Social priming of hemispatial neglect affects spatial coding: Evidence from the Simon task

In the Simon effect (SE), choice reactions are fast if the location of the stimulus and the response correspond when stimulus location is task-irrelevant; therefore, the SE reflects the automatic processing of space. Priming of social concepts was found to affect automatic processing in the Stroop effect. We investigated whether spatial coding measured by the SE can be affected by the observer’s mental state. We used two social priming manipulations of impairments: one involving spatial processing - hemispatial neglect (HN) and another involving color perception - achromatopsia (ACHM). In two experiments the SE was reduced in the “neglected” visual field (VF) under the HN, but not under the ACHM manipulation. Our results show that spatial coding is sensitive to spatial representations that are not derived from task-relevant parameters, but from the observer’s cognitive state. These findings dispute stimulus-response interference models grounded on the idea of the automaticity of spatial processing.     

中文词汇加工中的饱和现象

长时间注视一个字或词语后,感觉这个字词变得奇怪且陌生,这种现象称为饱和现象。本研究采用快速类别/词汇匹配范式,考察中文词汇加工中的饱和现象。实验1-3发现单纯的语义或字形的重复均未能引发饱和,只有类别标签在字形和语义上的同时重复才引发饱和,表明与英文饱和相似,中文饱和发生在字形加工和语义加工的联结阶段。实验4结果表明,中文饱和还能够由表义部件的重复引发,体现了中文饱和的特殊性。     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants’ task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

The Persistence of Priming: Exploring Long-lasting Syntactic Priming Effects in Children and Adults

The implicit learning account of syntactic priming proposes that the same mechanism underlies syntactic priming and language development, providing a link between a child and adult language processing. The present experiment tested predictions of this account by comparing the persistence of syntactic priming effects in children and adults. Four-year-olds and adults first described transitive events after hearing transitive primes, constituting an exposure phase that established priming effects for passives. The persistence of this priming effect was measured in a test phase as participants described further transitive events but no longer heard primes. Their production of passives was compared to a baseline group who described the same pictures without any exposure to primes. Neither immediate nor long-term priming effects differed between children and adults but both children and adults showed significant immediate and persistent effects of the priming when the test phase occurred immediately after the exposure phase and when a short delay separated the exposure and test phase. The implications of these results for an implicit learning account of syntactic priming are discussed.     

Driver conflict response during supervised automation: Do hands on wheel matter?

Securing appropriate driver responses to conflicts is essential in automation that is not perfect (because the driver is needed as a fall-back for system limitations and failures). However, this is recognized as a major challenge in the human factors literature. Moreover, in-depth knowledge is lacking regarding mechanisms affecting the driver response process. The first aim of this study was to investigate how driver conflict response while using highly reliable (but not perfect) supervised automation differ for drivers that (a) crash or avoid a conflict object and (b) report high trust or low trust in automation to avoid the conflict object. The second aim was to understand the influence on the driver conflict response of two specific factors: a hands-on-wheel requirement (with vs. without), and the conflict object type (garbage bag vs. stationary vehicle). Seventy-six participants drove with highly reliable but supervised automation for 30 min on a test track. Thereafter they needed to avoid a static object that was revealed by a lead-vehicle cut-out. The driver conflict response was assessed through the response process: timepoints for driver surprise reaction, hands-on-wheel, driver steering, and driver braking. Crashers generally responded later in all actions of the response process compared to non-crashers. In fact, some crashers collided with the conflict object without even putting their hands on the wheel. Driver conflict response was independent of the hands-on-wheel requirement. High-trust drivers generally responded later than the low-trust drivers or not at all, and only high trust drivers crashed. The larger stationary vehicle triggered an earlier surprise reaction compared to the garbage bag, while hands-on-wheel and steering response were similar for the two conflict object types. To conclude, crashing is associated with a delay in all actions of the response process. In addition, driver conflict response does not change with a hands-on-wheel requirement but changes with trust-level and conflict object type. Simply holding the hands on the wheel is not sufficient to prevent collisions or elicit earlier responses. High trust in automation is associated with late response and crashing, whereas low trust is associated with appropriate driver response. A larger conflict object trigger earlier surprise reactions.     

象似性和手语学习经验对中国手语-汉语跨模态语义启动效应的影响

采用启动条件下的词汇判断任务,考察熟练手语使用者和无手语经验成年听人的跨模态语义启动效应。结果发现：1)在象似词条件下,两组被试判断汉语语义相关词的反应时均快于语义无关词,说明手语象似词和汉语词之间存在跨模态语义启动效应。2)在非象似词条件下,仅手语熟练被试判断汉语语义相关词的反应时快于语义无关词,无手语经验被试判断汉语语义相关词和无关词的速度没有差异。这是由于前者心理词库中的手语词和口语词共享语义表征,而后者主要依赖手语象似词的视觉模拟性。整个研究表明,中国手语和汉语间存在跨模态语义启动效应,但该效应受到手语词象似性和手语学习经历的调节。     

寻找镜中的自我：精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择

精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择影响其必要的社交活动和生活质量。本文通过对精神分裂症患者视觉观点采择的研究进行梳理,总结出相关的心理特点：精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择过程受损,表现出自我中心性和他人中心性。在神经生理上表现出与视觉观点采择相关的脑区激活减弱。可能的原因是患者认知功能中反应抑制能力和心理旋转能力的受损所致,建议采用认知干预疗法可能会改善患者的视觉观点采择能力。目前的研究论证了精神分裂症患者视觉观点采择过程的损伤,对于不同水平的视觉观点采择下精神分裂症患者的认知模式还未有明确的定论,未来的研究可以从该角度入手,更加明确精神分裂症患者不同水平视觉观点采择的特点和神经生理活动。     

Person perception when aggressive or nonaggressive sports are primed

Previous research investigating the factors contributing to sports spectator violence has focused primarily on conscious processes such as the disinhibiting effects of aggressive models and physiological arousal. The current research borrows a methodology from social cognition work to examine the role of passive, category accessibility effects on fan hostility. Prior research has indicated that as a schema becomes more accessible in memory, the use of it to encode subsequent information is increased. It was therefore hypothesized that individuals for whom the category of hostility had been unobtrusively primed with aggressive-sports names (e.g., boxing) would rate an ambiguous target person as more hostile and as more likely to prefer hostile activities relative to persons who were primed with sports names which were not associated with violence (e.g., golf). The results supported the hypotheses, with subjects who were primed with aggressive-sports rating an unrelated target person's behavior as significantly more hostile and as more likely to prefer aggressive activities relative to subjects exposed to sentences containing references to nonaggressive-sports. Discussion includes the potential ramifications for spectator aggression at sporting events.