Cognitive Research-Principles and Implications最新文献

The .05 boundary within Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing (NHST) "has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move" (to quote Douglas Adams). Here, we move past meta-scientific arguments and ask an empirical question: What is the psychological standing of the .05 boundary for statistical significance? We find that graduate students in the psychological sciences show a boundary effect when relating p-values across .05. We propose this psychological boundary is learned through statistical training in NHST and reading a scientific literature replete with "statistical significance". Consistent with this proposal, undergraduates do not show the same sensitivity to the .05 boundary. Additionally, the size of a graduate student's boundary effect is not associated with their explicit endorsement of questionable research practices. These findings suggest that training creates distortions in initial processing of p-values, but these might be dampened through scientific processes operating over longer timescales.

Attention allows us to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions. Effective suppression of distracting information is crucial for efficient visual search. Recent studies have developed two paradigms to investigate attentional suppression: cued-suppression which is based on top-down control, and learned-suppression which is based on selection history. While both types of suppression reportedly engage proactive control, it remains unclear whether they rely on shared mechanisms. This study aimed to determine the relationship between cued- and learned-suppression. In a within-subjects design, 54 participants performed a cued-suppression task where pre-cues indicated upcoming target or distractor colors, and a learned-suppression task where a salient color distractor was present or absent. No significant correlation emerged between performance in the two tasks, suggesting distinct suppression mechanisms. Cued-suppression correlated with visual working memory capacity, indicating reliance on explicit control. In contrast, learned-suppression correlated with everyday distractibility, suggesting implicit control based on regularities. These results provide evidence for heterogeneous proactive control mechanisms underlying cued- and learned-suppression. While both engage inhibition, cued-suppression relies on deliberate top-down control modulated by working memory, whereas learned-suppression involves implicit suppression shaped by selection history and distractibility traits.

With the increased sophistication of technology, humans have the possibility to offload a variety of tasks to algorithms. Here, we investigated whether the extent to which people are willing to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is modulated by the availability of a bonus task and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity. Participants performed a multiple object tracking (MOT) task which required them to visually track targets on a screen. Participants could offload an unlimited number of targets to a "computer partner". If participants decided to offload the entire task to the computer, they could instead perform a bonus task which resulted in additional financial gain-however, this gain was conditional on a high performance accuracy in the MOT task. Thus, participants should only offload the entire task if they trusted the computer to perform accurately. We found that participants were significantly more willing to completely offload the task if they were informed beforehand that the computer's accuracy was flawless (Experiment 1 vs. 2). Participants' offloading behavior was not significantly affected by whether the bonus task was incentivized or not (Experiment 2 vs. 3). These results combined with those from our previous study (Wahn et al. in PLoS ONE 18:e0286102, 2023), which did not include a bonus task but was identical otherwise, show that the human willingness to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is considerably boosted by the availability of a bonus task-even if not incentivized-and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity.

The use of face coverings can make communication more difficult by removing access to visual cues as well as affecting the physical transmission of speech sounds. This study aimed to assess the independent and combined contributions of visual and auditory cues to impaired communication when using face coverings. In an online task, 150 participants rated videos of natural conversation along three dimensions: (1) how much they could follow, (2) how much effort was required, and (3) the clarity of the speech. Visual and audio variables were independently manipulated in each video, so that the same video could be presented with or without a superimposed surgical-style mask, accompanied by one of four audio conditions (either unfiltered audio, or audio-filtered to simulate the attenuation associated with a surgical mask, an FFP3 mask, or a visor). Hypotheses and analyses were pre-registered. Both the audio and visual variables had a statistically significant negative impact across all three dimensions. Whether or not talkers' faces were visible made the largest contribution to participants' ratings. The study identifies a degree of attenuation whose negative effects can be overcome by the restoration of visual cues. The significant effects observed in this nominally low-demand task (speech in quiet) highlight the importance of the visual and audio cues in everyday life and that their consideration should be included in future face mask designs.

Scrolling is a widely used mean to interact with visual displays, usually to move content to a certain target location on the display. Understanding how user scroll might identify potentially suboptimal use and allows to infer users' intentions. In the present study, we examined where users click on a scrollbar depending on the intended scrolling action. In two online experiments, click positions were systematically adapted to the intended scrolling action. Click position selection could not be explained as strict optimization of the distance traveled with the cursor, memory load, or motor-cognitive factors. By contrast, for identical scrolling actions click positions strongly depended on the context and on previous scrolls. The behavior of our participants closely resembled behavior observed for manipulation of other physical devices and suggested a simple heuristic of movement planning. The results have implications for modeling human-computer interaction and may contribute to predicting user behavior.

In sport, coaches often explicitly provide athletes with stable contextual information related to opponent action preferences to enhance anticipation performance. This information can be dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information that only emerges during the sequence of play (e.g. opponent positioning). The interdependency between contextual information sources, and the associated cognitive demands of integrating information sources during anticipation, has not yet been systematically examined. We used a temporal occlusion paradigm to alter the reliability of contextual and kinematic information during the early, mid- and final phases of a two-versus-two soccer anticipation task. A dual-task paradigm was incorporated to investigate the impact of task load on skilled soccer players' ability to integrate information and update their judgements in each phase. Across conditions, participants received no contextual information (control) or stable contextual information (opponent preferences) that was dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information (opponent positioning). As predicted, participants used reliable contextual and kinematic information to enhance anticipation. Further exploratory analysis suggested that increased task load detrimentally affected anticipation accuracy but only when both reliable contextual and kinematic information were available for integration in the final phase. This effect was observed irrespective of whether the stable contextual information was dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information. Findings suggest that updating anticipatory judgements in the final phase of a sequence of play based on the integration of reliable contextual and kinematic information requires cognitive resources.

The use of partially-automated systems require drivers to supervise the system functioning and resume manual control whenever necessary. Yet literature on vehicle automation show that drivers may spend more time looking away from the road when the partially-automated system is operational. In this study we answer the question of whether this pattern is a manifestation of inattentional blindness or, more dangerously, it is also accompanied by a greater attentional processing of the driving scene. Participants drove a simulated vehicle in manual or partially-automated mode. Fixations were recorded by means of a head-mounted eye-tracker. A surprise two-alternative forced-choice recognition task was administered at the end of the data collection whereby participants were quizzed on the presence of roadside billboards that they encountered during the two drives. Data showed that participants were more likely to fixate and recognize billboards when the automated system was operational. Furthermore, whereas fixations toward billboards decreased toward the end of the automated drive, the performance in the recognition task did not suffer. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that the use of the partially-automated driving system may result in an increase in attention allocation toward peripheral objects in the road scene which is detrimental to the drivers' ability to supervise the automated system and resume manual control of the vehicle.

In service of the goal of examining how cognitive science can facilitate human-computer interactions in complex systems, we explore how cognitive psychology research might help educators better utilize artificial intelligence and AI supported tools as facilitatory to learning, rather than see these emerging technologies as a threat. We also aim to provide historical perspective, both on how automation and technology has generated unnecessary apprehension over time, and how generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT are a product of the discipline of cognitive science. We introduce a model for how higher education instruction can adapt to the age of AI by fully capitalizing on the role that metacognition knowledge and skills play in determining learning effectiveness. Finally, we urge educators to consider how AI can be seen as a critical collaborator to be utilized in our efforts to educate around the critical workforce skills of effective communication and collaboration.

Artificial intelligence is already all around us, and its usage will only increase. Knowing its capabilities is critical. A facial recognition system (FRS) is a tool for law enforcement during suspect searches and when presenting photos to eyewitnesses for identification. However, there are no comparisons between eyewitness and FRS accuracy using video, so it is unknown whether FRS face matches are more accurate than eyewitness memory when identifying a perpetrator. Ours is the first application of artificial intelligence to an eyewitness experience, using a comparative psychology approach. As a first step to test system accuracy relative to eyewitness accuracy, participants and an open-source FRS (FaceNet) attempted perpetrator identification/match from lineup photos (target-present, target-absent) after exposure to real crime videos with varied clarity and perpetrator race. FRS used video probe images of each perpetrator to achieve similarity ratings for each corresponding lineup member. Using receiver operating characteristic analysis to measure discriminability, FRS performance was superior to eyewitness performance, regardless of video clarity or perpetrator race. Video clarity impacted participant performance, with the unclear videos yielding lower performance than the clear videos. Using confidence-accuracy characteristic analysis to measure reliability (i.e., the likelihood the identified suspect is the actual perpetrator), when the FRS identified faces with the highest similarity values, they were accurate. The results suggest FaceNet, or similarly performing systems, may supplement eyewitness memory for suspect searches and subsequent lineup construction and knowing the system's strengths and weaknesses is critical.

People often fail to notice unexpected stimuli when their attention is directed elsewhere. Most studies of this "inattentional blindness" have been conducted using laboratory tasks with little connection to real-world performance. Medical case reports document examples of missed findings in radiographs and CT images, unintentionally retained guidewires following surgery, and additional conditions being overlooked after making initial diagnoses. These cases suggest that inattentional blindness might contribute to medical errors, but relatively few studies have directly examined inattentional blindness in realistic medical contexts. We review the existing literature, much of which focuses on the use of augmented reality aids or inspection of medical images. Although these studies suggest a role for inattentional blindness in errors, most of the studies do not provide clear evidence that these errors result from inattentional blindness as opposed to other mechanisms. We discuss the design, analysis, and reporting practices that can make the contributions of inattentional blindness unclear, and we describe guidelines for future research in medicine and similar contexts that could provide clearer evidence for the role of inattentional blindness.