Mood-congruent biases in facial emotion perception and their gender dependence

Due to mood-congruency effects, we expect the emotion perceived on a face to be biased towards one's own mood. But the findings in the scant literature on such mood effects in normal healthy populations have not consistently and adequately supported this expectation. Employing effective mood manipulation techniques that ensured that the intended mood was sustained throughout the perception task, we explored mood-congruent intensity and recognition accuracy biases in emotion perception. Using realistic face stimuli with expressive cues of happiness and sadness, we demonstrated that happy, neutral and ambiguous expressions were perceived more positively in the positive than in the negative mood. The mood-congruency effect decreased with the degree of perceived negativity in the expression. Also, males were more affected by the mood-congruency effect in intensity perception than females. We suggest that the greater salience and better processing of negative stimuli and the superior cognitive ability of females in emotion perception are responsible for these observations. We found no evidence for mood-congruency effect in the recognition accuracy of emotions and suggest with supporting evidence that past reports of this effect may be attributed to response bias driven by mood.     

Individual Differences in Categorization Gradience As Predicted by Online Processing of Phonetic Cues During Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements

Recent studies have documented substantial variability among typical listeners in how gradiently they categorize speech sounds, and this variability in categorization gradience may link to how listeners weight different cues in the incoming signal. The present study tested the relationship between categorization gradience and cue weighting across two sets of English contrasts, each varying orthogonally in two acoustic dimensions. Participants performed a four-alternative forced-choice identification task in a visual world paradigm while their eye movements were monitored. We found that (a) greater categorization gradience derived from behavioral identification responses corresponds to larger secondary cue weights derived from eye movements; (b) the relationship between categorization gradience and secondary cue weighting is observed across cues and contrasts, suggesting that categorization gradience may be a consistent within-individual property in speech perception; and (c) listeners who showed greater categorization gradience tend to adopt a buffered processing strategy, especially when cues arrive asynchronously in time.     

Dynamics Versus Development in Numerosity Estimation: A Computational Model Accurately Predicts a Developmental Reversal

Perceptual judgments result from a dynamic process, but little is known about the dynamics of number-line estimation. A recent study proposed a computational model that combined a model of trial-to-trial changes with a model for the internal scaling of discrete numbers. Here, we tested a surprising prediction of the model—a situation in which children's estimates of numerosity would be better than those of adults. Consistent with the model simulations, task contexts led to a clear developmental reversal: children made more adult-like, linear estimates when to-be-estimated numbers were descending over trials (i.e., backward condition), whereas adults became more like children with logarithmic estimates when numbers were ascending (i.e., forward condition). In addition, adults’ estimates were subject to inter-trial differences regardless of stimulus order. In contrast, children were not able to use the trial-to-trial dynamics unless stimuli varied systematically, indicating the limited cognitive capacity for dynamic updates. Together, the model adequately predicts both developmental and trial-to-trial changes in number-line tasks.     

Choosing what to choose from: Preference for inclusion over exclusion when constructing consideration sets from large choice sets

Decision making is a two‐stage process, consisting of, first, consideration set construction and then final choice. Decision makers can form a consideration set from a choice set using one of two strategies: including the options they wish to further consider or excluding those they do not wish to further consider. The authors propose that decision makers have a relative preference for an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when choosing from large choice sets and that this preference is driven primarily by a lay belief that inclusion requires less effort than exclusion, particularly in large choice sets. Study 1 demonstrates that decision makers prefer using an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when faced with large choice sets. Study 2 replicates the effect of choice set size on preference for consideration set construction strategy and demonstrates that the belief that exclusion is more effortful mediates the relative preference for inclusion in large choice sets. Studies 3 and 4 further support the importance of perceived effort, demonstrating a greater preference for inclusion in large choice sets when decision makers are primed to think about effort (vs. accuracy; Study 3) and when the choice set is perceived as requiring more effort because of more information being presented about each alternative (vs. more alternatives in the choice set; Study 4). Finally, Study 5 manipulates consideration set construction strategy, showing that using inclusion (vs. exclusion) in large choice sets leads to smaller consideration sets, greater confidence in the decision process, and a higher quality consideration set.     

汉语母语者视听言语知觉发展趋势研究

6~12岁儿童、13~18岁青少年和20~30岁成人被试各30名,运用McGurk效应研究范式对汉语母语者视听言语知觉的发展趋势进行探讨。所有被试需要接受纯听和视听两种条件下的测试,其任务是出声报告自己听到的刺激。结果发现：（1）三个年龄阶段汉语母语者被试在安静听力环境下的单音节加工中都受到了视觉线索的影响,表现出了McGurk效应;（2）三个年龄阶段汉语母语者被试McGurk效应的强度存在显著差异,其受视觉言语影响的程度表现出随年龄增长而增强的发展趋势;（3）13岁以后汉语被试在视听一致下对视觉线索的依赖没有显著增强,但是在视听冲突下视觉言语的影响仍然在逐渐增强。     

Bridging ears and eyes when learning spoken words: On the effects of bilingual experience at 30 months

From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical representations. Using a cross‐modal word‐learning task, bilingual children aged 30 months were tested on their ability to learn new lexical mappings in either the auditory or the visual modality. Lexical recognition was assessed either in the same modality as the one used at learning (‘same modality’ condition: auditory test after auditory learning, visual test after visual learning) or in the other modality (‘cross‐modality’ condition: visual test after auditory learning, auditory test after visual learning). The results revealed that like their monolingual peers, bilingual children successfully learn new words in either the auditory or the visual modality and show cross‐modal recognition of words following auditory learning. Interestingly, as opposed to monolinguals, they also demonstrate cross‐modal recognition of words upon visual learning. Collectively, these findings indicate a bilingual edge in visual word learning, expressed in the capacity to form a recoverable cross‐modal representation of visually learned words.     

Reliability of variable message signs information: A field experiment study in Chongqing

A variable message sign (VMS), which is a key component of intelligent transportation systems, has been frequently used in the management of urban roads and motorways to provide drivers with real-time traffic condition information about a road section or area. Nevertheless, there is a lack of unified regulations for VMS design, which makes it difficult to accurately determine the understandability and legibility of VMS information. In practice, inappropriate designs of VMSs are common, such as overload of VMS information and excessive number of phases, particularly on the urban roads of China. Building on our earlier findings obtained by surveys, in this study, field tests were conducted to assess the reliability of VMS information in terms of the visual perception characteristics of drivers. For a full visual perception, the information displayed on a VMS must be reliable, i.e., it should be easy for drivers to detect, obtain, and understand the messages they require. Two basic theories—information theory and visual perception theory—were introduced to build a quantification model of VMS information, select evaluation indices, and design the experimental process. A total of 24 drivers participated in the field experiments and questionnaires. Five indices—information obtainment rate, periodic validity, driver subjective scoring and the corresponding UI (represents information intelligibility), and CE (represents information legibility)—were analyzed to evaluate their relationships to VMS information reliability. The results confirmed that the amount of information, and the scrolling period considering redundant distance, significantly affect the reliability of VMSs information. For static VMSs, the information obtainment rate and the subjective scoring decrease with increasing amount of information. The recollection accuracy of the drivers significantly declines when the amount of information shown increases to 90 bits, corresponding to an information obtainment rate of less than 0.8 and UI equal to 0. For dynamic VMSs, the information reliability deteriorates as the scrolling period shortens and the number of phases increases. Unreasonable reliability is found when the periodic validity is less than 0.9, i.e., the actual scrolling period is more than 10% less than the calculated one, corresponding to CE equal to 0. The reliability of information was evaluated by combining the subjective scoring of the drivers and a data-based statistical analysis and considering driving safety. Accordingly, it was recommended that 90 bit is the maximum amount of information to be shown on a VMS and that the preferred scrolling period of each phase of a dynamic VMS is 5 s. The results of this study support the objective of providing reliable information to drivers by addressing the problems related to the amount of information and presentation time for VMSs. These findings provide a basis for determining the thresholds for VMS information to promote practical and user-friendly designs of VMSs on urban roads.     

文字的“偷心术”:营销中的字体效应

文字是营销中视觉传播的重要元素, 它直接影响消费者对品牌的第一印象。文字的重要性不仅体现在文本内容上, 还体现在字形设计对消费者的影响上。字体的研究仍存在较大的空缺, 且现有文献多分散于语言学、设计学和心理学等不同学科领域。目前有较多存在矛盾的结论缺乏系统的框架支持, 本文为研究者提供了完整的字体效应研究框架。将字体进行定义及分类之后, 主要探讨了字体对消费者感知和行为的影响, 以及字体效应的三大心理机制, 即感知一致性、感知记忆性和感知人性化。在此基础上讨论了字体受到消费者特质、产品类型与外部环境的调节作用。最后, 深入分析了字体在市场营销中的理论和管理实践价值, 以及未来研究方向。     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.