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

The ability to quickly adapt steps while walking is pivotal for safe mobility. In a previous study of immediate switching between the two stepping tasks, older adults (OAs) performed worse than young adults (YAs). However, it remained unclear whether this difference was due to an inability to learn the tasks or an inability to quickly switch. Therefore, this study investigated treadmill walking while performing two targeted stepping tasks in conditions with immediate task switching (ITS) versus delayed task switching (DTS). Thirty YAs (aged 26.9 ± 3.1 years) and 32 OAs (aged 70.7 ± 7.3 years) were randomly assigned to either the ITS (ITS_YAs and ITS_OAs) or the DTS (DTS_YAs and DTS_OAs) group. Each group repeatedly switched between Task A (easy) and Task B (difficult) and completed three blocks (ABAB). Delayed switching involved 1-min breaks between both tasks. Results showed that ITS_OAs exhibited significantly more step errors and worse step accuracy, but that DTS_OAs were able to achieve a similar performance as YAs. Our findings underline an inability for quick gait adaptation during targeted stepping tasks in OAs, but the possibility to learn when delayed switching reduces task interference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has shown that cues that are good predictors of relevant outcomes receive more attention than nonpredictive cues. This attentional bias is thought to stem from the different predictive value of cues. However, because successful performance requires more attention to predictive cues, the bias may be a lingering effect of previous attention to cues (i.e., a selection history effect) instead. Two experiments assessed the contribution of predictive value and selection history to the bias produced by learned predictiveness. In a first task, participants responded to pairs of cues, only one of which predicted the correct response. A second task was superficially very similar, but the correct response was determined randomly on each trial and participants responded based on some physical characteristic of a target stimulus in each compound. Hence, in this latter task, participants had to pay more attention to the target stimuli, but these stimuli were not consistently associated with a specific response. Results revealed no differences in the attentional bias toward the relevant stimuli in the two tasks, suggesting that the bias induced by learned predictiveness is a consequence of deploying more attention to predictive stimuli during training. Thus, predictiveness may not bias attention by itself, adding nothing over and above the effect expected by selection history. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In visual search tasks, targets are difficult to find when they are similar to the surrounding nontargets. In this scenario, it is optimal to tune attention to target features that maximize the difference between target and nontargets. We investigated whether the optimal tuning of attention is driven by biases arising from previously attended stimuli (i.e., trial history). Consistent with the effects of trial history, we found that optimal tuning was stronger when a single target-nontarget relation was repeated than when two target-nontarget relations alternated randomly. Detailed analysis of blocks with random alternation showed that optimal tuning was stronger when the target-nontarget relation probed in the current trial matched the relation in the previous trial. We evaluated several mechanisms that may underlie the effects of trial history, such as priming of attentional set, switch costs, and sensory adaptation. However, none of the accounts was able to fully account for the pattern of results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

When we interact with objects using our hands, we derive their size through our skin. Prolonged exposure to an object leads to a perceptual size aftereffect: adapting to a larger/smaller object makes a subsequently perceived object to appear smaller/larger than its actual size. This phenomenon has been described as haptic as tactile sensations with kinesthetic feedback are involved. However, the exact role of different haptic components in generating this aftereffect remains largely underexplored. Here, we investigated how different aspects of haptic touch influence size perception. After adaptation to a large sphere with one hand and a small sphere with the other, participants touched two test spheres of equal or different sizes and judged which one felt larger. Similar haptic size adaption aftereffects were observed (a) when participants repeatedly grasped on and off the adapters, (b) when they simply continued to grasp the adapters without further hand movements, and (c) when the adapters were grasped without involving the fingers. All these conditions produced stronger aftereffects than a condition where the palms were simply resting on the adapter. Our findings suggest that the inclusion of grasp markedly increased the aftereffects, highlighting the pivotal role of haptic interactions in determining perceptual size adaptation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Do salient distractors have the power to automatically capture attention? This question has led to a heated debate concerning the role of salience in attentional control. A potential resolution, called the signal suppression hypothesis, has proposed that salient items produce a bottom-up signal that vies for attention, but that salient stimuli can be suppressed via top-down control to prevent the capture of attention. This hypothesis, however, has been criticized on the grounds that the distractors used in initial studies of support were weakly salient. It has been difficult to know how seriously to take this low-salience criticism because assertions about high and low salience were made in the absence of a common (or any) measure of salience. The current study used a recently developed psychophysical technique to compare the salience of distractors from two previous studies at the center of this debate. Surprisingly, we found that the original stimuli criticized as having low salience were, if anything, more salient than stimuli from the later studies that purported to increase salience. Follow-up experiments determined exactly why the original stimuli were more salient and tested whether further improving salience could cause attentional capture as predicted by the low-salience account. Ultimately, these findings challenge purely stimulus-driven accounts of attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective stimuli in our environment indicate reward or threat and thereby relate to approach and avoidance behavior. Previous findings suggest that affective stimuli may bias visual perception, but it remains unclear whether similar biases exist in the auditory domain. Therefore, we asked whether affective auditory voices (angry vs. neutral) influence sound distance perception. Two VR experiments (data collection 2021-2022) were conducted in which auditory stimuli were presented via loudspeakers located at positions unknown to the participants. In the first experiment (N = 44), participants actively placed a visually presented virtual agent or virtual loudspeaker in an empty room at the perceived sound source location. In the second experiment (N = 32), participants were standing in front of several virtual agents or virtual loudspeakers and had to indicate the sound source by directing their gaze toward the perceived sound location. Results in both preregistered experiments consistently showed that participants estimated the location of angry voice stimuli at greater distances than the location of neutral voice stimuli. We discuss that neither emotional nor motivational biases can account for these results. Instead, distance estimates seem to rely on listeners' representations regarding the relationship between vocal affect and acoustic characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Action planning can be construed as the temporary binding of action features to form a representation known as an action file. This file is distinct from other possible, but currently not required actions of the behavioral repertoire. To further this action file approach, we investigated what happens with an initially planned action, which however, is discarded before execution. In two experiments we found consistent evidence for a quick unbinding of action features with discarding. Other possible mechanisms that action discarding might invoke, be it the paradox strengthening of a discarded action plan, the selective suppression of the otherwise intact plan, or the global suppression of all subsequent action, were not or at least less consistently supported. These findings provide a novel perspective on inhibitory action control, which we discuss with respect to its applications to other instances of such inhibitory control as studied in multitasking, stop-signal, directed forgetting, or response-reprogramming paradigms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

When learning a novel visuomotor mapping (e.g., mirror writing), accuracy can improve quickly through explicit, knowledge-based learning (e.g., aim left to go right), but after practice, implicit or procedural learning takes over, producing fast, natural movements. This procedural learning occurs automatically, whereas it has recently been found that knowledge-based learning can be suppressed by the gradual introduction of the novel mapping when participants must make fast movements and visuomotor perturbations are small (e.g., 30° rotations). We explored the range of task instructions, perturbation parameters, and feedback that preclude or encourage this suppression. Using a reaching task with a rotation between screen position and movement direction, we found that knowledge-based learning could be suppressed even for an extreme 90° rotation, but only if it was introduced gradually and only under instructions to move quickly. If the rotation was introduced abruptly or if instructions emphasized accuracy over speed, knowledge-based learning occurred. A second experiment indicated that knowledge-based learning always occurred in the absence of continuous motion feedback, evidenced by the time course of learning, the aftereffects of learning when the rotation was abruptly removed, and the outcome of formal model comparison between a dual-state (procedural and knowledge-based) versus a single-state (procedural only) learning model of the data. A third experiment replicated the findings and verified that the knowledge-based component of the dual-state model corresponded to explicit aiming, whereas the procedural component was slow to unlearn. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative templates are based on foreknowledge of distractor features and can lead to more efficient visual search at the group level. However, large individual differences exist in the size of benefits induced by negative cues. The cognitive factors underlying these interindividual differences remain unknown. Previous research has suggested higher engagement of proactive control for negative templates compared to positive templates. We thus hypothesized that interindividual differences in proactive control efficiency may explain the large variability in negative cue benefits. A large data set made up of data from two previously published studies was reanalyzed (N = 139), with eye movements recorded in 36 participants. Individual proactive control efficiency was measured through reaction time (RT) variability. Participants with higher proactive control efficiency exhibited larger benefits after negative cues across two critical measures: Individuals with higher proactive control showed larger RT benefits following negative compared to neutral cues; similarly, individuals with higher proactive control exhibited lower first saccades to cued distractor items. No such relationship was observed for positive cues. Our results confirmed the existence of large interindividual differences in the benefits induced by negative attentional templates. Critically, we show that proactive control drives these interindividual differences in negative template use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How we perceive the physical world is not only organized in terms of objects, but also structured in time as sequences of events. This is especially evident in intuitive physics, with temporally bounded dynamics such as falling, occlusion, and bouncing demarcating the continuous flow of sensory inputs. While the spatial structure and attentional consequences of physical objects have been well-studied, much less is known about the temporal structure and attentional consequences of physical events in visual perception. Previous work has recognized physical events as units in the mind, and used presegmented object interactions to explore physical representations. However, these studies did not address whether and how perception imposes the kind of temporal structure that carves these physical events to begin with, and the attentional consequences of such segmentation during intuitive physics. Here, we use performance-based tasks to address this gap. In Experiment 1, we find that perception not only spontaneously separates visual input in time into physical events, but also, this segmentation occurs in a nonlinear manner within a few hundred milliseconds at the moment of the event boundary. In Experiment 2, we find that event representations, once formed, use coarse "look ahead" simulations to selectively prioritize those objects that are predictively part of the unfolding dynamics. This rich temporal and predictive structure of physical event representations, formed during vision, should inform models of intuitive physics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).