Egocentrism versus protocentrism: the status of self in social prediction

In this article, the author discusses the limitations of the egocentric view of self in which self serves as an automatic filter, inhibiting access to alternative representations of others' thoughts and feelings. The author then outlines a protocentric model, the self-as-distinct (SAD) model, in which generic representations of prototypic others serve as the default; representations of self, specific others, or categories encode only distinctiveness from generic knowledge about prototypic others. Thus, self-knowledge is distributed both in generic representations in which self and prototypic others are undifferentiated and in a self-representation that encodes distinctiveness. The self-representation does not serve to make predictions about others because it encodes how self differs from the generic representation of others. Predictions that are the same about self and others are protocentric, based on generic knowledge that serves as the default. The SAD model parsimoniously accounts for many inconsistent findings across various domains in social cognition.     

Self–other differences in change predictions

Individuals live in a changing world in which they predict future events based on past trends. Every event changes between two extremes (e.g., increases and decreases, successes and failures, and peaks and bottoms). People will anticipate changes if they can see the correlation between two extremes. This study investigates whether predictions about changes differ when individuals make predictions about events regarding themselves and others. Based on construal level theory, we hypothesized and found that people who made predictions for others anticipated more changes between two extremes than those who made predictions for themselves. However, self–other differences had boundary conditions. These differences were found in past trends without reversals but not in those with reversals. These results provide novel insights into change predictions.     

Information integration based predictions about the conscious states of a spiking neural network

This paper describes how Tononi’s information integration theory of consciousness was used to make detailed predictions about the distribution of phenomenal states in a spiking neural network. This network had approximately 18,000 neurons and 700,000 connections and it used models of emotion and imagination to control the eye movements of a virtual robot and avoid ‘negative’ stimuli. The first stage in the analysis was the development of a formal definition of Tononi’s theory of consciousness. The network was then analysed for information integration and detailed predictions were made about the distribution of consciousness for each time step of recorded activity. This work demonstrates how an artificial system can be analysed for consciousness using a particular theory and in the future this approach could be used to make predictions about the phenomenal states associated with biological systems.     

Self-bias modulates saccadic control

We present novel data on the role of attention in eliciting enhanced processing of stimuli associated with self. Participants were required to make pro- or anti-saccades according to whether learned shape–label pairings matched or mismatched. When stimuli matched participants were required to make an anti-saccade, and when the stimuli mismatched a pro-saccade was required. We found that anti-saccades were difficult to make to stimuli associated with self when compared to stimuli associated with a friend and a stranger. In contrast, anti-saccades to friend-stimuli were easier to make than anti-saccades to stranger-stimuli. In addition, a correct anti-saccade to a self-associated stimulus disrupted subsequent pro-saccade trials, relative to when the preceding anti-saccade was made to other stimuli. The data indicate that self-associated stimuli provide a strong cue for explicit shifts of attention to them, and that correct anti-saccades to such stimuli demand high levels of inhibition (which carries over to subsequent pro-saccade trials). The self exerts an automatic draw on attention.     

Keeping it real: self‐control depletion increases accuracy,but decreases confidence for performance

We propose that egotism about one's abilities may be related to good self‐regulation and a lack of self‐control may reduce estimations of aptitudes. Self‐control depletion should lead to more accurate and therefore less lofty predictions of future performances. In two experiments, self‐control depletion was manipulated by having participants either resist tempting cookies or by inhibiting thoughts about a white bear. In both cases, nondepleted participants made bolder predictions about their future performance on a video game than their depleted counterparts. Instead, depleted participants were more modest in their predictions and more accurate in their predictions than nondepleted participants. These findings suggest that depletion undermines self‐assurance in oneself, which may have implications for theories of depressive realism, accuracy, confidence, and goal setting.     

Implicit memory for novel associations between pictures: effects of stimulus unitization and aging

Studies of implicit memory for novel associations have focused primarily on verbal materials and have highlighted the contribution of conceptually unitized representations to such priming. Using pictorial stimuli in a perceptual identification task, we examined whether new association priming can occur at a purely perceptual level. By manipulating the spatial contiguity of stimuli, we also evaluated whether such priming requires the creation of perceptually unitized representations. Finally, we examined the status of such priming in aging. In Experiment 1, we found that spatial contiguity of stimuli is not necessary for novel pictorial association priming to emerge, although such contiguity does enhance the magnitude of associative priming. In Experiment 2, we found that new association priming is age invariant, regardless of spatial contiguity. In Experiment 3, we provide additional evidence that pictorial association priming is perceptually based. These findings expand the scope and delineate the conditions of novel association priming and inform theories about the nature of implicit memory for new associations.     

预测特征竞争范式下的特征推理方式

当面临归类不确定的情景时,人们的特征推理是基于类别进行,还是基于特征联结进行,一直是类别研究中的重要内容。本研究采用预测特征竞争范式对这一问题进行了探究。共两个实验：实验1采用预测特征竞争范式探讨推理前预先归类时,人们的推理方式是基于类别还是基于特征联结。实验2采用预测特征竞争范式探讨推理前不预先归类时,人们的推理是基于类别还是基于特征联结。实验结果表明,推理前预先归类时,被试倾向于基于类别进行推理。推理前不预先归类时,被试倾向于根据特征联结进行推理。     

Semantic and affective manifestations of ambi (valence)

ABSTRACT

People sometimes report both pleasant and unpleasant feelings when presented with affective stimuli. However, what is reported as “mixed emotions” might reflect semantic knowledge about the stimulus (Russell, J. A. (2017). Mixed emotions viewed from the psychological constructionist perspective. Emotion Review, 9(2), 111–117). The following research examines to what degree self-reported mixed emotions represent actual feelings compared to knowledge about the stimulus. In a series of three experiments, participants reported either their feelings or their knowledge in response to affective stimuli. In Experiment 1, we sampled the entire IAPS pictorial space and examined the proportion of mixed emotion ratings using feelings-focused and knowledge-focused self-reports. We found a higher degree of mixed emotions under knowledge-focused than feelings-focused self-reports. In Experiment 2, we used a priori selected pictures to elicit mixed emotions. The proportion of mixed emotions was again higher under knowledge-focused instructions. In Experiment 3, we used movie clips that were previously used to elicit mixed emotions. In contrast to Experiments 1 and 2, there was no difference between feelings-focused and knowledge-focused self-reports. The results suggest a strong semantic component and a weak experiential component of self-reports in the case of pictorial stimuli. However, ambivalent movie clips elicited a stronger experiential component, thus supporting the existence of mixed emotions at the level of feelings.     

儿童行为与心理水平的特质推理的发展

选取4岁组、5岁组、7岁组、10岁组、12岁组儿童和成人共192名(各年龄组32名, 男女各半)为被试, 采用个别测查法考察学前和小学儿童行为与心理水平的特质推理发展。结果表明: (1)4岁时儿童已能进行行为水平的特质推理, 5岁时才能进行心理水平的特质推理, 即使用特质引发规则进行特质推理, 10岁时两者均达到成人水平。(2)4岁、5岁时儿童心理水平的特质推理显著落后于行为水平的特质推理, 至少7岁时两者处于同一水平上。(3)儿童使用概念相似规则而不是情境匹配规则进行行为预测。(4)4岁儿童不使用简单效价规则进行行为预测, 5岁及以上儿童使用简单效价规则, 但他们是在区分同一特质范畴和不同特质范畴的基础上、在较低的确定程度上使用该规则。     

Theoretical analysis of the cognitive processing of lexical and pictorial stimuli: reading, naming, and visual and conceptual comparisons

This article reviews the research literature on the differences between word reading and picture naming. A theory for the visual and cognitive processing of pictures and words is then introduced. The theory accounts for slower naming of pictures than reading of words. Reading aloud involves a fast, grapheme-to-phoneme transformation process, whereas picture naming involves two additional processes: (a) determining the meaning of the pictorial stimulus and (b) finding a name for the pictorial stimulus. We conducted a reading-naming experiment, and the time to achieve (a) and (b) was determined to be approximately 160 ms. On the basis of data from a second experiment, we demonstrated that there is no significant difference in time to visually compare two pictures or two words when size of the stimuli is equated. There is no difference in time to make the two types of cross-modality conceptual comparisons (picture first, then word, or word first, then picture). The symmetry of the visual and conceptual comparison results supports the hypothesis that the coding of the mind is neither intrinsically linguistic nor imagistic, but rather it is abstract. There is a potent stimulus size effect, equal for both pictorial and lexical stimuli. Small stimuli take longer to be visually processed than do larger stimuli. For optimal processing, stimuli should not only be equated for size, but should subtend a visual angle of at least 3 degrees. The article ends with the presentation of a mathematical theory that jointly accounts for the data from word-reading, picture-naming visual comparison, and conceptual-comparison experiments.     

Effects of stimulus duration and ISI on accuracy and transference errors in pictorial recognition

The influence of stimulus duration and ISI on accuracy of recognition for two-part configurations was investigated in two experiments. A six-alternative forced-hoice recognition procedure is described that tested (1) subjects’ ability to recognize correct or partially correct stimuli, and (2) their tendencies to make transference errors. Subjects were significantly more accurate in recognition of pictorial components when given a longer (2-sec) rather than a shorter (.5-sec) exposure to stimuli, with ISI held constant (.5 sec). There was no beneficial effect on recognition of pictorial components when ISI was lengthened from .5 to 2 sec Iwith a .5-sec stimulus duration) or from .5 to 1.5 to 7 sec Iwith a 2-sec stimulus duration). The total time hypothesis received no support, since when two groups were given the same total time (2.5 sec for stimulus duration plus ISI), the group given the longer 12-sec) stimulus duration was significantly more accurate in partial recognition than a group given a longer 12-sec) ISI. There was a high incidence of transference errors in all experimental groups, although subjects’ ability to distinguish old stimuli from distractors made by recombining parts from different targets was not affected by any of the temporal manipulations. It appeared that, although length of stimulus duration determines the number of components encoded from a picture, the encoding of information that integrates these components into a whole does not require additional processing time.     

Children’s causal inferences from indirect evidence: Backwards blocking and Bayesian reasoning in preschoolers

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine’s activation that required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children’s causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference.     

音乐情境中自我参照加工的时间特征：来自ERPs的证据

采用事件相关电位技术, 考察在有情境条件下不同层面的自我参照加工的特性及其神经机制。实验发现,在两种音乐情境条件下个体自我参展刺激所激发的P300波幅比集体自我参照刺激和非自我刺激更大,而集体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅比非自我刺激更大;两种音乐情境条件下个体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅差异显著,而集体自我参照刺激所激发的P300波幅差异不显著。研究结果表明了在不同的情境中,个体自我参照加工的差异较大,表现出不稳定的特征;个体自我参照加工与集体自我参照加工的神经机制是不同的。这些结果还可能表明了相对于集体自我来讲,个体自我是自我的核心层面。     

Human preferences are biased towards associative information

There is ample evidence that the brain generates predictions that help interpret sensory input. To build such predictions the brain capitalizes upon learned statistical regularities and associations (e.g., “A” is followed by “B”; “C” appears together with “D”). The centrality of predictions to mental activities gave rise to the hypothesis that associative information with predictive value is perceived as intrinsically valuable. Such value would ensure that this information is proactively searched for, thereby promoting certainty and stability in our environment. We therefore tested here whether, all else being equal, participants would prefer stimuli that contained more rather than less associative information. In Experiments 1 and 2 we used novel, meaningless visual shapes and showed that participants preferred associative shapes over shapes that had not been associated with other shapes during training. In Experiment 3 we used pictures of real-world objects and again demonstrated a preference for stimuli that elicit stronger associations. These results support our proposal that predictive information is affectively tagged, and enhance our understanding of the formation of everyday preferences.     

Psychophysiological and subjective indices of emotion as a function of age and gender

Old, middle-aged and young persons of both genders were presented with slides containing pictorial stimuli that varied in emotional content. Each picture was rated on three dimensions: (1) valence; (2) arousal; and (3) dominance, using a 25-point scale. Heart rate, skin conductance, and forehead and cheek EMG were recorded during each slide presentation. The old and middle-aged groups showed greatly attenuated psychophysiological responses, compared to the young group. However, the old and middle-aged subjects used more extreme ratings than the young subjects on both the valence and arousal dimensions. Females were more valence-sensitive than males, but males in general used more extreme ratings of arousal than females. These results suggest a tendency to report increased felt emotion but decreased physiological response to emotional stimuli across the life span.     

Frequency, probability, and prediction: easy solutions to cognitive illusions?

Many errors in probabilistic judgment have been attributed to people's inability to think in statistical terms when faced with information about a single case. Prior theoretical analyses and empirical results imply that the errors associated with case-specific reasoning may be reduced when people make frequentistic predictions about a set of cases. In studies of three previously identified cognitive biases, we find that frequency-based predictions are different from-but no better than-case-specific judgments of probability. First, in studies of the "planning fallacy, " we compare the accuracy of aggregate frequency and case-specific probability judgments in predictions of students' real-life projects. When aggregate and single-case predictions are collected from different respondents, there is little difference between the two: Both are overly optimistic and show little predictive validity. However, in within-subject comparisons, the aggregate judgments are significantly more conservative than the single-case predictions, though still optimistically biased. Results from studies of overconfidence in general knowledge and base rate neglect in categorical prediction underline a general conclusion. Frequentistic predictions made for sets of events are no more statistically sophisticated, nor more accurate, than predictions made for individual events using subjective probability.     

A preliminary study of the effect of imaginary sexual stimulation on the perceived covariation between freedom and responsibility

The authors evaluated subjective estimates of the relationship between freedom and responsibility under predictions made in accordance with cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST; V. Denes-Raj & S. Epstein, 1994; S. Epstein, A. Lipson, C. Holstein, & E. Huh, 1992; S. Epstein, R. Pacini, V. Denes-Raj, & H. Meier, 1996; L. A. Kirkpatrick & S. Epstein, 1992). Half of the participants viewed sexually stimulating primes before making judgments. The other participants viewed neutral stimuli before making judgments. Two dependent measures were used: A set of alternate-forms propositions measured perceived relationships between the variables, and response latencies were used to evaluate the hypothesis that persons operating experientially would make judgments faster than persons operating rationally. Results indicated a significant effect for the priming condition with respect to the within-subject dependent variable. In accordance with predictions, further analysis indicated that positive contingency items were endorsed less often by primed participants, and negative contingency items were endorsed more often by primed participants. Results are in line with predictions afforded by the CEST model. Implications are discussed.     

Implicit attitudes towards meat and vegetables in vegetarians and nonvegetarians

Previous research, in which self‐report measures were used, showed that vegetarians have more negative beliefs about meat than nonvegetarians. An important limitation of this research is that it did not examine differences in spontaneous affective reactions (i.e., implicit attitudes) towards meat and other types of food. We therefore conducted a new study in which not only self‐report measures were used, but also two tasks that have been developed to measure implicit attitudes: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a pictorial version of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST). Both the IAT and EAST revealed that implicit attitudes towards vegetables (as compared to implicit attitudes towards meat) were more positive in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians. In line with previous findings, the self‐report measures showed that, compared to nonvegetarians, vegetarians had more positive attitudes towards vegetables and more negative attitudes towards meat. The IAT and EAST measures both correlated in the expected manner with self‐reported attitudes. A logistic regression showed that self‐reported attitudes were an almost perfect predictor of group status (vegetarian or nonvegetarian), and that adding the IAT and EAST measures as predictors did not improve prediction of group status. The results suggest that vegetarians and nonvegetarians differ in their spontaneous affective reaction towards vegetables or meat, and provide further evidence for the validity of the IAT and EAST as measures of inter‐individual differences in attitudes. Implicit attitudes could influence eating behaviour indirectly by biasing the decision to become a vegetarian or by determining how difficult it is for someone to maintain a vegetarian diet.     

Comparing Exemplar- and Rule-Based Theories of Categorization

ABSTRACT— We address whether human categorization behavior is based on abstracted rules or stored exemplars. Although predictions of both theories often mimic each other in many designs, they can be differentiated. Experimental data reviewed does not support either theory exclusively. We find participants use rules when the stimuli are confusable and exemplars when they are distinct. By drawing on the distinction between simple stimuli (such as lines of various lengths) and complex ones (such as words and objects), we offer a dynamic view of category learning. Initially, categorization is based on rules. During learning, suitable features for discriminating stimuli may be gradually learned. Then, stimuli can be stored as exemplars and used to categorize novel stimuli without recourse to rules.