Consciousness and Cognition最新文献

The question of whether free will exists or not has intrigued philosophers for centuries. About 40 years ago, cognitive neuroscientists such as Benjamin Libet have joined the discussion by demonstrating that an ERP component, the readiness potential (RP), precedes the reported time of decision to act by a few hundred milliseconds. Libet et al. (1983) argued that our brains unconsciously prepare the movement before we experience any conscious intention, which led some free will skeptics (e.g., Ebert & Wegner, 2011) to argue that free will does not exist. While Libet’s interpretation of his findings initiated an intense philosophical debate, alternative interpretations have been put forward more recently (Bode et al., 2014, Brass et al., 2019, Schurger et al., 2012, Schurger et al., 2021). Integration to bound models (ITB) of Libet-style experiments suggest that we accumulate information until an intention threshold is reached, which triggers our experience of intention and execution of voluntary behaviors. The RP, from this perspective reflects the decision process itself rather than the consequence of an unconscious decision. To determine if the ITB model better predicts behavioral patterns in Libet-style experiments, we added a whether-component to the classical Libet task (the Veto Libet task) and compared the behavioral measures in the Veto Libet task with the Classical Libet task. We hypothesized that the signal accumulation in the Veto Libet task would be less steep than in the Classical Libet task, resulting in longer wait times and earlier self-reported intentions to act (i.e., the W). The result in general supported our hypotheses. In addition, these behavioral differences between the Classical Libet task and the Veto Libet task established valuable behavioral correlates for future investigations into the vetoing phenomenon. Finally, this study was also the first application of the Libet task in an online setting, and the behavioral parameters were highly comparable to the previous offline studies, further supporting the possibility of using the online platform to study arbitrary decision-making.

The rise of powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) provides a compelling opportunity to investigate the consequences of anthropomorphism, particularly regarding how their exposure may influence the way individuals view themselves (self-perception) and other people (other-perception). Using a mind perception framework, we examined attributions of agency (the ability to do) and experience (the ability to feel). Participants evaluated their agentic and experiential capabilities and the extent to which these features are uniquely human before and after exposure to LLM responses. Post-exposure, participants increased evaluations of their agentic and experiential qualities while decreasing their perception that agency and experience are considered to be uniquely human. These results indicate that anthropomorphizing LLMs impacts attributions of mind for humans in fundamentally divergent ways: enhancing the perception of one’s own mind while reducing its uniqueness for others. These results open up a range of future questions regarding how anthropomorphism can affect mind perception toward humans.

The cognitive neural mechanisms by which sleep deprivation affects cognitive flexibility are poorly understood. Therefore, the study investigated the neuroelectrophysiological basis of the effect of 24 h sleep deprivation on cognitive flexibility in adolescents. 72 participants (36 females, mean age ± SD=20.46 ± 2.385 years old) participated in the study and were randomly assigned to the sleep deprivation group and control group. They were instructed to complete a task switch paradigm, during which participants’ behavioral and electroencephalographic data were recorded. Behaviorally, there were significant between-group differences in accuracy. The results of event-related potential showed that the P2, N2 and P3 components had significant group effects or interaction effects. At the time–frequency level, there were statistically significant differences between the delta and theta bands. These results suggested that 24 h sleep deprivation affected problem-solving effectiveness rather than efficiency, mainly because it systematically impaired cognitive processing associated with cognitive flexibility.

Participants completed two sessions of an auditory attention task and intermittently responded to thought probes asking about their level of mind-wandering. After the first session one group received 200 mg of caffeinated chewing gum (n = 61) and another group received regular (placebo) chewing gum (n = 66). The gum was chewed for 20-minutes and then disposed of before beginning the second session. Participants who received caffeine showed a performance benefit as well as reported being more on task and fewer instances of spontaneous mind-wandering compared to those in the placebo group. Participants who received caffeine also reported greater positive affect and arousal, as well as less feelings of boredom, sleepiness, and mental effort required to stay on task compared to those who received placebo. These results suggest that caffeine may benefit attentional engagement as well as performance during a sustained attention task.

There are no studies that have experimentally tested how temporal integration/segregation of sensory inputs might be linked to the emergence of dissociative experiences and alterations of emotional functioning. Thirty-six participants completed 3 sensory integration tasks. Psychometric thresholds were estimated as indexes of temporal integration/segregation processes. We collected self-report measures of pre-task trait levels of dissociation, as well as pre- post-task changes in both dissociation and emotionality. An independent sample of 21 subjects completed a control experiment administering the Attention Network Test. Results showed: (i) a significant increase of dissociative experiences after the completion of sensory integration tasks, but not after the ANT task; (ii) that subjective thresholds predicted the emergence of dissociative states; (iii) temporal integration efforts affected positive emotionality, which was explained by the extent of task-dependent dissociative states. The present findings reveal that dissociation could be understood in terms of an imbalance between “hyper-segregation” and “hyper-integration” processes.

The study aimed to investigate the effects of an embodied mindfulness treatment on chronometric mental rotation. Forty-four women and 47 men participated and were randomly divided into two groups: a mindfulness induction group and a control group. They completed two sets of 150 mental rotation tasks with cube figures each. Subjective cognitive effort (measured after each block), reaction time, and accuracy were analyzed using linear mixed models with the factors of time, mindfulness, angular disparity, and gender. The significant finding was a three-way interaction between pre-post testing, mindfulness, and gender for reaction times. This interaction suggests that women might benefit more from the mindfulness induction, while men may benefit more from the control condition. The analysis of subjective cognitive effort indicates that women and men perceive the same cognitive effort when solving cube-figure tasks.

In recent decades, hypnosis has increasingly moved into the mainstream of scientific inquiry. Hypnotic suggestions are frequently implemented in behavioral, neurocognitive, and clinical investigations and interventions. Despite abundant reports about the effectiveness of suggestions in altering behavior, perception, cognition, and agency, no consensus exists regarding the mechanisms driving these changes. This article reviews competing theoretical accounts that address the genesis of subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological responses to hypnotic suggestions. We systematically analyze the broad landscape of hypnosis theories that best represent our estimation of the current status and future avenues of scientific thinking. We start with procedural descriptions of hypnosis, suggestions, and hypnotizability, followed by a comparative analysis of systematically selected theories. Considering that prominent theoretical perspectives emphasize different aspects of hypnosis, our review reveals that each perspective possesses salient strengths, limitations, and heuristic values. We highlight the necessity of revisiting extant theories and formulating novel evidence-based accounts of hypnosis.

Humans experience feelings of confidence in their decisions. In perception, these feelings are typically accurate – we tend to feel more confident about correct decisions. The degree of insight people have into the accuracy of their decisions is known as metacognitive sensitivity. Currently popular methods of estimating metacognitive sensitivity are subject to interpretive ambiguities because they assume people have normally shaped distributions of different experiences when they are repeatedly exposed to a single input. If this normality assumption is violated, calculations can erroneously underestimate metacognitive sensitivity. Here, we describe a means of estimating metacognitive sensitivity that is more robust to violations of the normality assumption. This improved method can easily be added to standard behavioral experiments, and the authors provide Matlab code to help researchers implement these analyses and experimental procedures.

A number of studies have now shown that general information processing causes the activation of memories in the autobiographical memory system. These studies have shown that general processing of words, sounds, objects, or pictures primes autobiographical memories on voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memory tasks (the Crovitz cue-word task and the vigilance task). Deemed semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming, our goal in the current study was to demonstrate that this form of priming causes the unconscious activation of autobiographical memories (autobiographical automaticity) at the point of priming. Participants named words under subliminal and supraliminal conditions and then received a test of priming (the vigilance task). The results showed that words that were processed below the threshold of awareness were equally likely as words processed above the threshold of awareness to prime the production of involuntary autobiographical memories on the vigilance task. The results support the idea that autobiographical memory activations in semantic-to-autobiographical priming is both unintentional and unconscious.

Semantic relatedness and expectation were investigated in inattentional blindness—failure to perceive an unexpected object in plain sight when attention is engaged elsewhere. Participants named primary-task pictures and ignored distractor pictures. Four trials preceded a ‘critical’ trial where an unexpected six-letter-word appeared at fixation, simultaneously with the pictures. In Experiment 1, we found robust effects for both in-lab and on-line-Zoom methodology. More participants reported the unexpected word semantically-related to the primary-task pictures than a semantically-unrelated word. In Experiment 2, expectations were violated, by changing the semantic category of the primary-task pictures. More participants reported the unexpected word semantically-related to the unexpected picture category than a semantically-unrelated word. When attentional resources are consumed by a task, a violation to task expectations is not enough to reorient attention to an unexpected word. Attention reorients to what is meaningful to the task, and what is meaningful is updated in light of unexpected information.