Identifying individual differences in various cognitive constructs has important implications for settings such as clinical and educational assessments. Yet, cognitive tasks themselves often do not measure a single construct. As such, there is value in understanding the mixture of constructs involved in cognitive task performance, as this would allow target constructs to be better isolated. For example, tasks assessing visuospatial working memory (VSWM), in addition to measuring the “of interest” processes of encoding and maintenance, also involve lower-level perceptual processes. Here, we examined perceptual contaminant effects on VSWM using a modified Corsi Block Tapping Task, in which participants observed and reproduced sequences of spatial locations. Two forms of perceptual interference were manipulated: path clutterness, in which distractors appeared near the virtual path connecting successive targets, and endpoint crowding, in which distractors appeared near the target locations themselves. Endpoint crowding produced clear decrements in task performance, whereas path clutterness produced no detectable changes in performance. These findings indicate that perceptual processes, specifically visual crowding, influence VSWM assessment. This underscores the importance of accounting for perceptual processes in the design and interpretation of working memory measures.
Everyday cognition requires observers to find organization in continuous behavior as surface form changes. Behavioral streams can carry a constraint that governs what remains coherent across variation. This study examines whether such a constraint can remain publicly legible when it structures an action stream and remains concealed from observers. The study examined this question in Untitled, Literally, a full-length abstract choreographic work presented in five public performances. Eight sections were constructed with Essence-to-Movement (EtoM), a procedure for preserving a specified behavioral constraint across varied movement conditions. One section, Drink Me, served as an internal contrast. Following the performances, audience members completed an anonymous voluntary questionnaire (N = 393). We tested the hypothesis that observers who reported structural routes into the work would show lower uncertainty, stronger active meaning-making, and lower preference for the internal contrast. The observed profile was consistent with this hypothesis. Structural-entry reports were associated with lower uncertainty, stronger active meaning-making, and sharper within-work discrimination between constraint-governed material and the internal contrast. These associations are interpreted within a post-performance self-report design under concealment.
Goal-directed behaviour requires both efficient task execution as well as adequate task choice. Task choice may reflect deliberate evaluation of costs and benefits, but it may also be biased by bottom-up memory retrieval. Specifically, re-encountering a previously experienced context could retrieve a prior task choice, thereby influencing subsequent decisions. In the present study, using the voluntary task-switching (VTS) paradigm, we examined whether repeating a context would retrieve a task by manipulating whether a task-irrelevant context stimulus repeated or changed across consecutive trials. Based on a feature binding and episodic retrieval framework, we hypothesized that the context-albeit task irrelevant-could become bound with the task in each trial. Consequently, repeating the context would retrieve or reactivate the previous-trial task. Therefore, we predicted that context repetitions would increase task-repetition rates and task-repetition benefits. We used an adaptive VTS procedure (Mittelstädt, Miller, & Kiesel, 2018), wherein the onset of the stimulus affording a task repetition is delayed compared to the stimulus affording a task switch. The delay between the stimuli increases for every consecutive task repetition. We included a task-irrelevant context (a coloured box in Experiments 1 and 2, or a picture in Experiment 3) that could switch or repeat unpredictably in each trial. Contrary to the predictions, we found no evidence that repeating a task-irrelevant context affected either task choice or performance, even when context saliency was enhanced in Experiment 3. We discuss these findings in light of the interplay of performance optimization and task-set availability in VTS.
In our daily lives, we often need to switch between states of cognitive flexibility and stability based on environmental demands. It has been suggested that people can learn to navigate this balance based on reinforcement, but that this may be impaired in autism or other transdiagnostic dimensions. Replicating previous work, we show that people (n = 412) voluntarily switch tasks more when previously rewarded more for performing well on task-switch trials. Interestingly, we also found that it was difficult to unlearn this shift in cognitive flexibility when the mapping between task-switching and reward suddenly reversed. People with an autism diagnosis or high autism traits were not slower or faster in learning these contingencies. However, our results suggested a generally smaller task-rule interference effect and larger switch costs in autism and high autism traits, in line with prevalent ideas that they show more cognitive stability at the cost of less flexibility. A similar pattern was found for a significantly correlated Compulsivity and intrusive thought not capitalised for consistency please and Alexithymia component extracted from a rotated principal component analysis, highlighting the need to consider co-occurring symptoms. Together, our findings show that people learn to vary task-switching behaviour as a function of reinforcement, which may be hard or slow to unlearn, as well as interindividual variations along the flexibility-stability trade-off that show a relation to autism.
There is broad agreement among memory researchers that WM processes can influence LTM formation. Prior research has suggested that holding information in WM for a longer time may benefit LTM because of mechanisms such as refreshing, elaboration, or consolidation - processes presumed to rely on focused attention. However, studies manipulating free time do not isolate attention effects from other factors. Several studies have used a more direct way to study the effect of attention on LTM performance by using prioritization techniques (such as retro-cuing and rewarding) whereby attention is directed towards specific information in WM during the WM retention interval. Here we review these studies. The results are mixed: Whereas some studies find LTM benefits for prioritized items, others do not. Variability in outcomes could not be explained by differences in memory set size, presentation mode, material type, kind of priority signal, or test format. When an LTM benefit is present, the difference in performance remains modest. Thus, focused attention in WM generates at best a small benefit to LTM. Most of the included studies made use of a surprise LTM test and thus, further research is needed to determine whether the intent to remember information in the long term interacts with attention to promote LTM encoding. Altogether, our review findings suggest that attention to information in WM is insufficient on its own for robust LTM encoding.
Existing orthographic neighbourhood size measures for Chinese words rely on the representation of words or characters as consisting of two components, which leads to coarse measurements. Recently, Wang and Keuleers (2024) proposed the use of Ideographic Description Sequences (IDSs) which encode the basic stroke patterns of characters and their spatial relationships to create more precise neighbourhood measures. In two studies, we compared the effect of different neighbourhood size measures on recognition of single Chinese characters, while controlling for character frequency and number of strokes. In Study 1, we replicated the conventional two-unit approach using neighbourhood size measures for semantic (N-sc) and phonetic (N-pc) components. We found no effect of N-pc or N-sc. In Study 2, we used IDS-based measures to represent orthographic similarity at a more detailed level. In Study 2a, we found that the effect of a neighbourhood size measure based on single-component substitution (N-ch) was inhibitory but weak. In Study 2b, we found that a neighbourhood density measure using weighted edit distance (WLD-10) showed facilitation. In Study 2c, we found that this facilitatory effect was retained with a normalised measure (WND-10). While conceptually the IDS-based measures are better neighbourhood measures and one might hope that this would also imply stronger neighbourhood effects, our results show that the effects of neighbourhood size on character recognition remained small and difficult to interpret theoretically. Our results suggest that if any meaningful effects of orthographic neighbourhood size exist for character recognition in Chinese, they are probably small and inconsistent.
Humans adapt to environmental changes by balancing empirical observations with prior beliefs and evaluating if unexpected events indicate a true change. The specific factors that govern updating behavior in dynamic environments remain to be elucidated. We here examined how prior beliefs about environmental volatility affect updating of cue-target contingencies, particularly when observations violate these beliefs. Thirty-two participants completed two versions of a probabilistic reversal-learning task, in which auditory cues signaled the location of a subsequent visual target stimulus. In a reactive task version, participants indicated the target location after its appearance; in a predictive task version, they predicted the target's location based on the cue information. Cue-target contingencies either remained stable or reversed once within a block, thereby creating a stable and a reversal environment. Before each block, participants received either true or false information about volatility, i.e., about whether the cue-target contingency would remain stable or change. We analyzed reaction times (reactive task) and choices (predictive task) with model-free measures and a Rescorla-Wagner learning model. Participants generally adapted to the contingency changes in both tasks. In the reactive task, prior beliefs had no significant effect. In the predictive task, believing that a reversal environment was stable reduced learning rates. In stable environments, falsely believing the environment contained a reversal increased decision noise, reduced accuracy and increased choice variability. These findings demonstrate that prior beliefs about volatility shape updating in response to task demands and environmental structure.
Previous work has shown that successful tacit coordination depends on the availability of working memory resources. Much less is known about how thought processes, such as mind-wandering and self- vs. other-oriented attention, influence tacit coordination. In this experiment, we examined the effect of these thought processes on tacit coordination, and whether we could influence performance and thought processes through brief meditation interventions. While coordination and thought processes were not significantly affected by the interventions when compared to a control intervention, we found that thought processes, as measured by thought probes randomly interleaved between trials, significantly influenced coordination performance. Specifically, dyads performed significantly better when other-oriented than when self-oriented, showing greater convergence on shared decision rules over time. This study demonstrates the importance of orienting attention beyond self-generated responses in order to mutually adapt actions and mental states to achieve shared goals in iterated social coordination.
Proactive control refers to the biasing of information processing toward a task goal during anticipation of a relevant event. This study investigated proactive control of emotional information in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using a manual face-word Stroop task. Individuals with ADHD and healthy controls (n = 51 per group) were selected from a large participant pool (n = 1,020) using the Adult ADHD Self-Report-Scale. Images of happy or anxious faces were presented, with the word HAPPY or ANXIOUS written across the faces, congruent or incongruent with facial expressions. Participants had to identify facial expressions while ignoring word meaning. To investigate contextual cue utilization, the proportion of incongruent trials was manipulated (75% vs. 25%) to generate mostly congruent (MC) and mostly incongruent (MI) contexts. Individuals with ADHD showed larger error rate and longer reaction time (RT) than controls. Context effects were reflected by a greater difference in error rate and RT between congruent and incongruent trials within the MC than the MI context. These effects were independent of the presence of ADHD. The findings suggest that the ability to use contextual cues to facilitate proactive cognitive control is preserved in adult ADHD, despite marked impairments in attention and processing speed.
Previous studies show that word learning from context can be intrinsically rewarding, even in the absence of external feedback or incentives. Intrinsic reward activates the brain's reward-memory circuit, leading to enhanced memory for words people enjoyed learning. Existing studies have tested the link between contextual word learning and reward in the written domain (i.e., through reading). However, word learning from context often occurs in the oral domain, where conversations provide a rich source for acquiring vocabulary in both first and second language learning. In this online behavioral study, we investigate whether word learning triggers enjoyment across modalities, focusing on listening, reading, and listening and reading in combination. In all the modalities, we found that when words are successfully learned from context, people report greater levels of enjoyment. We also found that words that were associated with higher enjoyment during learning were recognised more accurately than those associated with lower enjoyment 24 hours later. Our results demonstrate the relevance of intrinsic reward for language learning and suggest that the link between contextual word learning and reward operates on higher-level word representations, rather than on modality-specific ones.
'Visual Anagrams' are images that are recognised as one familiar object from one angle, but another object, when rotated (Geng et al., 2024). Boger and Firestone's (2025) ingenious application of them uses examples that appear to be a large object from one angle, a small object at another. They report Familiar-Size Stroop Effects using those stimuli, claiming they must have reflected high-level recognition processes, as each visual anagram comprised identical visual features, just rotated. However, rotating visual anagrams introduces a range of subtle potential confounds. For example, in B&F's stimuli, anagrams perceived as small objects had lower centres of mass (CoMs), those perceived as large objects, higher CoMs. CoM confounds might therefore account for those Stroop Effects. To assess this, a new experiment used stimuli with similar overall shapes (and CoM confounds) to B&F's stimuli but designed to be less recognisable. The new experiment revealed Stroop effects, smaller than those observed by B&F, but consistent with a partial contribution to B&F's findings. These results highlight important considerations when using visual anagrams in future research.
Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) exhibit deficits in both selective attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM). However, whether attentional deficits directly constrain VSTM performance in ID remains unknown. Here, we examined the interplay between these two processes in ID and their correlates with fluid intelligence across individuals with varying levels of intellectual functioning. Nineteen adults with ID and twenty-two chronologically matched neurotypical adults (TDA) carried out the Attentional Orienting Task (AOT), in which they briefly viewed a memory array, followed by a probe and indicated whether the probe was previously presented in the memory array. Visuospatial attention cues were shown before (pre-cues) or after (retro-cues) the memory array to assess attentional orienting in service of VSTM encoding and maintenance, respectively, compared to neutral, baseline attention cues. Additionally, participants completed Raven's 2, a non-verbal reasoning test. TDA adults outperformed individuals with ID across all conditions. Importantly, while TDA demonstrated clear attentional orienting benefits in service of VSTM, individuals with ID showed no cueing benefits either before encoding into VSTM or during VSTM maintenance. Correlation and regression analyses showed that attentional orienting abilities predicted fluid intelligence beyond baseline VSTM performance. Current results show for the first time that attentional deficits constrain VSTM performance in ID, whereas individual differences in attentional orienting in service of VSTM predict non-verbal reasoning abilities. These findings speak to the overall functioning difficulties individuals with ID face and highlight the need to consider the dynamic relation between these cognitive processes when designing assessments and interventions for intellectual disabilities.
When instructed to remove a just-encoded item from working memory, people can do that very effectively. Here we investigate the side effects for episodic long-term memory of removing an item from working memory. Participants encoded lists of words into working memory, and each word was followed by a cue to remember or to forget that word. In a subsequent test of long-term memory, words to be maintained in working memory were remembered better than words to be removed. This was the case regardless of whether participants expected the long-term-memory test. In the final experiment we cued participants after each word to either remove it from working memory while keeping it in long-term memory, or to maintain it in working memory but forget it for the upcoming long-term memory test. Participants could not selectively remember information for one kind of memory test but not the other. Instead, they compromised, removing words less effectively from working memory than in the preceding experiments, and yet failing to remember those words better in the long-term memory test than the words they were told to forget for the long term. People cannot remove information from working memory and maintain it in long-term memory, or vice versa.
Cognition and affect are closely intertwined: identifying a task-relevant object can elicit positive affect, and successfully solving the associated task can enhance it further. Beyond stimulus-driven processing, theories of proactive control and predictive coding suggest that task-related cognition already unfolds before stimulus onset. We propose that such preparatory processes shape affective responses to task completion. In preregistered Experiment 1, participants categorized digit pairs as either “match” (e.g., 3 and 3) or “sequence” (e.g., 3 and 4). Affective responses were assessed via affective priming. Surveys indicated that most participants prepared for matches (“match seekers”), thus implicitly recoding sequences to “no match.” As predicted, correct responses to matches were faster and more positively valenced than responses to sequences. This pattern reversed for the subsample that prepared for sequences (“sequence seekers”). When participants were asked to categorize digits by color—which rendered preparatory processing for matches or sequences task-irrelevant—no affective differences emerged. In Experiment 2, we manipulated preparatory processing via instructions and response categories. Again, match seekers showed an affective advantage for matches, sequence seekers for sequences. Taken together, our findings imply that to understand affective responses to task completions, it is imperative to understand the preparatory processes the performer engaged in.
In the present study, we ran a replication of the experiment by Giesen et al. (2017) who found reversed observationally acquired stimulus-response binding and retrieval (oSRBR) effects after negative feedback and standard oSRBR effects after positive feedback. This suggests that feedback was used to infer action goals from observed actions, implying that oSRBR effects represent propositional information. However, their findings stand in contrast to recent studies on the influence of affective consequences like feedback on SR bindings stemming from self-performed actions. These studies consistently demonstrate that SR binding and retrieval effects emerge independently of feedback. This raises the question whether the findings by Giesen et al. (2017) reflect an alpha error. In our replication, we found no evidence for a modulatory influence of feedback on oSRBR effects. A meta-analysis with the data from Giesen et al. (2017) and our experiment revealed no significant modulatory effect of vicarious feedback on retrieval of observationally acquired SR bindings. In concert with recent literature, this implies that feedback information was not used to infer action goals, providing no evidence that oSRBR effects represent propositional information.
Bare plural generics ('generics' for short) attribute a feature to members of a category without specifying how many actually possess the feature (e.g., 'Belgians love fries'). Generics are often used to perpetuate stereotypes and misinformation, yet researchers from many different fields disagree about how people decide what justifies a generic. This has led to a wide variety of theories on how people reason with generics. Pragmatic theories state that people find generics justifiable if they express knowledge that is useful (e.g., for survival or efficient transmission of knowledge). Statistical theories state that people find generics justifiable if the distribution of the features in the involved categories satisfies certain criteria. We compared the predictions of several influential theories in a registered study where participants, in each trial, saw the distribution of a feature in two fictitious groups. Participants then judged the justifiability of a generic that attributes the feature to one of the two groups. We independently manipulated the dangerousness of the features (a factor of relevance in pragmatic theories), absolute prevalence in the target group, and relative prevalence in the target group (factors of relevance in statistical theories). All experimental manipulations were within-participants. The order of conditions and the combinations of stimulus materials were fully randomized. Because our design allowed to predict specific, divergent patterns of main and interaction effects from each theory, this registered study allowed us to examine their relative merit and to further elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying generic justifiability.
A major limitation of the traditional concealed information test (CIT) is its susceptibility to countermeasures. Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms improve resilience against countermeasures, and pupil dilation has been shown to indicate recognition of personally familiar information in the RSVP paradigm. Here, we introduce a novel variation of the RSVP paradigm, Moving Serial Visual Presentation (MSVP), that aims to improve individual detection by incorporating eye gaze and pupil dilation. We combined serial visual presentation with lateral movements to capitalize on pursuit eye movements and pupil size for detecting involuntary recognition and goal-driven suppression of familiar information. Across two experiments, either a target face, a personally familiar face (the participant's parent), or one of two control faces appeared in a stream. In Experiment 1, participants were required to maintain fixation at a central dot and suppress gaze shifts except toward the task-relevant target face. In Experiment 2, participants were free to move their gaze and responded via keypress. Results indicated that while eye movement measures contributed little to detecting familiar-face processing, both pupil dilation and its rate of change exhibited a noticeable increase in response to familiar faces. At the individual level, classification based on the rate of pupil size change yielded detection rates of 55.2% (Experiment 1) and 33.3% (Experiment 2), exceeding those of previous RSVP-based approaches (22.6%). These findings indicate that MSVP, particularly when eye movements are constrained, enhances the diagnostic value of pupil-based measures for detecting task-irrelevant familiarity, though further work is needed to reach applied standards.
We examined contingency learning of response sequences (response-response contingency learning, RR-CL) in a serial reaction time task (SRTT), in which keys were pressed corresponding to the spatial position of dots appearing successively on a screen. First-order contingencies between pairs of successive responses were introduced into the task by biasing the transition probabilities between the spatial positions of subsequently appearing dots, rendering specific response sequences more likely than others. A pre-registered study (n = 40) revealed evidence for robust RR-CL effects, indicated by shorter (longer) response times for responses that were preceded by a likely (unlikely) preceding response. Part of this RR-CL effect was due to episodic retrieval of the most recent response sequence that started with the same response as the current sequence. Yet, a robust genuine RR-CL effect remained after controlling for recency-based episodic retrieval. This residual RR-CL effect was dependent on contingency awareness, with stronger residual RR-CL effects for sequences that were correctly identified as high or low in frequency, indicating that learning of response sequence contingencies partly reflects propositional knowledge. A reliable residual RR-CL effect, however, was obtained also in the absence of contingency awareness, indicating that another part of the learning of response sequence contingencies operates automatically and outside of awareness.
When humans engage in closely coupled human-machine interactions, they often experience hand-arm vibrations, which are a byproduct of the running machine. Yet, in closely coupled human-machine interactions, it is important to ensure that human attention and cognition remains sufficiently high to avoid accidents and to achieve a good performance. The aim of the present study was to examine whether hand-arm vibrations impact on cognitive processing. In two studies, we investigated the impact of constant or random vibration compared to a baseline condition without vibration on selective attention. In detail, we assessed overall performance (RT and error rates) and the congruency effect in a flanker task (Experiment 1) and a temporal flanker task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, we additionally explored experienced vibration comfort and discomfort, two constructs often considered in ergonomics. In both experiments hand-arm vibrations neither affected mean response times nor proportion of correct responses. Additionally, hand-arm vibrations did not modulate the congruency effect. Experiment 2 revealed that vibration comfort and discomfort seem to correlate with task-performance. We conclude that hand-arm vibrations in general do not impact on cognitive processing, but it seems important to consider which vibration is selected to achieve optimal performance depending on user experience.
Humans develop biases during language learning. For example, we rely more heavily on consonants than on vowels to identify words. Advances on artificial intelligence have allowed the development of proficient large language models that sometimes mimic humans' language use. They do so by tracking regularities in natural language datasets that are used to train them. Here we test the hypothesis that tracking such regularities is enough for the emergence of responses that resemble the consonant bias. We asked ChatGPT which of two nonsense words (one with a vowel and one with a consonant change) was more similar to a target word. We observed that the model uses more the consonants than the vowels to perform similarity judgments across words in the two languages that we tested (English and Spanish).
