Cognitive Research-Principles and Implications最新文献

Advancements in technology now afford surveillance and projection of force beyond the immediate vicinity. When people communicate or act via technology, feelings of subjective distance may attenuate affective and behavioral responses that would otherwise be experienced more intensely. As the psychological effects of technology on remoteness (and its consequent behavior) are thus far understudied, we had participants (N = 205) complete an ostensible insect-killing task in which participants were either close (in the same room) or remote (via webcam) from their targets. Participants who killed insects in the same room felt less negative emotional consequences than participants who killed remotely, suggesting that remoteness can blunt the immediate emotional consequences of killing. In addition, there was an indirect effect, such that participants in the remote condition felt less negative emotion and in turn killed more insects. Examining the features of remoteness that could potentially explain this effect, mediational analyses suggested that the subjectively experienced sense of distance from "killed" targets is the most promising candidate. Undoubtedly, remoteness-inducing technology can afford material benefits, such as the use of drones to decrease the number of soldiers on the ground. This research shows that the distance induced by remoteness can also reduce the immediate and potentially the longer-term emotional impact of killing. In combat and other military settings, as well as in civilian life, it is crucial to understand the influence of technological mediation and the distance it affords.

As adults, we experience discomfort when we hear about how our data has not been safeguarded by apps. Despite this being a common experience, the psychological processes that underlie people's reasoning about data ownership and rights are poorly understood. Using a developmental approach, the current investigation examines the psychology of data ownership. We test the specific proposal that people have a coherent theory of ownership that leads them to view data as owned and under owners' control at the same developmental time point. In both studies (N = 218), children ages 5-12 were told about a user who shares personal and general information with an app. Children then had to decide who it belongs to (Study 1) and who is in charge of it (Study 2). During middle childhood, children view users as owners of personal information and therefore entitled to control it suggesting coherence in their representations of non-physical property types. Findings also suggest that by 8-years-old children have the cognition in place to think of data as property and therefore understand their data rights online.

Recognizing masked perpetrators in real-world surveillance scenarios poses significant challenges due to facial occlusion and degraded image quality. This study investigated the effects of contextual congruency on matching surveillance videos to suspects' photos. Participants (N = 229) completed a face-matching task involving four masked or unmasked video targets paired with either full face or masked photos. Matching accuracy was significantly higher for unmasked faces compared to masked faces, with no significant congruency effect between video and photo conditions. Participants' confidence was generally higher in congruent than incongruent conditions, particularly when viewing full-face videos. The confidence-accuracy relationship was condition-dependent, emerging as significant only when masked videos were paired with masked photographs. These findings emphasize the limitations of human performance in identifying masked individuals under degraded conditions and the constraints of potential strategies for improving face recognition in forensic and surveillance contexts.

The harmful effects of task interruptions on performance in discrete visual-manual reaction-time (RT) tasks are well investigated, but the impact on continuous auditory-verbal memory tasks has received comparably less attention. In the present study, the encoding phase of an auditory-verbal free recall task was interrupted by visual-manual RT tasks. To examine which factors influence the disruptiveness of an interruption during the encoding phase, we manipulated the cognitive workload (low vs. high) associated with the interruption task and the position (early vs. late) of the intervening interruption tasks. Moreover, we manipulated the central code (verbal vs. spatial) in the high-workload interruption task. Results showed decreased free recall with late and high-workload interruptions compared to early and low-workload interruptions. However, the variation of central codes did not influence free recall in the high-workload interruption task. We also examined task trade-offs and found worse performance in the interruption task itself compared to performing it as a single task. These results suggest that memory maintenance in the memory task interferes with response selection in the interruption task. Further, we assume that early interruptions of memory encoding are less harmful than later ones because less primary task information needs to be maintained during interruption task processing. Overall, our study revealed that task interruptions lead to information loss in auditory-verbal memory encoding, highlighting the importance of minimizing interruption costs in work environments where effective communication and information exchange are crucial.

Braille is a tactile writing system that enables individuals to read through the sense of touch. Although letter recognition research in the visual modality has informed reading instruction debates, the processes underlying braille letter recognition have received comparatively less attention which has led to little input from researchers toward educators. In this study, we first quantified the formal properties of braille dots using measures of cue validity and entropy-based informativeness, and we tested whether the 26 letters of the braille alphabet were linearly separable in the six-dimensional binary space defined by dot presence. We then examined letter discriminability in fluent Spanish braille readers using a same-different task that included all possible letter combinations. From participants' accuracy and response time data, we constructed perceptual similarity matrices and applied hierarchical clustering to characterize the structure of braille letter similarity. The resulting clusters revealed a structured perceptual space that reflected both local dot features and global configurations. These results provide a characterization of the perceptual structure of the braille alphabet and show constraints on tactile letter recognition that extend beyond dot overlap, offering a benchmark to guide experimental control, instructional sequencing of letters, and computational models of tactile letter recognition.

A primary aim of human-AI teaming is to achieve better collaborative performance than either can achieve alone. Despite considerable efforts in this direction, issues such as overreliance of users on decision aids continue to be a challenge which prevent this. In this study, we evaluated the potential of non-concurrent advice presentation as a strategy to reduce overreliance in a face-matching task. We conducted three pre-registered experiments examining (a) on-demand binary advice, (b) on-demand similarity ratings, and (c) conditional advice (i.e. advice presented only if participants' initial unaided decision is different from the AI prediction), compared to concurrent advice. Across all experiments, we did not find significant differences in the overall performance of participants in the concurrent vs. experimental conditions. But, we found that participants followed AI advice more when they demanded it. Conversely, when they demanded similarity ratings, they followed advice less. Thus on-demand similarity ratings reduced overreliance on AI compared to concurrent similarity ratings presentation. However, overall, similarity ratings were not more helpful compared to basic advice. We also found that participants were less likely to follow AI advice when presented after their initial unaided decision contradicted the AI prediction and were more confident in rejecting incorrect advice, but not as confident when accepting correct advice. Overall, non-concurrent paradigms have potential to reduce overreliance, but at the cost of underreliance on correct advice.

While people are often experts in perceiving and categorizing faces into meaningful social categories (i.e., race), there are suboptimal scenarios such as mask use that may impair face processing. Here we examined how mask use may differentially impact own- and other-race face processing in social categorization, and the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms using simultaneous eye movement and EEG recording. We found that mask use made participants' face scanning patterns more eyes-focused and consistent, and reduced the differences in both eye movement pattern and early attention-related ERP component P1 between viewing own- and other-race faces. Moreover, mask use did not change how people categorize biracial morphed faces, or the advantage in categorization speed of other-race faces. These results suggest that when perceiving masked faces, information from the eye region may be sufficient for social categorization, and that race-based social categorizations can be impervious to mask use. Interestingly, we found that when viewing other-race faces, where people have less perceptual expertise, those who show more consistent face scanning patterns have more efficient processing of masked faces. These findings have important implications for cross-race face perception, especially when face perception condition becomes suboptimal. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: As mask use has become a common practice in response to respiratory virus outbreaks, it has inadvertently altered both health practices and the complex dynamics of social interaction. In a world that values diversity and cross-racial interactions, understanding how masks influence our cognitive processes during cross-race face perception is not just timely but vital. Given this context, we examined the effect of mask use on race categorization, by systematically investigating eye movement behavior, and neural representations of own versus other-race faces, and how these mask-induced changes are associated with each other. By utilizing simultaneous eye movement and EEG recording, our study reveals that the eye region can significantly influence social categorization, suggesting that race-based categorizations persist even in the presence of masks. Interestingly, we found that for other-race faces with which people have less perceptual expertise, those who adjust to a more consistent face scanning pattern for masked faces have more efficient processing of masked faces. This highlights the importance of individuals' visual routine adaptability when the viewing condition is not optimal. Though the current research is called by the demand for COVID-19, our findings can be generalized to a broader context and enhance our understanding of human visual and social cognition.

Performing under pressure, particularly in multitasking environments, is a critical challenge in both everyday life and high-stakes professions. This study investigated the differential effects of monitoring and outcome pressure on time-sharing performance and allocation of visual attention. Using a within-subjects design, 30 participants completed a recently devised time-sharing task requiring prioritization under three different pressure conditions. We hypothesized that in a high-demand time-sharing environment, outcome pressure would impair task performance and visual sampling of subtasks more than monitoring pressure. To investigate, we recorded participants' task performance metrics and eye movements. However, our confirmatory analyses found no evidence supporting either hypothesis. In contrast, our additional exploratory analyses revealed that monitoring pressure, not outcome pressure, led to a statistically significant performance decrease. Notably, this effect occurred without changes in visual sampling. This unexpected finding reflects the high sensorimotor demands of the task, specifically the need for precise and rapid mouse movements, which may have been disrupted by the participants' heightened self-consciousness under monitoring pressure. Our findings contribute to the literature on the differential effects of monitoring and outcome pressure, with potential implications for high-stakes domains like military operations. In situations requiring fine motor control-such as piloting aircraft or operating drones-monitoring pressure may disrupt performance, even without altering attentional allocation. Similarly, everyday activities like driving under observation (e.g., driving tests) or performing in front of an audience may be affected. Understanding how pressure disrupts performance in such scenarios can inform training and support strategies to mitigate its impact.

Although gaze following is an important socio-interactive process, little is known about how this behavior is affected when multiple gaze cues are encountered in groups. Emerging research suggests that both visual consistency of cues and group size may play a role. For example, in groups of three, a minority of target-congruent gaze cues (or 1/3 faces looking at the target) have been found to facilitate target responses, whereas in groups of five, a majority of target-congruent gaze cues (or 3/5 faces looking at the target) were needed for the same effect. Here, in two preregistered experiments, we provide a high-powered conceptual replication of these past experiments and extend them to examine the possible uniqueness of responses to gaze using a comparison with arrows. We found that a minority of target-congruent gaze and arrow cues significantly facilitated target responses regardless of group size. Furthermore, we found that additional target-congruent cues, either gaze or arrows, led to further significant response facilitation. Thus, initially, responses were facilitated by a minority proportion of target-congruent cues with response times continuing to decrease with increasing numerosity of cues' spatial consistency toward the target. This suggests that humans may use both quorum-like and numerosity evaluation flexibly to guide responses in contexts presenting with multiple social or non-social cues.