Pictorial cues and three-dimensional information processing in early infancy.

Adults derive 3-D information from 2-D images by initially processing local line junction cues and then combining information from many junctions. Prior research indicates that 3-month-olds are sensitive to 3-D cues in individual line junctions. In Experiment 1, we examined whether infants are sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions that adults use to derive overall 3-D structure. Infants detected a misoriented shape in an array depicting 3-D blocks but not in 2-D patterns that contained all of the trilinear junctions of the 3-D shapes but without the connecting lines. Thus, like adults, infants exhibited sensitivity to holistic combinations of line junctions rather than to individual junctions. In Experiment 2, when confronted with two test patterns, one containing an individual novel element among 15 familiar elements and the other containing a single familiar element among 15 novel elements, infants preferred to look at the former pattern in the 3-D condition but at the latter pattern in the 2-D condition. Thus, akin to pop-out in adults, discrepancies in 3-D cues selectively engaged infants' attention. These results suggest that 3-month-olds are not only sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions that adults use to derive 3-D information but also selectively attend to these 3-D cues in static images.     

Diversity cues on recruitment websites: investigating the effects on job seekers' information processing

Although job seekers' motivation to process the information encountered during recruitment partially influences recruitment success, little is known about what motivates more thorough information processing. To address this issue, we integrated recruitment and social information processing theories to examine the possibility that diversity cues on recruitment websites influence website viewers' processing of presented information. Utilizing a controlled experiment and a hypothetical organization, Study 1 revealed that both Blacks and Whites spent more time viewing recruitment websites and better recalled website information when the sites included racial diversity cues. These relationships were stronger for Blacks, and organizational attractiveness perceptions mediated these effects for Blacks but not for Whites. Study 2 found similar relationships for Black and White participants viewing real organizational recruitment websites after taking into account perceived organizational attributes and website design effects. Implications of these findings for recruiting organizations are discussed.     

Admission of suspicion as a function of information source: Tip-off vs. situational cues

Two studies were run in which subjects received information about a fake opponent in a two-person game either from a confederate tip off or from situational cues designed to allow the subject to penetrate the deception unaided. In both experiments, subjects given the tip off reported less suspicion of the opponent than did those using situational cues. Probes were run to check tip-off information transmission in both experiments. In Experiment II a preinstruction manipulation was used to check for awareness of the actual purpose of the experiment and suspicion of the confederate tip off, but no evidence for these unwanted artifacts was found. The results suggest that subjects may be candid about their interpretations, at least if their suspicions do not derive from peers.     

Biassed processing of persuasive information: on the functional equivalence of cues and message arguments

Research on persuasion has shown that inferences based on heuristic or peripheral cues can bias the subsequent processing of persuasive messages. Two studies (total N = 296) examined the additional possibilities that a message argument can serve as a biassing factor and cue‐related information can serve as the target of processing bias. It was demonstrated that a message argument can bias (a) the processing of subsequent other message arguments (Study 1) and (b) the processing of subsequent cue information (Study 2). Results are discussed within dual‐process models and the recently developed unimodel of persuasion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Group vs individual information processing: The effects of outcome feedback on decision making

Recent theories of individual decision making have emphasized the role of environmental feedback on decision performance and confidence. However, in relation to group decision making, feedback has received only minor attention. This study compared individual and group decision performance and confidence on a multicue personnel decision task under three different feedback conditions. Individuals and five-person groups decided whether to promote 48 different job candidates, and rated how confident they were in each of their decisions. Feedback as to the correctness of their decisions was provided after (a) every decision (Total Feedback), (b) only those decisions to promote the candidate (Partial Feedback), or (c) after none of the decisions (No Feedback). Results indicated that groups performed best under total feedback, while individuals performed best under partial feedback. In addition, greater amounts of feedback reduced individuals' confidence but had little effect on group member confidence. Implications for both current theory in decision making and group vs individual information processing are discussed.     

Perceiving crowd attention: Gaze following in human crowds with conflicting cues

People automatically redirect their visual attention by following others’ gaze orientation, a phenomenon called “gaze following.” This is an evolutionarily generated socio-cognitive process that provides people with information about their environments. Often, however, people in crowds can have rather different gaze orientations. This study investigated how gaze following occurs in situations with many conflicting gazes. In two experiments, we modified the gaze cueing paradigm to use a crowd rather than a single individual. Specifically, participants were presented with a group of human avatars with differing gaze orientations, and the target appeared randomly on the left or right side of a display. We found that (a) when a marked difference existed in the number of avatars with divergent gaze orientations, participants automatically followed the majority’s gaze orientation, and (b) the strongest gaze cue effect occurred when all gazes shared the same orientation, with the response superiority of the majority’s oriented location monotonically diminishing with the number of gazes with divergent orientations. These findings suggested that the majority rule plays a role in gaze following behavior when individuals are confronted with conflicting multigaze scenes, and that an increasing subgroup size appears to enlarge the strength of the gaze cueing effect.     

Stimulus information vs processing time in auditory pattern recognition

Previous studies have shown that pitch perception improves with increases in tone duration. An increase in tone duration increases the information available in the stimulus presentation. Other recent experiments have shown that sufficient perceptual processing time is also necessary for accurate pitch perception. The present study determines the relative contribution of stimulus information and processing time in an absolute pitch indentification task. The results indicate that processing time is more critical than stimulus information. The results are described accurately by a model that describes the perceptual process in terms of the information in the stimulus and the time the information is available for perceptual processing.     

An examination of automatic vs. controlled information processing in the employment interview: The case of minority applicants

Sex Roles - Based on the automatic vs. controlled attention argument, this paper tested the contention that the amount of job-relevant information given to decision makers prior to the employment...     

Memory processing of spatial order as transmitted by auditory information in the absence of visual cues

Two experiments were conducted concerning spatial order recall when spatial information is transmitted by auditory stimuli. Temporal order either was congruent with spatial order or was independent of spatial order. In Experiment 1, the comparisons were among normally or partially sighted subjects allowed to look, normally sighted subjects who were blindfolded, and blind children. The main findings were a superiority of the sighted subjects allowed to look (that is, to support auditory information with visual cues) and a smaller advantage for the sighted-but-blindfolded subjects, relative to the blind group. In Experiment 2, normally sighted adults (either seeing or blindfolded) and blind adults were tested. Surprisingly, the blind were not worse than the sighted in this study. Subsequent interviews and detailed analysis of errors suggested that the blind coded spatial information kinesthetically. These indirect analyses also suggested that whereas spatial order was coded temporally in the sighted, it was controlled by both temporal and spatial factors in the blind and blindfolded subjects.     

It's a bittersweet symphony: simultaneously mixed emotional responses to music with conflicting cues

Some evidence indicates that emotional reactions to music can be organized along a bipolar valence dimension ranging from pleasant states (e.g., happiness) to unpleasant states (e.g., sadness), but songs can contain some cues that elicit happiness (e.g., fast tempos) and others that elicit sadness (e.g., minor modes). Some models of emotion contend that valence is a basic building block of emotional experience, which implies that songs with conflicting cues cannot make people feel happy and sad at the same time. Other models contend that positivity and negativity are separable in experience, which implies that music with conflicting cues might elicit simultaneously mixed emotions of happiness and sadness. Hunter, Schellenberg, and Schimmack (2008) tested these possibilities by having subjects report their happiness and sadness after listening to music with conflicting cues (e.g., fast songs in minor modes) and consistent cues (e.g., fast songs in major modes). Results indicated that music with conflicting cues elicited mixed emotions, but it remains unclear whether subjects simultaneously felt happy and sad or merely vacillated between happiness and sadness. To examine these possibilities, we had subjects press one button whenever they felt happy and another button whenever they felt sad as they listened to songs with conflicting and consistent cues. Results revealed that subjects spent more time simultaneously pressing both buttons during songs with conflicting, as opposed to consistent, cues. These findings indicate that songs with conflicting cues can simultaneously elicit happiness and sadness and that positivity and negativity are separable in experience.     

In the presence of conflicting gaze cues,fearful expression and eye-size guide attention

Humans are social beings that often interact in multi-individual environments. As such, we are frequently confronted with nonverbal social signals, including eye-gaze direction, from multiple individuals. Yet, the factors that allow for the prioritisation of certain gaze cues over others are poorly understood. Using a modified conflicting gaze paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that fearful gaze would be favoured amongst competing gaze cues. We further hypothesised that this effect is related to the increased sclera exposure, which is characteristic of fearful expressions. Across three experiments, we found that fearful, but not happy, gaze guides observers’ attention over competing non-emotional gaze. The guidance of attention by fearful gaze appears to be linked to increased sclera exposure. However, differences in sclera exposure do not prioritise competing gazes of other types. Thus, fearful gaze guides attention among competing cues and this effect is facilitated by increased sclera exposure – but increased sclera exposure per se does not guide attention. The prioritisation of fearful gaze over non-emotional gaze likely represents an adaptive means of selectively attending to survival-relevant spatial locations.     

Effect of extrinsic noise on vibrotactile information processing channels

Cutaneous receptors sensitive to high-frequency vibration produce spatial summation at threshold levels of stimulation, whereas the response of the receptor population sensitive to low frequencies appears to be independent of contactor size at threshold. Reports have been made of a phenomenon in which the presumably nonsummating population of mechanoreceptors produce spatial summation at suprathreshold levels. A possible explanation concerns the relative signal-to-noise ratios of cutaneous mechanoreceptor systems. By selectively masking the systems with narrow-band and wide-band noise, it can be shown that any combination of signal frequency, masking noise, and contactor size that predominantly activates either system results in a linear effect of the masker on the threshold of the signal. Combinations of the experimental variables that activate both receptor systems simultaneously reduce the effect of the masking by one-half. This is interpreted as evidence of an interactive process between receptor systems within the central nervous system. The effects of signal-to-noise ratio and intrasensory interactions are discussed.     

The dynamics of the visual system in combining conflicting KDE and binocular stereopsis cues

The dynamics of the visual system in combining multiple depth cues were investigated by measuring the temporal change in the perceived 3-D shape of a random-dot stimulus with conflicting kinetic depth effect (KDE) and binocular stereopsis cues. The KDE shape perception dominated for the first few seconds, and then was gradually supplanted by the stereo shape perception. The effects of various pre-adaptation stimuli suggested that the temporal change in the perceived shape resulted from a self-adaptation of the KDE mechanism that occurs mainly at the levels of motion and relative motion detection.     

Global vs. local information processing in visual/spatial problem solving: The case of traveling salesman problem

Human visual/spatial problem solving often requires both global and local information to be processed. But the relationship between those two kinds of information and the way in which they interact with one another during problem solving has not been thoroughly discussed. In the particular setting of solving the traveling salesman problem (TSP), we investigated into the relative roles of global and local information processing. An experiment was conducted to measure the importance of global information and the possible constraints of global information processing on search. A model was built to simulate human TSP performance and was used to investigate further the relationship between global information processing and local information processing. Our model was compared with the human data we collected and with other models of human TSP solving.     

The relationship between information processing style and information seeking,and its moderation by affect and perceived usefulness: Analysis vs. procrastination

We examined the relationship between information processing style and information seeking, and its moderation by anxiety and information utility. Information about Salmonella, a potentially commonplace disease, was presented to 2960 adults. Two types of information processing were examined: preferences for analytical or heuristic processing, and preferences for immediate or delayed processing. Information seeking was captured by measuring the number of additional pieces of information sought by participants. Preferences for analytical information processing were associated positively and directly with information seeking. Heuristic information processing was associated negatively and directly with information seeking. The positive relationship between preferences for delayed decision making and information seeking was moderated by anxiety and by information utility. Anxiety reduced the tendency to seek additional information. Information utility increased the likelihood of information seeking. The findings indicate that low levels of anxiety could prompt information seeking. However, information seeking occurred even when information was perceived as useful and sufficient, suggesting that it can be a form of procrastination rather than a useful contribution to effective decision making.     

Memory for numbers: Nominal vs. magnitude information

Across three paired associate learning experiments, the recall of four-digit number responses to word stimuli favored the most significant digit over the least significant (magnitude encoding rather than exhibiting typical bowed serial position functions (nominal encoding). Only with instructions emphasizing exact recall of each individual digit did recall functions revert to bowed curves. The results are interpreted as evidence for two kinds of number coding in semantic memory.