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

This study examined potential sex differences in the application of models of curve tracing, namely the pixel-by-pixel model, the bipartite model, and the zoom lens model. The purpose of this study was therefore to determine whether sex differences existed in terms of reliance on a particular model or whether the results of each sex could be best explained by one model. This was done by examining the combined data obtained by Voyer and MacPherson (2020), consisting of 420 participants, with 194 men and 226 women. We examined only the curve-tracing task data from that study and compared the fit of the different models as well as a possible interaction with sex of participants on the proportion of correct responses and response time. Overall, sex was a significant factor, with men showing better average accuracy and faster performance than women. On accuracy, we found that the pixel-by-pixel model provided the best fit for women, whereas the zoom lens model produced the best fit for men. On response time, the zoom model was the best predictor of response time for both sexes. The discussion elaborates on an account of these findings and on how our results might generalize to other visual-spatial tasks where a performance advantage for men is found. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Although studies of humour are as old as the Western academic tradition, most theories are too vague to allow for modelling and prediction of humour judgments. Previous work in modelling humour judgments has succeeded by focusing on the world's worst jokes: the slight humour of single nonwords (Westbury, Shaoul, Moroschan, & Ramscar, 2016) and single words (Westbury & Hollis, 2019). Here that work is extended to the world's third-worst jokes, adjective-noun pairs such as dancing dildo, flabby goldfish, and pompous snack. Participants used best-worst scaling to rate the humour of random word pairs. Those judgments were modelled using both linear regression and genetic programming, which is not constrained by assumptions of linearity. The linear regression models were as successful as the nonlinear models at predicting humour judgments, accounting for 27% of the variance in a 540-item validation set. Predictors associated only with the noun and with the relationship between the adjective and noun accounted for much more variance (over 14% each) than predictors associated only with the adjective (6.3%). Greater cosine distance of the adjective word2vec vector from the vectors of the shared neighbors of the noun and adjective is associated with higher humour ratings, whereas the opposite relationship is true for the noun. This captures a form of incongruity not seen in single items, by which neighbours of the adjective become unexpectedly relevant only when the noun brings them into focus. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

This article presents a survey of the first 70 years of this journal, covering (a) the origin and subsequent history of the journal, (b) who the Editors have been, (c) how the Editors have influenced the journal, (d) the most highly cited articles, and (e) consideration of the journal's content. After shifts in its purpose over its first two decades, the journal settled into being an outlet that is well respected around the world for research in the field of human experimental psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans operate in complex environments where social interactions require individuals to constantly attend to people and objects around them. Despite the complexity of these interactions from a visuomotor perspective, humans can engage and thrive in social settings. The purpose of the current study was to examine the simultaneous influence of multiple social cues (i.e., ownership and the presence of a coactor) on the processing of objects. Participants performed an object-based compatibility task in the presence and absence of a coacting confederate. Participants indicated whether pictures of mugs (that were either self-owned or unowned) were upright or inverted. The pictures appeared at one of 2 locations (a near or far location relative to the participant) on a computer screen laid flat on (parallel to) the tabletop. When present, the coactor stood on the opposite side of the screen/table. Analysis of response times (RTs) indicated that the processing of objects was influenced by the object's ownership status, the presence of the coactor, and where the object was located on the screen. Specifically, RTs for pictures of self-owned mugs were shorter than unowned mugs, but only when the pictures were located at the near location. Further, the presence of a confederate resulted in shorter RTs for pictures located at the near but not the far location. These findings suggest that when objects were placed at the far location, the additional social cues of ownership and social context did not influence visuomotor processing of the objects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The issue of bilingual phonological access remains unclear for bilinguals with cross-script language systems, which is especially true when the time course of phonological activation is involved. To investigate the time course of cross-script phonological activation, the present study asked Chinese-English bilinguals to complete a word naming task that was conducted in a forward-masked phonological priming paradigm in three stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions. By comparing the interlingual and intralingual phonological priming effects in a within-subjects design, we found that (a) target naming in Chinese and English was facilitated by a phonologically similar English or Chinese prime in the three SOA conditions (43 ms, 75 ms, and 150 ms) and the facilitation effect of the prime reached the peak when the pronunciation of the prime-target pair most resembled each other and (b) manipulation of the SOAs affected both the naming latencies of target words and the sizes of the phonological priming effect. In particular, naming latencies in each prime-target type displayed an increasing tendency as the SOA prolonged. Moreover, despite the varied sizes of the priming effect in the three SOA conditions, we found a consistent pattern that the priming effects in two interlingual conditions resembled their respective intralingual conditions along the time course. Taken together, these findings provide strong support for an integrated phonological representation of bilinguals and further extend the language nonselective access hypothesis to language pairs with very different orthographic systems. Implications for the manipulation of the SOAs in the masked priming paradigm are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

We explored whether control processes could account for age-related differences in internal strategy use, which in turn would contribute to episodic and working memory decline in aging. Young and older adults completed the internal strategy subscale of the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) questionnaire, a free-recall task (FRT), a reading span task (RST), and 3 executive control tasks (the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Initial Letter Fluency Test, and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test) allowing us to calculate a composite index of control processes. Results indicated that both self-reported internal strategy use and control processes index accounted for a significant proportion of the age-related variance in the FRT and the RST. However, once the control processes index was controlled for, variance in both the FRT and RST explained by internal strategy use were significantly reduced. Additionally, age-related variance in internal strategy use was mediated by the control processes index. These results suggest a cascade model in which individual control level would mediate age-related differences in internal strategy use, which in turn would mediate age-related differences in episodic and working memory performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Past research demonstrated enhanced memory for information encoded with relevance to a survival scenario compared to a control scenario, an effect referred to as the survival processing effect in memory. This effect has been explained by a proximate mechanism hypothesis (i.e., survival processing enables deep elaborative processing that promotes memory). In support of this hypothesis, past research found that, during encoding, the survival processing effect was largely intact under a perceptual or low-load secondary task condition but eliminated under a high-load secondary task condition. To test semantic encoding as a possible proximate mechanism, the current study assesses the impact of high-load and low-load divided attention tasks that require semantic processing of digits on the survival processing effect. Seventy-two young adults rated words for their relevance to two survival scenarios (i.e., grassland and mountain) and one non-survival control scenario (i.e., cruise), while completing a concurrent high-load or low-load semantic digit-monitoring task. No survival processing effect was found in either condition. The results suggest that semantic encoding probably serves as a proximate mechanism for the survival processing effect in memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: There is a strong relationship between reading and articulation (Lervåg & Hulme, 2009; Pan et al., 2011). Given the tight coupling of these processes, innovative approaches are needed to understand the intricacies associated with print-speech connections. Here we ran a series of tightly controlled experiments to examine the impact of mouth perturbations on silent reading.

Method: We altered the mouth, via somatosensory feedback, in several ways: (a) a large lollipop in the mouth (E1), (b) a candy stick (bite bar) held horizontally between the teeth (E2), and (c) lidocaine that served to numb the mouth (E3). Three tasks were completed: (a) picture categorization, (b) "spell" lexical decision (Spell-LDT; "does the letter string spell a real word, yes or no?"), and (c) "sound" lexical decision (Sound-LDT; "does the letter string sound like a real word, yes or no?"). Participants (N = 97; E1 = 27; E2 = 32; E3 = 38) completed each of the tasks two times: once with a somatosensory perturbation (lollipop, bite bar, or lidocaine) and once without.

Results: For each experiment, a linear mixed effects analysis was run. Overall, we found that the lollipop (E1) and lidocaine (E3) had some specific effects on word recognition (e.g., for "no" responses), particularly in the Spell-LDT, whereas the bite bar (E2) had no effect on word recognition. The picture categorization task was not impacted by any perturbations.

Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that sensorimotor information is connected to reading. We discuss how these findings advance our understanding of a print-to-speech framework. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Computational models of semantic memory have been successful in accounting for a wide range of cognitive phenomena, including word categorization, semantic priming, and release from proactive interference. Conventionally, the texts input to these models have been curated to represent the average individual's language experience. While this approach has proven successful for making predictions that generalize across individuals, it prevents consideration of situations in which individuals have divergent semantic representations. The use of a representative corpus prevents the generation of predictions specific to the language experience of an individual. While this limitation has been discussed in the literature, previous investigations have not yet validated such corpus-specific predictions. I present an approach to generate corpus-specific semantic representations using internet news sites as corpora. I then validate the semantic representations against subjects that read specific news sites. Results demonstrate that similarities between news sites are specific to the words under consideration and that news site-specific representations successfully predict differential priming effects in lexical decision as a function of news readership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).