Differential involvement of internal clock and working memory in the production and reproduction of duration: a study on older adults

The present study uses the inter-individual variability in time perception of a group of elderly participants to differentiate the processes underlying time production and time reproduction. Participants performed duration production and reproduction tasks. They were also administered working memory tests and a spontaneous motor tempo task. The findings suggest that duration production and duration reproduction involve different mechanisms. Correlational analyses revealed a double dissociation: production was only correlated with spontaneous motor tempo and reproduction only with working memory measures. These findings suggest that the internal clock rate modulates the production of duration and that reproduced duration varies according to working memory capacities.     

Horse-race model simulations of the stop-signal procedure

In the stop-signal paradigm, subjects perform a standard two-choice reaction task in which, occasionally and unpredictably, a stop-signal is presented requiring the inhibition of the response to the choice signal. The stop-signal paradigm has been successfully applied to assess the ability to inhibit under a wide range of experimental conditions and in various populations. The current study presents a set of evidence-based guidelines for using the stop-signal paradigm. The evidence was derived from a series of simulations aimed at (a) examining the effects of experimental design features on inhibition indices, and (b) testing the assumptions of the horse-race model that underlies the stop-signal paradigm. The simulations indicate that, under most conditions, the latency, but not variability, of response inhibition can be reliably estimated.     

Infant development of configural object processing in visual and visual-haptic contexts

Infants’ visual processing of objects is characterised by a developmental trend from a predominantly analytical to a configural processing mode. In two studies with 6- and 8-month-old infants, we sought to replicate this finding in a purely visual condition (inspecting objects), and to examine how far redundant visual-haptic information present in a visual-haptic condition influences the processing mode. Infants were familiarized with two objects differing in three dimensions (texture, size and shape). At test, infants were presented with a familiar object, a switch object consisting of a recombination of familiar dimensions, and a novel object, and looking times were measured. Results indicate a transition from analytical processing at 6 months to configural processing at 8 months in the visual condition. In the visual-haptic condition, both age-groups displayed configural processing. Thus, redundant visual-haptic information seems to enhance object processing.     

Age differences in memory control: evidence from updating and retrieval-practice tasks

Some contemporary approaches suggest that inhibitory mechanisms play an important role in cognitive development. In addition, several authors distinguish between intentional and unintentional inhibitory processes in cognition. We report two experiments aimed at exploring possible developmental changes in these two types of inhibitory mechanisms. In Experiment 1, an updating task was used. This task requires that participants intentionally suppress irrelevant information from working memory. In Experiment 2, the retrieval-practice task was used. Retrieval practice of a subset of studied items is thought to involve unintentional inhibitory processes to overcome interference from competing memories. As a result, suppressed items become forgotten in a later memory test. Results of the experiments indicated that younger children (8) were less efficient than older children (12) and adults at intentionally suppressing information (updating task). However, when the task required unintentional inhibition of competing items (retrieval-practice task), this developmental trend was not found and children and adults showed similar levels of retrieval-induced forgetting. The results are discussed in terms of the development of efficient inhibition and the distinction between intentional and unintentional inhibitions.     

Letter-specific processing in children and adults matched for reading level

Expert readers perform faster and more accurately during tasks that involve letters from the known language compared to tasks that involve unfamiliar letter-like forms (e.g., pseudoletters). Previous work with typically developing participants suggests that this letter-specific processing emerges as a consequence of increased reading ability, rather than increased age. In contrast, others have suggested that adults rely on visual information to a greater extent than children when reading, despite reading at similar less-than-expert levels, implying that adults may exhibit greater letter specificity than children. The present study aimed to discriminate between these possibilities by comparing the advantage for letters over pseudoletters in children and adults reading at the same less-than-expert (fourth grade) level. Results revealed greater letter specificity in adults than in children in both error rate and response time measures. Moreover, the magnitude of letter specificity did not vary with reading ability. Thus, results suggest that adults are more sensitive than children to the visual forms of letters, and that differences in letter specificity are not necessarily dependent on reading skill.     

Age-related changes in motor imagery from early childhood to adulthood: Probing the internal representation of speed-accuracy trade-offs

The purpose of this study was to chart the development of motor imagery ability between 5 and 29 years of age and its relationship to fine-motor skill. 237 participants performed a computerized Virtual Radial Fitts Task (VRFT) as a measure of Motor Imagery (MI) ability. Participants aimed at five targets, positioned along radial axes from a central target circle. The targets differed in width over trials (2.5, 5, 10, 20 or 40 mm). Performance was indexed by the relationship between the movement time (MT) in executed and imagined movements. A subset of participants (11–19 years old, n = 22) also performed the task with their non-preferred hand. We also examined if manual skill (measured by peg board task and posting coins) was related to the executed and imagined MT on the VRFT. Our results showed that the accuracy of the imagined movement improved steadily over childhood, reaching an asymptote during adolescence and into early adulthood. The correlation between the real and virtual MT using the preferred hand did not differ appreciably from that using the non-preferred hand. If the children could perform the tasks with their non-preferred hand (11 years and older), they also scaled performance in relatively precise terms using the less dextrous non-preferred hand. The correlation between real MT on the VRFT and fine-motor performance ranged between .53 and .42, while that for virtual movement was between .37 and .34. MI ability predicts manual skill to a moderate degree.     

The effects of visual context and individual differences on perception and evaluation of modern art and graffiti art

Traditionally, artworks are seen as autonomous objects that stand (or should stand) on their own. However, at least since the emergence of Conceptual Art in the 1920s and Pop Art in the 1960s, art lacks any distinctive perceptual features that define it as such. Art, therefore, cannot be defined without reference to its context. Some studies have shown that context affects the evaluation of artworks, and that specific contexts (street for graffiti art, museum for modern art) elicit specific effects (Gartus & Leder, 2014). However, it is yet unclear how context changes perception and appreciation processes. In our study we measured eye-movements while participants (64 psychology undergraduates, 48% women) perceived and evaluated beauty, interest, emotional valence, as well as perceived style for modern art and graffiti art embedded into either museum or street contexts. For modern art, beauty and interest ratings were higher in a museum than in a street context, but context made no difference for the ratings of graffiti art. Importantly, we also found an interaction of context and individual interest in graffiti for beauty and interest ratings, as well as for number of fixations. Analyses of eye-movements also revealed that viewing times were in general significantly longer in museum than in street contexts. We conclude that context can have an important influence on aesthetic appreciation. However, some effects depend also on the style of the artworks and the individual art interests of the viewers.     

The duration of response inhibition in the stop-signal paradigm varies with response force

In a previous study, we have found that the speed of stopping a response is delayed when response readiness is reduced by cuing the probability of no-go trials [Acta Psychol. 111 (2002) 155]. Other investigators observed that responses are more forceful when the probability to respond is low than when it is high (e.g. [Quart. J. Exp. Psychol. A 50 (1997) 405]). In this study, the hypothesis was tested that low probability responses are more forceful than high probability responses and that these responses are more difficult to stop. Subjects performed on a choice reaction task and on three tasks with respectively 100%, 80%, and 50% response probabilities. Stop signals were presented on 30% of the trials, instructing subjects to withhold their response. Response force on non-signal (go) trials and the duration of response inhibition on signal (stop) trials increased as response probability decreased. This pattern of findings was interpreted to support the hypothesis predicting that stopping is more difficult when response readiness is low than when it is high.     

Intentional control and biomechanical exploitation in preparatory handwriting

In this study it was investigated how primary school children perform a graphomotor task which required them to simultaneously achieve multiple movement goals. Thirty-four 1st-grade primary school children were asked to produce with an electronic ink pen loop patterns varying in height (3, 6, 9 and 12 mm) on preprinted sheets of paper attached to a digitizer tablet. The task was paced by means of an acoustic signal of either 1, 2 or 3 Hz. The children were instructed to attain both the imposed amplitude and frequency. By focusing on how local parameter errors changed from one movement to the next, exploitation of biomechanics when the children respected the inverse relationship between movement amplitude and frequency was distinguished from deliberate, cognitive control when the children succeeded in overriding the inverse relationship between movement amplitude and frequency. The results show that children, like adults, exploit biomechanics to a considerable extent. Coupling strength between the acoustic pacing signal and the pen-tip movements increased with age, whereas the temporal errors decreased. The study shows that preparatory writers can pursue multiple movement goals simultaneously at lower speeds but at higher speeds their capacity to do so is reduced.     

Stimulus spacing effects in duration perception are larger for auditory stimuli: Data and a model

Models of duration bisection have focused on the effects of stimulus spacing and stimulus modality. However, interactions between stimulus spacing and stimulus modality have not been examined systematically. Two duration bisection experiments that address this issue are reported. Experiment 1 showed that stimulus spacing influenced the classification of auditory, but not visual, stimuli. Experiment 2 used a wider stimulus range, and showed stimulus spacing effects for both visual and auditory stimuli, although the effects were larger for auditory stimuli. A version of Temporal Range Frequency Theory was applied to the data, and was used to demonstrate that the qualitative pattern of results can be captured with the single assumption that the durations of visual stimuli are less discriminable from one another than are the durations of auditory stimuli.     

Developmental changes in oculomotor control and working-memory efficiency

In the present study, we examined the developmental changes in the efficiency of saccadic inhibitory control. More specifically, the contribution of age-related changes in working-memory engagement was investigated. We manipulated the efficiency of inhibitory oculomotor control in antisaccade tasks by using fixation-offset conditions, which are supposed to affect inhibitory demands, and by adding increasing working-memory loads to the antisaccade task. In general, in comparison to antisaccade performance of adults, the antisaccade performance of 8-year-old and 12-year-old children was characterized by an increase in direction errors, and/or longer saccadic onset latencies on correct antisaccades. However, this pattern was not altered by the fixation-offset manipulations. In contrast, increased working-memory demands deteriorated 8-year-olds' antisaccade performance unequally as compared to older children and young adults. These findings suggest that - at least in young children - the available functional working-memory capacity is engaged in oculomotor inhibition.     

Age-related changes in the efficiency of cognitive processing across the life span

The global-speed and the specific-gain/loss hypotheses have been dominant theoretical frameworks in the recent literature on cognitive development and aging. Few attempts have been made to explicitly assess the predictive power of the two frameworks against each other. We evaluated the extent to which age changes in performance in executive function tasks (involving response selection, response suppression, working memory, and adaptive control) depend on age-related changes in global information-processing speed. Our sample consisted of children, adolescents, adults and seniors. Analysis of covariance and structural equation modeling revealed a mixed pattern of results. Controlling for global speed removed the child vs. adult differences in the speed of responding on the executive function tasks but the senior vs. adult differences remained. This mixed pattern of findings was interpreted to suggest that the effects of advancing age on the speed of responding are mediated by a global mechanism during childhood but during senescence the efficiency of executive functioning seems particularly vulnerable to the effects of age.     

Interference resolution in face perception and name retrieval

Selective retrieval is a rather difficult task, and especially so when one attempts to retrieve personal representations such as faces or names. Retrieval of memories under strong competition conditions is pervasive in human memory and some have suggested that inhibitory control is used to overcome interference between competing stimuli. In the present study, we used the retrieval practice paradigm to investigate if competition among personal representations (such as facial features and names) is also resolved by inhibitory mechanisms. This question is theoretically relevant, since personal representations have been said to have a special status on cognition. Moreover, some models of face recognition assume that interference can arise between different representations, but that this interference would be automatically and rapidly solved, with no need for a controlled inhibitory mechanism to act. In two experiments we showed RIF for facial features and familiar names, but only when participants had to actively retrieve some information. This suggests that personal information is subject to mechanisms of inhibitory control, which could help explain everyday life difficulties in processes such as face feature recognition or name retrieval.     

Sentencing,severity, and social norms: A rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments

Context effects have been shown to bias lay people's evaluations of the severity of crimes and punishments. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind these effects, we develop and apply a rank-based social norms approach to judgments of perceived crime seriousness and sentence appropriateness. In Study 1, we find that (a) people believe on average that 84% of people illegally download software more than they do themselves and (b) their judged severity of, and concern about, their own illegal software downloading is predicted not by its amount but by how this amount is believed (typically inaccurately) to rank within a social comparison distribution. Studies 2 and 3 find that the judged appropriateness of a given sentence length is highly dependent on the length of other sentences available in the decision-making context: The same objective sentence was judged as approximately four times stricter when it was the second longest sentence being considered than when it was the fifth longest. It is concluded that the same mechanisms that are used to judge the magnitude of psychophysical stimuli bias judgments about legal matters.     

Neural correlates of the perception of goal-directed action in infants

We investigated the neural correlates of the perception of human goal-directed action by 8-month-old infants. Infants viewed video loops of complete and incomplete actions, which they could discriminate according to our pilot study, while we recorded their electrophysiological brain activity. Analysis of bursts of gamma-band oscillations resulting from passive viewing of these stimuli indicated increased gamma-band activity over left frontal regions when viewing incomplete actions as compared with complete actions. These results suggest that by 8 months infants are sensitive to the disruption of perceived goal-directed actions.     

Learning and performance effects of accurate and erroneous knowledge of results on time perception

Performance feedback (also known as knowledge of results or KR) has both performance and learning effects on many tasks. Earlier studies have demonstrated performance but not learning effects on time perception tasks. In this experiment, we dissociate and identify these two phenomena on two different time perception tasks. Participants were presented with either accurate (100%) or erroneous (80% or 120% of actual performance) KR on either a reproduction or a numerical estimation time perception task. Accurate (100%) KR reduced the group variability and increased the accuracy of response magnitude but left individual variability unchanged. Erroneous (80% or 120%) KR also reduced the group variability while leaving individual variation unchanged, but decreased the true accuracy of the response, with response magnitudes increasing for the 80% KR group and decreasing for the 120% group. Thus external KR that is in conflict with internal time cues overrides these internal cues and dictates response magnitude on these two tasks. Thus KR provides guidance for these behaviors. KR did not reduce the variability (dispersion) of participants' responses, but centered each participant's responses closer to the targeted performance. This decreased group response variability reflected a performance enhancing effect of KR because group response variability increased after KR was withdrawn. In contrast, response magnitudes remained changed for the duration of the post-KR period, indicating that KR also induced a learned response. Thus individual response variability, group response variability and response magnitude represent dissociable features of performance on these time perception tasks.     

A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments

Although aesthetic experiences are frequent in modern life, there is as of yet no scientifically comprehensive theory that explains what psychologically constitutes such experiences. These experiences are particularly interesting because of their hedonic properties and the possibility to provide self‐rewarding cognitive operations. We shall explain why modern art's large number of individualized styles, innovativeness and conceptuality offer positive aesthetic experiences. Moreover, the challenge of art is mainly driven by a need for understanding. Cognitive challenges of both abstract art and other conceptual, complex and multidimensional stimuli require an extension of previous approaches to empirical aesthetics. We present an information‐processing stage model of aesthetic processing. According to the model, aesthetic experiences involve five stages: perception, explicit classification, implicit classification, cognitive mastering and evaluation. The model differentiates between aesthetic emotion and aesthetic judgments as two types of output.     

Inhibition and shifting capacities mediate adults' age-related differences in strategy selection and repertoire

Young and older adults differ in how many strategies they use to accomplish cognitive tasks. They also differ in how often they select the best strategy on each problem. Two experiments were run to determine whether two executive functions—inhibition and shifting capacities—mediate age-related differences in strategy repertoire and in strategy selection. Both experiments were run in arithmetic problem solving. In Experiment 1, young and older adults’ strategy repertoire was assessed on a problem-by-problem basis while participants solved two-digit addition problems (e.g., 42 + 76). In Experiment 2, young and older participants had to select the best strategy on each problem to find estimates of two-digit multiplication problems (e.g., 43 × 72). In both experiments, individuals’ inhibition and shifting capacities were assessed with the Trail Making Test and the Stroop Test. The main results showed that (a) older adults used a smaller strategy repertoire (Expt. 1) and selected the best strategy on each problem less frequently (Expt. 2) than young adults, (b) inhibition and shifting capacities mediated age-related differences in strategy repertoire and strategy selection, and unique age effects were no longer significant in strategy repertoire but were still significant in strategy selection after statistical control of inhibition and shifting capacities. We discuss important implications of these findings to further our understanding of strategic variations during cognitive aging.     

A feature-based inference model of numerical estimation: The split-seed effect

Prior research has identified two modes of quantitative estimation: numerical retrieval and ordinal conversion. In this paper we introduce a third mode, which operates by a feature-based inference process. In contrast to prior research, the results of three experiments demonstrate that people estimate automobile prices by combining metric information associated with two critical features: product class and brand status. In addition, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that when participants are seeded with the actual current base price of one of the to-be-estimated vehicles, they respond by revising the general metric and splitting the information carried by the seed between the two critical features. As a result, the degree of post-seeding revision is directly related to the number of these features that the seed and the transfer items have in common. The paper concludes with a general discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of our findings.