Psychological Research-Psychologische Forschung最新文献

Extrinsic motivation can foster effortful cognitive control. Moreover, the selective coupling of extrinsic motivation on low- versus high-control demands tasks would exert an additional impact. However, to what extent their influences are further modulated by the level of Need for Cognition (NFC) remains unclear. Thus, the current study sought to address this question. To this end, we conducted two behavioral experiments wherein cognitive control was triggered by the confound-minimized Stroop task and the NFC questionnaire was administered. Two different forms of extrinsic motivation were manipulated at the block level. In Experiment 1, extrinsic motivation was triggered by evaluative feedback. In Experiment 2, extrinsic motivation was triggered by reward incentives, while evaluative feedback was selectively coupled with low (congruent)- or high (incongruent)- control demands trials. The results indicated that two forms of extrinsic motivation (evaluative feedback vs. reward incentives) presented distinctive effects on effortful cognitive control; while their benefits on overall performance were further influenced by NFC. Interestingly, when incongruent rather than congruent trials were selectively coupled with reward incentives, not only conflict processing, but also overall performance for low-NFC participants only, benefited from this scenario. Taken together, the current study shows that extrinsic motivation can boost cognitive control, which gain was further reduced by high NFC.

Efficient and flexible responses are essential for successfully interacting with the environment. These interactions require an instantaneous integration of visual stimuli and responses, known as 'stimulus-response binding' (SR binding). SR binding is considered part of a holistic temporary representation, the event file, that integrates the stimulus, the response, and the action effect produced by this response. It is commonly assumed that an event file (or at least the SR binding) would end with the execution of the response or its action effect. This, however, has never been directly tested. Here, we tested whether the SR binding can be formed between another temporally close stimulus that people didn't respond to by implementing a sequence of two stimuli where participants needed to respond only to the first or second stimulus. Our results indicate that a binding between the response and this temporally close stimulus can occur, but only when it's placed after, and not before, the response execution. This finding suggests that the event file might operate a temporal binding window that is not decisively terminated by the response execution. Further, this insight into the temporal dynamics of the event file highlights the temporal flexibility of the SR binding and, thus, the need for careful consideration of its sub-structures and durability.

Introduction: Music is known to impact attentional state without conscious awareness. Listening to music encourages the brain to secrete neurotransmitters improving cognition and emotion.

Aim of work: Analysis of QEEG band width while listening to two music types, identifying different cortical areas activated and which genre has a similar effect to relaxed EEG.

Methods: This is a cross-section interventional analytic study including 76 normal subjects, 55 of them are females (72.37%). Participants listened to 10 min of a single audio track during EEG recording, consisting of (1 min of silence, 3 min of Egyptian folk music, 3 min of silence, then 3 min of Egyptian instrumental classic music (without any lyrics). We analyzed QEEG bands at each brain region during different tracks. The power ratio index (PRI) was calculated for each region, and then the interhemispheric difference was compared.

Results: The participants' ages ranged from 15 to 26 with a mean 16.73 ± 2.37 years. PRI showed a significant increase in the frontal and occipital regions during listening to folk music compared to the silent epoch, where p < 0.001 and p = 0.023, respectively. In the frontal and temporal regions, the classic music epoch evoked the highest PRI interhemispheric difference compared to the folk music epoch, where p = 0.004 and p < 0.001, respectively.

Conclusion: Egyptian folk music has significantly slowed the brain rhythm, particularly in the frontal region, compared to classic music, supporting the hypothesis of a momentary reduction of cognitive capacities by the noise. Classic music was evidently associated with a relaxed state EEG.

The present study investigated the role of inhibition in peripheral cueing by nonpredictive cues. Based on past findings, we investigated the possibility that inhibition of learned irrelevant cue colors is typical of short cue-target intervals, with more competition for attention capture between cue versus target. In line with the expectation, in a modified contingent-capture protocol, with short cue-target intervals, we found same-location costs (SLCs) - that is, disadvantages for validly cued targets (cue = target position) compared to invalidly cued targets (cue ≠ target position) with consistently colored non-matching cues. In contrast, no such effects for inconsistently colored non-matching cues were observed with short intervals. In a control condition, with longer intervals, the differences between consistently and inconsistently colored cues were no longer observed. We argue that this effect is due to participants proactively inhibiting consistently colored non-matching cues with short intervals but not with long intervals, but that inhibition failed with inconsistently colored non-matching cues that could take on different possible colors. Alternative explanations in terms of object-updating costs or masking were ruled out. We conclude that the currently found type of inhibition of peripheral cues most likely reflected the limitation of proactively established control structures that could be used at the same time.

The serial dependence effect (SDE) is a perceptual bias where current stimuli are perceived as more similar to recently seen stimuli, possibly enhancing the stability and continuity of visual perception. Although SDE has been observed across many visual features, it remains unclear whether humans rely on a single mechanism of SDE to support numerosity processing across two distinct numerical ranges: subitizing (i.e., small numerosity processing, likely related to early object recognition) and estimation (i.e., large numerosity processing, likely related to ensemble numerosity extraction). Here, we show that subitizing and estimation exhibit distinct SDE patterns. Subitizing is characterized by an asymmetric SDE, whereas estimation demonstrates a symmetric SDE. Specifically, in subitizing, the SDE occurs only when the current magnitude is smaller than the previous magnitude but not when it is larger. In contrast, the SDE in estimation is present in both scenarios. We propose that these differences arise from distinct underlying mechanisms. A perceptual mechanism-namely, a 'temporal hysteresis' account, can explain the asymmetrical SDE in subitizing since object individuation resources are easily activated but resistant to deactivation. Conversely, a combination of perceptual and post-perceptual mechanisms can account for the SDEs in estimation, as both perceptual and post-perceptual interference can reduce the SDEs. Critically, a novel type of SDE characterized by reduced processing precision is found in subitizing only, implying that the continuity and stability of numerical processing can be dissociable in dynamic situations where numerical information is integrated over time. Our findings reveal the multifaceted nature of SDE mechanisms and suggest their engagement with cognitive modules likely subserving different functionalities.

Brand names typically maintain a distinctive letter case (e.g., IKEA, Google). This element is essential for theoretical (word recognition models) and practical (brand design) reasons. In abstractionist models, letter case is considered irrelevant, whereas instance-based models use surface information like letter case during lexical retrieval. Previous brand identification tasks reported faster responses to brands in their characteristic letter case (e.g., IKEA and Google faster than ikea and GOOGLE), favoring instance-based models. We examined whether this pattern can be generalized to normal sentence reading: Participants read sentences in which well-known brand names were presented intact (e.g., IKEA, Google) or with a modified letter case (e.g., Ikea, GOOGLE). Results showed a cost for brands written in uppercase, independently of their characteristic letter case, in early eye fixation measures (probability of first-fixation, first-fixation duration). However, for later measures (gaze duration and total times), fixation times were longer when the brand's letter case was modified, restricted to those brands typically written in lowercase (e.g., GOOGLE > Google, whereas Ikea ≲ IKEA). Thus, during sentence reading, both the actual letter case and the typical letter case of brand names interact dynamically, posing problems for abstractionist models of reading.

Researchers in numerical cognition have extensively studied the number sense-the innate human ability to extract numerical information from the environment quickly and effortlessly. Much of this research, however, uses abstract stimuli (e.g., dot configurations) that are also strictly controlled for their low-level visual confounds, such as size. Nonetheless, individuals rarely extract numerical information from abstract stimuli in everyday life. Yet, numerical judgments of familiar objects remain poorly understood and understudied. In the current study, we examined the cognitive mechanisms underlying the numerical decisions of familiar objects. In two experiments, we asked adult participants (Experiment 1) and two groups of children (aged 7-9 years and 11-12 years, Experiment 2) to perform an animal numerosity task (i.e., "Which animal is more numerous?"), while the conceptual congruency (i.e., the congruency between an object's real-life size and its numerosity) and physical congruency (the congruency between the number of items and the total space they occupy on the screen) were manipulated. Results showed that the conceptual congruency effect (i.e., better performance when the animal with a larger size in real life is more numerous) and a physical congruency effect (i.e., better performance when the physically larger animal is more numerous) were present in adults and children. However, the effects differed across the age groups and were also a subject of developmental change. To our knowledge, this study is the first one to demonstrate that conceptual knowledge can interfere with numerosity judgements in a top-down manner. This interference effect is distinct from the bottom-up interference effect, which comes from the physical properties of the set. Our results imply that the number sense is not a standalone core system for numbers but is embedded in a more extensive network where both low-level and higher-order influences are possible. We encourage numerical cognition researchers to consider employing not only abstract but also familiar objects when examining numerosity judgements across the lifespan.

Spatial-Numerical Associations (SNAs) refer to the demonstrations of spatial processing of numbers. The Mental Number Line (MNL) is a representation model describing numbers as aligning left-to-right (LR) and was suggested to account for directional biases in participants' responses during numerical tasks. One common behavioral demonstration of this is the Spatial-Numerical Associations of Response Codes (SNARC) effect, which describes faster left-/right-hand responses to smaller/larger numbers, respectively. The MNL, and, consequently, directional SNAs, show variabilities across different cultures. Reading direction is considered to be the main factor in explaining these differences. In line with this, individuals with right-to-left (RL) reading habits show a weaker or even reverse SNARC effect. In the present study, we investigated whether SNAs are influenced not only by reading direction, but also by cultural directional preferences such as drawing lines, arranging objects, imagining objects (i.e., rightward or leftward facing), or representing events in time (i.e., mentally representing the past/future on the left/right, respectively). To test this hypothesis, we measured the cultural directional preferences and the SNARC effect across three cultures in an online setup; German, Turkish, and Iranian. LR preferences in the Cultural Directional Preferences Questionnaire were most prominent in German participants, intermediate in Turkish participants, and least prominent in Iranian participants. In line with this, the LR SNARC effect was strongest in German, intermediate in Turkish, and weakest (but not RL) in Iranian culture. These findings suggest that cultural directional preferences are involved in the emergence of adult SNAs in addition to the reading direction.

Previous research highlights impairments in the recognition of facial expression of emotion in individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Relatives of people with ASD may exhibit similar, albeit subtler, impairments, referred to as the Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP). Recently, the Differential outcomes procedure (DOP) has been shown to enhance this ability in young adults using dynamic stimuli, with fewer intensity levels required to identify fear and surprise. The present study aimed to extend these findings to adults diagnosed with ASD (ASD group), and relatives of people diagnosed with ASD (BAP group). A Bayesian Generalized Linear Model was employed for statistical inference. The results indicated that the ASD DOP group performed worse than the BAP DOP group in fear trials. The social dimension of autism negatively impacted performance in some conditions, while positive relationships were found between the repetitive behavior dimension and performance for the ASD group. The opposite pattern was observed in the BAP group. These results suggest the importance of considering different dimensions of autism when conducting research on its relationship with other variables. Finally, participants in both ASD and BAP groups required less intensity to identify certain emotions when the DOP was applied, highlighting its potential utility for improving dynamic facial emotion recognition.