Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology最新文献

The aim of this study was to examine whether peripheral information facilitates proactive processes during multitasking. For this purpose, peripheral information was presented regularly during multitasking and its effects on the performance of a tracking task (main task: reactive process) and a discrimination task (sub-task: proactive process) were examined. Experiment 1 presented peripheral information (white circles) in the same sensory modality (visual) as the information used for multitasking and the number of circle presentations was manipulated. In Experiment 2, a pure tone (auditory) was presented as peripheral information. We found that, in both experiments, the difficulty of the tracking task influenced discrimination performance, showing that as the difficulty of the tracking task (reactive process) increased, more cognitive resources were consumed in the tracking task, resulting in a decrease in cognitive resources available for the discrimination task (proactive process). In addition, regular presentation of peripheral information facilitated discrimination task performance in both experiments. Interestingly, this peripheral information also facilitated the tracking task performance (reactive process) even if the tracking task was difficult. Moreover, this promoting effect of the peripheral information occurred regardless of the sensory modality. This study revealed that processing of peripheral information facilitates the proactive process even if more cognitive resources are consumed, and that this facilitating effect does not conflict with multitasking and provides a margin of cognitive resources and also facilitates the reactive process. Our results provide evidence of how peripheral information and cognitive resources are used during multitasking.

Previous research has found associations between mental health difficulties and interpretation biases, including heightened interpretation of threat from neutral or ambiguous stimuli. Building on this research, we explored associations between interpretation biases (positive and negative) and three constructs that have been linked to migrant experience: mental health symptoms (Global Severity Index [GSI]), Post-Migration Living Difficulties (PMLD), and Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire (PEDQ). Two hundred thirty students who identified as first- (n = 94) or second-generation ethnic minority migrants (n = 68), and first-generation White migrants (n = 68) completed measures of GSI, PEDQ, and PMLD. They also performed an interpretation bias task using Point Light Walkers (PLW), dynamic stimuli with reduced visual input that are easily perceived as humans performing an action. Five categories of PLW were used: four that clearly depicted human forms undertaking positive, neutral, negative, or ambiguous actions, and a fifth that involved scrambled animations with no clear action or form. Participants were asked to imagine their interaction with the stimuli and rate their friendliness (positive interpretation bias) and aggressiveness (interpretation bias for threat). We found that the three groups differed on PEDQ and PMLD, with no significant differences in GSI, and the three measured were positively correlated. Poorer mental health and increased PMLD were associated with a heightened interpretation for threat of scrambled animations only. These findings have implications for understanding of the role of threat biases in mental health and the migrant experience.

Sex differences in mental rotation performance are one of the largest in cognitive psychology. Men outperform women by up to 1 SD in psychometric mental rotation tests, but it is often neglected that there are no or only small sex differences for chronometric tests. As both tests are supposed to measure the same ability, we suspect some features of the tests themselves to affect sex differences in performance. Following a theoretical review of the test features, we evaluate the effects of the number of possible answer alternatives, whether they are presented as pairwise mirrored, and their interaction on sex differences in mental rotation performance. In an online experiment, 838 German-speaking participants, 421 women, 417 men, M_age =  42.58 (SD = 12.54) years, solved four blocks of mental rotation trials with two or eight alternatives, which were either pairwise mirrored or not. The results show that that the overall performance was lower for more alternatives and for mixed alternatives but not for their interaction. We could not determine explanations for sex differences as we did not observe meaningful sex differences at all. Possible reasons include the differences between men and women in age and education. This study suggests that the differences between tests affect performance. Sex differences, however, need more investigation, including possible effects and interactions of the test design, education, and age.

Intention offloading involves using external reminders such as diaries, to-do lists, and digital alerts to help us remember delayed intentions. Recent studies have provided evidence for various cognitive and metacognitive factors that guide intention offloading, but little research has investigated the physical cost of reminder-setting itself. Here, we present two pre-registered experiments investigating how the cost of physical effort associated with reminder-setting influences strategic intention offloading under different levels of memory load. At all memory loads, reminder-setting was reduced when it was more effortful. The ability to set reminders allowed participants to compensate for the influence of memory load on accuracy in the low-effort condition; this effect was attenuated in the high-effort condition. In addition, there was evidence that participants with less confidence in their memory abilities were more likely to set reminders. Contrary to prediction, physical effort had the greatest effect on reminder-setting at intermediate memory loads. We speculate that the physical costs of reminder-setting might have the greatest impact when participants are uncertain about their strategy choice. These results demonstrate the importance of physical effort as one of the factors relevant to cost-benefit decision-making about cognitive offloading strategies.

Daily activities often occur in familiar environments, affording us an opportunity to learn. Laboratory studies have shown that people readily acquire an implicit spatial preference for locations that frequently contained a search target in the past. These studies, however, have focused on group characteristics, downplaying the significance of individual differences. In a pre-registered study, we examined the stability of individual differences in two variants of an implicit location probability learning (LPL) task. We tested the possibility that individual differences were stable in variants that shared the same search process, but not in variants involving different search processes. In Experiment 1, participants performed alternating blocks of T-among-Ls and 5-among-2s search tasks. Unbeknownst to them, the search target appeared disproportionately often in one region of space; the high-probability regions differed between the two tasks. LPL transferred between the two tasks. In addition, individuals who showed greater LPL in the T-task also did so in the 5-task and vice versa. In Experiment 2, participants searched for either a camouflaged-T against background noise or a well-segmented T among well-segmented Ls. These two tasks produced task-specific learning that did not transfer between tasks. Moreover, individual differences in learning did not correlate between tasks. Thus, LPL is associated with stable individual differences across variants, but only when the variants share common search processes.

It is generally assumed that decision-makers appear more competent and trustworthy when exuding confidence in their choices. However, many decisions are by their nature uncertain. Is it possible for a decision-maker to admit uncertainty and still be trusted? We propose that the communicated type of uncertainty may matter. Internal uncertainty, which signals lack of knowledge or a low degree of belief, may be viewed more negatively than external uncertainty, which is associated with randomness and complexity. The results of a series of experiments suggested that people viewed leaders as more competent when they expressed uncertainty about a decision in external ("It is uncertain") rather than internal terms ("I am uncertain"), overall effect size d = 0.45 [0.16, 0.74]. Paradoxically, when asked directly, participants expressed that leaders should be open about uncertainty rather than exuding confidence and downplaying uncertainty. A final study suggested that decision makers were more willing to reveal uncertainty about a choice to others when they perceived the uncertainty as more external and less internal and expected more positive and fewer negative consequences from expressing external rather than internal uncertainty.

Although it is known that the availability of visual feedback modulates grasping kinematics, it is unclear whether this extends to both the early and late stages of the movement. We tackled this issue by exposing participants to the Uznadze illusion (a medium stimulus appears larger or smaller after exposure to smaller or larger inducers). After seeing smaller or larger discs, participants grasped a medium disc with (closed-loop [CL]) or without (open-loop [OL]) visual feedback. Our main aim was to assess whether the time course of the illusion from the movement onset up to the grasp differed between OL and CL. Moreover, we compared OL and CL illusory effects on maximum grip aperture (MGA) and tested whether preparation time, movement time, and time to MGA predicted illusion magnitude. Results revealed that CL illusory effects decreased over movement time, whereas OL ones remained constant. At the time of MGA, OL, and CL effects were, however, of similar size. Although OL grasps were longer to prepare and showed earlier and larger MGAs, such differences had little impact on modulating the illusion. These results suggest that the early stage of grasping is sensitive to the Uznadze illusion both under CL and OL conditions, whereas the late phase is sensitive to it only under OL conditions. We discuss these findings within the framework of theoretical models on the functional properties of the dorsal stream for visually guided actions.

This article investigates the use of performance-related feedback as a strategy for overcoming spontaneous occupational stereotyping when certain social role nouns and professional terms are read. Across two studies participants were presented with two terms: a role noun (e.g., surgeon) and a kinship term (e.g., mother) and asked to quickly decide whether both terms could refer to the same person. The feedback training involved telling participants whether their responses were correct or incorrect and providing them with their cumulative percentage correct score. In the absence of feedback, responding to stereotype-incongruent pairings was typically slower and less accurate than in stereotype-congruent and neutral conditions. However, the results demonstrated that performance significantly improved to stimuli on which participants received the feedback training (Experiment 1), and to a novel set of stimuli (Experiment 2). In addition, the effects were still evident 1 week later (Experiment 2). It is concluded that performance-related feedback is a valuable strategy for overcoming spontaneous activation of occupational stereotypes and can result in lower levels of stereotype use.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the broader autistic phenotype (BAP) have been suggested to be associated with perceptual-cognitive difficulties processing human faces. However, the empirical results are mixed, arguably, in part due to inadequate samples and analyses. Consequently, we administered the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a vocabulary test, and the Autism Quotient (AQ) to a sample of 318 adults in the general community. Based on a disattenuated path analytic modelling strategy, we found that both face perception ability (β = -.21) and facial emotional expression recognition ability (β = -.27) predicted uniquely and significantly the Communication dimension of AQ. Vocabulary failed to yield a significant, direct effect onto the Communication dimension of the AQ. We conclude that difficulties perceiving information from the faces of others may contribute to difficulties in nonverbal communication, as conceptualised and measured within the context of BAP.

All major writing systems mandate the use of commas to separate clauses and list items. However, casual writers often omit mandatory commas. Little empirical or theoretical research has been done on the effect that omitting mandatory commas has on eye movement control during reading. We present an eye-tracking experiment in Spanish, a language with a clear standard as to mandatory comma use. Sentences were presented with or without mandatory commas while readers' eye movements were recorded. There was a local increase in the go-past time for the pre-comma region when commas were presented, which was balanced out by shorter first-pass and second-pass times on the subsequent regions. In global sentence reading time, there was no evidence for an advantage of presenting commas. These findings suggest that, even when commas are mandatory, their effect is primarily to shift when processing takes place rather than to facilitate processing overall.