Relationship between vection and motion perception in depth

This study examined the effects of cues to motion in depth – namely, stereoscopic (i.e., changing-disparity cues and interocular velocity differences) and changing-size cues on forward and backward vection. We conducted four experiments in which participants viewed expanding or contracting optical flows with the addition of either or both cues. In Experiment 1, participants reported vection by pressing a button whenever they felt it. After each trial, they also rated the magnitude of the vection (from 0 to 100). In Experiments 2 and 3, the participants rated the perceived velocity and motion-in-depth impression of the flows relative to standard stimuli, respectively. In Experiment 4, the participants rated the perceived depth and distance of the display. We observed enhancements in vection, motion-in-depth impression, and perceived depth and distance when either or both types of cues indicated motion-in-depth, as compared to those when the cues did not (Experiments 1, 3, and 4). The perceived velocity changed with cue conditions only for the high velocity condition (Experiment 2). Correlational analyses showed that the vection can be best explained by the motion-in-depth impression. This was partially supported by the multiple regression analyses. These results indicate that the enhancement of vection caused by cues is related to the impression of motion-in-depth rather than the perceived velocity and perceived three-dimensionality.     

Cue quality and criterion setting in recognition memory

Previous studies on how people set and modify decision criteria in old-new recognition tasks (in which they have to decide whether or not a stimulus was seen in a study phase) have almost exclusively focused on properties of the study items, such as presentation frequency or study list length. In contrast, in the three studies reported here, we manipulated the quality of the test cues in a scene-recognition task, either by degrading through Gaussian blurring (Experiment 1) or by limiting presentation duration (Experiment 2 and 3). In Experiments 1 and 2, degradation of the test cue led to worse old-new discrimination. Most importantly, however, participants were more liberal in their responses to degraded cues (i.e., more likely to call the cue “old”), demonstrating strong within-list, item-by-item, criterion shifts. This liberal response bias toward degraded stimuli came at the cost of increasing the false alarm rate while maintaining a constant hit rate. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 with additional stimulus types (words and faces) but did not provide accuracy feedback to participants. The criterion shifts in Experiment 3 were smaller in magnitude than Experiments 1 and 2 and varied in consistency across stimulus type, suggesting, in line with previous studies, that feedback is important for participants to shift their criteria.     

The concreteness effect on judgments of learning: Evaluating the contributions of fluency and beliefs

Researchers have often determined how cues influence judgments of learning (JOLs; e.g., concrete words are assigned higher JOLs than are abstract words), and recently there has been an emphasis in understanding why cues influence JOLs (i.e., the mechanisms that underlie cue effects on JOLs). The analytic-processing (AP) theory posits that JOLs are constructed in accordance with participants’ beliefs of how a cue will influence memory. Even so, some evidence suggests that fluency is also important to cue effects on JOLs. In the present experiments, we investigated the contributions of participants’ beliefs and processing fluency to the concreteness effect on JOLs. To evaluate beliefs, participants estimated memory performance in a hypothetical experiment (Experiment 1), and studied concrete and abstract words and made a pre-study JOL for each (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants’ predictions demonstrated the belief that concrete words are more likely to be remembered than are abstract words, consistent with the AP theory. To evaluate fluency, response latencies were measured during lexical decision (Experiment 4), self-paced study (Experiment 5), and mental imagery (Experiment 7). Number of trials to acquisition was also evaluated (Experiment 6). Fluency did not differ between concrete and abstract words in Experiments 5 and 6, and it did not mediate the concreteness effect on JOLs in Experiments 4 and 7. Taken together, these results demonstrate that beliefs are a primary mechanism driving the concreteness effect on JOLs.     

Training specificity and transfer in time and distance estimation

Learning is often specific to the conditions of training, making it important to identify which aspects of the testing environment are crucial to be matched in the training environment. In the present study, we examined training specificity in time and distance estimation tasks that differed only in the focus of processing (FOP). External spatial cues were provided for the distance estimation task and for the time estimation task in one condition, but not in another. The presence of a concurrent alphabet secondary task was manipulated during training and testing in all estimation conditions in Experiment 1. For distance as well as for time estimation in both conditions, training of the primary estimation task was found to be specific to the presence of the secondary task. In Experiments 2 and 3, we examined transfer between one estimation task and another, with no secondary task in either case. When all conditions were equal aside from the FOP instructions, including the presence of external spatial cues, Experiment 2 showed “transfer” between tasks, suggesting that training might not be specific to the FOP. When the external spatial cues were removed from the time estimation task, Experiment 3 showed no transfer between time and distance estimations, suggesting that external task cues influenced the procedures used in the estimation tasks.     

Visual search for changes in scenes creates long-term,incidental memory traces

Humans are very good at remembering large numbers of scenes over substantial periods of time. But how good are they at remembering changes to scenes? In this study, we tested scene memory and change detection two weeks after initial scene learning. In Experiments 1–3, scenes were learned incidentally during visual search for change. In Experiment 4, observers explicitly memorized scenes. At test, after two weeks observers were asked to discriminate old from new scenes, to recall a change that they had detected in the study phase, or to detect a newly introduced change in the memorization experiment. Next, they performed a change detection task, usually looking for the same change as in the study period. Scene recognition memory was found to be similar in all experiments, regardless of the study task. In Experiment 1, more difficult change detection produced better scene memory. Experiments 2 and 3 supported a “depth-of-processing” account for the effects of initial search and change detection on incidental memory for scenes. Of most interest, change detection was faster during the test phase than during the study phase, even when the observer had no explicit memory of having found that change previously. This result was replicated in two of our three change detection experiments. We conclude that scenes can be encoded incidentally as well as explicitly and that changes in those scenes can leave measurable traces even if they are not explicitly recalled.     

The strategic control of prospective memory monitoring in response to complex and probabilistic contextual cues

Participants use simple contextual cues to reduce deployment of costly monitoring processes in contexts in which prospective memory (PM) targets are not expected. This study investigated whether this strategic monitoring pattern is observed in response to complex and probabilistic contextual cues. Participants performed a lexical decision task in which words or nonwords were presented in upper or lower locations on screen. The specific condition was informed that PM targets (“tor” syllable) would occur only in words in the upper location, whereas the nonspecific condition was informed that targets could occur in any location or word type. Context was blocked such that word type and location changed every 8 trials. In Experiment 1, the specific condition used the complex contextual cue to reduce monitoring in unexpected contexts relative to the nonspecific condition. This pattern largely was not evidenced when the complex contextual cue was probabilistic (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 confirmed that strategic monitoring is observed for a complex cue that is deterministic, but not one that is probabilistic. Additionally, Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated a disadvantage associated with strategic monitoring—namely, that the specific condition was less likely to respond to a PM target in an unexpected context. Experiment 3 provided evidence that this disadvantage is attributable to impaired noticing of the target. The novel findings suggest use of a complex contextual cue per se is not a boundary condition for the strategic, context-specific allocation of monitoring processes to support prospective remembering; however, strategic monitoring is constrained by the predictive utility of the complex contextual cue.     

Simultaneous utilization of multiple cues in judgments of learning

There is much evidence that metacognitive judgments, such as people’s predictions of their future memory performance (judgments of learning, JOLs), are inferences based on cues and heuristics. However, relatively little is known about whether and when people integrate multiple cues in one metacognitive judgment or focus on a single cue without integrating further information. The current set of experiments systematically addressed whether and to what degree people integrate multiple extrinsic and intrinsic cues in JOLs. Experiment 1 varied two cues: number of study presentations (1 vs. 2) and font size (18 point vs. 48 point). Results revealed that people integrated both cues in their JOLs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the two word characteristics concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and emotionality (neutral vs. emotional) were integrated in JOLs. Experiment 3 showed that people integrated all four cues in their JOLs when manipulated simultaneously. Finally, Experiment 4 confirmed integration of three cues that varied on a continuum rather than in two easily distinguishable levels. These results demonstrate that people have a remarkable capacity to integrate multiple cues in metacognitive judgments. In addition, our findings render an explanation of cue effects on JOLs in terms of demand characteristics implausible.     

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.     

Whose hand is this? Differential responses of right and left extrastriate body areas to visual images of self and others’ hands

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is involved in perception of human bodies and nonfacial body parts, but its role in representing body identity is not clear. Here, we used on-line high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test the role of EBA in self–other distinction. In Experiments 1 and 2 we compared rTMS of right EBA with stimulation of left ventral premotor cortex (vPM), whereas in Experiment 3 we compared stimulation of right and left EBA. RTMS was applied during a hand laterality task in which self or others’ hand images were presented in first- versus third-person view (Experiments 1 and 3), or while participants had to explicitly recognize their own hands (Experiment 2) presented in first- versus third-person view. Experiment 1 showed that right EBA stimulation selectively speeded judgments on others’ hands, whereas no effect of left vPM stimulation was found. Experiment 2 did not reveal any effect of rTMS. Experiment 3 confirmed faster responses on others’ hands while stimulating right EBA and also showed an advantage when judging self with respect to others’ hands during stimulation of left EBA. These results would demonstrate that EBA responds to morphological features of human body contributing to identity processing.     

The mere exposure effect for visual image

Mere exposure effect refers to a phenomenon in which repeated stimuli are evaluated more positively than novel stimuli. We investigated whether this effect occurs for internally generated visual representations (i.e., visual images). In an exposure phase, a 5 × 5 dot array was presented, and a pair of dots corresponding to the neighboring vertices of an invisible polygon was sequentially flashed (in red), creating an invisible polygon. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4, participants visualized and memorized the shapes of invisible polygons based on different sequences of flashed dots, whereas in Experiment 3, participants only memorized positions of these dots. In a subsequent rating phase, participants visualized the shape of the invisible polygon from allocations of numerical characters on its vertices, and then rated their preference for invisible polygons (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). In contrast, in Experiment 4, participants rated the preference for visible polygons. Results showed that the mere exposure effect appeared only when participants visualized the shape of invisible polygons in both the exposure and rating phases (Experiments 1 and 2), suggesting that the mere exposure effect occurred for internalized visual images. This implies that the sensory inputs from repeated stimuli play a minor role in the mere exposure effect. Absence of the mere exposure effect in Experiment 4 suggests that the consistency of processing between exposure and rating phases plays an important role in the mere exposure effect.     

Explaining the forgetting bias effect on value judgments: The influence of memory for a past test

People often feel that information that was forgotten is less important than remembered information. Prior work has shown that participants assign higher importance to remembered information while undervaluing forgotten information. The current study examined two possible accounts of this finding. In three experiments, participants studied lists of words in which each word was randomly assigned a point value denoting the value of remembering the word. Following the presentation of each list participants engaged in a free recall test. After the presentation of all lists participants were shown each of the words they had studied and asked to recall the point value that was initially paired with each word. Experiment 1 tested a fluency-based account by presenting items for value judgments in a low-fluency or high-fluency format. Experiment 2 examined whether value judgments reflect attributions based on the familiarity of an item when value judgments are made. Finally, in Experiment 3, we evaluated whether participants believe that forgotten words are less important by having them judge whether an item was initially recalled or forgotten prior to making a value judgment. Manipulating the fluency of an item presented for judgment had no influence on value ratings (Experiment 1) and familiarity exerted a limited influence on value judgments (Experiment 2). More importantly, participants’ value judgments appeared to reflect a theory that remembered information is more valuable than forgotten information (Experiment 3). Overall, the present work suggests that individuals may apply a theory about remembering and forgetting to retrospectively assess the value of information.     

The texture of causal construals: Domain-specific biases shape causal inferences from discourse

We conducted five sets of experiments asking whether psychological and physical events are construed in broadly different manners concerning the underlying textures of their causes. In Experiments 1a–1d, we found a robust tendency to estimate fewer causes (but not effects) for psychological than for physical events; Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of results when participants were asked to generate hypothetical causes and effects; Experiment 3 revealed a greater tendency to ascribe linear chains of causes (but not effects) to physical events; Experiment 4 showed that the expectation of linear chains was related to intuitions about deterministic processes; and Experiment 5 showed that simply framing a given ambiguous event in psychological versus physical terms is sufficient to induce changes in the patterns of causal inferences. Adults therefore consistently show a tendency to think about psychological and physical events as being embedded in different kinds of causal structures.     

The fate of unattended stimuli and emotional habituation: Behavioral interference and cortical changes

The interference produced by the viewing of emotional distractors has been interpreted as evidence that emotional cues are processed in a fairly mandatory fashion, and that they divert attention from the primary ongoing task. However, few studies have examined how behavioral emotional interference varies with repeated presentation of the same emotional distractors. In two experiments, while participants were engaged in a parity judgment task, we investigated the effects of repetition of task-irrelevant emotional pictures, as reflected in both behavioral interference (Experiments 1 and 2) and neural activity (Experiment 2). Both experiments showed that the slowing of reaction times that was observed when viewing emotional, compared to neutral, scenes disappeared after only a few repetitions, suggesting diminished attention allocation to repeated emotional pictures. Conversely, in Experiment 2, neural correlates of picture processing revealed that the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude continued to be enhanced for emotional, compared to neutral, distractors despite picture repetition and the presence of a concurrent task. Altogether, these findings suggest that while evaluative processes are mandatory, and continue to engage cortico-limbic appetitive and defensive systems even after massive repetition, as suggested by the affective modulation of the LPP, attentional processes are not necessary after several repetitions of the same stimulus, as indicated by the rapid decline of behavioral emotional interference.     

Predictive visual search: Role of environmental regularities in the learning of context cues

Repeatedly searching through invariant spatial arrangements in visual search displays leads to the buildup of memory about these displays (contextual-cueing effect). In the present study, we investigate (1) whether contextual cueing is influenced by global statistical properties of the task and, if so, (2) whether these properties increase the overall strength (asymptotic level) or the temporal development (speed) of learning. Experiment 1a served as baseline against which we tested the effects of increased or decreased proportions of repeated relative to nonrepeated displays (Experiments 1b and 1c, respectively), thus manipulating the global statistical properties of search environments. Importantly, probability variations were achieved by manipulating the number of nonrepeated (baseline) displays so as to equate the total number of repeated displays across experiments. In Experiment 1d, repeated and nonrepeated displays were presented in longer streaks of trials, thus establishing a stable environment of sequences of repeated displays. Our results showed that the buildup of contextual cueing was expedited in the statistically rich Experiments 1b and 1d, relative to the baseline Experiment 1a. Further, contextual cueing was entirely absent when repeated displays occurred in the minority of trials (Experiment 1c). Together, these findings suggest that contextual cueing is modulated by observers’ assumptions about the reliability of search environments.     

Numerosity estimates for attended and unattended items in visual search

The goal of this research was to examine memories created for the number of items during a visual search task. Participants performed a visual search task for a target defined by a single feature (Experiment 1A), by a conjunction of features (Experiment 1B), or by a specific spatial configuration of features (Experiment 1C). On some trials following the search task, subjects were asked to recall the total number of items in the previous display. In all search types, participants underestimated the total number of items, but the severity of the underestimation varied depending on the efficiency of the search. In three follow-up studies (Experiments 2A, 2B, and 2C) using the same visual stimuli, the participants’ only task was to estimate the number of items on each screen. Participants still underestimated the numerosity of the items, although the degree of underestimation was smaller than in the search tasks and did not depend on the type of visual stimuli. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to recall the number of items in a display only once. Subjects still displayed a tendency to underestimate, indicating that the underestimation effects seen in Experiments 1A-1C were not attributable to knowledge of the estimation task. The degree of underestimation depends on the efficiency of the search task, with more severe underestimation in efficient search tasks. This suggests that the lower attentional demands of very efficient searches leads to less encoding of numerosity of the distractor set.     

Dissociations of the number and precision of visual short-term memory representations in change detection

The present study dissociated the number (i.e., quantity) and precision (i.e., quality) of visual short-term memory (STM) representations in change detection using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and experimental manipulations. Across three experiments, participants performed both recognition and recall tests of visual STM using the change-detection task and the continuous color-wheel recall task, respectively. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the estimates of the number and precision of visual STM representations based on the ROC model of change-detection performance were robustly correlated with the corresponding estimates based on the mixture model of continuous-recall performance. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the experimental manipulation of mnemonic precision using white-noise masking and the experimental manipulation of the number of encoded STM representations using consolidation masking produced selective effects on the corresponding measures of mnemonic precision and the number of encoded STM representations, respectively, in both change-detection and continuous-recall tasks. Altogether, using the individual-differences (Experiment 1) and experimental dissociation (Experiment 2 and 3) approaches, the present study demonstrated the some-or-none nature of visual STM representations across recall and recognition.     

Spontaneous prospective-memory processing: Unexpected fluency experiences trigger erroneous intention executions

Event-based prospective memory is the ability to remember to execute an intention when an environmental cue occurs. It has been argued that, due to their special meaning, these cues are discrepant from their environment and therefore are sometimes spontaneously noticed. In line with this assumption, the likelihood that an intention will be executed increases with increased cue-discrepancy. It is not yet clear, however, whether these improvements are due to facilitated spontaneous noticing rather than to an increase in the efficiency of controlled cue-processing. To further investigate the spontaneous nature of cue-discrepancy benefits, we presented participants with stimuli that were unrelated to the intention but discrepant from other stimuli. Therefore, we experimentally increased the processing fluency of some stimuli for participants currently holding an intention by using different priming procedures. We found that stimuli whose fluency was increased via spaced repeated stimulus presentation (Experiment 1) or via short pre-exposure (Experiment 2a to 3) elicited a tendency to fulfill the intention despite its actual inappropriateness. Findings were inconsistent as to whether cue-memory uncertainty fosters the reliance on cue discrepancy for intention retrieval (Experiments 2a and 3). Taken together, the present findings provide converging evidence for a spontaneous discrepancy-based prospective-memory process which works independent of controlled processes.     

Conflicting but close: Readers’ integration of information sources as a function of their disagreement

According to the documents model framework (Britt, Perfetti, Sandak, & Rouet, 1999), readers’ detection of contradictions within texts increases their integration of source–content links (i.e., who says what). This study examines whether conflict may also strengthen the relationship between the respective sources. In two experiments, participants read brief news reports containing two critical statements attributed to different sources. In half of the reports, the statements were consistent with each other, whereas in the other half they were discrepant. Participants were tested for source memory and source integration in an immediate item-recognition task (Experiment 1) and a cued recall task (Experiments 1 and 2). In both experiments, discrepancies increased readers’ memory for sources. We found that discrepant sources enhanced retrieval of the other source compared to consistent sources (using a delayed recall measure; Experiments 1 and 2). However, discrepant sources failed to prime the other source as evidenced in an online recognition measure (Experiment 1). We argue that discrepancies promoted the construction of links between sources, but that integration did not take place during reading.     

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims about the present or the past, a related but nonprobative photo can produce “truthiness,” an increase in the perceived truth of those claims (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). What we do not know is the extent to which nonprobative photos cause truthiness for the future. We addressed this issue in four experiments. In each experiment, people judged the truth of claims that the price of certain commodities (such as manganese) would increase (or decrease). Half of the time, subjects saw a photo of the commodity paired with the claim. Experiments 1A and 1B produced a “rosiness” bias: Photos led people to believe positive claims about the future but had very little effect on people’s belief in negative claims. In Experiment 2, rosiness occurred for both close and distant future claims. In Experiments 3A and 3B, we tested whether rosiness was tied to the perceived positivity of a claim. Finally, in Experiments 4A and 4B, we tested the rosiness hypothesis and found that rosiness was unique to claims about the future: When people made the same judgments about the past, photos produced the usual truthiness pattern for both positive and negative claims. Considered all together, our data fit with the idea that photos may operate as hypothesis-confirming evidence for people’s tendency to anticipate rosy future outcomes.     

Imagining the near and far future: The role of location familiarity

Plausible personal events envisioned as occurring in the near future tend to be reported as more vivid than those set in the far future. Why is this? The present set of three experiments identified one’s familiarity with the location in which the event is placed as critical in this regard. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrated that amongst a wide range of phenomenological characteristics, clarity of location appears to drive the overall difference in vividness between events imagined to take place in the near and the far future. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to further elucidate this finding. Experiment 2 demonstrated that near future events are more likely than far future events to be imagined in familiar locations. Experiment 3 showed that future events set in familiar locations tend to be imagined with greater clarity than those set in unfamiliar locations. The results of all three experiments converge on the conclusion that the difference in vividness of events imagined as occurring in the near and far future is mediated by one’s familiarity with the location in which the event is imagined to occur.