Cognitive Processing最新文献

As people commonly observe dog behaviors like the sudden bursts of physical movement colloquially known as "zoomies," and the canine penchant for sticking their nose out of car windows and for sniffing intently in dog parks, it is not surprising that people generally believe dogs learn and communicate by smell. While people generally discount their own olfactory sensitivity and the importance of smell overall, humans also learn and communicate by smell, in some cases even better than dogs. In this article, we discuss why this information exchange matters for learning and memory and why virtual meetings don't pass the sniff test.

Recent studies have shown that in some reasoning tasks people with Autism Spectrum Disorder perform better than typically developing people. This paper compares four such tasks, namely a syllogistic task, two decision-making tasks, and a task from the heuristics and biases literature, the aim being to identify common structure as well as differences. In the terminology of David Marr's three levels of cognitive systems, the tasks show commonalities on the computational level in terms of the effect of contextual stimuli, though an in-depth analysis of such contexts provides certain distinguishing features in the algorithmic level. We also make some general remarks on our approach, so as to set the stage for further studies in the area which could provide a better understanding of the reasoning process of ASD individuals.

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.

It is known that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit impairments in shifting attention. However, previous studies have primarily focused on school-aged children and adults with ASD. It remains unclear whether attentional shifting impairments emerge at an early age. Additionally, it is uncertain which specific process-engagement or disengagement-is affected in individuals with ASD. This study investigated the time course of attentional shifting in preschool-aged children with ASD using a Posner cue-target paradigm. The cue-target onset asynchrony was systematically manipulated to reveal both the early facilitation effect of attentional capture (i.e., engagement) and the later inhibitory aftereffect, commonly referred to as inhibition of return (IOR). Results showed an early facilitation effect in both ASD and typically developing (TD) children, indicating that ASD children engaged attention to salient spatial locations. In contrast to TD children, no reliable IOR effect was observed in ASD children, suggesting difficulties in disengaging attention. These findings indicate a selective impairment in attentional disengagement among preschool-aged children with ASD and support the need for early intervention programs focusing on attentional shifting.

Face masks can impact processing a narrative in sign language, affecting several metacognitive dimensions of understanding (i.e., perceived effort, confidence and feeling of understanding). However, to what extent this is modulated by sign language proficiency remains an open question. Thirty deaf adults were administered a narrative in Italian Sign Language (LIS), signed in three different visual conditions: no mask, transparent mask, opaque mask. In addition, they completed a Sentence Reproduction Task in LIS (LIS-SRT) to measure their sign language proficiency. Results showed that some of the error types in the LIS-SRT have significant correlations with performance in the comprehension task, revealing external validity for this sentence repetition test. Crucially, while sign language proficiency did not modulate the impact of face-masks on narrative comprehension, the metacognitive outcomes were clearly influenced by the interaction between LIS proficiency and visual conditions. Skilled signers experienced less effort and higher levels of confidence and feeling of understanding, whereas these subjective experiences were greatly impacted by visual conditions in less proficient signers. We discuss these findings in reference to cognitive load, thus also extending the construct of "listening effort" to sign languages. In addition, we relate differences in cognitive load in skilled vs. less proficient signers to the ability to extract and process at the same time multiple types of linguistic elements from the flow of signs (multilinear processing of sign language).

The objective was to examine differences in the gait-specific cognitive representation structures between individuals after total knee- (TKA) and after total hip-joint arthroplasty (THA). The cognitive representation structure was compared between three groups: 1. three months after TKA (n = 12), 2. three months after THA (n = 12), and 3. healthy control group (CG) (n = 12) using the structural dimensional analysis of mental representation (SDA-M). Additionally, perceived joint function was rated by either the KOOS, JR. or HOOS, JR. Mean distribution of perceived joint function was not significantly different between the TKA (60.35 ± 11.2) and THA group (68.01 ± 13.8) (t = - 1.425; p = .173). In the cognitive representation structure, the THA group exhibited functional differences from the TKA group and control group, both of which showed a functional structure. Three months after hip joint replacement the gait-specific cognitive representation structure seems to reflect joint function-specific deviations. Therefore, focussing on functional recovery of cognitive gait representation may facilitate gait rehabilitation in individuals after hip replacement.

As technological interfaces are relatively new cultural tools, regular interaction can lead to new psychological phenomena, like the baby duck syndrome, where users favor old interfaces over updates. This syndrome is seen as a cognitive bias in human-computer interaction. Two studies were conducted: Study 1 on an Airbnb app (old vs. new versions), and Study 2 on a self-developed website (blue vs. purple design). Subjects completed sequential five usability tasks in two blocks with the resting between. Experimental groups engaged with different interface versions, while control groups used the same one. After completing tasks, subjects filled questionnaires about interface interaction. Study 1 showed significantly higher preference for the old Airbnb version, though scores varied by group. Study 2 revealed a trend of reduced scores in experimental groups on second assessment, not seen in controls. Version-based rating differences were insignificant. Overall, Studies 1 and 2 indicated baby duck syndrome is challenging to study in labs, suggesting it emerges when users are genuinely engaged with the interface. This article has both theoretical and experimental significance for studying the emergence of psychological phenomena in human-digital interaction. As a practical application, the obtained results can be useful for correct development updates for interfaces.

Although the effects of emotionality on word processing might be modulated by lexical category, a body of extant literature has tended to obviate the need of considering this factor. In this study, we attempted to address how lexical category modulates the effects of emotionality on L2 word processing. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a group of late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals while they performed a lexical decision task with a set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives). The results revealed a P2 effect, an N400 effect, as well as an LPC effect for word emotionality. Moreover, an interaction between word emotionality and lexical category occurred within the N400 and LPC time windows over fronto-central electrodes, reflecting that the N400 displayed a smaller amplitude for positive nouns and verbs than for their neutral counterparts, as well as for negative as opposed to neutral adjectives, and that the LPC showed a larger amplitude for positive relative to neutral nouns, as well as for positive and negative adjectives than for their neutral counterparts. These results provide initial electrophysiological evidence for the modulation of lexical category to the emotionality effects on L2 word processing at the different stages and highlight the importance of lexical category in research on L2 emotional word processing.

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a specific mathematics learning disorder, characterized by the atypical development of number sense, arithmetic calculation, and atypical development of brain structures and brain activations in core brain regions for number processing. The current study examined the intervention effect of a 2-month abacus training on DD students. Results showed that compared with the non-trained control group, the DD students with abacus training showed higher scores in number sense, calculation, and sustained attention abilities. Additionally, a larger percentage of students in the abacus group showed improvements in the DD screening tasks compared to the control group. The current finding indicated that abacus training or abacus courses can be used as a tool for further DD intervention.

Operant keypress tasks in a reinforcement-reward framework where behavior is shaped by its consequence, show lawful relationships in human preference behavior (i.e., approach/avoidance) and have been analogized to "wanting". However, they take 20-40 min as opposed to short non-operant rating tasks, which can be as short as 3 min and unsupervised, thus more readily applied to internet research. It is unknown if non-operant rating tasks where each action does not have a consequence, analogous to "liking", show similar lawful relationships. We studied non-operant, picture-rating data from three independent population cohorts (N = 501, 506, and 4019 participants) using the same 7-point Likert scale for negative to positive preferences, and the same categories of images from the International Affective Picture System. Non-operant picture ratings were used to compute location, dispersion, and pattern (entropy) variables, that in turn produced similar value, limit, and trade-off functions to those reported for operant keypress tasks, all with individual R² > 0.80. For all three datasets, the individual functions were discrete in mathematical formulation. They were also recurrent or consistent across the cohorts and scaled between individual and group curves. Behavioral features such as risk aversion and other interpretable features of the graphs were also consistent across cohorts. Together, these observations argue for lawfulness in the modeling of the ratings. This picture rating task demonstrates a simple, quick, and low-cost framework for quantitatively assessing human preference without forced choice decisions, games of chance, or operant keypressing. This framework can be easily deployed on any digital device worldwide.