Dangerous stimuli are often assumed to capture attention automatically and impair ongoing task performance, yet empirical evidence is inconsistent. We examined two potential sources of this inconsistency: whether distractors fall within attentional scope under similarity-load manipulations and whether increased set size imposes sufficient processing demands to weaken distractor suppression. Across three visual-search experiments, peripheral distractor images were drawn from three categories: high-arousal dangerous, medium-arousal dangerous, and low-arousal neutral. Experiment 1 manipulated target-nontarget color similarity in six-item displays. Medium-arousal dangerous distractors slowed responses relative to low-arousal neutral distractors under high, but not low, similarity, whereas high-arousal dangerous distractors produced no reliable interference. Experiment 2 manipulated set size (6 vs. 10 items) while maintaining high target-nontarget color discriminability. Increasing set size produced neither a reliable reaction-time (RT) cost nor a set size × distractor type interaction. Experiment 3 applied the same set-size manipulation in a Landolt-C search requiring item-by-item discrimination. Increasing set size produced substantial RT and error costs. In the 10-item condition, both high- and medium-arousal dangerous distractors slowed responses relative to low-arousal neutral distractors, whereas neither produced reliable RT interference in the 6-item condition. Together, these findings suggest that interference from dangerous distractors is more likely to emerge when the primary task broadens the spatial scope of attention and consumes sufficient cognitive resources to weaken distractor suppression.
Stimuli that are unexpected, relatively infrequent, and task-irrelevant can grab attention to the detriment of ongoing tasks. In the surprise-induced blindness (SiB) and surprise-induced deafness (SiD) paradigms, such stimuli render participants unaware of a task-relevant probe presented 300-400 ms thereafter. These initially profound detection deficits, however, quickly habituate across surprise trials. We sought to identify the electroencephalography (EEG) markers of SiB and SiD to better understand the deficits' causes and relationship. Human participants (n = 33; 18 males, 15 females) completed the paradigms in counterbalanced order while EEG was recorded. Participants evidenced SiB and SiD: Probe detection was severely impaired, but only for the first few surprise trials. In contrast, detection was consistently high during standard trials. Surprise-induced deficits were accompanied by a late parietal positivity time-locked to surprise stimulus presentations, which attenuated by trial alongside the behavioral effects. These qualities are characteristic of the P3 complex, especially its novelty P3 (nP3) component, suggesting that SiB and SiD are a consequence of extended stimulus evaluation indexed by the nP3. Putative nP3s were similar for the visual and auditory paradigms, akin to the similar behavioral deficits. Nevertheless, individual differences in behavioral deficit magnitudes were not correlated across modalities, and encountering surprises in one modality did not reduce their effect in the other. Probe-evoked and early perceptual-related components also differed greatly by modality and did not habituate. Our results suggest that surprise-induced deficits are due to late, modality-specific attentional limitations with similar behavioral outcomes and neural features.
In two experiments, multiple measures of mind wandering and creativity were examined to understand the association between the two concepts. In-task measures of freely moving thought, intentional and unintentional mind wandering were collected during a lexical decision and a movie task. A survey was administered to obtain deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering traits. Creative problem solving and divergent thinking tasks were used to assess creative thinking. Experiment 1 found a positive relationship between intentional mind wandering and creative problem solving. Also, two significant interaction effects were present only during the lexical decision task. Experiment 2 included attention control and emotion measures and focused on task-specific effects with a between-subjects design of mind wandering tasks. Attention control positively predicted creative thinking. Deliberate mind wandering trait positively predicted creative thinking above and beyond attention control. In-task measures did not yield a significant effect. Implications for context-specific factors of productive and detrimental mind wandering as well as limitations of the study were discussed.
Navigating spatial environments is foundational to human behavior, critically involving familiarity and recollection processes. The extent to which these cognitive processes are affected by encoding manipulations is poorly understood, though, as most research examining encoding manipulation effects on recognition has implemented standard word list-learning paradigms. The current study examined how encoding manipulations impacted recognition memory by having participants tour dynamic scenes under different encoding conditions (passively viewing scenes while listening to pre-generated names, self-generating descriptive names to describe the scenes, or judging whether scenes took place in an indoor or outdoor setting), then tour novel test scenes that were either configurally similar or dissimilar to studied scenes. Results indicated that, compared to passive viewing, orienting participants toward perceptual aspects (i.e., requiring indoor/outdoor judgments) boosted familiarity-based discrimination and decreased recollection. Conversely, elaborative, semantic encoding (i.e., self-generating study scene names) increased recollection but not familiarity-based discrimination compared to passive viewing. These results fit with the broader verbal learning literature, suggesting that familiarity is sensitive to perceptual manipulations, whereas recollection is sensitive to elaborative processing, while also demonstrating encoding manipulation effects on scene memory. We propose that the relevance of encoded features is impactful on subsequent memory performance, as orienting participants to perceptual scene properties boosts familiarity, while elaborative task-relevant processing boosts recollection.
We examined whether continuous self-monitoring for mind-wandering episodes impairs primary-task performance and differentially affects residual probe-caught deliberate versus spontaneous mind-wandering. Participants (N = 117) completed the Metronome Response Task, which requires rhythmic keypresses synchronized with auditory tones. The task was intermittently interrupted by thought probes sampling experiences of deliberate and spontaneous mind-wandering. Critically, whereas both groups provided probe-caught responses, one group received additional instructions to self-catch and report mind-wandering episodes as they occurred. Results revealed that self-catching significantly increased rhythmic response time variability (d = 0.46), indicating impaired task performance. This performance cost emerged despite (a) no significant differences in probe-caught mind-wandering reports, and (b) no significant evidence that self-monitoring differentially reduced deliberate versus spontaneous mind-wandering across the groups. These findings suggest that the metacognitive act of monitoring one's attentional state is not cost-free, but rather draws upon limited cognitive resources needed for primary task performance. The observed performance costs align with models proposing that monitoring for mind wandering engages higher-order evaluative processes that compete with task-focused attention.
Deciding what activities to engage in on a given day recruits multiple cognitive processes, including the episodic memory system. One of the ways in which the episodic memory system supports daily decision-making is by episodic simulation, allowing us to pre-experience prospective activities. Prior work has shown that episodic simulation can increase the likelihood that one engages in an activity in the future but has not tested whether this increased likelihood is consistent across repeated choices or whether it depends on what is being simulated. Thus, the goal of the present study was to first characterize how episodic simulation affects repeated decisions for engaging in everyday activities, and then to address whether the content of these simulations shifted choice behaviour in a similar scenario. Across three experiments, we tested the hypotheses that simulated activities would be more likely to be chosen than unsimulated activities, but that this effect would decline across repeated choice scenarios (Experiments 1 and 2), and depend on the content of the simulation (Experiment 3). In support of these hypotheses, we found evidence for a transient effect of episodic simulation on the likelihood of choosing a simulated activity over an unsimulated activity. Furthermore, this effect was observed primarily when the simulations involved imagining rather than planning the activities. Together, our results provide insight into how people make everyday decisions and how these decisions may be influenced by episodic simulation and repeated choice.
Chronic pain is a prevalent and complex condition that significantly impacts individuals' quality of life. Understanding its neurobiology and clinical phenomenology requires the integration of cognitive-behavioral and sensory-motor frameworks. Traditional models inadequately address the multilevel and transnosological aspects of chronic pain, particularly the interplay between interoception and predictive coding. Recent neurocomputational approaches present the theoretical basis for a Bayesian model of chronic pain that unifies interoception and predictive processing. However, providing empirical evidence for this model remains challenging. In this regard, we present a comprehensive review demonstrating the applications of neurocomputational models to understand the complex pain experience under four key frameworks: (i) likelihood and the altered interoceptive processing; (ii) priors and the pain-related expectations; (iii) kinesiophobia shaped by anticipatory capability; and (iv) the heart-brain axis and its role in decision-making. Empirical evidence supporting these frameworks may guide clinical interventions and improve patient outcomes by targeting the specific maladaptive processes that underlie chronic pain.
The question raised in this study was: when and why does the feeling of a change in the passage of time arise? Participants were instructed to press a button as soon as they perceived a change in the speed of the passage of time. After each detection, they indicated whether they felt that time was "speeding up" and "slowing down", and rated the intensity of this feeling. They also rated their affective states: happiness, sadness, arousal, boredom, attention, and temporal expectation. Following the experimental session, they completed a questionnaire assessing their individual interoceptive awareness. Results showed that the time detection, the intensity of the passage-of-time, and the number of detections differed between participants who reported time slowing down and those who reported time speeding up. In addition, results suggested that distinct mechanisms could be linked to the feelings of time slowing down and time speeding up. The feeling of time slowing down was associated with interoceptive awareness linked to boredom, whereas the feeling of time speeding up was associated with happiness linked to heightened attention captured by the video, with interoceptive awareness playing no significant role. Based on the asymmetrical phenomenology of the slowing and speeding up of time, we proposed a model of variations in the judgment of the passage of time.
Achieving a complete understanding of our internal thought processes requires us to understand the behavioral and neural distinctions underpinning controlled thoughts (stimulus-independent control) and spontaneous thoughts (mind-wandering). One unexplored question is whether thought content differs with differing levels of thought control. We had participants perform a task known to elicit high levels of mind-wandering. Throughout the task, we asked participants to report the content of their thoughts in their own words and identify whether their thoughts were externally or self-generated and whether their thoughts were under their control. Task-unrelated thought content was more heterogeneous within participants compared to other thought categories. Self-generated spontaneous thoughts were less similar than self-generated controlled thoughts, even when analyses were restricted to task-unrelated thoughts. Examination of thought content using sentence embeddings found thought content naturally clustered based on thought category. Finally, we found the number of task-unrelated self-generated spontaneous trials, but not controlled trials, correlated with mind-wandering survey measures. Overall, we find evidence for a meaningful distinction between stimulus-independent controlled thought and spontaneous mind-wandering based on thought content.
Temporal order perception (TOP), a fundamental cognitive function that enables decoding of event timing, is influenced by perceptual grouping and attention, yet the role of cue validity in the interactive modulation of these two factors remains unclear. The present study adopted C-shaped stimuli composed of three line segments as experimental materials. Drawing on the grouping principle of closure, two experiments were conducted to examine the interactive effects of perceptual grouping and peripheral cues with non-predictive validity (50%, Experiment 1) and counter-predictive validity (20%, Experiment 2) on TOP. The results demonstrated that perceptual grouping facilitates simultaneity perception but impairs sequential perception. Notably, this dual effect of perceptual grouping on TOP is independent of both the validity and predictability of peripheral cues. Furthermore, the prior entry effect was enhanced by non-predictive peripheral cues but attenuated by counter-predictive ones. Perceptual grouping significantly reduced the modulatory effect of attention on TOP. Overall, these findings confirm a hierarchical modulation mechanism of TOP, in which the effect of perceptual grouping takes precedence over that of spatial attention in regulating TOP, and thus provide novel empirical and theoretical insights into the cognitive mechanisms of temporal order processing.
Understanding how visual information gains access to conscious awareness is a central issue in cognitive neuroscience. Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) provides a powerful method to investigate this transition by reliably suppressing visual stimuli from awareness. Previous work by Zhu, Drewes, and Melcher (2016) showed that mask frequency influences suppression strength of 2D stimuli, with a peak at 6 Hz. However, whether these findings generalize to more ecologically valid 3D stimuli, and whether CFS strength depends on the eye viewing the stimulus, remains unknown. In this study, we presented a real 3D black disc to one eye, and the dynamic colorful mask to the other one, alternating the eye-of-presentation across blocks. In each trial, the mask flickered at one of ten frequencies ranging from 0 Hz (static) to 32 Hz. Participants responded by pressing a bar as soon as any part of the stimulus became visible. Reaction times (RTs) showed a clear dependence on mask frequency, with maximal suppression occurring at about 6 Hz, as previously found with 2D stimuli, and without reliable differences between right- and left-eye presentations. However, unexpectedly, RTs exhibited a robust bimodal distribution, possibly suggesting specific cognitive processing of 3D stimuli that deserve further investigation. Together, these findings support the view that CFS engages fundamental temporal mechanisms of visual awareness that are shared by both 2D and 3D stimuli and operate at a relatively early, binocular stage of visual processing.
INTRODUCTION:Perception of our own body can dynamically change based on precision weighting of sensory prediction errors. The current study tested whether a trait-level factor influences such perceptual recalibration. Specifically, we tested whether bodily intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a distress response to ambiguous bodily signals, modulates visuo-somatic recalibration of perceived abdominal boundaries. METHODS:Participants competed a virtual reality paradigm, estimating perceived abdominal boundaries along the front-back dimension, before and after either congruent or incongruent visuo-tactile feedback. In the incongruent condition, the visuo-tactile feedback was manipulated to simulate an expanded abdominal boundary. RESULTS:Mixed-effects modelling showed that bodily IU predicted greater shifts in abdominal boundary estimates under incongruent feedback. DISCUSSION:These findings indicate that bodily IU amplifies perceptual change when sensory information is conflicting, suggesting a potential trait-level influence in precision control.
Recent evidence has highlighted differences in attentional shifting elicited by gaze and arrow stimuli. Specifically, in a spatial Stroop task, arrows consistently produce a standard congruency effect (SCE; faster reaction times on congruent vs. incongruent trials). In contrast, averted gaze stimuli produce a reversed congruency effect (RCE; faster reaction times on incongruent vs. congruent trials). The origin of this discrepancy is still under debate. One hypothesis suggests that the RCE for gaze is driven by joint attention (the shared focus of two individuals on the same object). According to this view, during incongruent trials, gaze stimuli appear to look toward the fixation stimulus, thus creating an episode of joint attention with the participant. To investigate this possibility, we conducted four experiments where participants identified the direction of a peripheral target (gaze or arrow). We also varied the fixation stimulus (symbolic cross or real-world object) and added an oculomotor component, to enhance joint attention contexts. Results consistently showed an SCE for arrows and an RCE for gaze, regardless of fixation type and the request to perform an eye movement, suggesting that joint attention, as operationalised in the present study, may not fully explain the RCE elicited by gaze.
Aphantasia - the absence of voluntary visual imagery - is typically framed as an imagery deficit, but the recurrent circuits implicated in imagery also support perception. We asked whether aphantasic individuals are more vulnerable to backward masking during visual pattern completion, a task that depends on recurrent feedback to fill in missing information from partially occluded objects. 31 self-identified aphantasic participants and 41 controls categorized briefly presented, partially occluded objects (stimulus-onset asynchronies 25-150 ms) followed by either a noise mask or a blank screen. Trial-level Bernoulli mixed-effects models estimated each group's masking cost - the within-subject unmasked-minus-masked accuracy decrement. Averaged across SOAs, the masking cost was larger in the aphantasia group (β = -0.167, z = -2.06, p = 0.039). Because recurrent processing is most constrained at the briefest target durations, we treated the 25 ms SOA as the theoretically focal condition; there the group difference was reliable (β = -0.339, z = -2.42, p = 0.015), with aphantasic participants losing roughly twice the accuracy controls did (19 vs. 10 percentage points). SOA did not, however, statistically moderate the difference (β = 0.106, p = 0.140), so the SOA gradient is consistent with, but not established by, the data. The larger masking cost reflected better unmasked performance in aphantasia that masking eliminated, not worse masked performance, and a combined model showed that the masking-cost difference was reliably larger for occluded than for intact stimuli at the focal SOA (β = -1.00, p = 0.012). These findings are consistent with recurrent processing in aphantasia being preserved but more easily disrupted by subsequent visual interference.
Research on the continuity and discontinuity between the waking and dreaming minds has largely focused on similarities and differences in waking and dream content. The present study expands this debate by examining another dimension: the relationship between the dream self and the waking self at the phenomenal level. Specifically, it investigates how bodily and affective dimensions of dream experience relate to individuals' experiences of self-continuity and self-discontinuity across wakefulness and dreaming. A sample of 302 participants completed self-report measures assessing experiences of self-(dis)continuity, including experiences of being another person, dream embodiment, dream affectivity, observer perspectives, lucid dreaming, and dream recall frequency. Results showed that stronger felt self-continuity between dreaming and waking was positively associated with experiences of positive-but not negative-dream emotions carrying over into waking life, and negatively associated with experiencing a body distinct from one's waking body. Conversely, more frequent experiences of being another person in dreams were associated with more frequent experiences of emotions perceived as inappropriate to the dream context. Contrary to expectations, no significant associations were found between experiences of being another person in dreams and lucid dreaming, observer perspectives, or dream recall frequency. These findings suggest convergent associations between experiences of self-(dis)continuity and bodily and affective dream phenomenology.
A key question in learning research concerns the role of awareness in human contingency learning. While a large portion of the contingency learning (CL) effect can be attributed to the episodic retrieval of previous SR bindings, a significant residual CL effect remains, which reflects the impact of global contingencies on behavior. In a high-powered (N = 168), pre-registered study, we implemented an on-task measure of awareness that prompted participants to actively search for underlying contingencies. This allowed for tracking fluctuations in contingency beliefs and relating these to the emergence of residual CL effects. We found that the residual CL effect is sensitive to propositional reasoning processes, as participants who completed the additional on-task assessment showed a larger residual CL effect than those in an off-task control group. This amplification was explained by increased levels of awareness in the on-task group, which were directly linked to a more pronounced residual CL effect. Notably, no residual CL effect emerged in the absence of awareness, regardless of whether awareness was assessed on-task or retrospectively. Interestingly, participants who repeatedly selected the same low contingency color in the on-task assessment showed a reversed residual CL effect, characterized by faster responding to low contingency color-word combinations that aligned with their false beliefs. Taken together, the present findings suggest that genuine human contingency learning - captured by residual CL effects that reflect the impact of environmental regularities on behavior - is not the product of automatic association formation but is fundamentally driven by active propositional reasoning processes.
Manipulations of belief in free will and behavioral outcomes have demonstrated mixed success raising the question under which conditions free will belief manipulations effectively change beliefs with its downstream consequences. Across four experiments (N = 3182) we tested the importance of commonly used manipulation characteristics by manipulating information type (text only vs. statements only vs. text and statements combined) and participants' engagement (asking participants to read the information vs. asking participants to summarize the information vs. asking participants to write about their personal experiences) on modifying belief in free will and punishment decisions measured at different time points. We found manipulations including combined text and statements as well as personalized manipulations to be particularly effective in weakening belief in free will measured immediately after the manipulation (Experiments 1, 2 and 4). However, neither information type nor engagement affected free will beliefs measured at the end of the experiment (Experiment 3). The use of combined text and statements and personalization led to greater changes in punishment behavior (Experiments 2-4). These findings have important implications for the development of manipulations targeting belief in free will and behavioral outcomes, such as punishment.
In the task-switching paradigm, the most prominent measure are the switch costs indicating worse performance on task switches compared to task repetitions. Previous research showed that introspective RT estimations capture the switch costs. However, the meaning of these introspective switch costs is not yet well understood. They may simply reflect the immediate experience of an executed response or rely on abstract theory-based knowledge about task transitions ("task switches are difficult and take longer"). The present study investigated how introspective judgments are formed during task switching. In Experiment 1, we tested participants' awareness of task transitions as a prerequisite of theory-based knowledge. On a random subset of trials, participants had to indicate whether the current task repeated or switched relative to the previous trial. Judgments were collected with a short (1000 ms) and a long (5000 ms) time window to distinguish intuitive from deliberate decisions. As predicted, participants reliably recognized the transition even with a short time window. In Experiment 2, we reduced immediate experience-based knowledge by introducing NoGo trials where participants had to refrain from responding. Hence, required RT estimations most likely relied on theory-based processes. The results showed introspective switch costs even in NoGo trials suggesting that participants may use theory-based knowledge to inform their judgments although experience-based influences of covert responses may also play a role. Taken together, our findings provide novel insights into introspection during task switching contributing to a better understanding of how task-switching performance may relate to decision-making.
Faces are among the most crucial visual stimuli for humans, and face detection is usually highly accurate. Humans can recognize faces rapidly and accurately, even under challenging viewing conditions, such as peripheral presentation and brief presentation times. Here, we show that faces are systematically underreported when presented in small groups, even for arrays as small as three faces. Participants viewed arrays of 3 to 6 identical faces with spacing well above visual resolution in the visual periphery. They reported the number of faces (Experiments 1 and 2), and additionally face orientations (upright or upside-down, Experiment 2). Participants frequently reported fewer faces than presented -even when only three faces were presented- while performing well in the face orientation task. Our results reveal unexpected detection-like errors for a highly important stimulus class. We suggest that the visual system optimizes the use of processing resources by prioritizing information compression over numerical accuracy when presented with redundant information.
Conflicting findings have led to uncertainty about the sensitivity of eye movements to unaware memory when materials are manipulated scenes. Here, we examine several factors (e.g., task instructions, manipulation type) that may determine whether and when unaware memory-based viewing effects are evident and detected in the data. Forty-eight young adults completed two encoding blocks, an indirect test block (i.e., eye-movements used alone to examine memory), and two direct test blocks. Test scenes were new, repeated, or manipulated, with an object removed from, or added to, the picture. Three explicit memory measures (i.e., scene recognition, change identification, change-location specification) were obtained in direct test 1 for indirect test scenes, whereas explicit responses and eye-movement data were obtained concurrently in direct test 2. Manipulated scene trials were categorized as unaware if all three responses were incorrect. Significant unaware viewing effects were evident when memory was tested indirectly and a new object was present in the scene, but not otherwise. We propose that elevated new-object viewing, without change awareness during the indirect test, promotes a reconsolidation process resulting in the development of a misleading familiarity signal. A lesser viewed, and therefore less familiar, object is then selected incorrectly as the new addition when memory is tested directly. In contrast, when changes are (spontaneously) noticed during indirect testing, a separate memory representation is encoded, permitting successful source discrimination later. Our findings reconcile incompatible results that have important implications for theories of hippocampal function and provide new insights into scene processing more generally.
