Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-Revue Canadienne De Psychologie Experimentale最新文献

It is generally well known that emotion can benefit memory; however, much less is known about how emotion influences metamemory. The present study examined how list composition and emotion influence individuals' metamnemonic judgements and performance in a free recall task. Participants studied lists of words that varied in emotional valence and made immediate judgements of learning after each word. Valence was manipulated in a mixed-list design in Experiment 1, a pure-list design in Experiment 2, and in a mixed- versus pure-list design in Experiment 4; arousal was held constant. We expected that the relative influence of emotion on metamemory would depend on participants' beliefs about how emotion influences memory and that these beliefs would be more salient in a mixed-list than pure-list design. Consistent with this, emotional words were given higher judgements of learnings than neutral words in Experiments 1 and 4, but not in Experiment 2. Posttest questionnaires (Experiments 1 and 2) and data collected from a naïve participant sample (Experiment 3) indicated that participants believed that emotional words are more memorable than nonemotional words. These results suggest that list structure influenced the degree to which judgements of learnings were responsive to emotional content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Research on smile perception indicates that smiles containing a cheek raiser tend to be judged as happier, more sincere, and more authentic than those without this cue. However, while this is well established for human smiles, less is known about how such cues are perceived in emojis. Guided by the emotions as social information (EASI) model, which posits that emotional expressions influence observers through inferential and affective pathways, this study examined judgements of sincerity for enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles produced by human and emoji encoders. In Experiment 1, participants judged whether smiles (human or emoji) were "really happy" or "not really happy." Both stimulus types included smiles that varied in cues of sincerity (presence or absence of the cheek raiser). In Experiment 2, the same task was repeated with open or closed mouth variations. Participants identified human enjoyment smiles as "really happy" more often than nonenjoyment smiles, whereas emojis were rated as "really happy" regardless of the sincerity cue. Closed mouth smiles were judged as less happy than open mouth smiles, and judgements were faster for emojis than for human faces. These findings suggest that, in line with the EASI model, emoji-based expressions may elicit affective rather than inferential processing, highlighting their limited equivalence to human smiles in digital communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impairments across several neurocognitive domains, particularly memory and executive function. The study explored the effectiveness of an individual cognitive stimulation (iCS) program on cognitive outcomes in older adults with moderate to moderately severe AD. A multicentre randomized controlled trial was conducted with 80 Portuguese older adults (M_age: 83.0 ± 7.1 years) with AD. Participants were randomly assigned to either iCS (n = 39; 49%) or treatment as usual (n = 41; 51%). Alzheimer's Disease Severity (ADS) categorized two groups based on Mini-Mental State Examination score: 10-14 in the ADS moderately severe group and 15-20 in the ADS moderate group. In participants with moderate AD, iCS led to significant improvements in memory-related outcomes (particularly Memory Assessment Test) and a trend toward improvement in global cognition. In contrast, no significant effects were observed in participants with moderately severe AD. Meta-analytic comparisons and meta-regression confirmed a significant difference in intervention effectiveness between severity levels. iCS was significantly more effective in individuals with moderate AD than in those with moderately severe AD. This difference in responsiveness between severity levels was statistically confirmed (Q = 11.29, p < .001). iCS was effective in enhancing memory in individuals with moderate AD, with additional indications of global cognitive benefit. However, no meaningful effects were observed in participants with moderately severe impairment, suggesting diminished responsiveness to iCS as disease severity increases. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental imagery plays a central role in various cognitive processes and is increasingly investigated in cognitive science. Yet standardized tools for its assessment in French-speaking populations remain scarce. This study examined the psychometric properties of two widely used self-report instruments of mental imagery within the French Canadian population: the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) and the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (Psi-Q)-here termed VVIQ-Québec (QC) and Psiq-QC. A total of 328 adults completed the VVIQ-QC and Psiq-QC, with a randomly selected subsample (n = 73) repeating the assessment 1 month later. Exploratory factor analysis of the VVIQ-QC (eyes-open) revealed, as in the original VVIQ, distinct factors corresponding to each prompt cluster (i.e., relative, sunrise, landscape, and storefront). The Psiq-QC yielded a six-factor solution after excluding the Body modality, diverging from the original seven-factor model. Both instruments showed strong internal consistency, temporal stability, and convergent validity. No significant effects of age, sex, or education were observed on imagery scores. These findings provide the first validated French Canadian versions of the VVIQ and Psi-Q, available via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/wuhja, offering reliable tools for both research and clinical applications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Several methods have been developed to assess sexual preferences in men and women. Direct instruments (e.g., plethysmography, questionnaires) are the most widely used, but they have notable shortcomings, including a lack of response specificity in certain groups and a risk of false responding. Indirect instruments (e.g., reaction time), where preferences are assessed unobtrusively, may overcome these limitations and could therefore be used to measure sexual preferences more effectively. One promising instrument, published by Jiang et al. (2006), used an ocular suppression paradigm that exposed participants to sexual images while simultaneously masking them from conscious perception. Jiang et al. (2006) found that these "invisible" images attracted visual attention when they matched the participants' sexual preferences for nude male or female images and, in the case of heterosexual men, repelled attention when they did not match the participants' preferences. Here, we attempt to replicate these findings over two studies. In the first experiment, using a stereoscopic apparatus with 22 men and 25 women and a validation test (time spent rating the same nude images), we found no attentional attraction to or repulsion of invisible images even though the rating times for the same images were related to participants' sexual orientation. In the second experiment, with 32 men, we replaced the stereoscopic apparatus with a virtual reality headset, offering better control over stimulus delivery. Again, the invisible images produced no attentional attraction or repulsion. Our results suggest that the interocular suppression paradigm is not an effective method for assessing sexual preferences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

After a decade of implementing open science practices as a principal investigator, mentor, data repository founder, and editor-in-chief, I have learned that the question is not whether researchers should adopt these practices but how to adapt them meaningfully. This commentary, based on a talk given at the 2024 Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science conference, argues for two key principles: First, open science implementation must be context-dependent rather than one-size-fits-all, and second, practical research realities require flexible approaches to idealized policies. Through personal examples, from my evolution with preregistration from "recipe" to "guide" during COVID-19 research to challenges with Registered Reports using existing data sets, I show how open science practices work best when researchers approach them as evolving tools rather than rigid rules. I also discuss field-specific differences in open science uptake between psychology and education and the importance of equity considerations in implementation. The commentary concludes with concrete recommendations for researchers and journals, emphasizing that sustainable open science requires meeting researchers where they are while maintaining transparency and scientific rigour. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In this narrative theoretical review, I take a closer look at the last 40 years of research on the cuing of attention and the often-related inhibition of return in the spatial senses of vision, audition, and touch. A distinction is made between perceptual versus response-based facilitation and inhibition in these two putatively related phenomena. Ray Klein has long been interested in the phenomenon of inhibition of return, though mostly from a unisensory visual perspective. This review highlights how examining these attentional and response-related phenomena outside of the visual modality (e.g., in audition and in touch), as well as crossmodally, and in a multisensory context, has helped to further our understanding of both empirical phenomena. The putative existence of attentional orienting and inhibition of return-like inhibitory phenomena outside of the spatial domain, as when attentional selection relates to a specific stimulus dimension (such as hue), semantic category, or even sensory modality, is also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychological science is hard. This short article focuses on two issues. One has to do with the importance of understanding statistical power and how post hoc data explorations and selective reporting can lead to exaggerated estimates of the size of effects and the strength of relationships (which in turn contribute to replication failures). The other topic is tools research psychologists can use to improve the reproducibility of their procedures and analyses. The article closes with a comment on the deeper challenge of improving the usefulness and testability of theories in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Moments of inattention are commonly experienced by most people in everyday life. While some of these inattentive episodes occur inadvertently, others are the result of an individual's choices. Here we characterize the aspects of inattention over which individuals have agency, with a specific consideration of the inattentive state of mind wandering (i.e., off-task thought). Our research on this topic has revealed several general principles that underpin people's agency over their inattention to a task at hand. First, people have nuanced awareness of their inattentive episodes, reporting various degrees of both spontaneous and deliberate moments of inattention, even during tasks in which they agree to be attentive. Second, spontaneous and deliberate bouts of attentional disengagement have distinct correlates and underlying mechanisms. Third, people have considerable control over the degree of their inattention and are able to regulate it skillfully on command and strategically in response to situational demands. Fourth, people have reliable memories of prior moment-to-moment changes in their inattention. And finally, individuals are able to accurately forecast how their inattention might change in an upcoming task. These principles suggest an agentic view of inattention, according to which people are imperfect but intelligent managers of their attentional engagement and disengagement. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of this view on prior and future studies of attentional disengagement, the interpretability of performance in cognitive tasks, and strategies that can be implemented to reduce inattention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Whereas the ability to prioritize important information in memory remains preserved with age, it is still unclear how subjective value may interact with emotional valence to impact memory. The present study examined the interaction of value and valence in memory selectivity among younger and older adults. A sample of 24 younger (aged 17-29; 20.13 ± 2.54) and 24 older adults (aged 65-79, 70.13 ± 4.47) ranked valenced (positive and negative) and neutral words based on their subjectively perceived value/importance for memory. They then completed a value-directed remembering task, studying the same set of words paired with their assigned values, with a goal to maximize value points accrued in a subsequent word free recall task. Next, they completed a cued recall for values assigned to the words. Mixed-model analyses of variance were conducted on value assignment, word free recall, and cued value recall performance. Positive words were assigned a higher value/importance than negative or neutral words. Items assigned a higher value were better recalled and likely to be recalled first, an effect that tends to be larger for older than younger adults. Older adults generally face specific challenges recalling schema-inconsistent high values originally assigned to negative words, an effect absent in younger adults. The results suggested that valence can direct value assignment and, in turn, interact with the assigned value to guide memory selectivity. Relative to younger adults, older adults appear more likely to rely on a "positive is more valuable than negative" schema to guide value retrieval. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).