produced factual or counterfactual responses, whereas autistic adults showed more uniform gaze patterns across conditions. These findings highlight shared competencies but distinct social-cognitive strategies in counterfactual production across groups.

Historical research has previously described sex differences in mental rotation ability. Here we sought to determine whether such sex differences still exist via a systematic review and meta-analysis. Using the University of Nottingham's Library database, Google Scholar and PubMed, all studies investigating sex differences in mental rotation since 2010 were considered. Existing meta analyses along with studies that did not compare both males and females' biological sex, use stated mental rotation tests and did not make the full text available were excluded. The systematic review identified 41 relevant studies and a meta-analysis was carried out on 59 effect sizes from this sample. Analysis found that males performed better than females in mental rotation tasks and the effect size (d = 0.60, CI 0.54) was of a similar magnitude to prior meta-analyses. Subgroup analysis also confirmed the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) produced the greatest effect size. An Eggers Test reported no evidence of publication bias, however there was significant heterogeneity within the research data. Overall, these results are consistent with previous research, however raise questions as to why the MRT elicits significantly greater effect sizes than other mental rotation assessments.

In perception experiments, researchers often collect multiple perceptual judgements from the same stimuli and participants to answer their research questions. While the way in which perceptual judgements are collected may affect the data, research rarely considers task design when investigating this topic. We therefore investigated how two frequently used methods of collecting multiple ratings can affect perceptual judgements, focusing on first impressions of faces. One participant group provided ratings of seven person characteristics (e.g. femininity, youthfulness, trustworthiness) blocked by characteristic, rating faces for one person characteristic at a time, across seven blocks. Another participant group completed one block in which they rated all seven characteristics simultaneously via a list of rating scales. The listed presentation format reduced task duration by 22%, but affected the perceptual ratings in several ways, pointing to reduced data quality, potentially as a result of satisficing behaviours. Specically, inter-rater agreement was lower for some person characteristics (youthfulness, femininity, and trustworthiness) in the listed format. Variance in ratings was also reduced for youthfulness, femininity, and dominance, with ratings clustering closer to the middle of the scale. Importantly, correlations between different person characteristics became universally positive in the listed format, indicating reduced independence of judgements. These findings highlight that while presenting multiple judgements at the same time may offer efficiency, this approach can introduce systematic biases and potentially reduce the reliability of perceptual data. We therefore suggest using a blocked presentation format and consider how these trade-offs would impact experiments looking at multiple perceptual judgements collected from the same participants.

Interaction with objects typically involves both vision and touch. Understanding how visual and haptic information interact during object exploration is essential to uncovering the mechanisms of multisensory shape perception. We investigated whether haptic exploration influences subsequent eye movements, using a cross-modal shape comparison task. Participants (N = 22) explored 3D replicas of bell peppers either haptically or visually, and subsequently viewed the same or a different object. We tracked eye movements during visual explorations. Comparing uni-modal visual to cross-modal, haptic-to-visual conditions, we found that prior haptic exploration led to significantly shorter fixations, longer and faster saccades, as well as larger coverage of the image with fixations during subsequent visual exploration - indicative of a broader, more distributed scanning pattern. These effects suggest that visual saliency is modulated by prior tactile experience, challenging purely unimodal or bottom-up models of attentional guidance.

Previous research has confirmed the effect of monetary reward on selective attention, but the influence of social reward has yet to be fully investigated. To address this issue, we employed a modified two-rectangle paradigm paired with the monetary incentive delay task or social incentive delay task. In this paradigm, reward cues were implemented symbolically and were not linked to performance-based rewards. In Experiment 1, the relative value of monetary reward diminished object-based attention without affecting space-based attention (SBA). In Experiment 2, the stability of the SBA effect was confirmed, but the elimination of the object-based attention effect due to the relative value of non-verbal social reward was only observed in women. In Experiment 3, we found that verbal social reward resulted in similar effects as monetary reward in Experiment 1 when non-verbal information bias was controlled. The results contribute further evidence to the extended common currency schema and are consistent with the view from prospect theory that relative, context-dependent value can influence early attentional processing across different reward types.

We conducted a cued target localization experiment to examine inhibition of return (IOR) in a computer-simulated three-dimensional (3D) environment. Cues and targets were presented either on the same or different depth planes, and on the same or opposite sides. In trials where cues and targets were at different depths, they were positioned either within a single object extending across depth or across two distinct objects separated along the depth axis. IOR was reduced when the cue appeared farther than the subsequent target (a far-to-near switch), compared to when both appeared at the same depth. Notably, this depth-specific reduction in IOR only emerged when the cue and target appeared between different objects, not when they were part of the same object. In contrast, no such effect was found for near-to-far depth switches. These findings suggest that IOR can be modulated by both depth and object structure, but only under specific spatial configurations-particularly when attention shifts from a farther to a nearer location across separate objects.

The peripersonal space is a multisensory interface between the body and the environment, which can be modulated by the presence of objects or other agents. However, how the presence of artificial agents affects the representation of peripersonal space is still poorly understood. We conducted four experiments in which participants had to judge objects' reachability for themselves or for another agent. In Experiment 1, participants performed the reachability task alone. In Experiment 2, participants interacted with another human partner. Experiment 2b was a control condition to test task's physical properties. In Experiment 3, participants performed the task with the humanoid robot iCub, programmed to exhibit motor and social behaviours. The results showed that the extent of the peripersonal space was influenced by the presence of another agent, as participants narrowed their own peripersonal space in a social context, compared to performing the task alone. Furthermore, they perceived their own peripersonal space as larger, compared to the peripersonal space of another human agent (Experiment 2) or humanoid robot (Experiment 3). This suggests that the motor repertoire of a human and a humanoid embodied artificial agent is similarly perceived. The present evidence may open new avenues for space perception in social interactions.

Losses and errors often slow down subsequent reaction times (RTs). This is classically explained in terms of a shift towards more cautious, therefore slow, behaviour. Recent studies of gambling, however, reported faster RTs following losses, so-called post-loss speeding, often attributing these to behavioural impulsivity arising from frustration. Here we instead investigated post-loss speeding in the context of a task that allowed behavioural adaptation and learning, namely probabilistic reversal learning (PRL). We additionally used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how losses influence subsequent markers of action generation (readiness potential [RP]) and outcome evaluation (feedback-related negativity [FRN] and P300). Our results confirm faster RTs after losses than after wins in PRL, thus extending post-loss speeding from gambling to cognitive contexts where learning is possible. Previous losses did not affect subsequent RP amplitudes. However, compared to wins, previous losses led to more positive FRN and more positive P300 amplitudes elicited by subsequent outcomes. Furthermore, faster RTs were associated with more negative FRN amplitudes irrespective of previous or outcome valence. We hypothesise that post-loss speeding in PRL may represent a form of signal chasing, allowing participants to behaviourally modulate neurophysiological responses and thereby potentially establish agency by influencing internal neurophysiological signals.

Can personality, known to shape emotional experiences and gaze behaviors, influence the recognition of subtle emotional facial expressions? Do these personality-related gaze patterns change with emotional intensity? To explore this, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment with 116 participants who identified dynamic emotional facial expressions of varying intensities (anger, fear, disgust, happiness). Using a multidimensional approach to personality, we clustered participants based on Big Five personality dimensions and anxiety scores, distinguishing those scoring high in dimensions associated with positive (extroversion, agreeableness) versus negative emotions (neuroticism, social anxiety). Results showed that individuals with a positively-colored personality focused more on the mouth (likely seeking happiness cues), while those with a negatively-colored personality focused more on the eyes (likely seeking signs of negative emotions). However, at higher intensity, these gaze patterns persisted only when emotions matched participants' personality (individuals with a negatively-colored personality focused more on the eyes than others, but only when viewing fear or anger). Yet, personality did not affect the sensory discrimination or decision-making processes for subtle emotion identification. Thus, personality, as a multidimensional construct, seems to influence gaze strategies, facilitating emotionally congruent experiences without hindering the recognition of others' emotions, even subtle ones, which is crucial for effective social interactions.

In a spatial Stroop task, responses to gaze stimuli are faster when the direction and location are incongruent (reversed congruency effect), whereas responses to arrow stimuli are faster when congruent (standard congruency effect). To explain the reversal of gaze, Tanaka et al. proposed a dual-stage hypothesis comprising target-background segregation and selective inhibition. This hypothesis predicts that the enhancement of selective inhibition reduces and increases the standard and reversed congruency effects, respectively. As selective inhibition varies on a trial-by-trial basis, we tested the dual-stage hypothesis by examining congruency sequence effects (CSE) in the spatial Stroop task. We analysed the data collected from 409 participants previously tested in our laboratory. The results showed a decrease in the standard congruency effect (standard CSE) and an increase in the reversed congruency effect (reversed CSE) after incongruent trials (N - 1 incongruent) relative to congruent trials (N - 1 congruent). Reaction time distribution analysis revealed that these CSEs emerged from faster responses, suggesting that conflict monitoring in preceding trials enhanced inhibition efficiency in the current trials. These results highlighted the role of selective inhibition in the dual-stage hypothesis. Selective inhibition dynamically changes its size and onset depending on the preceding trial type and contributes to these sequential effects.