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

Ensemble representations are efficient codes that the brain generates effortlessly even under noisy conditions. However, the role of visual awareness for computing ensemble representations remains unclear. We present two psychophysical experiments (N = 15 × 2) using a bias-free paradigm to investigate the contribution of conscious and unconscious processing to ensemble perception. Here, we show that ensemble perception can unfold without awareness of the relevant features that define the ensemble. Computational modeling of the type-1 and type-2 drift-rates further suggest that awareness lags well behind the categorization processes that support ensemble perception. Additional evidence indicates that the dissociation between type-1 from type-2 sensitivity, was not driven by the type-2 inefficiency or a systematic disadvantage in type-2 decision making. The present study demonstrates the utility of robust measures for studying the role of visual consciousness and metacognition in stimuli and tasks of increasing complexity, crucially, without underestimating the contribution of unconscious processing in an otherwise visible stimulus. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Across spoken languages, there are some words whose acoustic features resemble the meanings of their referents by evoking perceptual imagery, i.e., they are iconic (e.g., in English, "splash" imitates the sound of an object hitting water). While these sound symbolic form-meaning relationships are well-studied, relatively little work has explored whether the sensory properties of English words also involve systematic (i.e., statistical) form-meaning mappings. We first test the prediction that surface form properties can predict sensory experience ratings for over 5,000 monosyllabic and disyllabic words (Juhasz & Yap, 2013), confirming they explain a significant proportion of variance. Next, we show that iconicity and sensory form typicality, a statistical measure of how well a word's form aligns with its sensory experience rating, are only weakly related to each other, indicating they are likely to be distinct constructs. To determine whether form typicality influences processing of sensory words, we conducted regression analyses using lexical decision, word recognition, naming and semantic decision tasks from behavioral megastudy data sets. Across the data sets, sensory form typicality was able to predict more variance in performance than sensory experience or iconicity ratings. Further, the effects of typicality were consistently inhibitory in comprehension (i.e., more typical forms were responded to more slowly and less accurately), whereas for production the effect was facilitatory. These findings are the first evidence that systematic form-meaning mappings in English sensory words influence their processing. We discuss how language processing models incorporating Bayesian prediction mechanisms might be able to account for form typicality in the lexicon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Task-irrelevant stimuli often capture our attention despite our best efforts to ignore them. It has been noted that tasks involving perceptually complex displays can lead to reduced interference from distractors. The mechanism behind this effect is debated, with some accounts emphasizing the "perceptual load" of the stimuli themselves and others emphasizing the role of proactive control. Here, in three experiments, we investigated the roles of perceptual load, proactive control, and reward motivation in determining distractor interference. Participants performed a visual search task of high, low, or intermediate load, with flanking task-irrelevant distractors. Each trial was preceded by a cue indicating the level of perceptual load (Experiments 1-3) as well as the potential reward that could be earned (Experiments 2 and 3). In all three experiments, the attentional set induced by the preceding trial and cued proactive expectation of perceptual load interacted to determine flanker interference, which was significant for all trial types except trials cued as high load which were also preceded by high load. These effects were not modulated by reward motivation, although in the final experiment reward did significantly improve performance overall. Thus, successful distractor exclusion does not depend upon motivation or load per se but does require an expectation of high load. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

We examined whether and how embodied decision biases-related to motor costs (MC) as well as cognitive crosstalk (CC) due to the body state-are influenced by extended deliberation time. Participants performed a tracking task while concurrently making reward-based decisions, with rewards being presented with varying preview time. In Experiment 1 (N = 58), we observed a reduced CC bias with extended preview time. Partially, this was due to participants slightly adapting tracking to serialize it in relation to decision making. However, the influence of MC was only marginal and not subject to anticipatory state adjustments. In Experiment 2 (N = 67), we examined whether participants integrated the immediate state at reward presentation or anticipated state when a decision could be implemented when adapting their tracking and decision behavior. Results were most compatible with the anticipated state being integrated. We conclude that humans anticipate the body state when a decision must be implemented and consider the corresponding motor and cognitive demands when adapting their decision behavior. However, anticipatory state adaptations targeting the influence of MC with extended preview time were absent, suggesting that anticipatory adaptations are starkly limited in low-practice tasks compared to more overlearned behavior like walking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Individuals' reaction time (RT) slopes in tasks of mental rotation have been found to be related to other measures of visual-spatial abilities, and thus are often viewed as a psychometric measure of visual-spatial abilities. The common interpretation of individual RT slopes is as a measure of the speed at which the rotation is carried out. However, electroencephalography studies have found that the process of mental rotation continues after response selection has been carried out, casting doubt on the interpretation of RT slopes as measures of the speed of mental rotation. This study made use of electroencephalography techniques to directly capture individual differences in the speed of mental rotation and assess their association with visual-spatial abilities. We found that individual differences in mental rotation speed are not related to individual differences in RT slopes. Moreover, a computation model supports an alternative explanation by which RT slopes reflect individual differences in differential tolerances for stimulus identification within mental rotation tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "Is musical expertise associated with self-reported foreign-language ability" by E. Glenn Schellenberg, Ana Isabel Correia and César F. Lima (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2023[Jul], Vol 49[7], 1083-1089). In the article, the following funding information was missing from the author note: "This work was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through a PhD studentship awarded to Ana Isabel Correia (SFRH/BD/148360/2019), a Scientific Employment Stimulus grant awarded to E. Glenn Schellenberg (CEECIND/03266/2018), and a project grant awarded to César F. Lima (PTDC/PSI-GER/28274/2017) and was cofunded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Lisbon Regional Operational Program (LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-028274) and the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 028274)." The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2023-76385-001.) Many claims have been made about links between musical expertise and language ability. Rhythm ability, in particular, has been shown to predict phonological, grammatical, and second-language (L2) abilities, whereas music training often predicts reading and speech-perception skills. Here, we asked whether musical expertise-musical ability and/or music training-relates to L2 (English) abilities of Portuguese native speakers. Participants (N = 154) rated their L2 ability on seven 7-point scales, one each for speaking, reading, writing, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and accent. They also completed a test of general cognitive ability, an objective test of musical ability with melody and rhythm subtests, and a questionnaire that measured music training and other aspects of musical behaviors. L2 ability correlated positively with education and cognitive ability but not with music training. It also had no association with musical ability or with self-reports of musical behaviors. Moreover, Bayesian analyses provided evidence for the null hypotheses (i.e., no link between L2 and rhythm ability, no link between L2 and years of music lessons). In short, our findings-based on participants' self-reports of L2 ability-raise doubts about proposed associations between musical and second-language abilities, which may be limited to specific populations or measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Recent studies have shown that observers can learn to suppress locations in the visual field with a high distractor probability. Here, we investigated whether this learned suppression resulting from a spatial distractor imbalance transfers to a completely different search task that does not contain any distractors. Observers performed the additional singleton task and learned to suppress the location that was likely to contain a color singleton distractor. Within a block, the additional singleton task would randomly switch to a T-among-L task where observers searched in parallel (Experiment 1) or serially (Experiment 2) for a T among Ls. The upcoming search was either unpredictable (Experiment 1/2A) or cued (Experiment 1/2B). The results show that there was transfer of learning from one to the other task as the learned suppression stayed in place after the switch regardless of whether the T-among-L task was performed via parallel or serial search. Moreover, cueing that the task would switch had no effect on performance. The current findings indicate that implicit learned biases are rather inflexible and remain in place even when the task and the required search strategy are dramatically different and even when participants can anticipate that a change in the search required is imminent. This transfer of the suppression to a different task is consistent with the notion that suppression is proactively applied. Because the location is already suppressed proactively, that is, before display onset, regardless which display and task is presented, the suppressed location competes less for attention than all other locations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Object-based warping is a visual illusion in which dots appear farther apart from each other when superimposed on an object. Previous research found that the illusion's strength varies with the perceived objecthood of the display. We tested whether objecthood alone determines the strength of the visual illusion or if low-level factors separable from objecthood also play a role. In Experiments 1-2, we varied low-level features to assess their impact on the warping illusion. We found that the warping illusion is equally strong for a variety of shapes but varies with the elements by which shape is defined. Shapes composed of continuous edges produced larger warping effects than shapes defined by disconnected elements. In Experiment 3, we varied a display's objecthood while holding low-level features constant. Displays with matched low-level features produced warping effects of the same size even when the perceived unity of the elements in the display varied. In Experiments 4-6, we tested whether displays with low-level features predicted to be important in spatial warping produced the visual illusion even when the display weakly configured into a single object. Results showed that the presence of low-level features like contour solidity and convexity determined warping effect sizes over and above what could be accounted for by the display's perceived objecthood. Our findings challenge the view that the spatial warping illusion is solely object-based. Other factors like the solidity of contours and contours' position relative to reference dots appear to play separate and important roles in determining warping effect sizes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning-guided control refers to adjustments of cognitive control settings based on learned associations between predictive cues and the likelihood of conflict. In three preregistered experiments, we examined transfer of item-specific control settings beyond conditions under which they were learned. In Experiment 1, an item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) manipulation was applied in a training phase in which target color in a Flanker task was biased (mostly congruent or mostly incongruent). In a subsequent transfer phase, participants performed a color-word Stroop task in which the same target colors were unbiased (50% congruent). The same design was implemented in Experiment 2, but training and transfer tasks were intermixed within blocks. Between-task transfer was evidenced in both experiments, suggesting learned control settings associated with the predictive cues were retrieved when encountering unbiased transfer items. In Experiment 3, we investigated a farther version of between-task transfer by using training (color-word Stroop) and transfer (picture-word Stroop) tasks that did not share the relevant (to-be-named) dimension or response sets. Despite the stronger, between-task boundary, we observed an ISPC effect for the transfer items, but it did not emerge until the second half of the experiment. The results provided converging evidence for the flexibility and automaticity of item-specific control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Crossmodal correspondences refer to systematic associations between stimulus attributes encountered in different sensory modalities. These correspondences can be probed in the speeded classification task where they tend to produce congruency effects. This study aimed to replicate and extend previous work conducted by Marks (1987, Experiment 3, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 13, No. 3, 384-394) which demonstrated a crossmodal correspondence between auditory and visual intensity attributes. Experiment 1 successfully replicates Marks' original finding that performance in a brightness classification task is affected by whether the loudness of a concurrently presented auditory distractor matches the brightness of the visual target. Furthermore, in line with the original study, we found that this effect was absent in a lightness classification task. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate that loudness-brightness correspondence is robust even when the exact stimulus input changes. This finding suggests that there is a context-dependent mapping between loudness and brightness levels, rather than an absolute mapping between any particular intensity levels. Finally, exploratory analysis using the diffusion model for conflict tasks indicated that evidence from the task-irrelevant modality generates a burst of weak, short-lived automatic activation that can bias decision-making in difficult tasks, but not in easy tasks. Our results provide further evidence for the existence of a flexible crossmodal correspondence between brightness and loudness, which might be helpful in determining one's distance to a stimulus source during the early stages of multisensory integration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).