Differential attentional allocation and subsequent recognition for young and older adult faces

Studies examining own-age recognition biases report inconsistent results and often utilize paradigms that present faces individually and in isolation. We investigated young and older adults' attention towards young and older faces during learning and whether differential attention influences recognition. Participants viewed complex scenes while their eye movements were recorded; each scene contained two young and two older faces. Half of the participants formed scene impressions and half prepared for a memory test. Participants then completed an old/new face recognition task. Both age groups looked longer at young than older faces; however, only young adults showed an own-age recognition advantage. Participants in the memory condition looked longer at faces but did not show enhanced recognition relative to the impressions condition. Overall, attention during learning did not influence recognition. Our results provide evidence for a young adult face bias in attentional allocation but suggest that longer looking does not necessarily indicate deeper encoding.     

Sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition: A meta-analytic review

We review the literature on sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition. By means of a meta-analysis, we found that girls and women remember more faces than boys and men do (g=0.36), and more female faces (g=0.55), but not more male faces (g=0.08); however, when only male faces are presented, girls and women outperform boys and men (g=0.22). In addition, there is female own-gender bias (g=0.57), but not a male own-gender bias (g= ? 0.03), showing that girls and women remember more female than male faces. It is argued that girls and women have an advantage in face processing and episodic memory, resulting in sex differences for faces, and that the female own-gender bias may stem from an early perceptual expertise for female faces, which may be strengthened by reciprocal interactions and psychological processes directing girls' and women's interest to other females.     

Engaging the motor system with masked orthographic primes: A kinematic analysis

We report two experiments in which participants categorized target words (e.g., BLOOD or CUCUMBER) according to their canonical colour of red or green by pointing to a red square on the left or a green square on the right. Unbeknownst to the participants, the target words were preceded by the prime words “red” or “green”. We found that the curvature of participants’ pointing trajectories was greater following incongruent primes (green–BLOOD) than it was following congruent primes, indicating that individuals initiated a response on the basis of the prime and then corrected that response mid-flight. This finding establishes that the processing of masked orthographic stimuli extends down to include the formulation of an overt manual response.     

The time course of gaze bias in visual decision tasks

In three experiments, we used eyetracking to investigate the time course of biases in looking behaviour during visual decision making. Our study replicated and extended prior research by Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, and Scheier (2003), and Simion and Shimojo (2006). Three groups of participants performed forced-choice decisions in a two-alternative free-viewing condition (Experiment 1a), a two-alternative gaze-contingent window condition (Experiment 1b), and an eight-alternative free-viewing condition (Experiment 1c). Participants viewed photographic art images and were instructed to select the one that they preferred (preference task), or the one that they judged to be photographed most recently (recency task). Across experiments and tasks, we demonstrated robust bias towards the chosen item in either gaze duration, gaze frequency or both. The present gaze bias effect was less task specific than those reported previously. Importantly, in the eight-alternative condition we demonstrated a very early gaze bias effect, which rules out a postdecision response-related explanation.     

Gaze bias: Selective encoding and liking effects

People look longer at things that they choose than things they do not choose. How much of this tendency—the gaze bias effect—is due to a liking effect compared to the information encoding aspect of the decision-making process? Do these processes compete under certain conditions? We monitored eye movements during a visual decision-making task with four decision prompts: Like, dislike, older, and newer. The gaze bias effect was present during the first dwell in all conditions except the dislike condition, when the preference to look at the liked item and the goal to identify the disliked item compete. Colour content (whether a photograph was colour or black-and-white), not decision type, influenced the gaze bias effect in the older/newer decisions because colour is a relevant feature for such decisions. These interactions appear early in the eye movement record, indicating that gaze bias is influenced during information encoding.     

Belief–logic conflict resolution in syllogistic reasoning: Inspection-time evidence for a parallel-process model

An experiment is reported examining dual-process models of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning using a problem complexity manipulation and an inspection-time method to monitor processing latencies for premises and conclusions. Endorsement rates indicated increased belief bias on complex problems, a finding that runs counter to the “belief-first” selective scrutiny model, but which is consistent with other theories, including “reasoning-first” and “parallel-process” models. Inspection-time data revealed a number of effects that, again, arbitrated against the selective scrutiny model. The most striking inspection-time result was an interaction between logic and belief on premise-processing times, whereby belief – logic conflict problems promoted increased latencies relative to non-conflict problems. This finding challenges belief-first and reasoning-first models, but is directly predicted by parallel-process models, which assume that the outputs of simultaneous heuristic and analytic processing streams lead to an awareness of belief – logic conflicts than then require time-consuming resolution.     

A cross-cultural study of hindsight bias and conditional probabilistic reasoning

Hindsight bias is a mistaken belief that one could have predicted a given outcome once the outcome is known. Choi and Nisbett (2000 Choi, I. and Nisbett, R. E. 2000. Cultural psychology of surprise: Holistic theories and recognition of contradiction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79: 890–905. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that Koreans showed stronger hindsight bias than Americans, and explained the results using the distinction between analytic cognition (Westerners) and holistic cognition (Easterners). The purpose of the present study was to see whether hindsight bias is stronger among Easterners than among Westerners using a probability judgement task, and to test an “explicit–implicit” hypothesis and a “rule-dialectics” hypothesis. We predicted that the implicit process is more active among Easterners to generate hindsight bias, and that Easterners are more dialectical thinkers, whereas Westerners are more rule-based thinkers. French, British, Japanese, and Korean participants were asked to make probabilistic judgements in a Good Samaritan scenario (Experiment 1) and in a scenario including conditional probabilistic judgement (Experiment 2). In both Experiments, we presume that the implicit revision of causal models is made just by being given unexpected outcome information, and that explicit revision is made by being asked to point out possible factors for an unexpected outcome. In the results Easterners showed greater hindsight bias generally and it was greater in the Good Samaritan scenario. We conclude that the reason why hindsight bias was lower among Westerners is primarily that they tried to follow a rule to suppress the bias.     

Even better than the real thing: Alternative outcome bias affects decision judgements and decision regret

Three experiments demonstrated that decisions resulting in considerable amounts of profit, but missed alternative outcomes of greater profits, were rated lower in quality and produced more regret than did decisions that returned lesser (or equal) amounts of profit but either did not miss or missed only slightly better alternatives. These effects were mediated by upward counterfactuals and moderated by participants’ orientation to the decision context. That decision evaluations were affected by the availability and magnitude of alternative outcomes rather than the positivity of actual outcomes is counter to the outcome bias effect—a bias in which decisions are rated more positively when they led to more positive outcomes (despite a priori probabilities associated with the decision outcomes). Experiment 3 demonstrated that these effects represent a bias that occurs even when it is clear that the process by which decisions were made followed rational decision processes. This research suggests that when alternative worlds are even better than the desirable outcomes experienced, affect and cognition may be more strongly linked to the magnitude of alternative realities than to obtained outcomes.     

On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases

Two critical thinking skills—the tendency to avoid myside bias and to avoid one-sided thinking—were examined in three different experiments involving over 1200 participants and across two different paradigms. Robust indications of myside bias were observed in all three experiments. Participants gave higher evaluations to arguments that supported their opinions than those that refuted their prior positions. Likewise, substantial one-side bias was observed—participants were more likely to prefer a one-sided to a balanced argument. There was substantial variation in both types of bias, but we failed to find that participants of higher cognitive ability displayed less myside bias or less one-side bias. Although cognitive ability failed to associate with the magnitude of the myside bias, the strength and content of the prior opinion did predict the degree of myside bias shown. Our results indicate that cognitive ability—as defined by traditional psychometric indicators—turns out to be surprisingly independent of two of the most important critical thinking tendencies discussed in the literature.     

Impression making by résumé layout: Its impact on the probability of being shortlisted

This study examines the effect of the graphical layout of résumés on the shortlisting of applicants for employment interviews. Previous research has investigated the effect of bad printing quality, but this research has explored the impact of a creative layout of résumés of equal quality. A sample of 90 respondents (half professional recruiters, half students) was asked to rank 12 candidates applying for one vacancy. All 12 candidates were presented an equal number of times in three different layout formats—formal on white paper, coloured, and “creative” design. Results suggest that the graphical design may have a substantial impact on the likelihood of being shortlisted, where formal designs were preferred over the “creative” layouts. Professional recruiters were only slightly less influenced by the layout than nonprofessionals. Implications for employers and jobseekers are discussed.