Patterns of Response Times and Response Choices to Science Questions: The Influence of Relative Processing Time

We report on five experiments investigating response choices and response times to simple science questions that evoke student “misconceptions,” and we construct a simple model to explain the patterns of response choices. Physics students were asked to compare a physical quantity represented by the slope, such as speed, on simple physics graphs. We found that response times of incorrect answers, resulting from comparing heights, were faster than response times of correct answers comparing slopes. This result alone might be explained by the fact that height was typically processed faster than slope for this kind of task, which we confirmed in a separate experiment. However, we hypothesize that the difference in response time is an indicator of the cause (rather than the result) of the response choice. To support this, we found that imposing a 3‐s delay in responding increased the number of students comparing slopes (answering correctly) on the task. Additionally a significant proportion of students recognized the correct written rule (compare slope), but on the graph task they incorrectly compared heights. Finally, training either with repetitive examples or providing a general rule both improved scores, but only repetitive examples had a large effect on response times, thus providing evidence of dual paths or processes to a solution. Considering models of heuristics, information accumulation models, and models relevant to the Stroop effect, we construct a simple relative processing time model that could be viewed as a kind of fluency heuristic. The results suggest that misconception‐like patterns of answers to some science questions commonly found on tests may be explained in part by automatic processes that involve the relative processing time of considered dimensions and a priority to answer quickly.     

邻近效应对多媒体学习中图文整合的影响:线索的作用

在多媒体学习中图文排列的邻近或远离会影响学习的效果。本研究操纵了多媒体呈现的图文排列位置,采用颜色作为线索引导注意,探讨了线索有无和图片-文字的空间位置对多媒体学习图文整合的影响。结果发现:图文邻近呈现时的保持测验和迁移测验成绩好于图文远离呈现,图文邻近呈现时学习者对关键兴趣区的进出次数更多,体现出以文字为导向的阅读模式。线索并没有单独影响学习成绩和注意分配;但结合图文位置后,发现有线索时图文邻近学习材料的注视次数、进出关键兴趣区的次数显著多于图文远离。研究认为:图文的邻近效应不仅提高学习者对知识的识记和理解,同时也影响了学习者的注意分配过程,图文邻近呈现有助于图片和文本信息的注意联结和知识整合;线索能使邻近效应得到凸显,更好地促进图文信息的注视加工,但没有改进学习的效果。     

An Evolutionary Analysis of Learned Attention

Humans and many other species selectively attend to stimuli or stimulus dimensions—but why should an animal constrain information input in this way? To investigate the adaptive functions of attention, we used a genetic algorithm to evolve simple connectionist networks that had to make categorization decisions in a variety of environmental structures. The results of these simulations show that while learned attention is not universally adaptive, its benefit is not restricted to the reduction of input complexity in order to keep it within an organism's processing capacity limitations. Instead, being able to shift attention provides adaptive benefit by allowing faster learning with fewer errors in a range of ecologically plausible environments.     

The Identity‐Location Binding Problem

The binding problem is fundamental to visual perception. It is the problem of associating an object's visual properties with itself and not with some other object. The problem is made particular difficult because different properties of an object, such as its color, shape, size, and motion, are often processed independently, sometimes in different cortical areas. The results of these separate analyses have to be combined before the object can be seen as a single coherent entity as opposed to a collection of unconnected features. Visual bindings are typically initiated and updated in a serial fashion, one object at a time. Here, we show that one type of binding, location‐identity bindings, can be updated in parallel. We do this by using two complementary techniques, the simultaneous‐sequential paradigm and systems factorial technology. These techniques make different assumptions and rely on different behavioral measures, yet both came to the same conclusion.     

The inhibitory spillover effect: Controlling the bladder makes better liars

The Inhibitory-Spillover-Effect (ISE) on a deception task was investigated. The ISE occurs when performance in one self-control task facilitates performance in another (simultaneously conducted) self-control task. Deceiving requires increased access to inhibitory control. We hypothesized that inducing liars to control urination urgency (physical inhibition) would facilitate control during deceptive interviews (cognitive inhibition). Participants drank small (low-control) or large (high-control) amounts of water. Next, they lied or told the truth to an interviewer. Third-party observers assessed the presence of behavioral cues and made true/lie judgments. In the high-control, but not the low-control condition, liars displayed significantly fewer behavioral cues to deception, more behavioral cues signaling truth, and provided longer and more complex accounts than truth-tellers. Accuracy detecting liars in the high-control condition was significantly impaired; observers revealed bias toward perceiving liars as truth-tellers. The ISE can operate in complex behaviors. Acts of deception can be facilitated by covert manipulations of self-control.     

Examining the effect of visual treatments on truck drivers’ time-to-arrival judgments of motorcycles at T-intersections

An automobile–motorcycle crash most commonly results when an automobile pulls out of a side road into the path of an oncoming motorcycle and violates the motorcyclist’s right-of-way. One of the reasons for this could be that motorists misjudged the motorcycle arrival time. Motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to injury in crashes with truck due to substantial differences in vehicle mass, protection degree and speed. We investigated truck drivers’ judgments of motorcycle time-to-arrival (TTA) across a number of visual treatments. Participants watched a series of video clips captured at a T-intersection, and they were instructed to respond by clicking the computer mouse at the time they estimated the front wheels of an oncoming vehicle (motorcycle or car) to reach the T-intersection. The results showed that, at long distance between the target motorcycle and the viewer, the motorcycle with daytime running headlights (DRH) was estimated to arrive sooner than the motorcycle whose motorcyclist wore a black helmet with a reflective sticker. However, the opposite is true at a short distance. We also found that a motorcyclist wearing a white helmet and riding a motorcycle with DRH, as well as a motorcyclist wearing a white helmet and white outfit, would improve truck drivers’ judgment with respect to motorcycle TTA. Consequently, truck drivers would be less likely to pull out into a small gap in front of a motorcycle, resulting in a higher safety margin for the motorcycle.     

基于增强现实和ERPs架构的SNARC效应展望

SNARC效应是人类空间认知的重要组成部分。限于技术手段,现有SNARC研究的理论和技术多以小尺度空间环境为基础,致使其生态效度较低。基于增强现实技术和认知神经科学范式,通过增强现实技术生成的交互情境,从核心加工系统(静态空间SNARC、动态空间SNARC、静态-动态联合SNARC)和加工特性两个方面,研究建立起基于大尺度空间环境的SNARC加工模型。为人类空间认知研究提供了更加完备的知识领域。     

Response mode does not modulate the space–time congruency effect: Evidence for a space–time mapping at a conceptual level

Previous studies reported a space–time congruency effect on response time, supporting the notion that people's thinking about time is grounded in their spatial sensorimotor experience. According to a strong view of metaphoric mapping, the congruency effect should be larger for responses that differ in their spatial features than for responses that lack such differences. In contrast, a weaker version of this account posits that the grounding of time is based on higher-level spatial concepts. In this case, response mode should not modulate the size of the space–time congruency effect. In order to assess these predictions, participants in this study responded to temporal stimuli either manually or vocally. Response mode did not modulate the space–time congruency effect which supports the weaker view of metaphoric mapping suggesting that this effect emerges at a higher cognitive level.     

The relationship between social anxiety and the perception of depth-ambiguous biological motion stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability

Orthographically projected biological motion stimuli are depth-ambiguous. Consequently, their projection when oriented towards the viewer is the same as when oriented away. Despite this, observers tend to interpret such stimuli as facing the viewer more often. Some have speculated that this facing-the-viewer bias may exist for sociobiological reasons: Mistaking another human as retreating when they are actually approaching could have more severe consequences than the opposite error. An implication of this theory is that the facing-towards percept may be perceived as more threatening than the facing-away percept. Given this, as well as the finding that anxious individuals have been found to display an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli, we reasoned that more anxious individuals might have stronger facing-the-viewer biases. Furthermore, since anxious individuals have been found to perform poorer on inhibition tasks, we hypothesized that inhibitory ability would mediate the relationship between anxiety and the facing-the-viewer bias (i.e., difficulty inhibiting the threatening percept). Exploring individual differences, we asked participants to complete anxiety questionnaires, to perform a Go/No-Go task, and then to complete a perceptual task that allowed us to assess their facing-the-viewer biases. As hypothesized, we found that both greater anxiety and weaker inhibitory ability were associated with greater facing-the-viewer biases. In addition, we found that inhibitory ability significantly mediated the relationship between anxiety and facing-the-viewer biases. Our results provide further support that the facing-the-viewer bias is sensitive to the sociobiological relevance of biological motion stimuli, and that the threat bias for ambiguous visual stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability.     

Dissociation between the behavioural and electrophysiological effects of the face and body composite illusions

Several studies have reported similarities between perceptual processes underlying face and body perception, particularly emphasizing the importance of configural processes. Differences between the perception of faces and the perception of bodies were observed by means of a manipulation targeting a specific subtype of configural processing: the composite illusion. The composite face illusion describes the fact that two identical top halves of a face are perceived as being different if they are presented with different bottom parts. This effect disappears, if both halves are laterally shifted. Crucially, the effect of misalignment is not observed for bodies. This study aimed to further explore differences in the time course of face and body perception by using the composite effect. The present results replicated behavioural effects illustrating that misalignment affects the perception of faces but not bodies. Thus, face but not body perception relies on holistic processing. However, differences in the time course of the processing of both stimulus categories emerged at the N170 and P200. The pattern of the behavioural data seemed to be related to the P200. Thus, the present data indicate that holistic processes associated with the effect of misalignment might occur 200 ms after stimulus onset.