Illusory trust: Kanizsa shapes incidentally increase trust and willingness to invest

Previous research has shown that the completion of basic perceptual processes is intrinsically pleasant. In the absence of diagnostic and objective cues to trustworthiness, nondiagnostic factors such as positive affect can incidentally lead to reported and behavioral trust. On the basis of these two premises, it was tested whether positive affect from the completion of perceptual processes has implications for the formation of trust in first-time business-consumer interactions. We tested this hypothesis in four experiments, using the famous Kanizsa illusion as an exemplary perceptual process that has been shown to trigger positive affect. We found that participants trusted companies who featured a Kanizsa shape as their logo more than companies with closely matched logos that did not allow for the completion of a basic perceptual process. This was evident on self-reported (Experiment 1) as well as behavioral (Experiments 2–4) measures of trust. This effect even persisted under incentivized conditions (Experiment 4) and was partially mediated by the intrinsic pleasantness of perception (Experiment 3). These findings for the first time demonstrate that positive affect is not the only consequence of perception, but rather has further trickle-down consequences for social judgments and economic decision making. Perceptual illusions seem to elicit illusory trust. Therefore, these novel findings bear important implications not only for both logo design and marketing but also for consumer decision making.     

Endings as gain: The capacity to end and its role in creating space for growth

The paper describes an application of child psychotherapy in a paediatric setting. It examines the crucial part that attention to endings played in a clinical intervention where the phantasy of going on for ever threatened to inhibit growth. Case material is used to illustrate the different meanings and functions of endings and their significance in terms of parenting issues and developmental tasks. In this context the concept of negative elasticity is put forward as a useful tool for exploring the nature of boundaries. The final part of the paper focuses on the value of the external-reality experience of ending, its relationship to potential professional omnipotence and the importance of sustaining a tension between inner- and outer-world factors.     

Mechanisms behind hazard perception of warning signs: An EEG study

Warning signs are the most effective way to alert people to hazards in the industries, architecture, and transportation. To better understand how these warning signs prompted hazard, this study investigated the intrinsic mechanism of hazard perception of warning signs, including warning words (low versus high hazard levels) and surrounding shapes (upright triangle versus circle). We recruited 18 participants and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG). We found that a combination of high-hazard-level words and an upright triangle shape significantly elicited more negative N300 and increased theta-band (3–8 Hz) synchronization, but reduced beta-band (15–30 Hz) desynchronization. The N300 component represented the emotional arousal strength, theta oscillations reflected the engagement of retrieval of emotional experiences from episodic memory, and beta oscillation connoted the semantic encoding. Thus, these findings suggested that a high-hazard-level combination had the ability to obtain high priority in cognitive processing. The EEG pattern changes allowed us to assess whether the hazard perception of warning signs was high or low, which could be an accurate indicator to better evaluate the design of warning signs.     

“It's hip to be square”: Grounding moral traits in geometric shapes

To examine the hypothesis that there is a metaphoric link between geometric shapes (square vs. circle) and moral traits (integrity vs. deviousness), we conducted three experiments in China. In Study 1, integrity-related words were classified faster when embedded in a square than in a circle. Conversely, deviousness-related words were classified faster in a circle than in a square. Study 2 found that a person who preferred squares was perceived as more righteous and that a person who preferred circles was perceived as more devious. Study 3 revealed that the participants were more likely to pair a square with integrity-related words and a circle with deviousness-related words in a memory task. Given the negation of square-integrity and circle-deviousness emotional congruence, the findings of this research show that shape-related information is a meaningful part of the mental representations of moral traits.     

Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew

Letter names play an important role in early literacy. Previous studies of letter name learning have examined the Latin alphabet. The current study tested learners of Hebrew, comparing their patterns of performance and types of errors with those of English learners. We analyzed letter-naming data from 645 Israeli children who had not begun formal reading instruction: a younger group (mean age 5 years 2 months) and an older group (mean age 6 years 2 months). Children's errors often involved letters with similar shapes or letters adjacent to one another in the alphabet. Most Hebrew letter names are not very similar to one another phonologically, and there were fewer phonologically based confusions than in English. We found both general frequency effects and frequency effects that reflected the letters in individual children's names. On average, girls knew more letter names than did boys. The results suggest that letter name learning follows similar principles across languages.     

Developmental changes in the processing of hierarchical shapes continue into adolescence

The present study was designed to trace the normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. We presented pairs of hierarchical shapes to children and adults and asked them to indicate whether the two shapes were the same or different at either the global or the local level. In Experiments 1 (6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults) and 2 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli centrally. All age groups responded faster on global trials than local trials (global precedence effect), but the bias was stronger in children and diminished to the adult level between 10 and 14 years of age. In Experiment 3 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli in the left or right visual field so that they were transmitted first to the contralateral hemisphere. All age groups responded faster on local trials when stimuli were presented in the right visual field (left hemisphere); reaction times on global trials were independent of visual field. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that by 10 years of age the hemispheres have adult-like specialization for the processing of hierarchical shapes, at least when attention is directed to the global versus local level. Nevertheless, their greater bias in Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that 10-year-olds are less able than adults to modulate attention to the output from local versus global channels-perhaps because they are less able to ignore distractors and perhaps because the cerebral hemispheres are less able to engage in parallel processing.     

Cross-linguistic comparison of utterance shapes in Korean- and English-learning children: An ambient language effect

This study compared vocal development in Korean- and English-learning infants and examined ambient-language effects focusing on predominant utterance shapes. Vocalization samples were obtained from 14 Korean-learning children and 14 English-learning children, who ranged in age from 9 to 21 months, in monolingual environments using day-long audio recordings. The analyzers, who were blind to participants’ demographic information, identified utterance shapes to determine functional vocal repertoires through naturalistic listening simulating the caregiver’s natural mode of listening. The results showed no cross-linguistic differences in the amount of vocal output or the proportion of canonical syllables. However, the infants from the two language backgrounds showed differences regarding the predominant canonical utterance shapes. The percentage of VCV utterances in Korean-learning children was higher than in English-learning children while CV syllables predominated in the English-learning children. We speculate that the difference between the predominant utterance shapes of Korean- and English-learning children could be associated with differences in early lexical items typically acquired in the two language groups.     

Extrafoveal Processing in Categorical Search for Geometric Shapes: General Tendencies and Individual Variations

The paper addresses the capabilities and limitations of extrafoveal processing during a categorical visual search. Previous research has established that a target could be identified from the very first or without any saccade, suggesting that extrafoveal perception is necessarily involved. However, the limits in complexity defining the processed information are still not clear. We performed four experiments with a gradual increase of stimuli complexity to determine the role of extrafoveal processing in searching for the categorically defined geometric shape. The series of experiments demonstrated a significant role of extrafoveal processing while searching for simple two-dimensional shapes and its gradual decrease in a condition with more complicated three-dimensional shapes. The factors of objects’ spatial orientation and distractor homogeneity significantly influenced both reaction time and the number of saccades required to identify a categorically defined target. An analysis of the individual p-value distributions revealed pronounced individual differences in using extrafoveal analysis and allowed examination of the performance of each particular participant. The condition with the forced prohibition of eye movements enabled us to investigate the efficacy of covert attention in the condition with complicated shapes. Our results indicate that both foveal and extrafoveal processing are simultaneously involved during a categorical search, and the specificity of their interaction is determined by the spatial orientation of objects, type of distractors, the prohibition to use overt attention, and individual characteristics of the participants.