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

Previous work shows a reinforcing impact of action effect on behavior, independent of other reinforces such as positive outcomes or task success. Action-effect temporal contiguity plays an important role in such a reinforcing effect, possibly indicating a motor-based evaluation of their causal relationship. In the present study, we aimed to negate the reinforcing impact of an immediate action effect with task success by designing a task where red and green circle stimuli rapidly descended on the screen. Participants were instructed to respond only when a specific sequence of colored stimuli matched a predefined response rule. The temporal contiguity between the response and a perceptual effect was manipulated. We initially hypothesized an increased action tendency resulting in higher false alarm rates in the immediate (compared to 400 ms lag) action-effect condition. We also expected this pattern to be more pronounced in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder compared to typically developing individuals. Contrary to our expectations, results from three experiments showed a consistent pattern of a lower false alarm rate in the immediate compared to the 400 ms lag effect condition across both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and typically developing groups. Additionally, while action-effect temporal contiguity did not significantly alter the overall rate of misses, we observed earlier improvements in both misses and false alarms in the immediate condition during the first blocks. Possible explanations for the complex impact of action effect on action tendency and action control are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Object perception and action are closely interrelated: Various grasping components are evoked when perceiving visual objects ("object affordances"). Yet little is known about the impact of the evocation of multiobject affordances on object perceptual processing. This study aimed to determine whether object processing may be affected by the similarity of affordances evoked by multiple objects and whether semantic relations between objects modulate this effect. Adult students were presented with three-dimensional scenes involving pairs of graspable objects. Each object evoked grasp size affordances (precision or power grasps). Affordances of the two objects could be similar or dissimilar and objects could be thematically related (spatula-pan) or unrelated (spatula-snow globe). Participants had to judge the color of a target object by performing power and precision grasps compatible or incompatible with the target evoked grasp. Results showed slower responses on compatible targets when unrelated distractors evoked similar compared to dissimilar affordances. This cost of similar affordances disappeared when objects were thematically related. Findings corroborate predictions of recent models hypothesizing automatic inhibition of distractor affordances when selecting one object among others. We further provide novel evidence for a role of thematic relations between objects in the perception of multiple affordances. Findings have implications for object processing in naturalistic scenes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Simon effects have been observed to arise from different modes of spatial information (e.g., physical location, arrow direction, and location word). The present study investigated whether different modes of spatial information elicit a unitary set of spatial codes when triggering a spatially corresponding response code. A pair of two different Simon tasks was presented in alternation: location- and arrow-based Simon tasks in Experiments 1 and 2, word- and location-based Simon tasks in Experiment 3, and arrow- and word-based Simon tasks in Experiment 4. Responses were collected using unimanual aimed-movement responses. Cross-task congruency sequence effects (CSEs) were found in Experiments 1 and 2, indicating a shared set of spatial codes between physical locations and arrow directions. Conversely, the absence of CSEs in Experiment 3 suggested that physical locations and location words elicited different sets of spatial codes. In Experiment 4, a CSE was evident in the arrow-based Simon task but not in the word-based one, implying an overlap in the spatial attributes of arrow directions with those of location words. Distributional analyses of the Simon effects revealed that different modes of spatial information yielded distinct temporal patterns of its activation and dissipation, implying quantitative differences in the Simon effects. The cross-comparisons of the CSE and delta function data indicated that the quantitative similarities in spatial modes did not correspond to the qualitative similarities, suggesting a crucial finding that each set of data reflects different aspects of the nature of the spatial codes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The visual Simon task is widely employed to explore the underlying mechanisms of sensorimotor processing in the presence of task-relevant (targets) and task-irrelevant (distracting) location information. Critically, the Simon effect is considered as an indicator of action-related interference resulting from distractor-based activation, which fades out over time. In this study, we tested whether attenuated Simon effects with slower task processing may be fully explained by the fading of distractor-based response activation. To that end, we selectively manipulated perceptual target discriminability by varying the ratio of differently colored dots within (Experiment 1) and between blocks (Experiment 2). According to pure fading activation accounts, the negative-going delta plots of the two discriminability conditions should overlap across the entire reaction time (RT) distribution. In contrast to this prediction, the negative-going DPs for the two discriminability conditions did not overlap in either experiment. Instead, the Simon effect was either consistently smaller (Experiment 1) or larger (Experiment 2) across the entire RT distribution in the easy condition compared to the hard condition. This result pattern indicates that perceptual target discriminability affected conflict resolution beyond the mere fading of distractor-based activation. Exploratory model-based analyses suggest a stronger processing of relevant perceptual information with more discriminable targets, which may counteract the influence of distracting location information. However, as the exact effects of discriminability on conflict processing seem to depend on variation mode (trialwise vs. blockwise), the importance of global strategic effects is also highlighted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

While the classic Posner cuing paradigm has been used to study cuing of a single endogenous shift of attention, we present a new multiple cue paradigm to study the competition between multiple endogenous shifts of attention. The new paradigm enables us to manipulate the number of competing attention shifts and their relative importance. In three experiments, we demonstrate that the process of selecting one among other relevant attention shifts is governed by limited capacity and biased competition. We show that the probability of performing the most optimal attention shift is influenced by the total number of attention shifts competing for execution and that reward is a determining factor for the selection between attention shifts. We explain our results with a recent mathematical model of biased selection of response sets (the model of intention selection [MIS]). Our new paradigm offers a critical test of MIS and is an important new tool for investigating the mechanisms underlying the retrieval of response sets from long-term memory (LTM). The model (MIS) and the new multiple cue paradigm can provide a new perspective on LTM representations of response sets for instrumental action and on habitual and goal-directed processing in action control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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).