Working memory consolidation (WMC) is known to consume central attentional resources, impairing performance on subsequent attention-demanding tasks. However, the specific nature of this impairment, particularly its effect on the initial stage of visual selection, remains unclear. The current study tested three competing hypotheses: No-suppression, Pure-temporal-suppression, and Spatial-suppression hypotheses. We used a sequential target-matching task where the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between a target item and a subsequent probe item was varied to modulate the state of consolidation. Experiment 1 revealed that a spatial cue before the probe item failed to guide attention during consolidation (10-ms ISI) but did so effectively after consolidation was complete (1,000-ms ISI), thus ruling out the No-suppression hypothesis. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that when a larger target item encompassed the cue's location, the cueing effect was restored during consolidation (0 and 150-ms ISIs), a finding that argues against the Pure-temporal-suppression hypothesis. Taken together, these findings support the Spatial-suppression hypothesis, revealing that visual selection during WMC is governed by an attentional window whose size is flexibly tied to the consolidated representation. This work clarifies the nature of the attentional bottleneck in WMC, reframing it as a spatial phenomenon.
Previous research has shown that observers can predict the target object of a grasping action from early hand preshaping cues. However, critical questions remain unexplored: how predictions adapt to the available kinematic information and evolve throughout the movement timeline. We address these fundamental gaps by combining kinematic analysis with machine-learning approaches. Using motion capture technology, we recorded reach-to-grasp actions toward large and small objects and had participants predict target size from hand kinematics at varying time points. Our analysis revealed that prediction performance not only evolved with increasing information but, crucially, differed significantly between target size choices. To provide insight into the participants' performance, we developed a comparative framework using two distinct machine learning models: Support Vector Machines modeling kinematic information and convolutional neural network-recurrent neural networks extracting visual patterns. This comparison indicates that predicting the target objects of observed actions adapts to the available kinematic information depending on the target object, with prediction changing over time accordingly. These findings advance our understanding of action prediction and have significant implications for social cognition and human-machine interaction.
Proactive interference (PI) is a key mechanism in forgetting, making it important to examine factors that may alleviate its detrimental effects. In a preregistered online study with 207 English-speaking 18- to 60-year-old adults, we probed block-by-block spontaneous mnemonic strategy use in a categorised word list recall task with increasing PI, followed by release from PI. Based on the blockwise self-reports, participants were classified as no strategy users, maintenance strategy users (e.g., repetition), or manipulation strategy users (e.g., grouping, creating a story). Strategy users formed a majority and showed better recall than no strategy users, with the highest recall rates in manipulation strategy users. The detrimental effects of PI on word recall were similar in the three subgroups. Self-reports suggested increased shifts of the selected strategy when moving from the last PI block to release from PI. Altogether, the present results indicate that self-generated memory strategies are (a) common in adults, (b) flexibly used when faced with a qualitative change in task demands, (c) associated with better memory performance especially concerning more sophisticated strategies involving mental manipulation of the memoranda, but (d) do not prevent the buildup of PI as they may not provide enough differentiation between current and previous category members.
Prior research demonstrates that collective discourse surrounding shared experiences can impact subsequent memory. Correct information provided by a partner can improve the accuracy of subsequent memories, while inaccurate partner-provided information can decrease the accuracy of such recollections. Despite this focus on how post-event information provided by one's peers can impact memory performance, the manner in which partner-provided inferential information affects memory has not been investigated. To date, the effects of inferences on subsequent memory performance have been primarily limited to examining situations where inferences were induced using narrative or pictoral stimuli. In the present study, we explored the influence of partner-provided inferential information on post-event memory accuracy. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 105) were instructed to read stories designed to induce inferences and were then randomly assigned to answer questions about the stories either alone or with a partner who exposed the participant to both accurate and inferential details about the story. Experiment 2 (n = 208) utilized a similar design but additionally manipulated the partner's self-reported confidence in their own memory. Across both experiments, participants were more likely to falsely recognize inferences when those inferences were supplied by a partner. In Experiment 2, participants working with a highly confident partner falsely recognized more inferences than those paired with a low-confidence partner or working alone. These results suggest that collaborating with a partner, especially one expressing high confidence, reduced subsequent memory accuracy, indicating that confidence may enhance the transmission and acceptance of inferential information.
Observers' emotional states may bias the perception of single emotional faces; however, little is known about the similar biases in the perception of face ensembles. In the present study, we explored how observers' state anxiety influences the perceived average expression intensity of the ensembles of fearful and angry faces. Participants performed the estimation task in the neutral or anxious state, and the face ensembles varied in mean facial expression intensity. We obtained the emotion-congruence-amplification effect - overestimation of a perceived average intensity in processing emotional face ensembles in an anxious state. This effect was stronger for the ensembles with lower mean intensity and for fearful compared to angry faces. The explanation of the emotion-congruence-amplification effect may be based on an attention mechanism, which focuses cognitive resources on the most salient or emotionally intense elements in an ensemble, thereby amplifying their impact. These findings deepen our understanding of how individuals' emotional states may bias social perception of emotions in group contexts.
Visual crowding is the impairment in recognising an object in the presence of nearby clutter. Two prominent characteristics of crowding are that flankers similar to the target cause more crowding than dissimilar ones, and radially located flankers cause more crowding than tangential ones. These observations are based on studies where a target is surrounded by a small number of flankers. Recent evidence, however, suggests that crowding behaves differently in the presence of a dense set of flankers. Here, we examined the effect of target-flanker similarity and radial-tangential anisotropy in dense crowding in order to probe the mechanisms underlying crowding. Experiment 1 found that the presence of dissimilar flankers reduced crowding in sparse settings, particularly in radial locations, as expected, but paradoxically increased crowding in dense settings. This effect was not attributable to perceived grouping. Experiment 2A manipulated the number of similar flankers adjacent to the target embedded in a dense set of dissimilar flankers and found that just one pair of nearby similar flankers drastically impaired target identification. Experiment 2B manipulated the number of dissimilar flankers adjacent to a target embedded within similar flankers, which revealed a modest improvement in performance with increasing number of dissimilar flankers. There was no evidence of radial-tangential anisotropy in Experiment 2A or 2B. These findings are discussed in relation to prevalent theories of crowding. The results, particularly that of Experiment 2A, lend support to the nearest neighbour hypothesis, which explains crowding as a failure of target segmentation from its immediately adjacent neighbours.
Deciding whether two images show the same person sounds easy, but the average individual achieves accuracy of 60% to 90% on many unfamiliar face matching tasks. However, overall task performance can be improved by combining the identification decisions made by different individuals through the “wisdom of the crowd” effect. We investigated whether similar gains occur when combining multiple decisions made by the same individual, via a “wisdom of the crowd within” effect. Participants completed the same unfamiliar face matching task three times: in one session (Experiment 1), or over 3 weeks (Experiment 2). We found a wisdom of the crowd within effect in both experiments, which became significant after two responses and was larger with three. Surprisingly, the delay did not offer additional benefit. Though the crowd within improved performance, crowds of different individuals produced larger gains. Our results contribute to a growing literature showing that combined decision-making can improve unfamiliar face matching performance.
Previously rewarded stimuli can influence later performance even when they are task-irrelevant, while multisensory stimuli often enhance perceptual salience and speed responses to targets. This study examined how reward history and multisensory stimulus configuration jointly shape behaviour in a speeded localisation task. Participants first learned associations between visual stimuli and high or low reward. In a subsequent test phase, they localised an unrewarded visual target while a previously rewarded distractor appeared in the opposite hemifield. Target and distractor modalities were independently varied between unisensory visual and multisensory audiovisual stimuli. Responses were faster to multisensory than unisensory targets, and high-value distractors slowed responses relative to low-value distractors when both target and distractor were unisensory. However, when targets were multisensory and distractors were unisensory, distractor value no longer influenced response times. Multisensory signals at the distractor produced more complex effects: when the target was multisensory, high-value multisensory distractors slowed responses more than high-value unisensory distractors, whereas when the target was unisensory, high-value multisensory distractors produced less slowing than high-value unisensory distractors. These findings show that reward history and multisensory stimulus configuration interact in shaping target-localisation performance. The observed effects may reflect attentional selection, response selection, or interactions between these processes, but not necessarily attentional selection. To determine this, future designs should disambiguate target location and response.
The present study sheds light on effects of similarity-based interference due to phonological overlap (PO), as well as working memory (WM), during silent reading in native speakers (NS) and nonnative speakers (NNS). While prior research has mainly focused on syntactic complexity or ambiguity to gain insight into nonnative language processing and the role of WM, the effects of PO have remained poorly understood. Using multiline texts with varying degrees of PO, we examined whether increased amounts of overlap disrupt online reading and offline recall, and whether effects differ across native and nonnative groups or vary as a function of WM capacity. Results revealed that greater PO caused delays during online processing, but without impacting offline recall. Crucially, NS and NNS experienced online interference similarly, and WM modulated these effects in comparable ways across both groups. These results suggest convergence both in overt behaviour and in how underlying cognitive resources are used. Findings are discussed with respect to their implications for theories of native-nonnative language processing differences and possible directions for further research.
Gesture and speech are tightly coordinated during communication, yet the mechanisms underlying this coordination remain debated. The interactive view proposes that gesture and speech can influence each other not only during planning but also during execution, whereas the ballistic view holds that interaction is limited to pre-execution stages. To test these competing theories, four experiments investigated whether disrupting one modality affects the execution of the other. Participants named and gesturally depicted geometric shapes and motion events while gesture or speech was disrupted using virtual reality, motion tracking, delayed visual or auditory feedback, and stimulus changes. In all experiments, disrupting one modality consistently prolonged the execution time of the other modality. Moreover, the magnitude of execution prolongation in one modality was related to that in the other. These results show that gesture and speech remain continuously and bidirectionally connected during execution, providing strong support for the interactive view.
A traditional view of selective attention distinguishes between goal-directed and stimulus-driven mechanisms of attentional control. More recently, a large (and growing) body of research has identified a third class of control system-termed selection history-wherein attentional prioritisation is shaped by our prior experience with stimuli, independently of our goals and the physical salience of those stimuli. This article reviews work within this selection history literature demonstrating that prioritisation is rapidly and automatically modulated by learning about the rewards associated with stimuli, and argues for a framework that distinguishes between history-driven processes implementing attentional exploitation (the drive to leverage reliable information) and attentional exploration (the drive to resolve uncertainty, with the aim of validating potential new sources of information). Findings such as these highlight a fundamental and intricate interaction between learning and attention, wherein our prior experience shapes the way in which we extract information from our environment-with potential consequences for understanding the subsequent decisions that we make and choices that we take.
Music strongly shapes emotional perception, yet its influence on social threat evaluation remains underexplored. This study examined whether scary music biases threat perception of emotional faces using subjective ratings and pupillometry. In a within-subjects design, a predominantly female sample of participants viewed angry, neutral, and happy faces following either scary music or white noise. Behavioural ratings showed that faces were perceived as more threatening after scary music relative to white noise, consistent with affective priming accounts. Notably, the effect extended beyond angry and neutral faces to happy faces, suggesting that the pairing with fear-inducing music distorted their positive meaning, perhaps conveying ill intent instead. Pupillometry results revealed no overall effect of scary music on pupil size; however, an interaction showed increased pupil dilation to neutral faces under scary music, consistent with the heightened susceptibility of ambiguous stimuli to priming. Angry and happy faces may have elicited sufficient arousal on their own, limiting additional music-related effects. These findings demonstrate that scary music biases threat perception both behaviourally and physiologically, though not uniformly across emotions. By showing that music can alter the evaluation of socially meaningful stimuli (i.e., facial expressions), this study advances understanding of cross-modal affective priming and has implications for contexts where music may unconsciously shape social judgements.
Dysfunctional interoception is increasingly being recognized as a risk factor for depression and anxiety. However, results remain mixed. Emerging research suggests that particular interoceptive phenotypes may be differentially pathogenic. The current studies aimed to evaluate the degree to which self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention predict depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as to test the interaction between accuracy and attention. Participants (study 1: N = 170, M = 20.34 years, 69% female, 64% White; study 2: N = 826, M = 38.04 years, 49% female, 58% White) self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention using the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale and Body Perception Questionnaire, respectively. Participants also reported depression and anxiety symptoms using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. In both studies, lower interoceptive accuracy and more interoceptive attention predicted higher depression and anxiety symptoms. In neither study did accuracy interact with attention to predict depression or anxiety symptoms. These results provide evidence that self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention are independent predictors and do not interact to predict depression and anxiety symptoms.
Implicit (unconscious) learning ostensibly affects cognitive and social skills in both typical and atypical populations, such as those on the autism spectrum. Research into implicit learning in autism has yielded conflicting results, underscoring the need to explore factors that might influence their implicit learning. One such factor is processing style, specifically processing biases for either global (holistic) or local (detail-oriented) processing. In our experiment, we investigated the potential role of processing differences in implicit (and explicit) learning performance in individuals with autism (n = 20) and typically developing (TD) individuals (n = 22), by using a global-local version of the artificial grammar learning (AGL) task. Overall AGL performance and explicit knowledge yielded only a trend toward an interaction suggesting a greater global processing advantage in TD participants compared with that in participants with autism but no conclusive evidence. The above interaction was further observed in terms of implicit knowledge, with TD participants demonstrating higher levels of implicit structural knowledge than individuals with autism during global processing. Implicit knowledge between group differences during local processing remains weak/inconclusive. Overall, our findings suggest interesting potential processing differences in the implicit learning between individuals with and without autism.
Connectionist theories of psychology propose that the accuracy of stimulus representations is a function of the extent to which its elements become interconnected, or associated, as a consequence of experience. To explore this idea, across three experiments, participants were required to solve a compound learned-predictiveness task, in which pairs of stimuli in each compound were established as either predictive or non-predictive of a subsequent outcome. Outcome probability was further manipulated as either probabilistic or deterministic. It was hypothesized that the propensity for one stimulus to connect with another within the compound would be greater when (a) it possessed higher relative predictive validity for an outcome and (b) was followed by an uncertain outcome relative to a deterministic outcome. Consequently, participants accuracy in recognising the conjunction of the previously exposed stimulus pairs should vary as a function of these variables. Across three experiments, which used old/new judgements following compound learned-predictiveness training, a consistent effect of predictive validity was observed - participants' hit rate for detecting a change in the conjunction of predictive stimuli was superior to changes in the conjunction of non-predictive stimuli. However, there was no effect of outcome uncertainty. The implications of these results for theories of learning and representation are discussed.
During language comprehension, people often predict what they are likely to encounter, but such predictions are affected by processing difficulty. In this study, we explored how speech rate influences listeners' prediction speed using three different methods. Participants read sentence contexts that either were or were not highly predictive of a final word, and we measured how quickly participants judged whether a given letter was contained in that final word (Experiment 1), named a picture corresponding to that final word (Experiment 2), and named that final word (Experiment 3). We manipulated the speech rates and contextual predictability of the sentences. Across the experiments, participants responded more slowly at a faster speech rate, and this slowing was greater in more predictable than less predictable contexts. These results suggest that a faster speech rate slows down prediction speed, reinforcing the idea that prediction demands cognitive resources.
Visual working memory (VWM) operates within structured environments, yet it remains debated whether representations are guided primarily by the global scene configuration (gist) or the intrinsic features of objects. This question extends to cognitive ageing, where declines in VWM co-occur with a relative preservation of global information over fine-grained visual details. To disentangle these influences, younger and older adults detected changes to an object's identity, location, or both, while its semantic consistency with the scene was manipulated. Unlike our previous work, where location changes disrupted the spatial layout, here we preserved the layout by swapping the critical object, thereby isolating memory for object-location binding from sensitivity to global disruptions. Across age groups, conjunctive changes were detected more accurately than single-feature changes. Crucially, detecting location changes was significantly more difficult when the layout was preserved (swaps) than when it was disrupted (displacements). This demonstrates that while layout disruptions provide salient cues, recalling an object's location from a stable configuration requires retrieving its intrinsic features. This is further supported by a detection advantage for semantically inconsistent objects (e.g., a torch in a bathroom), which was observed specifically in younger adults, suggesting an age-related decline in the strategic use of contextual violations. Eye-tracking during retrieval revealed longer fixations for inconsistent objects, indicating increased effort in integrating them. In contrast, consistent objects were fixated faster, a novel retrieval-phase finding likely driven by memory from their initial encoding as inconsistent. While core attentional mechanisms were preserved with age, our results argue that when global structure remains unaltered, VWM is guided by hierarchical representations of object features, in which semantic meaning plays a central, organising role.
Research has consistently shown that emotional stimuli are more memorable than neutral ones-a phenomenon known as the emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) effect. This memory benefit, however, is thought to come at the cost of reduced memory for contextual details. Moreover, emotional stimuli can impair memory of adjacent neutral information, giving rise to an emotional carryover effect that typically involves both emotional anterograde and retrograde memory inhibition. Although these effects are well established, it remains unclear whether they also influence source memory and whether they persist in socially collaborative settings. To investigate these questions, we integrated an emotional timeout procedure into the collaborative memory paradigm. Participants were presented with triplets varying in emotionality, each consisting of a neutral word, a modulator word (taboo, non-taboo negative, neutral, or positive), and another neutral word. Following encoding, participants completed three recall sessions (Recalls 1, 2, and 3), each assessing both item and source memory. Recalls 1 and 3 were performed individually, whereas Recall 2 was conducted either individually or collaboratively. The findings carry several theoretical implications. (a) The EEM effect was observed across all recall conditions, but its magnitude was enhanced during and after collaboration, supporting priority-binding theory. Notably, the effect was only for taboo words, suggesting they may hinder memory of other emotional stimuli. (b) The emotional carryover effect manifested differently across item versus source memory-specifically through emotional anterograde and retrograde memory inhibition-lending support to attentive resource allocation theory, the arousal-biased competition model, and the contextual binding model. Importantly, this effect emerged independent of collaborative recall, indicating its robustness across social contexts.
The adverse effects of social media have been widely studied, but most research has focused on internalization of beauty standards, body attitudes, and self-enhancement intentions rather than observable behavioral responses. In this pre-registered experiment, female participants (n = 164) were fitted with a head-mounted device, described as a head tracker, but actually a device designed to tousle their hair. Participants viewed either idealized social media models or neutral abstract paintings. After the device was removed, participants were left alone in a laboratory room for 2 min, while their natural behaviors were recorded. Recordings were then analyzed using BORIS software to assess mirror self-gazing, mirror self-fixation, and self-modification. Contrary to predictions, no significant behavioral differences emerged between conditions and observed effect sizes were substantially smaller than anticipated. These null findings suggest several possibilities: brief exposure to idealized models is insufficient to elicit immediate appearance-related behaviors; long-term exposure to social media has already been internalized, so additional short exposures produce a change smaller than expected; and/or our behavioral indices lacked sensitivity to detect small effects. We conclude that future studies should assess cumulative exposure, employ more sensitive measures, and sample populations with lower prior social-media experience.
How readers use multiple sources of information to determine where to move their eyes during reading is a central question in eye movement control. In Chinese reading, both preview and contextual information have been shown to modulate saccade target selection. However, it remains unclear how contextual constraint and parafoveal preview jointly influence saccade targeting. The present study examined the relationship between contextual constraint and parafoveal preview in saccade target selection during Chinese reading. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they read sentences containing three-character target words embedded in either high- or low-constraint contexts. Using the boundary paradigm, we manipulated the preview validity of the target words: the preview was either identical to the target word (valid preview) or consisted of three pseudo-characters (invalid preview). The results showed a significant interaction between contextual constraint and preview validity on initial landing positions within the target word region and on saccade lengths entering the target word. Specifically, contextual constraint affected saccade targeting under valid preview conditions, whereas this effect was eliminated under invalid preview conditions. These findings indicate that saccade target selection during Chinese reading reflects a dynamically interactive process that integrates both preview (bottom-up) and contextual (top-down) information. The results provide empirical evidence that refines cognitive models of eye movement control in Chinese reading.
