Cognitive Processing最新文献

The current study focuses on how autistic adults utilize context to determine whether ambiguous utterances (e.g., "I'm thirsty") are intended as indirect requests or as literal comment/questions. Two questions are addressed: (1) How do autistic adults compare to neurotypical adults in using context to interpret an utterance's intention as either literal or a request? (2) What cognitive mechanisms correlate with indirect request interpretation, and are these different for participants in each group? Twenty-six autistic and 26 neurotypical college students participated, engaging in an online experiment where they read narratives that ended with utterances open to literal or request interpretations, based on context. After each narrative, participants selected the best paraphrase of the utterance from two options, literal versus request. Following this task, participants completed two mentalizing measures (a false belief and emotion-identification task) and several executive functioning tests. The best model for predicting paraphrase choice included scores on the emotion-identification task and context as main effects, along with the interaction between both. Participants with higher emotion-identification test scores were more likely to provide correct paraphrases. Models including group as a main effect and/or interaction were not better at fitting the data, nor were any models that included executive functioning measures as main effects or interactions. Emotion-identification test scores, but not autism diagnosis, predict how adults infer whether an utterance is a request. Findings suggest that autistic adults use context similarly to neurotypical adults when interpreting requests, and that similar processes underlie performance for each group.

Retrieving information from memory enhances long-term retention. In this manuscript, we describe the dual-memory framework, which makes interval-scale predictions of the magnitude of this retrieval practice effect. After outlining the framework, we use data from our laboratory—both at the group level and at the distribution level—to fit the equations from the dual-memory framework. Overall, we successfully fitted the model predictions to the observed average data. In addition, we compared the predicted and the observed distributions of performance in the retrieval practice condition. More importantly, we introduce a useful approach to simulate empirical scenarios and test the relationship between individual-difference variables and the retrieval practice effect. We illustrate the application of this approach using data from a study that measured fluid intelligence. Future studies may benefit from contrasting different strength-based frameworks.

Dynamic assessment is an approach that aims to improve student performance through interventions. One of the important application areas of dynamic assessment is the assessment of intelligence. Within the scope of the study, after a Cognitive intervention program (CIP) was developed, its effects on intelligence scores were examined with a quasi-experimental research method. The CIP was prepared by adopting a dynamic assessment approach to improve the performance of students with expert support. This improvement would be provided by the clues and feedback given during the intervention within the scope of the CIP. The sample of the study included 173 students in the 5–6 age group (83 experimental group, 90 control group). The CIP developed by the researcher consisted of 54 worksheets and was applied to the experimental group for 9 weeks. The implementation of the worksheets was supervised by classroom teachers. The digital application of the Anadolu-Sak Intelligence Scale (d-ASIS) and Raven’s colored progressive matrices (RCPM) were applied to both the experimental and control groups as pretests and posttests. The increases in the intelligence scores of the experimental and control groups were analyzed by MANOVA. The analysis showed that the intelligence levels of the experimental group increased significantly more than the control group in terms of both d-ASIS and RCPM total gain scores (posttest to pretest). This result indicated that the CIP, which was developed by adopting a dynamic assessment approach, supported cognitive development.

People's preferences for the utilitarian outcome in sacrificial moral dilemmas, where a larger group of individuals are saved at the cost of a few, have been argued to be influenced by various factors. Taking expected utility (EU) theory into consideration, we investigate whether the expected effectiveness of actions elucidate certain inconsistencies in moral judgments. Additionally, we also explore whether participants' role in the dilemma as the executor or a superior who merely makes a decision, which is carried out by a subordinate, influences judgments-a factor generally overlooked by classical EU models. We test these hypotheses using a modified moral dilemma paradigm with a choice between two actions, one highly successful and the other more likely to fail. Both actions are either expected to result in a favorable outcome of saving five individuals by sacrificing one or an unfavorable outcome of sacrificing five to save one. When the efficient action is anticipated to lead to a favorable outcome, in line with EU models, people almost invariably choose the efficient action. However, in conditions where the EUs associated with efficient and inefficient actions are close to each other, people's choice for favored outcome is above chance when they act as agents themselves. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of moral judgments.

Critical thinking as one of the key skills for success in the 21st-century has been considered by many scholars in teacher education. This study tries to examine the interaction of critical thinking disposition with two other key characteristics of successful teachers: cognitive flexibility and self-efficacy. To this end, a sample of pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers was selected for this study. Based on the findings, a positive and strong relationship between cognitive flexibility and critical thinking disposition, and a positive and robust correlation between self-efficacy and critical thinking disposition were observed. Hence, it can be suggested that teacher-educationists can use this link for designing teacher-training courses with tailored tasks for both in and pre-service teachers. The main contribution of the findings might be beneficial for homogenizing teacher-training courses around the globe with the 21st-century trends. In addition, this line of research can be followed by empirical studies for checking the effectiveness of tailored tasks for provoking teachers' critical thinking dispositions, cognitive flexibility, and self-efficacy in teaching activities.

This study explored whether instructing participants to make forward or backward joystick movements in response to morality words is consistent with the conceptual metaphor MORAL IS MOVING FORWARD/IMMORAL IS MOVING BACKWARD in Chinese-English bilinguals' first and second languages. Chinese-English bilinguals were instructed to categorize words as moral or immoral while moving a joystick in a compatible block (moral-forward, immoral-backward) and an incompatible block (moral-backward, immoral-forward). The results revealed three main conclusions: First, participants showed faster categorization of immoral words when their responses involved backward joystick movements compared to forward joystick movements. Second, participants also demonstrated a slightly faster categorization of moral words when their responses involved backward joystick movements compared to forward joystick movements. Third, Chinese morality words were categorized faster overall than English morality words. However, despite a slightly larger effect size observed in L1, the action compatibility effects for morality words exhibited a similar pattern across both languages. In sum, bilinguals showed shared access to the IMMORAL IS MOVING BACKWARD conceptual metaphor across both L1 and L2, but they did not access the MORAL IS MOVING FORWARD conceptual metaphor in either L1 or L2. This study provides new evidence supporting the conceptual metaphor theory.

Metaphorical sentences are assumed to be related to more costly processes than their literal counterparts. However, given their frequent use in our daily lives, metaphorical sentences "must come with a benefit" (Noveck et al. Metaphor Symb 16:109-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2001.9678889 , 2001). In this paper, we investigated whether metaphorical sentences were better remembered than their literal counterparts. In addition, we were interested in assessing whether the relevance of the metaphors impacted this recall. Anchoring this hypothesis in the appraisal theory, we hypothesized that food-related metaphorical sentences may be particularly relevant when one is hungry, and consequently, be better remembered in that particular physiological state. Participants were presented with randomized metaphorical sentences and their literal counterparts and were later asked to remember the missing word in both metaphorical and literal sentences. General mixed model analyses revealed that metaphorical sentences were better remembered. However, there was no significant effect of hunger. We discuss these results in relation to (1) the metaphor literature and (2) the appraisal theory of emotion.

Emoticons have been considered pragmatic cues that enhance emotional expressivity during computer-mediated communication. Yet, it is unclear how emoticons are processed in ambiguous text-based communication due to incongruences between the emoticon's emotional valence and its context. In this study, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of contextual influence on the early emotional processing of emoticons, during an emotional congruence judgment task. Participants were instructed to judge the congruence between a text message expressing an emotional situation (positive or negative), and a subsequent emoticon expressing positive or negative emotions. We analyzed early event-related potentials elicited by emoticons related to face processing (N170) and emotional salience in visual perception processing (Early Posterior Negativity, EPN). Our results show that accuracy and Reaction Times depend on the interaction between the emotional valence of the context and the emoticon. Negative emoticons elicited a larger N170, suggesting that the emotional information of the emoticon is integrated at the early stages of the perceptual process. During emoticon processing, a valence effect was observed with enhanced EPN amplitudes in occipital areas for emoticons representing negative valences. Moreover, we observed a congruence effect in parieto-temporal sites within the same time-window, with larger amplitudes for the congruent condition. We conclude that, similar to face processing, emoticons are processed differently according to their emotional content and the context in which they are embedded. A congruent context might enhance the emotional salience of the emoticon (and therefore, its emotional expression) during the early stages of their processing.

A vast body of evidence has shown that concrete concepts are processed faster and more accurately than abstract concepts in a variety of cognitive tasks. This phenomenon is widely known as the concreteness effect, and explanations for its occurrence seem to reflect differences in processing and organization for both types of representations. While there is considerable evidence to support this concreteness effect, the nature of these differences is still controversial. In developing an explanation, we have proposed a relatively different approach from a false memory perspective using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. To explore the implications of the association in creating false memories, we explore behavioral and electrophysiologically the false memory effect, where targets were manipulated according to their association strength and their concreteness. Results showed that false recognition rates differed significantly between concrete and abstract critical words when they were associated strongly with their respective lists, which led to a higher proportion of abstract false alarms both in behavioral and electrophysiological experiments. The principal outcome, which was called the DIM-HA effect, was discussed in terms of theories of associative activation and qualitatively different representation.

Responsibility is an essential part of our social life. Although responsibility is an abstract concept, it can be represented with concrete ideas through conceptual metaphor. Expressions like "carry a lot of responsibility," "shoulder the responsibility" shows that responsibility can be understood as a load on shoulder that one has to carry. Accordingly, this study tests the question that does putting a burden on one's shoulder makes him/her more responsible or not. In order to investigate this, on each trial, we asked participants to decide between risky situations that vary in magnitude, probability of win/lose, and the ambiguity level in two conditions: "self" and 'group." Each subject wears a vest with a load on each shoulder in half of the trials. As expected, Most of participants choose to defer on the group trials more than on the self-trials. This difference between numbers of deferring in group and self conditions is called responsibility aversion. Results indicate that responsibility aversion scores are lower (responsibility-taking was greater) in the state of wearing the vest than in the form of not wearing the vest significantly. We provided evidence that the abstract concept of responsibility is linked to bodily experiences of feeling load on the shoulder consistent with an embodied cognition theory.