Apparent body tilt and postural aftereffect

Apparent orientation of the body tilted laterally in the frontal plane was studied with the methods of absolute judgments in four experiments. In Experiment 1, 17 subjects, who maintained the normal adaptation of body to gravity, estimated their body tilts under the condition of seeing the gravitational vertical and under the condition of eliminating it. The results showed that (1) there was not a significant difference between the two conditions and (2) the small tilts of less than 45° were exactly estimated, whereas the large tilts of 45°–108° were overestimated. In Experiment 2,10 subjects estimated their body tilts under three velocities of a rotating chair on which each subject was placed. Although both body tilt and chair velocity were found to influence tilt estimation, the effect of body tilt was overwhelmingly greater than that of chair velocity. In Experiment 3, 11 subjects adapted their bodies to a 72° left tilt for 10 min and then estimated various body tilts around the adapting tilt. The estimations obtained under the 72° adaptation were lower than those obtained under the 0° adaptation, and this reduction was greater for the test tilt that was farther away from the adapting tilt. In Experiment 4, 11 subjects adjusted their own body tilts to designated angles. The results confirmed the outcomes of absolute estimation in Experiments 1-3. From these findings and past literature, the judgments of body tilt were considered to be subserved by a single sensory process that was based on the cutaneous and muscular proprioceptors, rather than the vestibular and joint proprioceptors.     

Bidirectional examination of the interaction between time and numerosity corroborates that numerosity influences time estimation but not vice versa

There has been great interest in the idea that time, number, and space share a common magnitude system. However, only a handful of studies examined bidirectional interaction between time and number and the results varied depending on the specifics of the methods and stimulus properties of each study. The present study investigated bidirectional interaction between time and number using estimation tasks. We used duration (Experiment 1) and numerosity (Experiment 2) estimation tasks to investigate the effect of numerosity‐on‐duration and duration‐on‐numerosity estimation. The results from the two experiments demonstrated that numerosity influences duration processing but not vice versa; that is, there was unidirectional interaction between numerosity and time. The duration of stimulus presentation was overestimated for stimuli larger in (task‐irrelevant) numerosity. Possible mechanisms underlying the unidirectional interaction between time and number are discussed.     

Time,change, and motion: The effects of stimulus movement on temporal perception

The effects of stimulus motion on time perception were examined in five experiments. Subjects judged the durations (6–18 sec) of a series of computer-generated visual displays comprised of varying numbers of simple geometrical forms. In Experiment 1, subjects reproduced the duration of displays consisting of stationary or moving (at 20 cm/sec) stimulus figures. In Experiment 2, subjects reproduced the durations of stimuli that were either stationary, moving slowly (at 10 cm/sec), or moving fast (at 30 cm/sec). In Experiment 3, subjects used the production method to generate specified durations for stationary, slow, and fast displays. In Experiments 4 and 5, subjects reproduced the duration of stimuli that moved at speeds ranging from 0 to 45 cm/sec. Each experiment showed that stimulus motion lengthened perceived time. In general, faster speeds lengthened perceived time to a greater degree than slower speeds. Varying the number of stimuli appearing in the displays had only limited effects on time judgments. Other findings indicated that shorter intervals tended to be overestimated and longer intervals underestimated (Vierordt’s law), an effect which applied to both stationary and moving stimuli. The results support a change model of perceived time, which maintains that intervals associated with more changes are perceived to be longer than intervals with fewer changes.     

The Influence of Confirmation Bias on Memory and Source Monitoring

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether recognition memory for information and/or its source are influenced by confirmation bias. During Phase 1, subjects were shown a summary about the issue of gun control and asked to indicate a position on the issue. During Phase 2, 12 abstracts (Experiment 1) or social media posts (Experiment 2) were shown, one at a time. Posts in Experiment 2 were associated with either friends or strangers. Participants indicated whether they wanted to read a more extensive version of each abstract (Experiment 1) or post (Experiment 2). Phase 3 was the memory phase. Thirty-two abstract titles (Experiment 1) or posts (Experiment 2) were shown one at a time. Participants indicated yes or no, and whether they recognized the titles/posts from the last phase. Recognition memory for information that supported the participants' viewpoint was higher than that for opposing information.     

Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: tuning to positivity

Nine experiments tested competing hypotheses regarding nonconscious affective responses to acute social exclusion and how such responses may relate to positive mental health. The results strongly and consistently indicated that acute social exclusion increased nonconscious positive affect. Compared to nonexcluded participants, excluded participants recalled more positive memories from childhood than did accepted participants (Experiment 1), gave greater weight to positive emotion in their judgments of word similarity (Experiments 2 and 3), and completed more ambiguous word stems with happy words (Experiments 4a and 4b). This process was apparently automatic, as participants asked to imagine exclusion overestimated explicit distress and underestimated implicit positivity (Experiment 3). Four final experiments showed that this automatic emotion regulation process was found among participants low (but not high) in depressive symptoms (Experiments 5 and 6) and among participants high (but not low) in self-esteem (Experiments 7 and 8). These findings suggest that acute exclusion sets in motion an automatic emotion regulation process in which positive emotions become highly accessible, which relates to positive mental health.     

Variation in working memory capacity and cognitive control: goal maintenance and microadjustments of control

Variation in working memory capacity (WMC) and cognitive control was examined in four experiments. In the experiments high- and low-WMC individuals performed a choice reaction time task (Experiment 1), a version of the antisaccade task (Experiment 2), a version of the Stroop task (Experiment 3), and an arrow version of the flanker task (Experiment 4). An examination of response time distributions suggested that high- and low-WMC individuals primarily differed in the slowest responses in each experiment, consistent with the notion that WMC is related to active maintenance abilities. Examination of two indicators of microadjustments of control (posterror slowing and conflict adaptation effects) suggested no differences between high- and low-WMC individuals. Collectively these results suggest that variation in WMC is related to some, but not all, cognitive control operations. The results are interpreted within the executive attention theory of WMC.     

Effects of event structure on retrospective duration judgments

Two experiments examined whether varying degrees of event coherence influence the remembering of an event’s actual duration. Relying on musical compositions (Experiment 1) or filmed narratives (Experiment 2) as experimental stimuli, the underlying hierarchy of information within events (i.e., melodic intervals or story elements) was either attentionally highlighted or obscured by placing a varying number of accents (i.e., prolonged notes or commercial breaks) at locations that either coincided or conflicted with grammatical phrase boundaries. When subjects were unexpectedly asked to judge the actual duration of events, through a reproduction (Experiment 1) or verbal estimation (Experiment 2) task, duration estimates became more accurate and less variable when the pattern of accentuation increasingly outlined the events’ nested relationships. Conversely, when the events’ organization was increasingly obscured through accentuation, time judgments not only became less accurate and more variable, but were consistently overestimated. These findings support a theoretical framework emphasizing the effects of event structure on attending and remembering activities.     

Children's ability to make tentative interpretations of ambiguous messages

Consistent with prior research, 5- and 6-year-old children overestimated their knowledge of the intended referent of ambiguous messages. Yet they correctly revised their interpretations of ambiguous messages in light of contradicting information that followed immediately, while maintaining their initial interpretations of unambiguous messages (Experiment 1). Children of this age were able to integrate information over two successive ambiguous messages to identify the intended referent (Experiment 2). However, unlike 7- and 8-year-olds, they were no more likely to search for further information following ambiguous messages compared with unambiguous ones (Experiment 3). We conclude that although 5- and 6-year-olds' interpretations of ambiguous messages are not tentative at the outset, they can use source monitoring skills to treat them as tentative retrospectively, at least over short time spans.     

Effect of direction of sequential presentation and redundancy on short-term recognition memory

Short-term recognition memory was tested by presenting six letters, one after the other, followed by a target letter and having S indicate whether or not the target matched one of the six letters. Recognition memory for a letter was better when it was embedded in a six-letter word, rather than a nonword, and when it was included in a sequence presented left-to-right, rather than right-to-left (Experiment 1). Reducing the presentation rate from 4/sec to 2.5/sec largely eliminated the left-to-right effect (Experiment 2). The effect of direction of presentation was greater for redundant (Experiment 1) than for nonredundant sequences (Experiment 3) and was greater for Ss who more frequently formed a word out of the sequence (Experiments 1 and 2), but was no greater for words than nonwords (Experiments 1 and 2) and no greater for letter than for line-figure sequences (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that the left-to-right effect depends as much, or more, on “peripheral” processes (e.g., eye movements) as on “central” processes (e.g., reading).     

Distorted distance estimation induced by a self-relevant national boundary

Six experiments explored the possibility that the categorization of self versus not-self can distort visual estimations of distance. In Experiments 1-3, Americans overestimated the distance between a U.S. location and a foreign location relative to a visually equidistant U.S. location. In Experiment 4, Canadians overestimated foreign relative to Canadian locations. Experiment 5 showed that this effect occurs even when the domestic context is not physically contiguous. Experiment 6 showed that distance distortion occurs only when crossing one’s own border to a foreign location, not when crossing borders from one foreign location to another. Thus, crossing the psychological boundary between self and not-self creates a visual illusion that distorts on-line distance estimates.     

A timing-specific memory distortion effect in young children

It has been suggested that there are systematic distortions in children's memory for temporal durations, such that children's memory is not just less accurate than that of adults but qualitatively different. Experiment 1 replicated the memory distortion effect by demonstrating developmental change in the tendency to confuse a reference duration with one that is shorter rather than longer than it. When the long-term memory demands of the task were reduced by providing reminders of the reference duration on every trial, there were no such qualitative changes in error patterns (Experiment 2). Further evidence for developmental changes in memory distortion was found in the temporal generalization task of Experiment 3, in which stimuli were spaced logarithmically rather than linearly. In Experiment 4, a similar distortion pattern was absent in a task in which children made judgments about the pitch rather than the duration of stimuli, suggesting the effect may be specific to time estimation.     

Effects of attention and external stimuli on duration estimation under aprospective paradigm

The study examined whether there are two independent cognitive factors affecting duration estimation. In two experiments, we manipulated simultaneously and independently two variables, namely, the level of attention to the lapse of time and the quantity of perceived changes, and examined their effects on duration estimation under a prospective paradigm. The duration was estimated to be longer when subjects attended to the lapse of time than when they attended to tasks during the target interval (Experiments 1 and 2). The characteristics of external stimuli irrelevant to the tasks, namely, the rate of presentation of sounds (Experiment 1) and the velocity of moving dots (Experiment 2), affected duration estimation, even though the attention level was little changed by these stimuli. These findings suggest that there are at least two independent cognitive factors that affect duration estimation.     

Most People Think They Are More Pro-Environmental than Others: A Demonstration of the Better-than-Average Effect in Perceived Pro-Environmental Behavioral Engagement

Abstract

People tend to perceive themselves as better than average in various contexts. In this article I test if the better-than-average effect (BTAE) also holds for pro-environmental behavioral engagement. Experiment 1 supported that the majority of participants report to be more pro-environmental than others, using a large representative sample. Experiment 2 validated these findings in 3 additional cultures (United States, United Kingdom, and India) and showed that BTAE held for both abstract (other Americans) and concrete (my friends) comparisons. Experiment 3 found that participants overestimated both how “much” and how “often” they engage in pro-environmental actions. Finally, Experiment 4 found weak support for the hypothesis that inducing BTAE are inhibiting future pro-environmental behaviors.     

长时记忆中文本目标信息的激活机制

选取138名大学生被试,采用移动窗口实时阅读技术和探测技术,探讨文本理解过程中长时记忆的目标信息激活的机制。实验1探讨在中文条件下目标焦点是否也启动长时记忆中目标信息的整合。结果表明在目标实现的条件下,目标句1可以作为目标启动句,激活进入长时记忆中的目标信息。实验2和3探讨长时记忆中目标信息的激活是自然实现的还是需要目标愈合信号启动激活,实验结果表明长时记忆中目标信息的激活需要目标愈合信号的启动。该研究结果总的表明:阅读过程长时记忆中目标信息的激活不需要与当前阅读信息发生共振,目标愈合情境是影响长时记忆目标信息通达的关键因素。     

Global-local interference modulated by communication between the hemispheres.

Three experiments examined whether interhemispheric interaction modulates selective attention in a same-different version of D. Navon's (1977) global-local paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, interhemispheric interaction reduced interstimulus interference produced when two stimuli matched at a preassigned level (e.g., local) but differed at the irrelevant level (e.g., global). This effect was greater for stimuli made of a few large elements than for those made of many small elements. Experiment 3 demonstrated that (a) the ability of interhemispheric interaction to reduce interstimulus interference is not constrained by hemispheric differences for global and local processing and (b) interhemispheric interaction does not strongly modulate intrastimulus interference produced when the forms at the preassigned (e.g., local) and irrelevant (e.g., global) levels differ within an individual stimulus. These findings indicate that interaction between the hemispheres is a neural mechanism that may aid selective attention.     

Cue depreciation: when word fragment completion is undermined by prior exposure to lesser fragments

The ability to think of a previously studied item has often been shown to be impaired when, in one way or another, the extraitem context is changed from study to test. In a series of five experiments, such impairment is induced in a somewhat different way. A fragment (e.g. r-i--rop) of a just-studied word (raindrop) is shown to be less readily completed if it is presented bit by bit (r------p, r----r-p, r-i--r-p, r-i--rop) rather than all at once (Experiments 1, 3, 4, and 5). No such effect is found if the word has not been studied beforehand (Experiments 2, 3, 4, and 5). This pattern of results occurs even when fragments of studied and nonstudied words occur in the same test and under conditions in which subjects cannot tell whether a given fragment is of a studied or nonstudied word (Experiments 4 and 5). In addition, for words that have been studied beforehand, the impairment is shown to increase systematically with the number of steps involved in the presentation of the word fragment (Experiment 3) and also to persist when the time allowed for completion of the final version of the fragment is increased from 4 s to a full minute (Experiment 5).     

The repetition effect in judgments of temporal duration across minutes, days, and months.

Three experiments assessed the stability of the repetition effect in time judgment. In Experiment 1, subjects (N = 18) produced intervals ranging from 8 to 31 sec in a two-phase procedure with a five min rest between phases. In Experiment 2, subjects (N = 20) made verbal estimates of intervals ranging from 8 to 20 sec with a 48-hour delay between phases. Experiment 3 involved daily productions by three subjects of intervals ranging from 8 to 54 sec over several months. The slope of the psychophysical function increased across phases in Experimental 1, declined (as expected for estimation) across days in Experiment 2, and increased across months in Experiment 3. It was concluded that the repetition effect is relatively permanent and thus more similar to habituation than to sensory adaptation.     

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.