Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (33)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (33)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Journal article (33)
Language
- English (33) (remove)
Keywords
- ideomotor theory (4)
- masked priming (4)
- motor control (3)
- perception (3)
- unconscious processing (3)
- Psychologie (2)
- action (2)
- body ownership (2)
- experimental design (2)
- expertise (2)
In contrast to classical theories of cognitive control, recent evidence suggests that cognitive control and unconscious automatic processing influence each other. First, masked semantic priming, an index of unconscious automatic processing, depends on attention to semantics induced by a previously executed task. Second, cognitive control operations (e.g., implementation of task sets indicating how to process a particular stimulus) can be activated by masked task cues, presented outside awareness. In this study, we combined both lines of research. We investigated in three experiments whether induction tasks and presentation of visible or masked task cues, which signal subsequent semantic or perceptual tasks but do not require induction task execution, comparably modulate masked semantic priming. In line with previous research, priming was consistently larger following execution of a semantic rather than a perceptual induction task. However, we observed in experiment 1 (masked letter cues) a reversed priming pattern following task cues (larger priming following cues signaling perceptual tasks) compared to induction tasks. Experiment 2 (visible letter cues) and experiment 3 (visible color cues) showed that this reversed priming pattern depended only on apriori associations between task cues and task elements (task set dominance), but neither on awareness nor on the verbal or non-verbal format of the cues. These results indicate that task cues have the power to modulate subsequent masked semantic priming through attentional mechanisms. Task-set dominance conceivably affects the time course of task set activation and inhibition in response to task cues and thus the direction of their modulatory effects on priming.
With ubiquitous computing, problems can be solved using more strategies than ever, though many strategies feature subpar performance. Here, we explored whether and how simple advice regarding when to use which strategy can improve performance. Specifically, we presented unfamiliar alphanumeric equations (e.g., A + 5 = F) and asked whether counting up the alphabet from the left letter by the indicated number resulted in the right letter. In an initial choice block, participants could engage in one of three cognitive strategies: (a) internal counting, (b) internal retrieval of previously generated solutions, or (c) computer-mediated external retrieval of solutions. Participants belonged to one of two groups: they were either instructed to first try internal retrieval before using external retrieval, or received no specific use instructions. In a subsequent internal block with identical instructions for both groups, external retrieval was made unavailable. The ‘try internal retrieval first’ instruction in the choice block led to pronounced benefits (d = .76) in the internal block. Benefits were due to facilitated creation and retrieval of internal memory traces and possibly also due to improved strategy choice. These results showcase how simple strategy advice can greatly help users navigate cognitive environments. More generally, our results also imply that uninformed use of external tools (i.e., technology) can bear the risk of not developing and using even more superior internal processing strategies.
We assessed the relation of creativity and unethical behaviour by manipulating the thinking style of participants (N = 450 adults) and measuring the impact of this manipulation on the prevalence of dishonest behaviour. Participants performed one of three inducer tasks: the alternative uses task to promote divergent thinking, the remote associates task to promote convergent thinking, or a simple classification task for rule-based thinking. Before and after this manipulation, participants conducted the mind game as a straightforward measure of dishonesty. Dishonest behaviour increased from before to after the intervention, but we found no credible evidence that this increase differed between induced mindsets. Exploratory analyses did not support any relation of trait creativity and dishonesty either. We conclude that the influence of creative thinking on unethical behaviour seems to be more ambiguous than assumed in earlier research or might be restricted to specific populations or contexts.
Repeatedly encountering a stimulus biases the observer’s affective response and evaluation of the stimuli. Here we provide evidence for a causal link between mere exposure to fictitious news reports and subsequent voting behavior. In four pre-registered online experiments, participants browsed through newspaper webpages and were tacitly exposed to names of fictitious politicians. Exposure predicted voting behavior in a subsequent mock election, with a consistent preference for frequent over infrequent names, except when news items were decidedly negative. Follow-up analyses indicated that mere media presence fuels implicit personality theories regarding a candidate’s vigor in political contexts. News outlets should therefore be mindful to cover political candidates as evenly as possible.
Neuroanatomical variations across the visual field of human observers go along with corresponding variations of the perceived coarseness of visual stimuli. Here we show that horizontal gratings are perceived as having lower spatial frequency than vertical gratings when occurring along the horizontal meridian of the visual field, whereas gratings occurring along the vertical meridian show the exact opposite effect. This finding indicates a new peculiarity of processes operating along the cardinal axes of the visual field.
Changes in body perception often arise when observers are confronted with related yet discrepant multisensory signals. Some of these effects are interpreted as outcomes of sensory integration of various signals, whereas related biases are ascribed to learning-dependent recalibration of coding individual signals. The present study explored whether the same sensorimotor experience entails changes in body perception that are indicative of multisensory integration and those that indicate recalibration. Participants enclosed visual objects by a pair of visual cursors controlled by finger movements. Then either they judged their perceived finger posture (indicating multisensory integration) or they produced a certain finger posture (indicating recalibration). An experimental variation of the size of the visual object resulted in systematic and opposite biases of the perceived and produced finger distances. This pattern of results is consistent with the assumption that multisensory integration and recalibration had a common origin in the task we used.
When telling a lie, humans might engage in stronger monitoring of their behavior than when telling the truth. Initial evidence has indeed pointed towards a stronger recruitment of capacity-limited monitoring processes in dishonest than honest responding, conceivably resulting from the necessity to overcome automatic tendencies to respond honestly. Previous results suggested monitoring to be confined to response execution, however, whereas the current study goes beyond these findings by specifically probing for post-execution monitoring. Participants responded (dis)honestly to simple yes/no questions in a first task and switched to an unrelated second task after a response–stimulus interval of 0 ms or 1000 ms. Dishonest responses did not only prolong response times in Task 1, but also in Task 2 with a short response–stimulus interval. These findings support the assumption that increased monitoring for dishonest responses extends beyond mere response execution, a mechanism that is possibly tuned to assess the successful completion of a dishonest act.
The present study examined the perceptual consequences of learning arbitrary mappings between visual stimuli and hand movements. Participants moved a small cursor with their unseen hand twice to a large visual target object and then judged either the relative distance of the hand movements (Exp.1), or the relative number of dots that appeared in the two consecutive target objects (Exp.2) using a two-alternative forced choice method. During a learning phase, the numbers of dots that appeared in the target object were correlated with the hand movement distance. In Exp.1, we observed that after the participants were trained to expect many dots with larger hand movements, they judged movements made to targets with many dots as being longer than the same movements made to targets with few dots. In Exp.2, another group of participants who received the same training judged the same number of dots as smaller when larger rather than smaller hand movements were executed. When many dots were paired with smaller hand movements during the learning phase of both experiments, no significant changes in the perception of movements and of visual stimuli were observed. These results suggest that changes in the perception of body states and of external objects can arise when certain body characteristics co-occur with certain characteristics of the environment. They also indicate that the (dis)integration of multimodal perceptual signals depends not only on the physical or statistical relation between these signals, but on which signal is currently attended.
The sociomotor framework outlines a possible role of social action effects on human action control, suggesting that anticipated partner reactions are a major cue to represent, select, and initiate own body movements. Here, we review studies that elucidate the actual content of social action representations and that explore factors that can distinguish action control processes involving social and inanimate action effects. Specifically, we address two hypotheses on how the social context can influence effect-based action control: first, by providing unique social features such as body-related, anatomical codes, and second, by orienting attention towards any relevant feature dimensions of the action effects. The reviewed empirical work presents a surprisingly mixed picture: while there is indirect evidence for both accounts, previous studies that directly addressed the anatomical account showed no signs of the involvement of genuinely social features in sociomotor action control. Furthermore, several studies show evidence against the differentiation of social and non-social action effect processing, portraying sociomotor action representations as remarkably non-social. A focus on enhancing the social experience in future studies should, therefore, complement the current database to establish whether such settings give rise to the hypothesized influence of social context.
Previous research has revealed changes in the perception of objects due to changes of object-oriented actions. In present study, we varied the arm and finger postures in the context of a virtual reaching and grasping task and tested whether this manipulation can simultaneously affect the perceived size and distance of external objects. Participants manually controlled visual cursors, aiming at reaching and enclosing a distant target object, and judged the size and distance of this object. We observed that a visual-proprioceptive discrepancy introduced during the reaching part of the action simultaneously affected the judgments of target distance and of target size (Experiment 1). A related variation applied to the grasping part of the action affected the judgments of size, but not of distance of the target (Experiment 2). These results indicate that perceptual effects observed in the context of actions can directly arise through sensory integration of multimodal redundant signals and indirectly through perceptual constancy mechanisms.