Cognitive Research-Principles and Implications最新文献

Perceptual expertise is typically domain-specific and rarely generalises beyond an expert's domain of experience. Forensic feature-comparison examiners outperform the norm in domain-specific visual comparison, but emerging research suggests that they show advantages on other similar tasks outside their domain of expertise. For example, fingerprint examiners not only outperform novices in fingerprint comparison, but also in face comparison. Yet, the extent to which their skills generalise is poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the generalisability of perceptual expertise amongst forensic examiners by comparing their performance to novices and other examiners within and outside their area of expertise. We recruited 85 experts from three forensic disciplines (face, fingerprint, and firearms) and asked them to complete four different visual comparison tasks: faces, fingerprints, firearms, and novel-objects. Examiners displayed domain-specific expertise: they outperformed novices and other examiners within their domain of visual comparison expertise. Yet, some of their skill also generalised: examiners also outperformed novices outside their area of expertise. However, while individual differences in examiners' performance within their domain of experience were associated with their performance in a novel comparison task, they were not related to their performance on tasks outside their expert domain. These results provide key insight into the domain-specific and domain-general contributions of forensic examiners' perceptual expertise. Forensic expertise lends some generalisable skill to other visual comparison tasks, but best performance is still seen within examiners' domain of expertise.

Recent findings suggest that adding a visual depiction of a nose to virtual reality displays (virtual nose) can reduce motion sickness. If so, this would be a simple intervention that could improve the experience of a variety of VR applications. However, only one peer-reviewed study has reported a benefit from a virtual nose, and the effect was observed in a single low-powered experiment. To further test the effectiveness of a virtual nose for mitigating motion sickness in VR, we performed a preregistered experiment with higher power and better control. Subjects were presented with simulated movement in a virtual environment using a head-mounted display, and the resulting motion sickness was measured using the Fast Motion Sickness Scale (FMS) and the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Conditions with and without a virtual nose were tested in separate sessions on different days, and the mean habituation effects were removed analytically. Awareness of the manipulation was assessed with a funnel debriefing procedure. The sample size (n = 32) was chosen to have over 90% power to detect the estimated effect size based on previous data (d_z = 0.6). We found no significant difference between motion sickness in conditions with and without the virtual nose. The estimated effect size was close to zero, d_z = - 0.02, with a 95% credible interval [- 0.37, 0.33]. Results from a Bayesian analysis imply that any benefit from a virtual nose is unlikely to be more than a 26% reduction in FMS scores, and any cost is unlikely to be more than a 23% increase. Our results do not support the hypothesis that a virtual nose is a general and effective way to relieve motion sickness in virtual reality.

As they become more common, automated systems are also becoming increasingly opaque, challenging their users' abilities to explain and interpret their outputs. In this study, we test the predictions of fuzzy-trace theory-a leading theory of how people interpret quantitative information-on user decision making after interacting with an online decision aid. We recruited a sample of 205 online crowdworkers and asked them to use a system that was designed to detect URLs that were part of coordinated misinformation campaigns. We examined how user endorsements of system interpretability covaried with performance on this coordinated misinformation detection task and found that subjects who endorsed system interpretability displayed enhanced discernment. This interpretability was, in turn, associated with both objective mathematical ability and mathematical self-confidence. Beyond these individual differences, we evaluated the impact of a theoretically motivated intervention that was designed to promote sensemaking of system output. Participants provided with a "gist" version of system output, expressing the bottom-line meaning of that output, were better able to identify URLs that might have been part of a coordinated misinformation campaign, compared to users given the same information presented as verbatim quantitative metrics. This work highlights the importance of enabling users to grasp the essential, gist meaning of the information they receive from automated systems, which benefits users regardless of individual differences.

Observers' memory for a person's appearance can be compromised by the presence of a weapon, a phenomenon known as the weapon-focus effect (WFE). According to the unusual-item hypothesis, attention shifts from the perpetrator to the weapon because a weapon is an unusual object in many contexts. To test this assumption, we monitored participants' eye movements while they watched a mock-crime video. The video was presented with sound and featured a female perpetrator holding either a weapon, a non-threatening unusual object, or a neutral object. Contrary to the predictions of current theories, there were no significant differences in total viewing times for the three objects. For the perpetrator, total viewing time was reduced when she held the non-threatening unusual object, but not when she held the weapon. However, weapon presence led to an attentional shift from the perpetrator's face toward her body. Detailed time-course analyses revealed that the effects of object type were more pronounced during early scene viewing. Thus, our results do not support the idea of extended attentional shifts from the perpetrator toward the unusual objects, but instead suggest more complex attentional effects. Contrary to previous research, memory for the perpetrator's appearance was not affected by object type. Thus, there was no WFE. An additional online experiment using the same videos and methodology produced a WFE, but this effect disappeared when the videos were presented without sound.

Benefits of self-testing for learning have been consistently shown for simple materials such as word lists learned by rote memorization. Considerably less evidence for such benefits exists for complex, more educationally relevant materials and its application to new situations. The present study explores the mechanisms underlying this transfer. To this end, a typical retrieval-practice-effect paradigm was applied to foster the learning of an artificial language. Participants either repeatedly studied grammatically correct exemplar sentences of the artificial language or engaged in a cloze test as the interim test after learning. To assess far transfer, participants in both groups of restudy and retrieval practice engaged in a grammaticality judgment test after a delay of 5 min and 1 week. In addition, participants in both groups completed a final memory test (i.e., a cloze test identical to the initial test) 1 week after learning. In addition to a long-term memory benefit of retrieval practice, results revealed also a retrieval-practice benefit in the far-transfer test after the 1-week delay. The findings further support the view that far transfer is supported by learning the underlying grammatical rules as opposed to memorizing the material. Thus, retrieval practice is also effective for fostering learning of complex materials and, even more importantly, for promoting transfer of learning-a crucial goal in modern educational practices.

The study explores whether racial identity and appearance-based trustworthiness judgments can affect recognition of pain in medical students differing in levels of resting heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic control of the heart. After undergoing HRV assessment, 68 medical students (37 females) participated in a dynamic pain recognition task, viewing video clips of White and Black faces, which differed in perceived trustworthiness based on facial appearance, transitioning from neutral to intense pain expressions. Response time, pain intensity attribution and treatment recommendations were analyzed. Pain was recognized slower and estimated as less intense in Black compared to White faces, leading to a lower likelihood of recommending therapy. Pain recognition was faster for untrustworthy-looking White faces compared to trustworthy ones, while perceived trustworthiness had a minimal impact on the speed of pain recognition in Black faces. However, untrustworthy-looking faces were estimated to express more pain, particularly for Black faces. Notably, these biases were more pronounced in individuals with low, rather than high, resting HRV. Considering that therapeutic decisions mirrored pain intensity attribution, it would be important to increase awareness of these biases during medical training in order to promote equity in future pain assessment and treatment.

Increased automation transparency can improve the accuracy of automation use but can lead to increased bias towards agreeing with advice. Information about the automation's confidence in its advice may also increase the predictability of automation errors. We examined the effects of providing automation transparency, automation confidence information, and their potential interacting effect on the accuracy of automation use and other outcomes. An uninhabited vehicle (UV) management task was completed where participants selected the optimal UV to complete missions. Low or high automation transparency was provided, and participants agreed/disagreed with automated advice on each mission. We manipulated between participants whether automated advice was accompanied by confidence information. This information indicated on each trial whether automation was "somewhat" or "highly" confident in its advice. Higher transparency improved the accuracy of automation use, led to faster decisions, lower perceived workload, and increased trust and perceived usability. Providing participant automation confidence information, as compared with not, did not have an overall impact on any outcome variable and did not interact with transparency. Despite no benefit, participants who were provided confidence information did use it. For trials where lower compared to higher confidence information was presented, hit rates decreased, correct rejection rates increased, decision times slowed, and perceived workload increased, all suggestive of decreased reliance on automated advice. Such trial-by-trial shifts in automation use bias and other outcomes were not moderated by transparency. These findings can potentially inform the design of automated decision-support systems that are more understandable by humans in order to optimise human-automation interaction.

Searching for missing or wanted people is a crucial task in our society. Previous work on prospective person memory (PPM) has demonstrated that performance on this type of search task is worse relative to standard prospective memory tasks. Importantly, this process may be further affected by the race of the missing person, yet this has never been tested in laboratory settings. To test the effects of race on PPM, a convenience sample consisting primarily of self-identified Caucasian participants was asked to search for either a Caucasian or an Indian target person while judging the orientation of different Caucasian and Indian faces. Although the tasks were otherwise identical, 89% of Caucasian PPM targets were found while only 53% of Indian targets were found. Furthermore, relative to a control group with no PPM requirements, participants were slower and more error-prone when judging Indian faces relative to White faces, particularly if they were searching for an Indian face. We interpret these results as revealing other-race effects in prospective person memory, highlighting race as a critical factor for finding missing people. Importantly, this also emphasizes the need for real-world search efforts to factor in difficulty differences when people monitor for missing/wanted people from their own or different racial backgrounds. For example, media coverage of missing persons cases could perhaps be distributed more equitably by considering whether the missing person is from a racial minority in that region.

People perform poorly at sighting missing and wanted persons in simulated searches due to attention and face recognition failures. We manipulated participants' expectations of encountering a target person and the within-person variability of the targets' photographs studied in a laboratory-based and a field-based prospective person memory task. We hypothesized that within-person variability and expectations of encounter would impact prospective person memory performance, and that expectations would interact with within-person variability to mitigate the effect of variability. Surprisingly, low within-person variability resulted in better performance on the search task than high within-person variability in Experiment one possibly due to the study-test images being rated as more similar in the low variability condition. We found the expected effect of high variability producing more hits for the target whose study-test images were equally similar across variability conditions. There was no effect of variability in Experiment two. Expectations affected performance only in the field-based study (Experiment two), possibly because performance is typically poor in field-based studies. Our research demonstrates some nuance to the effect of within-person variability on search performance and extends existing research demonstrating expectations affect search performance.