Metacognitive insight—the ability to monitor one’s own performance—enables efficient allocation of limited resources, but whether this mechanism underlies performance on perceptual tasks has never been directly tested. Here we asked whether insight into face matching performance drives time-allocation decisions to improve accuracy. Participants (n = 74) completed a two-phase task: an initial evaluation in which they saw face pairs for two seconds and selected up to half for extended review, followed by a 30-s review of all pairs. Accuracy in the review phase improved substantially more for selected than not-selected pairs (23
In radiology and in traditional visual search tasks, the detection of a first target in an image tends to impair the detection of additional targets, a phenomenon termed satisfaction of search (SOS) or subsequent search misses. The original explanation for SOS focused on early termination of inspection after having found a first target. Tests of this hypothesis have yielded mixed results, however. Here, we developed a novel task to examine the potential role of early termination in SOS. In our “Ghosts in the Forest” task, the visual search backgrounds were contour-dense natural scene images, and targets were semi-transparent face images drawn from two emotion categories: happy and angry. Targets were either high salience (HS) or low salience (LS), and scenes contained either one HS target, one LS target, or both an HS target and an LS target. First, we observed a robust SOS effect for the detection of LS targets, both in a sample of naïve observers (Experiment 1) and in a sample of radiologists (Experiment 2). Second, we observed an early termination effect following HS target detection. Third, the time spent searching after detecting an HS target reliably predicted the magnitude of the SOS effect at an individual participant level: SOS was most pronounced for those participants who terminated search earlier. Together, the results indicate that early termination of image inspection is a substantial cause of SOS in a task that embodies some of the core properties of medical image analysis.
Effective navigation depends on the formation of cognitive maps, yet it remains unclear how temporal experience is integrated with spatial information during this process. While prior research has primarily emphasized external spatial cues, real-world navigation unfolds over time, raising the possibility that cognitive maps emerge from the integration of temporal and spatial information. The present study examined how the spatiotemporal properties of navigation—operationalized as navigation-duration—interacted with landmark availability and navigational perspective to shape different forms of spatial knowledge. A total of 149 participants completed a virtual navigation task, followed by measures of path distance estimation, landmark sequence memory, and sketch mapping. Results showed that navigation-duration selectively biased metric distance judgments but did not affect landmark sequence memory or sketch-map accuracy, indicating a dissociation between metric and structural representations. Critically, the effects of temporal information were modulated by environmental and representational context: aerial perspective improved layout accuracy only in the presence of landmarks, whereas ground-level perspective yielded more stable performance in their absence. Regression analyses further revealed that landmark knowledge, perspective, spatiotemporal properties, and sense of direction independently contributed to cognitive map accuracy. Together, these findings support a context-dependent integration account of cognitive map formation, in which temporal and spatial information are flexibly weighted depending on environmental structure and representational format. This work provides a mechanistic explanation for systematic spatial distortions and highlights the role of the spatiotemporal properties of navigation in cognitive map construction. Everyday navigation—whether walking through unfamiliar buildings, driving in complex road networks, or following GPS-based navigation systems—depends on how people form internal maps of space. Yet these cognitive maps are often systematically distorted, particularly in dynamic, time-constrained environments such as hospitals, airports, or urban traffic systems. Traditional approaches to improving navigation have focused primarily on optimizing spatial information, such as clearer signage, more salient landmarks, or more precise digital maps. However, real-world navigation is inherently a spatiotemporal process: individuals continuously integrate where they are with how long they have been moving, waiting, or making decisions. This raises a critical and practical question: how does temporal experience shape spatial understanding in real-world navigation contexts? The present research addresses this question by examining how temporal experience, environmental cues, and perspective jointly influence the formation of cognitive maps. Using controlled virtual environments, the study demonstrates that time is not merely an accompanying factor but rather biases spatial judgments, particularly distance estimation, and that its influence depends on the availability of landmarks and the format of spatial representation. These findings suggest that navigation errors—whether occurring during wayfinding, driving, or GPS use—may arise not only from insufficient spatial information but also from how temporal and spatial information are integrated. By identifying the conditions under which such distortions emerge, this work provides a foundation for improving the design of navigation systems, including digital mapping tools, in-vehicle guidance interfaces, and spatial training programs in complex environments.
Mobile phones and other smart displays, such as in-car entertainment units, are widely used to display and dictate navigation routes. These navigation systems offer alerts about road closures, construction zones, and traffic conditions. However, these navigation applications often fail to dynamically update safety information in response to rapidly changing threats, such as public safety incidents. The current study explores virtual cues as an intermediate step toward developing augmented reality (AR) safety navigation aids. In a virtual reality (VR) environment simulating a safety–critical scenario, we evaluate two types of navigation cues: (1) a world-fixed localized, egocentric ground-area (GA) cue that visually highlights danger zones and (2) a screen-fixed allocentric minimap (MM) offering a global bird’s-eye view of the danger areas and surroundings. The cues were evaluated using a free-navigation goal directed wayfinding task, in which participants were asked to navigate to a target beacon, answer affective questions providing trial-by-trial evaluation of affective states (i.e., spatial anxiety), and then asked to point to the last known threat location to evaluate spatial memory. Results show both cues were associated with minimal time in danger zones, but the minimap significantly decreased spatial anxiety ratings and increased participants’ reports of willingness to walk the same route in the real world, compared to the GA cue. Further, higher self-reported navigation ability predicted better spatial memory within the virtual environment. These findings represent an initial step toward understanding how virtual cue design affects navigation behavior, affective states, and spatial memory in safety–critical environments. Navigation research has largely focused on how virtual graphics can be used to provide directional guidance to navigators, supporting efficient wayfinding in everyday scenarios. Yet real-world navigation can occur in a variety of situations, including public safety emergencies, where individuals must make rapid decisions under increased cognitive load and stress. In these scenarios, directional guidance may not be useful or sufficient to help the navigator reach a point of safety. The current study expands the use case for virtual graphics in navigation by examining their ability to cue hazardous areas in the environment that pose an increased risk to the navigator. This study therefore makes two novel contributions: (1) a systematic evaluation of cues designed specifically to guide hazard avoidance, and (2) a novel methodology for assessing anxiety states around those cues and the situation on a trial-by-trial basis. Together, these extend existing cueing paradigms beyond route guidance, toward the importance of considering safety during navigation, and how individual differences in states and traits shape safe navigation decisions. The results of the study showed that two different virtual graphics promoted safe navigation, but only a minimap cue led to a significant decrease in participants’ state anxiety levels. These results highlight how virtual graphics can serve as intuitive cues to signal dangerous areas in the environment—allowing for safer navigation and reducing momentary state anxiety in safety–critical environments, where rapid, informed decisions are essential.
Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to perform an intended action in the future, is influenced by affective states. We tested two opposing theoretical accounts regarding the effects of negative affect on cognitive tasks using behavioral and neural data to better understand the mechanisms underlying emotional effects on PM. We presented negative or neutral film clips to participants prior to them completing an event-based PM task while their electrophysiological activity was recorded with electroencephalography (EEG). Results revealed significant interactions between affective state and trial type (PM vs. non-PM trials) for the N300 and FN400 components, indicating that the relationship between affective state and ERP amplitude varied across trial types. No comparable interactions were observed for the P3b or prospective positivity components. In addition, higher levels of intrusive thoughts were associated with poorer PM performance and reduced N300 amplitudes. The overall pattern is consistent with the possibility that negative affective states influence early PM processes, potentially via increased task-unrelated thoughts and reduced allocation of attentional resources. These findings provide tentative support for capacity-based accounts and highlight the need for further research to clarify the reliability and magnitude of these effects. In everyday life, people often need to remember to carry out intended actions at the right moment, such as taking medication when a specific cue appears, responding to an alert at work, or delivering a message when encountering someone. These prospective memory demands frequently occur under conditions of negative mood, yet we still have limited understanding of how experiencing emotions influences the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms that support remembering future intentions. The present study addresses this real-world problem by combining basic cognitive neuroscience methods with questions motivated by everyday challenges. Using electrophysiological measures, we examined how negative affect alters the neural processes involved in the realization of intended actions, such as detecting and recognizing cues that signal when the actions should be performed. By focusing on neurophysiological responses, the study moves beyond observable behavior and reveals changes in cognitive processing that may precede overt performance failures. This work advances fundamental knowledge about how emotion interacts with attention and memory, while remaining directly relevant to real-world situations in which prospective memory is critical. The findings show that neural processes may vulnerable to negative affective states and intrusive thoughts, helping to understand why remembering intentions can become more difficult under negative emotional states and providing a foundation for developing strategies to support prospective memory in everyday and applied settings.
Abstract Space–time interference has been frequently reported in perceptual paradigms, but it is unclear to what extent these effects generalize to action-related tasks. We therefore investigated whether space–time interference extends to the execution of goal-directed reaching movements towards 3D objects presented in immersive virtual reality. Forty participants performed both perceptual and motor judgments with respect to the spatial and temporal occurrence of sequentially from left to right presented 3D spheres, with spatial and temporal interstimulus intervals systematically varied. Consistent with previous findings in 2D paradigms, we observed bidirectional interference in a goal-directed pointing task: larger spatial intervals delayed temporal predictions (positive space-on-time effect), whereas longer temporal intervals shifted spatial predictions leftward (negative time-on-space effect). Perceptual judgments showed a significant positive time-on-space effect, but no space-on-time effect. Interference effects in perceptual and pointing tasks were not correlated. Our findings demonstrate that space–time interference extends to more complex motor behavior, highlighting its relevance for everyday actions such as reaching, catching, and navigating.
The transition to Industry 4.0 in mining has shifted operator roles from manual control to cognitive supervision, demanding heightened visual working memory (VWM) for monitoring complex data interfaces. This study examines whether adaptive VWM training improves performance in safety–critical monitoring tasks and whether individual differences in memory growth potential modulate this efficacy. Using a randomized controlled design with 59 participants, we employed a continuous metric of memory growth potential ΔK (K6–K4) to represent latent cognitive plasticity. Results show that VWM training significantly enhanced VWM capacity, with the magnitude of gains being positively predicted by an individual’s initial memory growth potential. These training benefits selectively transferred to a simulated mine monitoring task; specifically, higher growth potential positively predicted greater behavioral improvements in both gas and equipment monitoring. By contrast, no transfer occurred on a near-transfer VWM precision task. These findings suggest that VWM training yields selective, task-specific improvements in performance on simulated mining monitoring tasks, while highlighting the necessity of personalized assessment and training protocols that account for individual differences in cognitive plasticity.
Self-related information is typically processed with high priority, but in everyday life self-relevant cues are often embedded in socially evaluative or self-related crime contexts. The present study examined whether a self-related crime context disrupts self-face prioritization or instead recalibrates its behavioral and neural expression. Participants completed a self/other face judgment task after three contextual framings: self-related crime, self-irrelated crime, and self-related non-crime. Event-related potentials and time–frequency activity were recorded to characterize the temporal dynamics of face processing. Behaviorally, self-faces were recognized faster than other-faces overall, but responses to self-faces were slower in the self-related crime condition than in the other contexts. The N170 was not modulated by face type or context, suggesting that early structural encoding was relatively insensitive to contextual framing. In contrast, self-faces elicited larger N250 and P3 amplitudes than other-faces across contexts, indicating preserved self-related identity activation and post-perceptual evaluation. Crime-related framing also increased N250 and P3 amplitudes more broadly, consistent with enhanced contextual salience or evaluative significance. Time–frequency analyses further showed context-dependent theta and alpha modulations, suggesting altered control dynamics and attentional gating when self-relevance was paired with crime-related meaning. These findings indicate that self-implicating negative contexts do not eliminate self-prioritization. Instead, they preserve core electrophysiological indices of self-processing while recalibrating behavioral efficiency and oscillatory control dynamics.
Consumers often inspect products before making purchase decisions. Some items are selected for their shopping baskets, while others are discarded. Can discarded products influence how the selected set is perceived? We examined this question across two experiments. Participants viewed sequences of grocery products, some included in the shopping basket and some discarded, and were asked to provide a summative estimate of the included set’s environmental friendliness after presentation. In Experiment 1, participants had to remember which items to consider for the upcoming judgment, as each item disappeared after presentation. In Experiment 2, each item remained visible after presentation. Discarded green (environmentally friendly) items produced a downshift in perceived environmental friendliness of the included set of items in Experiment 1 (a contrast effect), but an upshift in Experiment 2 (an assimilation effect). Correspondingly, discarded red (environmentally harmful) items produced an upshift in Experiment 1 and a downshift in Experiment 2. These findings show that discarded items can shift judgments of environmental friendliness, but that the direction of this effect depends on whether discarded items are mentally excluded or perceptually integrated with the remaining set.
Conceptual metaphor theory supposes that metaphor underlies much of human understanding. The implicit association test (IAT) has recently been used to quantify metaphoric alignments, like black and white, that may also be associated with racial bias. Here, in six experiments, we studied the extent to which performance on the controversial race IAT might be attributed to metaphoric alignments of white and black, such as with good and evil. Experiment 1 replicates a prior report that IAT scores for black–white color alone are as strong as those associated with race. Experiment 2 shows that, for White participants, measured biases are just as strongly correlated between race and color IATs as between two different instances of the race IAT. Experiment 3 shows that metaphor-based color biases measured by IATs are just as strong among people who identify as Black as those who identify as White. Experiments 4 and 6 show that correlations between race and color IAT scores extend to Black participants. Experiment 5 shows that white-positive bias on a variety of color IATs is related to the figurative affective meanings of colors, not to literal color preferences or to explicit racial bias. Experiment 6 showed that variations in the figurative affective meanings of colors predicts within-group variation in scores on the race IAT. Across all experiments that tested both color and race IATs, variation in performance on a black–white color IAT (but not a blue-gray color IAT) was the strongest predictor of variation in performance on the Black–White race IAT. The Black–White race IAT is often used as a tool for measuring or demonstrating racial bias. Millions of people have tested themselves online at the Project Implicit website. However, there is controversy over the extent to which the race IAT reflects group biases or cultural biases rather than individual racial prejudice. The present study suggests that the White-positive bias on the race IAT may primarily measure underlying metaphoric alignments, such as between darkness and evil, that are present in many religious and secular cultures. We show that performance on the race IAT is significantly correlated with performance on IATs that measure bias for the color white vs. the color black. This proved to be true even when the participants themselves were Black. When metaphor-based color bias is taken into account, the race IAT was weakly sensitive to explicit racial bias in both Black and White participants. The data show that the race IAT is more sensitive to the figurative meanings of black and white than to racial bias.
Abstract How do subtitles shape where learners look, and what they learn, in bilingual instructional video? Subtitles are increasingly central to instructional video in multilingual education, where learners must integrate spoken input with written text. In the present paper, we recorded eye movements while university students watched two-speaker instructional videos to test the effects of audio language (original L2 vs L1 dubbed) and subtitle language (L1 vs L2). Experiment 1a (N = 40 Spanish L1, English L2) contrasted original English audio with Spanish-dubbed versions, and we found that dubbing shifted gaze from the speakers’ mouths to their eyes; comprehension was also higher for dubbed L1 than original L2. Experiment 1b tested the same Spanish-speaking participants with English-audio videos containing either English (L2) or Spanish (L1) subtitles, and included native English speakers viewing the English-audio/English-subtitle condition as a comparison group. In both groups, participants consistently devoted most of their gaze to subtitles rather than to the speakers’ eyes or mouths, independent of subtitle language; comprehension was equally high for L1 and L2 subtitles. Taken together, these findings indicate the key role of subtitles in guiding visual attention, with direct implications for the design of bilingual multimedia instruction.
Abstract Police administer live showup procedures when a suspect is located shortly after a crime, yet most prior research has relied on static, image-based showups, where confidence is often a weaker predictor of accuracy than in lineup procedures. Because actual police showup procedures involve live, in-person identifications, we conducted two studies to test the reliability of eyewitness confidence in live showups. In Study 1, a laboratory experiment ( N = 229), identifications made with both high confidence and fast response time were more likely to be correct, and high-confidence rejections indicated suspect innocence. In Study 2 ( N = 153), a field study using showup cases from two US jurisdictions, eyewitness confidence again indicated accuracy, assessed with the Strength of Evidence Scale as a proxy for ground truth. These findings demonstrate that eyewitness confidence is an indicator of accuracy in live showups, with implications for law enforcement policy and safeguards against wrongful convictions. When administered with procedures to reduce bias, live showups can yield reliable and probative identification, supporting their continued use in police investigations.
Abstract Prospective memory research often assumes that unfulfilled intentions reflect memory failures, but the reasons behind self-reported daily intention non-completion remain underexplored. In this study, we investigated the relative contribution of forgetting versus other factors to unfulfilled daily intentions and examined how intention-related characteristics predict the type of non-fulfillment. A total of 102 distance-learning students completed smartphone-based intention diaries across two five-day periods, reporting on 1823 non-routine next-day intentions and providing ratings of importance, perceived difficulty, memory confidence, and reminder use. Mixed-effects multinomial logistic regression revealed that memory confidence and perceived difficulty reliably distinguished non-forgetting reasons, whereas perceived importance had no effect. Reminder use was selectively associated with external causes rather than forgetting. Cross-validation with a publicly available dataset (Scott & Gilbert, 2024; N = 409 intentions) largely replicated these patterns. Overall, within the present sampling frame, forgetting accounted for only a minority of self-reported non-fulfillments (~ 10–14%), suggesting that situational and motivational factors, rather than memory failure, are primary drivers of non-completion in daily life. These findings challenge the assumption that unfulfilled intentions in naturalistic settings are predominantly due to forgetting and highlight the importance of considering multiple psychological and contextual aspects in prospective memory research.
Abstract We tested whether viewing a top-down map before or while exploring an environment can facilitate spatial learning through first-person navigation. In three experiments, participants navigated in virtual environments to find a sequence of targets (exploration) and then performed three tasks to assess their spatial knowledge: scene and orientation-dependent pointing (SOP), judgments of relative direction (JRD), and map reconstruction. In separate sessions, we tested conditions with and without map viewing. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed a structural map of the environment before performing exploration trials. Experiment 1 tested city environments with rectangular intersections, and Experiment 2 tested village environments with a main path and irregular side paths. We found no evidence that the structural map previews improved overall accuracy of spatial representations learned from navigation. Experiment 3 tested a village environment with more distinctive landmarks and presented a detailed map without targets labeled repeatedly throughout the exploration and still found no benefit from viewing a top-down map for first-person navigation in large-scale virtual spaces. We speculate that difficulty in translating between egocentric and allocentric representations might make it difficult to integrate information from a map and navigation experience.
Abstract First-person shooter (FPS) games demand rapid visual processing, spatial awareness, and response inhibition, yet the cognitive correlates of FPS gameplay remain under debate. This study examined whether FPS gaming experience is associated with inhibitory control indices and visuomotor efficiency using a gamified Go/No-Go target acquisition task with FPS-relevant spatial demands. Behavioral and eye movement indices were compared between 29 experienced FPS players (16 males; mean age = 21.38 ± 2.11 years) and 32 non-FPS participants (17 males; mean age = 21.00 ± 2.11 years). Results showed that FPS players demonstrated reliably faster execution times, while accuracy on Go trials did not differ between groups. For No-Go trials, overall commission error rates did not show a significant group effect, but were systematically modulated by spatial context (quadrant and its interaction with target distance). Eye-tracking results further revealed more efficient oculomotor dynamics in FPS players, including shorter saccade latencies and durations, with group differences most pronounced in specific spatial locations (notably Quadrant 2). Together, these findings suggest that FPS gaming experience is associated with faster visuomotor responding and distinct gaze dynamics under spatially distributed demands, while inhibitory accuracy appears more strongly shaped by spatial constraints than by experience level.
Visual search is shaped by both stress-inducing and motivational factors. Time pressure, a common stressor, can impair performance by prompting hurried search strategies, whereas reward value, a motivator, may enhance performance and efficiency. Although their individual effects are well-established, their joint influence on search performance and behavior is not yet clear—specifically, whether reward value can counteract the performance costs incurred by time pressure, enabling fast yet accurate searches. Moreover, little is known on whether time pressure and reward value exert distinct effects on the two processing components of visual search: target acquisition and target verification. The present eye-tracking study examines: (1) how time pressure and reward value influence search performance and behavior, and (2) whether reward value can counteract the adverse effects of time pressure on performance. Forty participants searched for target objects in a virtual living room under various time pressure and reward value conditions. As expected, time pressure reduced accuracy. However, it incurred longer target acquisition but shorter verification times. In contrast, reward value enhanced target acquisition efficiency and accuracy. It particularly improved accuracy and reduced search time under time pressure, suggesting a mitigating role against the performance decrements incurred by time pressure. Overall, the findings show that time pressure and reward value exert distinct effects on target acquisition and verification, yet their interaction influences performance. Everyday tasks often require us to find objects quickly and accurately. Whether a driver must spot the correct highway exit, an emergency responder must find the right instrument, or an air traffic controller must identify the correct signal on a display, visual search is a core component of many tasks. Yet, these searches rarely happen in a vacuum. Rather, they are influenced by stressors, such as time pressure, and motivators, such as the value of the outcome. Understanding how time pressure and reward value jointly impact visual search is therefore crucial for understanding how humans search in real-world scenarios. In the present study, we investigated how time pressure and reward value influenced visual search and performance, with emphasis on the two components of visual search: target acquisition (how quickly the target can be located) and verification (how long it takes to verify the target). Using virtual reality paired with eye-tracking, we were able to capture search behavior in a naturalistic setting. We found that time pressure induced less thorough search strategies that reduced accuracy, while reward value improved efficiency and could counteract some of the negative effects of time pressure on performance. Ultimately, this work contributes to applications ranging from interface design to training protocols in medicine, transportation, aviation, and military–contexts where the balance between search speed and accuracy can have serious ramifications.
This study used a between-subjects experimental design to examine how five spoiler conditions, including a complete scene without spoiler, a chaotic scene without spoiler, a video spoiler, a verbal spoiler, and a written spoiler, influenced viewers' narrative engagement, heart rate synchrony measured by inter-subject correlation, and task performance while watching suspenseful film clips. Seventy-six university students were randomly assigned to one of the spoiler groups and viewed clips from the film Revenge. Narrative engagement was assessed using the Narrative Engagement Scale (NES), and ECG signals were recorded to derive heart rate time series for ISC-HR analyses. Key cue search task was indexed by a sticker-counting task during viewing. Results indicated that the video spoiler group showed the most consistent advantages, including higher narrative engagement, more frequent key cue search task, and the highest ISC-HR during the spoiler exposure phase. In contrast, the chaotic scene without spoiler group showed the weakest subjective engagement profile, with differences most evident in comprehension-related engagement and partially attentional focus. ISC-HR varied by spoiler modality primarily during the spoiler exposure phase, with the video spoiler group eliciting the highest synchrony, whereas ISC-HR during movie watching did not show clear group differences. Overall, these findings suggest that spoiler modality and narrative coherence shape viewers' cognitive processing and cue monitoring during film viewing, and that ISC-HR can be used as a complementary physiological indicator to support the interpretation of immersion-related self-reports by indexing shared response dynamics among viewers.
Abstract Empirical evidence has demonstrated the power of AI to influence human decisions and the risk of humans acquiring AI biases. Therefore, there is a clear need to develop strategies to mitigate such threat. In three experiments, set in a medical context, we tested whether warning individuals about AI biases and errors could mitigate the negative impact of AI biases on their decisions and reduce the transmission of AI biases to humans. In Experiment 1, participants received explicit information about the percentage of erroneous AI recommendations but with two different framings: in terms of AI accuracy or AI risk of error. Our results showed that emphasising the risk of AI errors, more than its accuracy, reduced people’s tendency to follow incorrect AI suggestions and to acquire biases from AI. In Experiment 2, a more general warning message alerting of possible AI errors and biases was also effective in reducing bias acquisition. Experiment 3 showed that, although the warning message provided some protection against bias, participants who received AI support still made more errors than participants who completed the classification task without any assistance. Experiments 2 and 3 also investigated whether the type of error made by the AI, a false positive or a false negative, influenced participants’ tendency to adhere to its suggestions, and the effect of the warning message. However, no significant effects were found. Overall, our results highlight the importance of informing users about the risk of AI error rather than focusing solely on accuracy.
It has long been recognized that expert decision making entails both fast, intuitive and slower, deliberative processes. The enduring debate has to do with their relative roles. Some theories attribute the growth of expertise to the replacement of deliberative processes by intuitive perceptual recognition processes. Time pressure should have minimal effects on expert performance if intuitive processes are the primary basis for expertise. Two studies on archival data from the world's strongest chess experts participating in high-stakes time-critical international matches with different time controls were conducted. Chess moves from 20 grandmasters and seven world chess champions were examined in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. Using a within-subject design, analysis of quantifiable performance measures in both speed (move time) and decision quality (blunder propensity) provided a strong demonstration of adverse time pressure effects. Experts did not deliberate only when time pressure was low. Importantly, elite chess players were highly strategic and adaptive in their deployment of time usage that allowed them to intuit when feasible and to deliberate when necessary. The present findings demonstrate the key role of deliberative processes even at the highest levels of expertise and are inconsistent with the assertion that intuitive processes are the primary basis for expertise. Discounting the deliberate component in expert decision making in theory and in practice could have far-reaching real-world consequences.
Abstract The existing literature on naturalistic thoughts has offered insights into the general patterns of thoughts common across large groups of participants. However, little is known about individual variability in thoughts. One approach to understanding variation within individuals is precision experience sampling, an idiographic approach that involves sampling inner experiences across multiple sessions and/or timepoints. This creates a comprehensive portrayal of an individual’s thoughts across time and context, which in turn facilitates person-specific predictions of their thoughts. The current study therefore used precision experience sampling to examine individual variations in naturalistic thoughts as a function of ongoing task. We implemented 7 sessions per participant (n = 7, idiographic group), resulting in 49 datasets. We verified that the descriptives of thoughts and task-modulatory effects of thoughts in this group were comparable to a larger cohort of participants (n = 49, nomothetic group) who each completed one session. Both groups were asked to complete whatever task they wished on the laboratory computer and to occasionally report their current task and numerous thought dimensions. Our results revealed considerable individual differences in the modulatory effects of task on thought dimensions, such that individuals engaged in different types of thoughts under different task contexts, underscoring the importance of considering both individual and contextual factors. They also indicated that patterns observed at the group level did not always accurately represent individual level patterns. Furthermore, applying machine learning algorithms on reports of the task-at-hand reliably detected all thought dimensions, with superior classification performance in the idiographic compared to nomothetic group. Overall, our study demonstrates the idiosyncratic effects of task on naturalistic thoughts and highlights the value of precision experience sampling in improving person-specific predictions of thoughts, which has important methodological and clinical implications.
