Cognitive Research-Principles and Implications最新文献

Developing ways to predict and encourage vaccine booster uptake are necessary for durable immunity responses. In a multi-nation sample, recruited in June-August 2021, we assessed delay discounting (one's tendency to choose smaller immediate rewards over larger future rewards), COVID-19 vaccination status, demographics, and distress level. Participants who reported being vaccinated were invited back one year later (n = 2547) to report their willingness to receive a booster dose, along with reasons for their decision. After controlling for demographic variables and distress level, a greater tendency to discount future rewards was associated with reduced willingness to receive a booster dose. Thematic coding revealed that the most common reason for booster willingness was protection against COVID-19, and for unwillingness was non-necessity. The results identify delay discounting as a behavioral predictor of booster willingness that may be used to inform tailored approaches to increase booster uptake (e.g., trust in science vs. vaccine mandates).

Prior studies indicate that emotions, particularly high-arousal emotions, may elicit rapid intuitive thinking, thereby decreasing the ability to recognize misinformation. Yet, few studies have distinguished prior affective states from emotional reactions to false news, which could influence belief in falsehoods in different ways. Extending a study by Martel et al. (Cognit Res: Principles Implic 5: 1-20, 2020), we conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment in Austria (N = 422), investigating associations of emotions and discernment of false and real news related to COVID-19. We found no associations of prior affective state with discernment, but observed higher anger and less joy in response to false compared to real news. Exploratory analyses, including automated analyses of open-ended text responses, suggested that anger arose for different reasons in different people depending on their prior beliefs. In our educated and left-leaning sample, higher anger was often related to recognizing the misinformation as such, rather than accepting the false claims. We conclude that studies need to distinguish between prior affective state and emotional response to misinformation and consider individuals' prior beliefs as determinants of emotions.

We report six experiments that examine how two essential components of a category-learning paradigm, training and feedback, can be manipulated to maximize learning and transfer of real-world, complex concepts. Some subjects learned through classification and were asked to classify hypothetical experiment scenarios as either true or non-true experiments; others learned through observation, wherein these same scenarios were presented along with the corresponding category label. Additionally, some subjects were presented correct-answer feedback (the category label), whereas others were presented explanation feedback (the correct answer and a detailed explanation). For classification training, this feedback was presented after each classification judgment; for observation training this feedback was presented simultaneously with the hypothetical experiment. After the learning phase, subjects completed a posttest that included one task that involved classifying novel hypothetical scenarios and another task comprising multiple-choice questions about novel scenarios, in which subjects had to specify the issue with the scenario or indicate how it could be fixed. The posttest either occurred immediately after the learning phase (Experiments 1-2), 10 min later (Experiments 3-4), two days later (Experiment 5), or one week later (Experiment 6). Explanation feedback generally led to better learning and transfer than correct-answer feedback. However, although subjects showed clear evidence of learning and transfer, posttest performance did not differ between classification and observation training. Critically, various learning theories and principles (e.g., retrieval practice, generation, active learning) predict a classification advantage. Our results thus call into question the extent to which such theories and principles extend to the transfer of learning.

As a wide variety of intelligent technologies become part of everyday life, researchers have explored how people conceptualize agents that in some ways act and think like living things but are clearly machines. Much of this work draws upon the idea that people readily default to generalizing human-like properties to such agents, and only pare back on these generalizations with added thought. However, recent findings have also documented that people are sometimes initially hesitant to attribute minds to a machine but are more willing to do so with additional thought. In the current experiments, we hypothesized that these attribution-increasing reconsiderations could be spurred by situation-induced cognitive dissonance. In two experiments, participants completed a belief activation exercise designed to induce cognitive dissonance (writing arguments for or against prominent beliefs), viewed a video of an ambiguously intentional robot, and completed measures of cognitive dissonance. In both experiments, cognitive dissonance was associated with increased attributions of mind to the robot. Our findings provide evidence that people sometimes increase their attributions of minds when experiencing cognitive conflict, but also that activation of change-inducing concepts may impact attributions of a mind without producing conscious cognitive conflict in participants.

Word identification accuracy is modulated by many factors including linguistic characteristics of words (frequent vs. infrequent), listening environment (noisy vs. quiet), and listener-related differences (older vs. younger). Nearly, all studies investigating these factors use high-familiarity words and noise signals that are either energetic maskers (e.g., white noise) or informational maskers composed of competing talkers (e.g., multitalker babble). Here, we expand on these findings by examining younger and older listeners' speech-in-noise perception for words varying in both frequency and familiarity within a simulated hospital noise that has important non-speech information. The method was inspired by the real-world challenges aging patients can face in understanding less familiar medical terminology used by healthcare professionals in noisy hospital environments. Word familiarity data from older and young adults were collected for 800 medically related terms. Familiarity ratings were highly correlated between the two age groups. Older adults' transcription accuracy for sentences with medical terminology that vary in their familiarity and frequency was assessed across four listening conditions: hospital noise, speech-shaped noise, amplitude-modulated speech-shaped noise, and quiet. Listeners were less accurate in noise conditions than in a quiet condition and were more impacted by hospital noise than either speech-shaped noise. Sentences with low-familiarity and low-frequency medical words combined with hospital noise were particularly detrimental for older adults compared to younger adults. The results impact our theoretical understanding of speech perception in noise and highlight real-world consequences of older adults' difficulties with speech-in-noise and specifically noise containing competing, non-speech information.

The widely utilized Global Positioning System (GPS) plays a crucial role in everyday navigation. The literature has predominantly focused on GPS use for reaching destinations rather than exploring its various strategic applications and relations with individual factors. The current paper is intended to develop a GPS Uses Scale assessing a variety of GPS uses for wayfinding and other GPS uses (Study 1). We also examine whether GPS uses are related to gender, age, self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring, dependence on GPS devices, and environment knowledge (Study 2). In Study 1, 365 participants completed the new GPS Uses Scale and the McGill GPS questionnaire, for assessing validity. Results from the confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a structure as five-level factors, good reliability, and validity. In Study 2, 200 participants completed the GPS Uses Scale, self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring scale, GPS dependence scale, and a sketch map task after learning a virtual city from a video. Results from the linear model showed that those who use GPS for strategic purposes reported higher self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring as well as dependence on GPS. Moreover, those who use GPS for orientation purposes reported higher dependency on GPS and had higher scores on the map task (environment knowledge). Men were less likely to use GPS for orientation. The present paper outlines the importance of assessing the various uses of GPS, suggesting self-efficacy and dependence on GPS, and contributes to its strategic use.

Previous studies have shown that fixations on familiar stimuli tend to be longer than on unfamiliar stimuli, theorized to be a result of retrieval of information from memory. We hypothesize that extended fixations are due to a lesser need to explore an already familiar stimulus. Participant's gaze was tracked as they tried to encode or retrieve a familiar face displayed either alone or alongside other unfamiliar faces. Regardless of the memory task (encodingretrieval), longer fixation durations were observed when a single familiar face was presented alone, and not when presented among unfamiliar ones. Thus, fixations were not prolonged when it was possible to explore other, unfamiliar stimuli. We conclude that prolonged fixations on familiar stimuli reflect a lesser need to explore an already familiar percept. The results underscore how memory representations influence active sensing, yielding fresh insights into efficient deployment of attention resources. We conclude that fixation durations could be used in applied memory detection tests, preferably together with other measures and when the familiar stimulus is presented alone.

The interplay between facial age and facial identity is evident from several scenarios experienced in daily life, such as when recognising a face several decades after the last exposure. However, the link between age and identity processing, and how age perception abilities might diverge in individuals with different face processing abilities, has scarcely been considered. Furthermore, the approach used to test age perception ability may also influence outcome, but the effect of different paradigms on performance is not yet known. Across three studies, we compare super-recognisers (SRs), people with developmental prosopagnosia (DPs), and a group of neurotypical controls, on three age perception paradigms. There were no differences on the numeric age estimation task (i.e. providing precise age estimates for a series of faces; Study 1), and numeric age estimation task with added noise-distortion to stimuli (Study 2). However, SRs were more accurate when instructed to classify ambient faces as either over- or under- the age of 18 compared to both DPs and controls (Study 3). Thus, there may be nuanced differences in age processing which can be tapped into using separate paradigms; however, given that the difference is only with SRs it remains unclear to what extent these are linked to facial identity processing.

People are often asked to self-evaluate their abilities, and these evaluations may not always reflect objective reality. Here, we investigated this issue for bilingual adults' self-evaluations of language proficiency and usage. We specifically examined how people's self-reported language solidarity impacted their first- (L1) and second-language (L2) self-evaluations, while statistically controlling for their objective language performance (i.e. LexTALE). We also investigated whether this impact varied for value-laden evaluations (e.g. how "good" am I at my L2) vs. usage-based evaluations (e.g. how often do I use my L2) for two sociolinguistically distinct groups (i.e. English-L1 speakers vs. French-L1 speakers in Montreal). Starting with value-laden self-evaluations, we found that French-L1 speakers with more favourable L2-English solidarity tended to underestimate their objective L2 ability, whereas French-L1 speakers with less favourable L2-English solidarity more accurately estimated their objective L2 ability. In contrast, English-L1 speakers with more favourable L2-French solidarity more accurately estimated their objective L2 ability than those with less favourable L2-French solidarity who underestimated their L2-French abilities. Turning to usage-based self-evaluations, we found that participants' self-evaluations were generally more accurate reflections of their performance, in a manner that was less affected by individual differences in self-reported language solidarity. This implies that language solidarity (or perhaps language attitudes more generally) can implicitly or explicitly impact bilingual adults' language self-evaluations when these evaluations are value-laden. These data suggest that people's language attitudes can bias how they perceive their abilities, although self-evaluations based on language use may be less susceptible to bias than those that are value-laden. These data have implications for the study of language and cognition that depend on self-assessments of individual differences and are relevant to work on how people self-assess their abilities generally.