Unconscious task set priming with phonological and semantic tasks

Whether unconscious stimuli can modulate the preparation of a cognitive task is still controversial. Using a backward masking paradigm, we investigated whether the modulation could be observed even if the prime was made unconscious in 100% of the trials. In two behavioral experiments, subjects were instructed to initiate a phonological or semantic task on an upcoming word, following an explicit instruction and an unconscious prime. When the SOA between prime and instruction was sufficiently long (84 ms), primes congruent with the task set instruction led to speedier responses than incongruent primes. In the other condition (36 ms), no task set priming was observed. Repetition priming had the opposite tendency, suggesting the observed task set facilitation cannot be ascribed solely to perceptual repetition priming. Our results therefore confirm that unconscious information can modulate cognitive control for currently active task sets, providing sufficient time is available before the conscious decision.     

Effects of Accuracy Motivation and Anchoring on Metacomprehension Judgment and Accuracy

The current research investigates how accuracy motivation impacts anchoring and adjustment in metacomprehension judgment and how accuracy motivation and anchoring affect metacomprehension accuracy. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions produced by the between-subjects factorial design involving accuracy motivation (incentive or no) and peer performance anchor (95%, 55%, or no). Two studies showed that accuracy motivation did not impact anchoring bias, but the adjustment-from-anchor process occurred. Accuracy incentive increased anchor-judgment gap for the 95% anchor but not for the 55% anchor, which induced less certainty about the direction of adjustment. The findings offer support to the integrative theory of anchoring. Additionally, the two studies revealed a “power struggle” between accuracy motivation and anchoring in influencing metacomprehension accuracy. Accuracy motivation could improve metacomprehension accuracy in spite of anchoring effect, but if anchoring effect is too strong, it could overpower the motivation effect. The implications of the findings were discussed.     

Children’s social cognition about proactive aggression

In this study, 6- and 9-year-old children (N = 258) observed two instances of proactive aggression (one relational and the other direct aggression) that were committed by members of a group toward out-group members. Participants were either members of the group or independent observers. Analyses of participants’ social cognition about the aggressor and the aggression (cause of aggression, moral judgment of aggression, attitudes toward the aggressor, and exclusion of the aggressor) indicated that, overall, group members were more positive toward aggressors than were independent observers. Although intergroup competition was perceived to be the cause of the aggression, participants disapproved of both types of aggression (especially direct aggression), disapproval increased with age, and girls disapproved of relational aggression more than did boys. Group members’ social cognition about the aggressor and the aggression comprised a coherent cognitive process for both types of aggression, but the observers’ process was simpler and differed by aggression type.     

Criticism of the Theory of Motivation

The theory of motivation is a theory which takes the executora＇s motivation as the basis of moral judgment. One presupposition of the theory is that motivation can be a common object of understanding. However, motivation exists only in the heart of the executor, and cannot be known exactly by others, so motivation cannot be perceived like a common object, and thus, logically, cannot be the basis of moral judgment. Even if the executor＇s motivation is accepted by others and turned into a common object, the motivation still cannot become the valid basis of a moral judgment. This is the dilemma of the theory of motivation. In practice, the dilemma appears as follows： if one insists on the theory of motivation, one can be led to the result that people do evil with good intentions. However, just because motivation cannot be the basis of moral judgment does not mean that motivation is of no significance. Good motivation is always better than evil motivation. Therefore, in moral education we should carry out motivation education and teach people to strive to have good motivations for their behavior. This is the value of motivation theory.     

Let me take the wheel: Illusory control and sense of agency

Illusory control refers to an effect in games of chance where features associated with skilful situations increase expectancies of success. Past work has operationalized illusory control in terms of subjective ratings or behaviour, with limited consideration of the relationship between these definitions, or the broader construct of agency. This study used a novel card-guessing task in 78 participants to investigate the relationship between subjective and behavioural illusory control. We compared trials in which participants (a) had no opportunity to exercise illusory control, (b) could exercise illusory control for free, or (c) could pay to exercise illusory control. Contingency Judgment and Intentional Binding tasks assessed explicit and implicit sense of agency, respectively. On the card-guessing task, confidence was higher when participants exerted control than in the baseline condition. In a complementary model, participants were more likely to exercise control when their confidence was high, and this effect was accentuated in the pay condition relative to the free condition. Decisions to pay were positively correlated with control ratings on the Contingency Judgment task, but were not significantly related to Intentional Binding. These results establish an association between subjective and behavioural illusory control and locate the construct within the cognitive literature on agency.     

Extrapolating human judgments from skip-gram vector representations of word meaning

There is a growing body of research in psychology that attempts to extrapolate human lexical judgments from computational models of semantics. This research can be used to help develop comprehensive norm sets for experimental research, it has applications to large-scale statistical modelling of lexical access and has broad value within natural language processing and sentiment analysis. However, the value of extrapolated human judgments has recently been questioned within psychological research. Of primary concern is the fact that extrapolated judgments may not share the same pattern of statistical relationship with lexical and semantic variables as do actual human judgments; often the error component in extrapolated judgments is not psychologically inert, making such judgments problematic to use for psychological research. We present a new methodology for extrapolating human judgments that partially addresses prior concerns of validity. We use this methodology to extrapolate human judgments of valence, arousal, dominance, and concreteness for 78,286 words. We also provide resources for users to extrapolate these human judgments for three million English words and short phrases. Applications for large sets of extrapolated human judgments are demonstrated and discussed.     

Development and Validation of the Scientific Reasoning Scale

Scientific findings and innovations play an important role in a range of decisions faced by nonscientists, yet little is known about the skills that nonscientists need in order to read and evaluate scientific evidence. Drawing on research in public understanding of science, cognitive developmental psychology, and behavioral decision research, we develop an individual difference measure of scientific reasoning skills, defined as the skills needed to evaluate scientific findings in terms of the factors that determine their quality. We present the results of three studies assessing its psychometric validity. Our results indicate that the Scientific Reasoning Scale (SRS) is internally consistent and distinct from extant measures of scientific literacy. Participants with higher SRS scores are more likely to have beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus on potentially contentious issues, above and beyond education, political and religious beliefs, and scores on two widely used measures of scientific literacy. Participants with higher SRS scores also had better performance on a task requiring them to analyze scientific information. Our results suggest that the SRS provides a theoretically informed contribution to decoding lay responses to scientific results and controversies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alternative Lens Model Equations for Dichotomous Judgments about Dichotomous Criteria

The Brunswik lens model typically represents a judge's accuracy using parameters derived from linear regression. This is not optimal if the judgment or the ecological criterion is dichotomous. Alternative approaches, modeling dichotomies using logistic regression, or linearizing judgments with confidence ratings, have not been compared with the same data. Four techniques for deriving lens model equation parameters were compared: (i) linear and (ii) logistic regression applied to dichotomous patient outcomes and judgments; (iii) linear regression with confidence‐adjusted judgments but dichotomous patient outcomes; and (iv) a hybrid with a linear model of the confidence‐adjusted judgments and a logistic model of the patient outcomes. Judgment accuracy (r_a) was slightly higher with confidence adjustment of the categorical judgments. The logistic lens model accounted for a higher proportion of r_a than the linear lens model; the confident‐linear and hybrid lens models were intermediate. For up to a quarter of participants, different methods identified different cues as most important. Display condition differences in achievement r_a and in lens model components are similar with all lens model methods. Each of the three alternative lens model equation methods improves on the linear lens model equation's decomposition of the accuracy of dichotomous judgments. Confidence adjustment improves achievement although it requires additional work from the subjects. The logistic lens model equation explains the highest proportion of achievement, but with a small stimulus set, it is more vulnerable to cue intercorrelations than either the linear or the confident linear lens model equation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

面孔相似性判断中各部件的权重分配

采用多级估量法,通过分析不同隶属度的部件样例组合成的面孔样例对原型的隶属度,考察耳朵、脸型、眼睛和嘴巴等部件在面孔相似性判断中的作用。结果发现,面孔相似性判断中,人们对不同面孔部件赋予的权重并不相同,对脸型和嘴巴赋予的权重较大,而对耳朵和眼睛赋予的权重较小。表明,面孔各部件在面孔相似性判断中的作用不同,相对于耳朵和眼睛,脸型和嘴巴的作用更大;面孔内部特征和外部特征的划分方法并不一定适合于面孔相似性判断。     

Detrimental effects of using negative sentences in the autobiographical IAT

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is a method that accurately identifies which one of two contrasting autobiographical events is true for the subject. The aIAT indexes the real autobiographical event (e.g. I was in Paris for Christmas) on the basis of the facilitating effect because it maps the real autobiographical event with true sentences (e.g. I am in front of a computer) on the same motor response. In this paper we focus on the conditions under which the autobiographical IAT accurately and reliably identifies autobiographical memories. A recent study showed a reduction in the accuracy of the aIAT when negative sentences are used. We have investigated the detrimental effect on aIAT accuracy of such negative sentence items, used to describe autobiographical events, compared with affirmative sentence items. While we highlight the reliability of the results obtained using negative sentences, we also show that the use of affirmative sentences in describing autobiographical events guarantees high accuracy and reliability of results in identifying the true autobiographical event. Finally, we summarise the criteria for preparing stimuli for an effective aIAT in order to maximise correct classifications of individual subjects.