Cognitive Processing最新文献

Despite the well-known physical and mental health benefits of regular exercise, many of the world's population, including healthy young adults, grossly undershoot recommended physical activity levels. Chronic exercise has potential to improve cognitive performance and affect in most age groups. However, there is currently a poverty of relevant research in young adults, especially randomised controlled trials. To address this, the current research investigated the effects of a running intervention on neuropsychological function (cognition and affect) in young adults. We predicted that following a running intervention, neuropsychological performance would improve alongside increases in aerobic fitness. Thirty-two healthy young adult university students were randomised (using a 3:1 ratio) into an intervention or control group, with the intervention group (n = 24) asked to run for 30 min three times a week over a 6-week period and the control group (n = 8) asked to maintain their current level of exercise over a 6-week period. We assessed fitness, cognitive performance, affect and running enjoyment at baseline and follow-up, and runners recorded the environmental conditions of their runs. Repeated measures ANCOVAs failed to find any significant effects of the running intervention on fitness or the neuropsychological measures. Anecdotal evidence supported running environment and enjoyment as potentially relevant factors. The failure to find any fitness improvements, which likely underpins the lack of neuropsychological improvements, highlights the importance of monitoring exercise sessions. Coupled with other insights gained from this trial, this article may prove useful towards future endeavours to develop exercise interventions beneficial to young adults.TRN: ACTRN12621000242820, Date of registration: 08/03/2021.

The paper provides novel theoretical and experimental perspectives on the functioning of linguistic vagueness as an implicit persuasive strategy. It presents an operative definition of pragmatically marked vagueness, referring to vague expressions whose interpretation is not retrievable by recipients. The phenomenon is illustrated via numerous examples of its use in predominantly persuasive texts (i.e., advertising and political propaganda) in different languages. The psycholinguistic functioning of vague expressions is then illustrated by the results of a self-paced reading task experiment. Data showing shorter reading times associated with markedly vague expressions as compared to expressions that are either (a) lexically more precise or (b) made precise by the context suggest that the former are interpreted in a shallow way, without searching for and/or retrieving exact referents. These results support the validity of a differentiation between context-supported vs. non-supported vague expressions. Furthermore, validation of using marked vagueness as a persuasive implicit strategy which reduces epistemic vigilance is provided.

The term affordance refers to the property or quality of an object that indicates the ways in which it could potentially be used. Affordances elicit automatic motor representations that sometimes differ from the current action representation, resulting in behavioural interference effects. This affordance-induces interference could result in automatic and involuntary behavioural inhibition, probably according to the same mechanism that controls the voluntary motor inhibition. Nevertheless, few studies have considered how voluntary response inhibition is modulated by affordance. In this study, we assess the effect of affordance on voluntary action inhibition using a stop-signal task with an affordance object as a Stop Signal. An image of a mug, with the handle orientated in the same or in the opposite direction of the hand recruited to respond at the target, was used as Stop Signal. Our results showed a reduction of the time necessary to withhold the response when the handle of the mug was pointed toward the hand pre-activated to respond. This effect indicates an increased inhibition due to the mismatch between the motor representation elicited by the affordance and the motor representation pre-activated by the target. This suggests a specific interference effect, reflected in an enhanced ability to inhibit an ongoing action.

Disgust is a basic emotion that increases the organism's survival success by preventing the transfer of pathogens. In this regard, it directs cognitive processes and motivates avoidance behaviors that prevent pathogens from entering the body. Moreover, disgust has many specific characteristics that distinguish it from other basic emotions. Firstly, unlike other basic emotions, it contaminates neutral objects around it and causes difficult-to-change learning. Another specific characteristic of disgust is that it depends on ideational processes. Objects, situations, and behaviors that do not contain pathogens can also cause disgust. In this regard, disgust appears not only as a basic emotion but also as different adaptations in different fields. In this context, two distinct adaptations of disgust stand out: sexual and moral disgust. These two adaptations of disgust benefit from disgust-related behaviors and motivations in different ways. Sexual disgust works as a gene protection mechanism, while moral disgust helps maintain social rules. The specific characteristics of disgust and its effects on cognitive processes such as attention and memory interact. In conclusion, the multifaceted structure of disgust shows that it needs to be studied more in the subfields of psychology. (Strohminger, Philos Compass 9:478-493, 2014) defines disgust as a psychological nebula that needs to be discovered. However, it is observed that disgust has not been adequately addressed. This review aims to comprehensively explore unique characteristics and diverse aspects of disgust, shedding light on its significance from various perspectives. This study underscores the broader understanding of disgust and its pivotal role in psychological research.

"Subitizing" defines a phenomenon whereby approximately four items can be quickly and accurately processed. Studies have shown the close association between subitizing and math performance, however, the mechanism for the association remains unclear. The present study was conducted to investigate whether form perception assessed on a serial figure matching task is a potential non-numerical mechanism between subitizing ability and math performance. Three-hundred and seventy-three Chinese primary school students completed four kinds of dot comparison tasks, serial figure matching task, math performance tasks (including three arithmetic computation tasks and math word problem task), and other cognitive tasks as their general cognitive abilities were observed as covariates. A series of hierarchical regression analyses showed that after controlling for age, gender, nonverbal matrix reasoning, and visual tracking, subitizing comparison (subitizing vs. subitizing, subitizing vs. estimation) still contributed to simple addition or simple subtraction but not to complex subtraction ability or math word problem. After taking form perception as an additional control variable, the predictive power of different dot comparison conditions disappeared. A path model also showed that form perception fully mediates the relation between numerosity comparison (within and beyond the subitizing range) and arithmetic performance. These findings support the claim that form perception is a non-numerical cognitive correlate of the relation between subitizing ability and math performance (especially arithmetic computation).

Recent research shows that sensitivity to interoceptive sensitivity is associated with a more granular experience of emotions. These studies suggest that individuals sensitive to their interoceptive signals can better perceive somatic physiological changes as compared to their counterparts. Therefore, they discriminate among a wide and subtle range of emotions. Further, the perception of others' emotions could be based on our own emotional experiences. However, whether interoceptive sensitivity is related to the perception of others' emotions remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between interoceptive sensitivity and emotional perception. Considering the model that emotion perception comprises two processes, categorization of facial expressions and approach-avoidance responses, this study examined both categorizations of facial expressions and approach-avoidance responses. The results showed no relationship between interoceptive sensitivity and the perception of emotion, which suggests that interoceptive sensitivity is related to the experience of emotion but does not affect the granularity of emotional perception. Future studies should diversely and empirically examine the role of the body in emotional perception from the perspective of interoceptive sensitivity.

While moral psychology research has extensively studied decision making using moral dilemmas, such high-conflict situations may not fully represent all moral decisions. Moreover, most studies on the effect of conflict have focused on nonmoral decisions, and it is unclear how it applies to the moral realm. The present mixed-method research investigates how conflict impacts moral compared to nonmoral decision making. In a preregistered empirical study ( $N=42$ ), participants made moral and nonmoral decisions with varying levels of conflict while their mouse trajectories were recorded. Results indicate that moral decisions were more stable in the presence of conflict, while still seeking compromise. In addition, decisions were more affected when conflict got higher. Mouse-tracking data further indicate that some factors are impacting the decision process earlier than others, supporting the relevance of tracing methods to dig into finer-grained decision dynamics. We also present a computational model that aims to capture decision mechanisms and how conflict and morality influence decision making. The model uses dynamic neural fields coupled with sensorimotor control to map a continuous decision space. Two model versions were compared: one with greater perceptual weight for moral information, and another with earlier processing of moral versus nonmoral information. The simulated data more successfully reproduced empirical patterns for the second version, thus providing insights into the underlying decision processes for both moral and nonmoral decisions, in the presence of conflict or not.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute an intention in the future without having a permanent reminder. These intentions can be performed when they are not relevant or become no-longer needed, the so-called “commission errors”. The present study aims to understand the effect of cue salience on PM commission errors with unperformed intentions and on the ongoing task performance-associated costs. Through a between-subjects design, eighty-one participants were assigned to 3 conditions: the no-PM condition, which served as control, and the salient and nonsalient conditions, which were asked to perform a lexical decision task and an incomplete nonfocal prospective memory task (i.e. no PM cues were presented). Subsequently, participants were instructed to no longer execute the prospective intention. In the second phase, a lexical decision task occurred again, including irrelevant PM cues, which should not be answered as such. In the salient condition, cues were salient (i.e. presented in red or blue background). In contrast, in the nonsalient condition, PM cues appeared on a black background, as any other stimuli. In the no-PM control condition, participants only performed an LDT. A commission error occurred when the (irrelevant) intention was performed in this second phase. Results showed that more participants performed a commission error in the presence of salient cues, even when PM intentions became irrelevant. Additionally, when cues were not salient, participants took longer to answer the LDT, as reasoned by the spontaneous retrieval theory. These findings are discussed according to the dual-mechanism account.