Visual context processing and its development in gamers and non-gamers

Visual context processing was investigated in both action video game players and nonplayers using the Ebbinghaus illusion task (N = 312, 39.4% female) in a cross-sectional study design. When presented in context, players showed markedly poorer target size discrimination accuracy compared with nonplayers in the 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-years old age groups, but this difference was reduced in 10-years old group and diminished in adults. When presented in isolation (no-context), the two groups displayed similar performance in all age groups. Furthermore, nonplayers (linear) and players (bell curve) showed profoundly different age-related differences in context processing. These findings provide evidence that players might have enhanced perceptual bias to process visual context in the transition from early childhood to early adolescence, and the differences between the two groups start at early ages and continue with distinct developmental profiles.     

Thinking disposition,thinking style,and susceptibility to causal illusion predict fake news discriminability

Acceptance of fake news is probably modulated by an intricate interplay of social, cultural, and political factors. In this study, we investigated whether individual-level cognitive factors related to thinking and decision making could influence the tendency to accept fake news. A group of volunteers responded to a COVID19-related fake news discrimination scale as well as to questionnaires assessing their thinking style (reflective vs. intuitive) and thinking disposition (actively open-mindedness). Furthermore, they completed a computerized contingency learning task aimed at measuring their tendency to develop a causal illusion, a cognitive bias leading to perceive causal connections between non-contingent events. More actively open-minded and more reflective individuals presented higher fake news discrimination scores. In addition, those who developed weaker causal illusions in the contingency learning task were also more accurate at differentiating between fake and legitimate news. Actively open-minded thinking was the main contributor in a regression model predicting fake news discrimination.     

场依存性与独立性认知方式对视动错觉的影响

为探讨认知方式对视动性错觉的影响,对100名男性军校学员进行了棒框测验,15名高分者和15名低分者分别作为场依存组和场独立组。每名被试随机给予一系列视动阶跃刺激(5,10,15,20,30,40,60,80,100,120度/秒),每个刺激持续20秒。记录被试视动错觉出现的潜伏期和错觉模糊量。研究结果表明:1.场依存组被试的错觉潜伏期短于场独立组,它与刺激速度呈幂函数关系,而场独立组潜伏期随刺激速度的增加呈直线下降;2.在5—120度/秒的范围内,两组被试错觉量回归成两条直线,两直线回归系数无显著性差异,而截距差别十分显著。因此,场依存性/独立性认知方式是视动错觉个体差异性的一种重要影响因素,它对军事飞行员的心理学选拔和训练有着重要的意义。     

福至心灵：幸运感知对消费行为的影响及其理论解释

寻求幸运的行为从古至今广泛存在于人类生活的方方面面,幸运感知如何影响消费行为的理论成果为消费研究领域做出了重要贡献。通过系统回顾相关文献发现,个体的幸运感知会对冒险行为、独特性寻求、传染效应、特定事物的态度和幸运消费产生影响。归因理论、人格特质理论、认知启动理论、反事实思维、社会比较理论、控制感理论和启发式决策可以用于解释幸运感知对消费行为的影响。未来研究应深化幸运感知影响消费行为的作用机制并拓展边界条件及其双向结果。     

身体表征的分离:二分解释模型及其证据

身体表征是一种内部结构,它具有追踪身体状态并对其进行编码的功能。这种结构可以对身体进行错误的表征,并可以从身体中分离出来。来自海豹肢症与躯体失认症等方面的病例,证实部分身体畸形与脑损伤患者的身体表征存在分离;来自橡胶手错觉与全身错觉的实验证据,验证了健康个体身体表征分离的事实。基于上述证据,以身体图式和身体意象为二分维度的模型解释了身体表征的分离。未来的研究可以从神经心理学实验和虚拟现实技术着手,对身体表征的分离进行深入探究。     

Individual differences in susceptibility to experimentally induced phantom sensations

We investigated individual differences in susceptibility to two vibration-induced phantom illusions, i.e. illusory arm extension and nose prolongation (“Pinocchio illusion”). Vibration was applied to the biceps brachii tendon of 32 healthy participants. Susceptibility to the illusions was quantified by vividness ratings and by ratings of the amount of illusory position changes of the arm and illusory shape changes of the nose. Participants also completed the Perceptual Aberration (PA) and the Need for Cognition (NFC) inventories. PA reflects the frequency of spontaneously experienced body schema alterations and NFC a person's tendency to cognitively structure experiences. PA was positively correlated with participants’ susceptibility to illusory arm extension and, exclusively for men, also to nose elongation. A high NFC was weakly associated with a high susceptibility for the Pinocchio illusion. By inference, these findings indicate a physiological basis of PA and a cognitive mediation of experimentally induced phantom sensations.     

Can you tickle yourself if you swap bodies with someone else?

The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated “tickle” sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations. In addition, evidence was found that a version of the rubber hand illusion exists within the body transfer illusion. We situate our findings within the larger debate over sensory attenuation: (1) there is an attenuation of prediction errors that depends upon the context in which sensory input is predicted (i.e., efference copy), and (2) sensory attenuation is a necessary consequence of self-generated movement irrespective of context (i.e., active inference). The results support the notion of active inference.     

Higher-order cognitive factors affect subjective but not proprioceptive aspects of self-representation in the rubber hand illusion

In the current study we look at whether subjective and proprioceptive aspects of selfrepresentation are separable components subserved by distinct systems of multisensory integration. We used the rubber hand illusion (RHI) to draw the location of the ‘self’ away from the body, towards extracorporeal space (Out Condition), thereby violating top-down information about the body location. This was compared with the traditional RHI which drew position of the ‘self’ towards the body (In Condition). We were successfully able to draw proprioceptive position of the limbs in and out from the body suggesting body perception is a purely bottom-up process, resistant to top-down effects. Conversely, we found subjective self-representation was altered by the violation of top-down body information – as the strong association of subjective and proprioceptive factors found in the In Condition became non-significant in the Out Condition. Interestingly, we also found evidence that subjective embodiment can modulate tactile perception.     

Body-ownership for actively operated non-corporeal objects

Rubber-hand and virtual-hand illusions show that people can perceive body ownership for objects under suitable conditions. Bottom-up approaches assume that perceived ownership emerges from multisensory matching (e.g., between seen object and felt hand movements), whereas top-down approaches claim that novel body parts are integrated only if they resemble some part of a permanent internal body representation. We demonstrate that healthy adults perceive body ownership for a virtual balloon changing in size, and a virtual square changing in size or color, in synchrony with movements of their real hand. This finding is inconsistent with top-down approaches and amounts to an existence proof that non-corporeal events can be perceived as body parts if their changes are systematically related to one’s actions. It also implies that previous studies with passive-stimulation techniques might have underestimated the plasticity of body representations and put too much emphasis on the resemblance between viewed object and real hand.     

Balancing awareness: Vestibular signals modulate visual consciousness in the absence of awareness

The processing of visual and vestibular information is crucial for perceiving self-motion. Visual cues, such as optic flow, have been shown to induce and alter vestibular percepts, yet the role of vestibular information in shaping visual awareness remains unclear. Here we investigated if vestibular signals influence the access to awareness of invisible visual signals. Using natural vestibular stimulation (passive yaw rotations) on a vestibular self-motion platform, and optic flow masked through continuous flash suppression (CFS) we tested if congruent visual–vestibular information would break interocular suppression more rapidly than incongruent information. We found that when the unseen optic flow was congruent with the vestibular signals perceptual suppression as quantified with the CFS paradigm was broken more rapidly than when it was incongruent. We argue that vestibular signals impact the formation of visual awareness through enhanced access to awareness for congruent multisensory stimulation.