Real men are made,not born! Incidental exposure to energy drinks may promote men's tolerance of physical pain

The energy drink market has grown exponentially since the debut of Red Bull. Advertising of energy drinks tends to reinforce an emphasis on masculine identification. However, no previous study has addressed the symbolic effect of energy drinks on pain tolerance, that is, a particular masculine characteristic. We conducted a priming‐based experiment to show that energy drink primes elevated men's pain tolerance. Induced conformity to masculinity norms mediated the priming effect of energy drinks on pain tolerance. These findings suggest that mere reminders of masculinity‐related products can lead men to behave accordingly in seemingly irrelevant domains (i.e., pain tolerance). Besides distraction and placebo treatment, the connection between a symbolic masculinity prime and greater tolerance of pain may shed lights on an alternative route for pain control.     

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。     

Boundary conditions for the influence of unfamiliar non-target primes in unconscious evaluative priming: The moderating role of attentional task sets

Evaluative priming by masked emotional stimuli that are not consciously perceived has been taken as evidence that affective stimulus evaluation can also occur unconsciously. However, as masked priming effects were small and frequently observed only for familiar primes that there also presented as visible targets in an evaluative decision task, priming was thought to reflect primarily response activation based on acquired S–R associations and not evaluative semantic stimulus analysis. The present study therefore assessed across three experiments boundary conditions for the emergence of masked evaluative priming effects with unfamiliar primes in an evaluative decision task and investigated the role of the frequency of target repetition on priming with pictorial and verbal stimuli. While familiar primes elicited robust priming effects in all conditions, priming effects by unfamiliar primes were reliably obtained for low repetition (pictures) or unrepeated targets (words), but not for targets repeated at a high frequency. This suggests that unfamiliar masked stimuli only elicit evaluative priming effects when the task set associated with the visible target involves evaluative semantic analysis and is not based on S–R triggered responding as for high repetition targets. The present results therefore converge with the growing body of evidence demonstrating attentional control influences on unconscious processing.     

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.     

The rise and fall of the Pacquiao Effect: Contrastive priming and national identification

We demonstrate in a series of field and controlled experiments that assimilative and contrastive priming effects can be observed in the pattern of self‐concept change in response to a major cultural event. Study 1 used the brief implicit association test (BIAT) to measure national identification of Filipinos online across a period of time that encompassed a national sporting event. The pattern of scores support the hypothesis that while people who were ambivalent about identifying with Filipino concepts exhibited an assimilation effect (i.e. a slight rise in identification after the fight), people who already highly identified with being Filipino experienced a contrast effect (i.e. a slight drop in identification). Study 2 replicated this result five months later with a new sample and ruled out several possible alternative hypotheses. A subsequent controlled experiment and a qualitative investigation consistently supported the hypothesis that the pattern observed in the previous studies is more consistent with assimilative and contrastive priming effects rather than disidentification.     

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.     

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.