When Intertemporal Rewards Are Hedonic,Larger Units of Wait Time Boost Patience

In intertemporal choices between smaller‐sooner (SS) and larger‐later (LL) rewards, five studies reveal that patience for the LL option is influenced by an interactive effect of the measurement units used to express wait time (large vs. small) and the type of the reward (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Specifically, larger time units boost patience, but more so when rewards are hedonic rather than utilitarian. In line with the numerosity heuristic, the effect of time units on patience is mediated by larger time units shrinking wait time perception. This effect arises because hedonic (vs. utilitarian) rewards promote a reliance on heuristics rather than systematic calculations. Therefore, a more calculative mindset diminishes the effect of units even for hedonic rewards and eliminates the hedonic‐utilitarian asymmetry. These results contribute to research on numerosity, intertemporal choice, and hedonic‐utilitarian differences, and offer a simple tool for practitioners to influence patience.     

Both Earlier Times and the Future Are “Front”: The Distinction Between Time‐ and Ego‐Reference‐Points in Mandarin Speakers’ Temporal Representation

Mandarin speakers, like most other language speakers around the world, use spatial terms to talk about time. However, the direction of their mental temporal representation along the front‐back axis remains controversial because they use the spatial term “front” to refer to both earlier times (e.g., front‐year means “the year before last”) and the future (e.g., front‐road means “prospect”). Although the linguistic distinction between time‐ and ego‐reference‐point spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin suggests a promising clarification of the above controversy, there is little empirical evidence verifying this distinction. In this study, Mandarin speakers’ time‐ and ego‐reference‐point temporal representations on three axes (i.e., sagittal, lateral, and vertical) were separately examined through two tasks. In a time‐reference‐point task, Mandarin speakers judged whether the time point of the second picture was earlier or later than the time point of the first picture, while in an ego‐reference‐point task, they judged whether an event or phase had happened in the past or would happen in the future. The results indicate that Mandarin speakers construe an earlier‐times‐in‐front‐of‐later‐times temporal sequence and adopt the front‐to‐the‐future orientation.     

Individual Differences in Children's Understanding of Guilt: Links with Theory of Mind

The author examined the relation between individual differences in children's understanding of guilt and theory of mind (ToM) ability. Two hundred and eighteen 8- to 10-year-old children were asked to define what guilt is and report a personal experience in which they felt this emotion. ToM was assessed with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Children's version; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) and with the Strange Stories test (Happè, 1994). There were marked differences in children's understanding of guilt even after controlling for age. Moreover, high levels of understanding of guilt were associated with high levels of performance on both ToM tests. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Determinants of Scanpath Regularity in Reading

Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research perhaps due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure, using simple sentences that are typically read from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentence processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements. All predictions were confirmed: Sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: Syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.     

Well‐Hidden Regularities: Abstract Uses of in and on Retain an Aspect of Their Spatial Meaning

Prepositions name spatial relationships (e.g., book on a table). But they are also used to convey abstract, non‐spatial relationships (e.g., Adrian is on a roll)—raising the question of how the abstract uses relate to the concrete spatial uses. Despite considerable success in delineating these relationships, no general account exists for the two most frequently extended prepositions: in and on. We test the proposal that what is preserved in abstract uses of these prepositions is the relative degree of control between the located object (the figure) and the reference object (the ground). Across four experiments, we find a continuum of greater figure control for on (e.g., Jordan is on a roll) and greater ground control for in (e.g., Casey is in a depression). These findings bear on accounts of semantic structure and language change, as well as on second language instruction.     

Understanding intentions from actions: Direct perception,inference, and the roles of mirror and mentalizing systems

This review asks whether observers can obtain information about others’ intentions from observation of their actions; and if so, whether this process is performed using direct perceptual or inferential processes (prominent examples of each being the intention understanding theory of mirror neuron function, and mentalizing accounts of intention understanding, respectively). I propose four conditions that should be fulfilled in order to support a direct perception account, and suggest that only two of these conditions are supported by the existing data. I then propose and review three further sources of evidence which have the potential to inform this debate, concluding that the data do not support the direct perception account. In particular, mirror neurons may be involved in lower-level processes of action perception, but there is no evidence to support their involvement in the type of higher-level intention understanding that is proposed by the direct perception account.     

Stroke me for longer this touch feels too short: The effect of pleasant touch on temporal perception

Negative, painful, somatosensory stimulation lengthens the perceived duration of time. However, to date, no research has explored the influence of positive, pleasant, somatosensory stimulation on temporal perception. Here we asked whether gentle stroking touch influences perceptions of duration. Pleasant (gentle) and mildly unpleasant (rough) tactile stimulation was delivered whilst participants estimated the duration of a neutral visual stimulus. Pleasant touch resulted in shorter estimates of duration than unpleasant touch. There was no difference in duration perception in the unpleasant and control conditions. Taken together with the results of previous research (Ogden, Moore, Redfern, & McGlone, 2015), the results of this study suggest that pleasant and painful somatosensory stimulation have opposing effects on temporal perception, and additionally that pleasant touch can alter aspects of perceptual and attentional processing outside the purely affective domain.     

Time flies with music whatever its emotional valence

The present study used a temporal bisection task to investigate whether music affects time estimation differently from a matched auditory neutral stimulus, and whether the emotional valence of the musical stimuli (i.e., sad vs. happy music) modulates this effect. The results showed that, compared to sine wave control music, music presented in a major (happy) or a minor (sad) key shifted the bisection function toward the right, thus increasing the bisection point value (point of subjective equality). This indicates that the duration of a melody is judged shorter than that of a non-melodic control stimulus, thus confirming that “time flies” when we listen to music. Nevertheless, sensitivity to time was similar for all the auditory stimuli. Furthermore, the temporal bisection functions did not differ as a function of musical mode.