Journal of Cognition最新文献

Previous studies have examined error dynamics to investigate the origins of incorrect lexical access. The comparison of correct and incorrect reaction times (RTs) and the use of Conditional Accuracy Functions (CAFs) in lexical decision tasks have led to inconclusive findings. The present study aimed to clarify these inconsistencies by integrating both methodological approaches across a larger dataset. Our results revealed a pattern of fast errors for pseudowords in both measures, with faster error trials compared to correct trials and a marked decrease in accuracy for the fastest trials. This pattern is discussed within diffusion models of visual word recognition and cognitive control which suggest that pseudoword errors are associated with uninhibited automatic lexical activation. Word errors appeared relatively insensitive to RTs, as no significant difference was found between correct and error RTs, and the CAF displayed a more uniform pattern, but yet not homogeneous. Indeed, a pattern of slow errors was observed for both words and pseudowords in the CAFs, with less accuracy in the slowest RTs. An exploratory analysis suggested that this pattern of slow errors in the word condition might be characteristic of poor reading skills. These aspects are discussed in regard to visual word recognition models that postulate several factors to explain the occurrence of slow errors. Taken together, this research provides a framework that could be used for identifying cognitive markers of reading difficulties. Future research could explore how factors like word frequency or reading skills influence error dynamics, potentially informing interventions targeting lexical retrieval deficits.

SFUSED English (Simon Fraser University Speech Error Database - English) is the first large scale database of speech errors developed from audio recordings of spontaneous speech. This article describes the structure of the database and the standards used to construct it, including collection and classification methods, record mark-up, data quality measures, and adherence to standard practices in psycholinguistics and English linguistics. Additional information on these methods and the entire database are available on the OSF repository: https://osf.io/8c9rg/.

Acting intentionally requires the integration of perceptual with action information in a common representational format. In the action control literature, this integrated representation is often called event file and is measured in so-called stimulus-response binding effects. These effects allow us to measure the strength of this shared representation and the impact it can have on behavior. A well-established finding is that particular variables can modulate the size of binding effects - one recently discovered modulator is stimulus predictability: If perceptual information is perfectly predictable, stimulus-response binding effects diminish. Yet, the concrete mechanism of why predictability diminishes stimulus-response binding effects remained elusive so far. In the present study (N = 234), we compared two possible explanations for these modulation effects, namely habituation versus statistical learning. We found that it is unlikely that the predictability modulation is explained by habituation. Instead, we found evidence that is more in line with (but not exclusive to) learning of statistical regularities as an explanation. Our study thus adds to recent attempts to more closely relate learning mechanisms and action control.

Executing go/no-go and approach/avoidance responses toward objects can increase people's choices of go over no-go items, and of approach over avoidance items. Some theoretical accounts explain these effects as the results of merely executing these responses (i.e., action execution), while others propose that these choice effects stem from interpreting these motor responses as valenced actions (i.e., action interpretation). To test the role of action execution versus action interpretation in both go/no-go and approach/avoidance responses, we employed a recently developed training that combined both dimensions orthogonally. Participants either pressed a key or not (i.e., go/no-go) to control a shopping cart on screen, to either collect or not collect certain food items (i.e., approach/avoidance). After the training, they repeatedly chose between food items (i.e., candies) for real consumption. When the instructions framed the responses as approach/avoidance actions, participants (N = 98) preferred approach items over avoidance items, but did not show preferences between go and no-go items in their choices. In contrast, when the instructions framed the responses as go/no-go actions, participants (N = 98) preferred go items over no-go items, but did not show preferences between approach and avoidance items. Despite making the same actual responses in both instruction groups, action interpretation determined whether go/no-go or approach/avoidance actions influenced food choice. Disambiguating the interpretation of motor responses as clearly valenced and meaningful actions may therefore be a fruitful way to maximize the effectiveness of response-based behavioral interventions.

The levels of processing effect demonstrates that deeper encoding (processing meaning) enhances memory retention more than shallow encoding (processing perceptual features). While extensively studied with verbal materials, limited research has addressed this effect using nonverbal materials such as pictures. Previous studies have used pleasantness judgments to induce deep encoding and judgments of straight lines to induce shallow encoding. However, these tasks confound level of processing with other factors like task relevance, self-reference, and attentional scope, offering alternative explanations for observed memory performance differences. This online study (N = 307) tested the levels of processing framework for pictures using novel encoding tasks to isolate the effect of semantic processing. The novel encoding tasks involved a size judgment. In the shallow encoding condition, participants compared the size of an object to the displayed size of a reference object presented on the screen. This is a perceptual comparison of two pictures. In the deep encoding condition, participants compared the size of an object to the real-life size of a reference object. This requires an understanding of the semantic meaning of the presented object. Our results showed better memory performance in deep encoding conditions (pleasantness judgment, real-life size judgment) than shallow encoding conditions (line judgment, displayed size judgment), supporting the levels of processing framework. Additionally, the new size judgment tasks minimized alternative explanatory factors, providing a clearer understanding of how semantic processing influences visual associative memory. These findings confirm the applicability of the levels of processing effect to nonverbal materials.

Motor interactions with single, as well as pairs of objects can be automatically affected by visual asymmetries provided by protruding parts, whether the handle or not. Faster and more accurate performance is typically produced when task-defined responses correspond to the location of such protruding parts, relative to when they do not correspond (i.e., object-based spatial correspondence effects). In two experiments we investigated the mechanisms that underlie the spatial coding of tool-object pairs when semantic and action alignment relationships were orthogonally combined. Centrally presented pictures of "active" tools (depicted as potentially performing their proper action) were paired, on one side, to a "passive" object (target of the tool action). We observed S-R correspondence effects that depended on the location of the protruding side of tool-object pairs, and not on the non-protruding side of the tool handle. Thus, results further supported the location coding account of the effect, against the affordance activation one. The effect was only produced when tool-object pairs belonged to the same semantic category or were correctly aligned for action, but with no further interplay. This was not consistent with the idea that action links were coded between tool-object pairs, and that the resulting action direction interacted with response spatial codes. Alternatively, we claimed that semantic relation and action alignment acted, independent from each other, as perceptual grouping criteria; allowing for the basic spatial coding of visual asymmetries to take place. This brought to speculation, at neurocognitive level, about independent processing along the ventral and ventro-dorsal streams.

We examined long-term contingency learning (CL) in a color classification task with two separate sets of non-overlapping color-word contingencies that were employed in alternating blocks of the task ("alternating blocks paradigm"). Analyzing only the first occurrences of the word distractors in each block provides a pure indicator of long-term CL that is free from recency-based episodic retrieval processes. A high-powered (n = 110), pre-registered study revealed evidence for reliable long-term color-word CL. This long-term CL effect depended on contingency awareness, indicating that genuine long-term CL is influenced by propositional knowledge.

Action control theories assume that stimulus and response features are integrated or bound into short term episodic traces. A repetition of any of these features results in a retrieval of the entire episodic trace, and can thus facilitate or interfere with future actions. Along with stimuli features, features of the response and any other irrelevant stimuli that are present, are also integrated into such traces and can influence future actions. Using word stimuli, Singh et al. (2018) observed that such so-called binding effects are larger for attended features relative to unattended features. This was the case even for features generally believed to be automatically processed, like valence. Since previous research has shown differences in the processing of word and picture stimuli, it is questionable whether the attentional modulations in the above study would extend to picture stimuli. In order to examine this question, Experiment 1 replicated the design of Singh et al. (2018) but used picture instead of word stimuli. In order to directly compare word and picture stimuli, the data of Singh et al (2018) were re-analysed together with the data of the present study. In Experiment 2, the alternative hypothesis, that the effects were driven by the encoding of stimulus contingencies, was tested. Taken together, the findings of the present study replicate those of Singh et al. (2018), indicating that even with picture stimuli, valence related binding effects are modulated by attention allocation.

Associative learning can occur implicitly for stimuli that occur together probabilistically. It is debated whether probabilistic, implicit learning occurs not only at the item level, but also at the category level. Here, we investigated whether associative learning would occur between color and numerical categories, while participants performed a color task. In category-level experiments for each parity and magnitude, high-probability pairings of four numbers with one color were categorically consistent (e.g., the Arabic numerals 2,4,6, and 8 appeared in blue with a high probability, p = .9). Associative learning was measured as higher performance for high-probability vs. low-probability color/number pairings. For both parity and magnitude, performance was significantly better for high- vs. low-probability trials (parity: 3.1% more accurate; magnitude: 1.3% more accurate; 9 ms faster). Category-level learning was also evident in a subsequent color association report task with novel double-digit numbers (parity: 63% accuracy; magnitude: 55%). In control, item-level experiments, in which high-probability pairings were not categorically consistent (e.g., 2,3,6, and 7 appeared in blue with a high probability, p = .9), no significant differences between high- vs. low-probability trials were present. These results are in line with associative learning occurring at the category level, and, further, suggest automatic semantic processing of symbolic numerals in terms of parity and magnitude.

Human survival requires prompt perception and action to address relevant events in the environment. For this, the brain has evolved a system that uses warning stimuli to elicit phasic alertness, a state readying the brain for upcoming perception and action. Although a wealth of empirical evidence revealed how phasic alertness improves a wide range of perceptual and cognitive processing, it is still unclear by what cognitive mechanisms this is achieved. Here, we identify key problems that have to be solved for this to be possible and delineate concrete ways to achieve this. Specifically, we discover I) how to establish phasic alertness as a cognitive state of readiness for perception and action, II) how it can affect cognition online or offline, III) how it could be triggered internally without a warning, and IV) to what degrees it relied on bottom-up processing, or top-down temporal or stimulus expectations and the current task. As a result, the discussion provides us with a research program yielding the theoretical and empirical basis for mechanistic and computational models of phasic alertness and its neurophysiological underpinnings.