Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance最新文献

We examined distractor effects caused by neutral versus emotional faces in a perceptual load paradigm. In a series of experiments, we asked participants to categorize female or male names (the target) into their respective genders. The target was presented with 1, 3, 5, or 7 pseudonames (i.e., varying perceptual load) in the center of the screen, with an irrelevant face distractor (to the right or left of center). At low load, we expected flanker effects (i.e., faster responses if face gender and name gender were congruent compared with the incongruent condition) that were expected to vanish at high load, in line with the perceptual load literature. For emotional faces, however, flanker effects were expected to be present at all load levels. In Experiment 1, we presented happy versus neutral faces. In Experiment 2, we presented angry versus neutral faces. In Experiment 3, we replicated both earlier experiments, varying types of emotion in a between-participants design. All experiments show an emotional flanker effect advantage, meaning that at a load level where neutral flanker effect ceases, emotional flanker effects persist. Finally, the analysis of the full data set supported our hypothesis that flanker effects for emotional faces but not for neutral faces were found even at the highest load level. We discuss the results given the prevailing theories to explain perceptual load effects, with an emphasis on attentional slippage theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Studying numerical interferences has become a widely used method for investigating the representations that underlie numerical cognition. Here, we contrast the classic pure approximate number system (ANS) framework and a more recently proposed hybrid approximate number system-discrete semantic system framework with respect to their distinctive predictions for the nonsymbolic and symbolic spatial numerical associations of response codes (SNARC) effect (the most extensively studied interference between numbers and space). We compare the symbolic (Indo-Arabic numerals) to the nonsymbolic (arrays of dots) version of a SNARC paradigm (n = 77). In contrast to previous studies, in the present experiment, (a) the magnitude is irrelevant for solving the task (a color judgment task), and (b) the nonsymbolic stimuli contain arrays of dots outside the subitizing range, ensuring to activate the ANS. We found clear evidence for the SNARC effect in the symbolic color task. However, we found no indication of the SNARC effect in the nonsymbolic color task. This pattern of results supports the hybrid approximate number system-discrete semantic system framework, assuming that the SNARC interference is a symbolic effect while refuting the pure ANS view of the SNARC effect, which necessitates the presence of the SNARC interference using a nonsymbolic format, too. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative valence images benefit memory tasks as well as visual statistical learning (VSL) tasks. Another factor that strongly drives memory performance: image memorability-an inherent property of the image regarding its likelihood to be remembered across observers. Here, we examined the influence of image memorability and emotional valence on VSL and the potential role of memorability explaining the benefit of negative valence in VSL tasks. In three VSL experiments, participants viewed a stream of repeating triplets of images. Importantly, the triplets were constructed of varying images in their emotional valence and memorability scores. Memorability significantly influenced VSL performance, with high-memorability images enhancing learning compared to low-memorability images. The benefit of negative valence was also replicated but emerged only under low-memorability conditions. Similarly, when valence was held constant, the effect of memorability was evident only for neutral images. These findings indicate that memorability is a robust and consistent driver of VSL. However, its influence is not fixed, it can be modulated by emotional valence and cannot fully account for the benefit seen with negative emotion. Taken together, our study provides new insights into the role of image memorability in VSL and highlights the importance of considering its interaction with emotional valence in incidental visual memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

People vary widely in how strategically they guide their attention during visual search. What drives this variation? We contrasted two possibilities: one in which individuals are predisposed to attend to different stimulus aspects, and another in which individuals flexibly choose their strategies depending on the task parameters. Using the adaptive choice visual search paradigm, we measured participants' search strategies while probing various display features to index how participants attended the displays. Experiment 1 showed that participants who attended the stimulus properties that are essential for the optimal search strategy-specifically, the numerosity subset information-exhibited more optimal performance. In Experiment 2, we made the subset information irrelevant for optimal task performance and found no relationship between attention to the subsets and search optimality, which is consistent with the strategic choice account. Experiment 3 encouraged attention to the subset information without explicitly requiring optimal search. Results showed a small but significant boost in optimality, suggesting that overcoming a reluctance to engage in numerosity judgments fosters better strategy use. Overall, these results help to explain individual variation in attentional strategy use, with optimal searchers judiciously directing their attention to process the critical stimulus properties while nonoptimal searchers avoid doing so. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans and nonhuman animals can anticipate the timing of events to react fast and accurately, an ability called temporal preparation. Events in the environment can be initiated either externally or voluntarily, yet research on temporal preparation has so far focused mainly on externally initiated events. This study examined how voluntary actions influence temporal preparation for visual stimuli. Across four experiments conducted between 2022 and 2024, we compared reaction times using variable and constant foreperiods (FPs). In each experiment, target stimuli were self-initiated (action task) or externally initiated (external task), with FPs ranging from 0.6 to 2.8 s. Participants performed a go/no-go task (Experiment 1) or an orientation discrimination task (Experiments 2-4). We observed slower reaction times for self-initiated stimuli than for externally initiated stimuli, particularly at shorter FPs. The effect diminished as FP duration increased. This pattern was observed only in variable-FP experiments, indicating an interaction between voluntary actions and FP variability. In contrast, a constant-FP experiment did not show significant differences between action and external tasks. These findings suggest that voluntary actions influence temporal preparation in the presence of temporal uncertainty. We discuss how these results relate to current theories of temporal preparation, proposing new perspectives on the role of voluntary actions in shaping anticipatory behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In 1992, this journal published one of the most influential articles in the field of visual space perception and action ("Visual Space Perception and Visually Directed Action" by Jack Loomis, José Da Silva, Naofumi Fujita, and Sergio Fukusima). Loomis et al. showed that in the scale of space that accommodates ambulatory locomotion, perception of locations and that of the distance between them are dissociated. This dissociation is particularly notable when the perceived locations form an interval that is parallel to an observer's sagittal body axis: While the interval appears to be much shorter than it physically is, indication of its two ends through action-based measures (e.g., walking to them without vision) yields no evidence of such perceptual foreshortening. The current article briefly reviews the literature that follows this discovery and discusses its lasting influence. In particular, the authors focus on the view articulated by Loomis et al.-open-loop motoric tasks are particularly useful for measuring perception of ambulatory space-and point out that it continues to be relevant to cutting-edge research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Traditionally, cognitive psychology has viewed attentional control-the process of selecting information for perception, cognition, and action-as a deliberate, resource-demanding process governed by immediate goals. However, significant advances over the past few decades have broadened our understanding of how attention is controlled. A particularly groundbreaking insight is that attentional control can be learned and once acquired can be automatically executed in response to environmental cues. Key studies contributing to this paradigm shift have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. This article reviews several of these pivotal studies and discusses potential future directions for the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Rubber hand illusion and tool-use paradigms have been extensively used to investigate body representation. Although both approaches rely on multisensory integration and external object incorporation, they are typically studied in isolation. Here, we introduce a novel paradigm that combines these methods to investigate whether perceptual modifications to body representation can induce motor changes, and vice versa. First, participants completed a tool-use task, actively using a short or long grabber tool to move cubes. When asked to point toward the forearm midpoint, only long tool users exhibited a distal shift, denoting an expansion in motor representation. Next, participants experienced the "rubber tool illusion" by passively holding the same tool while observing a rubber hand grasp an identical-looking tool. Notably, participants holding a short tool exhibited an expanded forearm representation when they observed a synchronously stroked long tool during illusion. Control experiments revealed that this effect depended on prior active tool use, embodiment of the observed rubber hand/tool, and a length mismatch between the held and observed tools. These findings reveal for the first time that motor representation of forearm length, a component of body schema, can be modulated by changes in body image. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention and eye movements often align in visual tasks, but they can also dissociate, as when people shift attention without moving their eyes. Most studies have examined these systems over short timescales, capturing momentary attention or eye movements. Here, we explored their interaction over a longer timescale using a location probability learning paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a target that frequently appeared in one quadrant, developing both an oculomotor habit (initial saccades toward the high-probability quadrant) and an attentional habit (faster search when the target appeared in the high-probability region). Both habits emerged simultaneously and persisted in a neutral testing phase with random target locations. This coupling broke down in Experiments 2 and 3, where participants were cued to saccade toward specific quadrants that aligned or misaligned with the high-probability target quadrant. In a spatially unbiased testing phase without the cue, the oculomotor habit persisted toward the previously saccaded quadrant, while search speed was fastest in the high-probability area, unaffected by prior cuing. Thus, while oculomotor and attentional habits are often coupled, they arise from distinct mechanisms: oculomotor habits are driven by eye movement history, and attentional habits by search success. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Information in working memory can have distracting effects on visual search. For instance, a color that is incidentally stored in memory may bias search toward items matching the stored color. We investigated whether attentional guidance by task-irrelevant colors is transient or sustained. To investigate this, we systematically varied the color match between memorized and target colors, as well as the set size of the search display. We found that the match between the task-irrelevant color in memory and the color of the subset with the search target resulted in equivalent reductions of search reaction times across varying set sizes, supporting the hypothesis of a transient effect on attentional guidance. A sustained effect would predict growing differences between matching and nonmatching colors as the number of scanned items increases. Using eye tracking, we ruled out postattentional target identification or decision making as potential explanations. Thus, the content of visual working memory guides attention to matching features even in case of task irrelevance, but this guidance is transient. Possibly, the activation of the irrelevant content is suppressed to avoid the prolonged distraction resulting from sustained guidance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).