Open Mind最新文献

Judgment is often described in terms of an intuitive (System 1) versus deliberative (System 2) dichotomy, yet sound deliberation itself can take more than one form. Building on philosophical traditions and distinctions in treatment of sound judgment in economics and law, we propose that lay conceptions revolve around two distinct types of deliberate judgment: rational, emphasizing rule-based and utility-focused reasoning for well-defined problems, and reasonable, prioritizing context-sensitive and socially conscious reasoning for ill-defined problems. Across four studies in English-speaking Western samples (Studies 1-4; N = 2,130) and a Mandarin-speaking Chinese sample (Study 4; N = 697), participants described their notions of "sound" and "good" judgment, evaluated social scenarios, chose between candidates with distinct judgmental profiles, and categorized non-social objects. Results consistently showed that people view both rationality and reasonableness as common forms of deliberate sound judgment, while treating them as distinct. Participants preferred rational deliberation for algorithmic social roles linked to well-defined tasks and reasonable deliberation for interpretive roles linked to ill-defined tasks. Moreover, framing decisions as rational vs. reasonable influenced whether participants relied on rule-based vs. overall-similarity strategies in classification tasks. These findings suggest that lay understanding of sound judgment does not rely on a single standard of judgmental competence. Instead, people recognize that both rationality and reasonableness are critical for competent deliberation on different types of problems in life.

Conspiracy theories have pervaded human thought across time and cultures, often emerging during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where they influenced public behaviors and attitudes, notably in vaccine hesitancy. This research explores the metacognitive foundations of conspiracy beliefs, particularly focusing on how individuals monitor and assess their problem-solving processes. We propose that conspiracy beliefs are linked to high propositional confidence-often unsupported by accurate reasoning. Two studies were conducted to investigate the potential relationship between meta-reasoning inaccuracies (i.e., prospective confidence judgments and commission errors) during problem solving and conspiracy beliefs. Across two studies, we examine metacognitive markers of this overconfidence. Study 1 analyzes archival data from George and Mielicki's (2023) to investigate how COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs are associated with initial judgments of solvability in solvable and unsolvable Compound Remote Associate (CRA) tasks. Study 2 examines the relationship between commission errors on Rebus puzzles and conspiracy beliefs, while also assessing Socio-Cognitive Polarization (SCP)-a construct encompassing ideological rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and xenophobia. Results show that SCP amplified the effects of commission errors on conspiracy beliefs, situating these cognitive patterns within socio-political contexts. These findings offer novel evidence that conspiracy beliefs are not merely a product of what people think, but how they think-underscoring the intertwined roles of flawed meta-reasoning and socio-political attitudes in sustaining conspiratorial worldviews.

Using our hands to move a stick along a path differs in systematic ways from using our hands to communicate about moving the stick. Kinematic signatures (e.g., enlarged moving trajectories) have been found to mark a movement as communicative, relative to its non-communicative counterpart. But communicative movements are frequently embedded within an expressive system and might differ as a function of that system. For example, deaf signers move their hands when they communicate with sign language, which is a linguistic system. Hearing speakers also move their hands-they gesture along with speech-but those gestures do not form a linguistic system unto themselves. Do the communicative movements signers and speakers use to describe the same event differ as a function of the expressive systems within which they are embedded? Because some signs are highly iconic, researchers often assume that movements in these signs have the same properties as speakers' gestures. To test this assumption, we compared spontaneous hand gestures produced by hearing speakers when they talk (co-speech gesture) to productive iconic hand signs produced by deaf signers when the signs superficially resemble co-speech gestures (classifier signs). We used motion tracking and kinematic analyses to disentangle the spatial and temporal kinematic patterns of communicative movements in 33 English-speakers and 10 American Sign Language (ASL) signers, using each group's non-communicative movements as a control. Participants copied a movement on an object performed by a model (non-communicative movement) and then described what they did with the object (communicative movement). We found no differences between groups in how non-communicative movements related to communicative movements for spatial kinematics. However, for temporal kinematics, speakers' co-speech movements were less rhythmic and jerkier than their non-communicative movements, but signers' communicative movements were more rhythmic and smoother than their non-communicative movements. We thus found differences in the temporal aspects of co-speech gestures vs. classifier signs, leading to 3 conclusions: (i) Communicative movements do not always have the same kinematic signatures but depend on the expressive system within which they are embedded. (ii) Since signers' and speakers' communicative movements have different kinematic features, even highly iconic signed movements cannot be considered entirely gestural. (iii) We need fine-grained techniques to measure communicative movements, particularly when trying to identify the gestural aspects of sign. Communicative movements, even when superficially similar, differ as a function of the system they are part of.

Much of what children know about the world is learned from information provided by others, and children's endorsement of this information depends on the social attributes of the person providing the information (e.g., their accent, attractiveness, etc.). Previous work on how the identity of a person providing information (i.e., informant) influences children's learning has tended to focus on a highly specific, simplified learning context, where children are provided with conflicting claims from two individuals (e.g., one foreign- and one locally accented speaker) and are immediately asked to indicate whose information they endorse more. In the current study, we investigated the effect of informant identity on 5- to 7-year-old children's (N = 144) learning in a more real-world context, where children encountered surprising information from only one person (a foreign- or locally accented speaker), and were subsequently given the opportunity to engage further with that information (by testing for themselves whether the information was true). In contrast to previous research using a forced choice method, almost all children initially endorsed the surprising claim; however, their subsequent testing of the claim and later endorsement did differ based on whether children were interacting with a foreign- or locally accented speaker. These results highlight the need to investigate the influence of social factors on selective learning in more ecologically valid contexts, which, importantly, consider the influence of an informant at multiple points throughout the learning process.

Visual-world eye-tracking has long been a useful tool for measuring young children's real-time interpretation of words and sentences. Recently, researchers have extended this method to virtual platforms to reduce equipment costs and recruit more diverse participants. However, there is currently limited guidance on best practices, which require individual researchers to invent their own methodologies and may prevent broader adoption. Here, we present three broad approaches for implementing nine remote visual-world eye-tracking studies, and show that this method is highly feasible for assessing fine-grained language processing across populations of varying ages, clinical statuses, and socioeconomic status backgrounds. We outline strategic methods for conducting this research effectively, including strategies for experimental design, data collection, and data analysis given the variable conditions outside of a lab setting. We adopt four criteria for evaluating success for this method: 1) Minimal subject attrition relative to in-person studies, 2) Minimal track loss relative to conventional eye-tracking, 3) Conceptual replication of previous findings, and 4) Evidence of broadening participation. These case studies provide a thorough guide to future researchers looking to conduct remote eye-tracking research with developmental populations. Ultimately, we conclude that visual-world eye-tracking using internet-based methods is feasible for research with young children and may provide a relatively inexpensive option that can reach a broader, more diverse set of participants.

Question asking is a key tool for learning about the world, especially in childhood. However, formulating good questions is challenging. In any given situation, many questions are possible but only few are informative. In the present work, we investigate two ways 5- to 10-year-olds and adults simplify the challenge of formulating questions: by reusing previous questions, and by recombining components of previous questions to form new questions. In Study 1, we develop a new question asking task, verify its suitability for studying question asking in children and adults, and conduct a preliminary investigation of how children and adults reuse and recombine their own prior questions. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulate exposure to another person's questions, investigating under what conditions children and adults reuse and recombine others' questions. Our experimental results suggest that both children and adults reuse and recombine questions, and they adaptively modulate reuse depending on how informative a question will be in a particular situation. Moreover, children reuse and recombine prior questions more frequently than adults in some cases. This work shows that prior questions provide fodder for future questions, simplifying the challenge of inquiry and enabling effective learning.

There is consistent evidence for a positive association between education and a wide range of cognitive abilities. In particular, spatial abilities have been shown to be strongly related to academic achievement. However, studying this association is complex as both education and spatial abilities are modulated by multivariate sociodemographic factors, likely to vary across countries. Most previous studies relied on small sample sizes or were restricted to a limited number of countries, thus were unable to control for these covariates. To overcome these limitations, we used a spatial navigation task embedded in a mobile video game. We quantified the wayfinding ability of 397,162 people across 38 countries and showed that on average, education level was positively associated with wayfinding ability. This difference was stronger in older participants and increased with task difficulty. However, the effect of education was different across countries, from near-zero and non-significant in India (Bayes' factor = 0.08, Hedge's g = -0.03, 95% CI = [-0.15, 0.08]), to modest and significant in Romania (Bayes' factor = 345.44, Hedge's g = 0.15, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.22]). We did not find any relationship between the education effect size of countries and economic indicators such as GDP per capita. Using the 1972 reform increasing the minimum school leaving age in the UK as a natural experiment, we used a regression discontinuity design to show that education has a causal effect on wayfinding ability.

Forming memories requires a focus on the external world; retrieving memories requires attention to our internal world. Computational models propose that the hippocampus resolves the tension between encoding and retrieval by alternating between states that prioritize one over the other. We asked whether the success of a retrieval state affects the success of an encoding state, when both are measured in behavior. Across 3 Experiments (N = 197), we operationalized retrieval as the use of memories to make predictions about the future, and tested whether successful (vs. unsuccessful) prediction affected the likelihood of successful encoding. Participants viewed a series of scene categories that contained structure (e.g., beaches are followed by castles), which enabled memory retrieval to guide prediction. After structure learning, they completed a simultaneous prediction and encoding task. They were shown trial-unique category exemplars and made predictions about upcoming scene categories. Finally, participants completed a surprise memory test for the trial-unique images. Accurate (vs. inaccurate) predictions were associated with better encoding, and increasing prediction distance hurt both prediction and encoding. This association between encoding and prediction could not be explained by generic on- vs. off-task states. We propose that, in addition to stimulus and endogenous factors that modulate switches between encoding and retrieval, the success of one state can facilitate a switch to the other. Thus, although encoding and prediction depend on distinct and competitive computational mechanisms, the success of one in behavior can increase the likelihood of success for the other.

We can use prior knowledge of temporal structure to make predictions about how an event will unfold, and this schematic knowledge has been shown to impact the way that event memories are encoded and later reconstructed. Existing paradigms for studying prediction, however, are largely unable to separate effects of prediction accuracy from effects of stimulus probability: likely outcomes are assumed to be predicted, while unlikely outcomes are assumed to cause prediction errors. Here we use a novel approach in which we can independently manipulate prediction success and stimulus probability, by using real-time eye-tracking when viewing moves in a board game. The moves can be consistent or inconsistent with a participant's predictions (assessed via fixation patterns) and can be also be likely or unlikely to be played by a strategic player. By decorrelating these two measures, we found that both probability and prediction accuracy boost memory through two separate mechanisms, leading to different eye-movement strategies at retrieval. Accurate prediction improved encoding precision, allowing participants to directly retrieve these moves without the use of schematic knowledge. Probable moves, on the other hand, led to improved memory through a retrieval-time strategy in which schematic knowledge was used to generate candidate moves for recognition. These results shed new light on the specific role of predictions in enhancing event memories, and provide a more realistic paradigm for studying schemas, learning, and decision making.

Do people tacitly contrast minds and bodies? To find out, here, we gauge Dualism using a brief implicit association task. Participants were asked to determine whether a target word belonged to a category-attribute pair. Categories were either body or mind; attributes captured either physical properties of bodies (e.g., object/solid) or their converse (e.g., stuff/airy). Results from five experiments showed that physical properties selectively facilitated responses only to body (but not mind). In Experiments 3-5, responses to mind were further facilitated by airy (relative to solid). Together, these results suggest that people tacitly view the mind as ethereal, distinct from the physical body. Remarkably, this was the case even in participants who explicitly rejected Dualism. Dualism, then, is an implicit bias that persists despite explicit attitudes to the contrary. These conclusions shed light on why educated Western adults contrast minds and bodies.