Emotion is typically perceived in dynamic multisensory contexts. Although previous studies have demonstrated multimodal gains in audiovisual recognition (i.e., general enhancement in audiovisual conditions), they have not clarified how visual and auditory information contribute to affective judgments or whether their contribution differs by emotion categories. The current study investigated how emotion perception varies across modalities and examined whether these variations depend on emotion categories. We conducted an emotion perception experiment using audio-only (AO), video-only (VO), and audio-visual (AV) speech stimuli. Participants evaluated the valence (positive/negative) and arousal (weak/strong) of stimuli depicting seven emotions (angry, calm, disgust, fearful, happy, sad, and surprise). Overall, AO stimuli tended to be perceived as more negative in valence and weaker in arousal compared to VO or AV stimuli. In representational similarity analysis, the response patterns for AV were more similar to VO than to AO. Happy and disgust stimuli were rated as weaker in arousal and less positive or less negative in valence in AO condition than in other conditions. For surprise, VO stimuli were rated more negatively than AO and AV. However, angry, fearful, and sad emotions did not differ between modalities. These findings indicate that affective judgments are not solely driven by general enhancement from combined audiovisual cues; rather, the relative importance of sensory modalities varies by emotion, suggesting that specific unimodal cues can be as informative as multimodal information. These modality-specific contributions to emotion perception have implications for clinical assessment, social communication, and affective neuroscience.
This study investigated how stimulus material and effector specificity influence interference control (a form of inhibitory control) in adolescent players. Ninety-one males aged 15–18 years (28 handball players, 34 soccer players, 29 non-player controls) completed nine modified Flanker task versions varying in stimulus type (abstract, handball-specific, soccer-specific) and response modality (finger, hand, foot). Mixed-design ANOVAs revealed significant main effects of congruency, stimulus type, and response modality. Responses were slower, and interference effects were larger in incongruent than in congruent trials. In addition, sports-specific stimuli and more motorically demanding response modalities were associated with increased response times compared to abstract arrow stimuli and simple finger responses. A congruency × stimulus interaction revealed reduced flanker effects for sports-specific stimuli, indicating that domain-specificity shapes interference processing. However, no consistent group differences were found, suggesting adolescent players do not exhibit broad cognitive advantages, or such advantages are context-dependent. Overall, the findings suggest that performance was primarily shaped by perceptual and motor requirements of the task, i.e., bystimulus complexity and response modality rather than by differences between athlete and control groups. Longitudinal research is needed to clarify how training and development interact to shape cognitive–motor control.
Co-attention has been shown to enhance memory. Although this effect has been replicated in different social contexts, its minimal conditions remain unclear. Features of previous experiments have been conducive to collaboration, such as participants completing complementary tasks or experiencing a minimal ingroup manipulation. Consequently, it remains unknown whether co-attention effects on memory reflect a fundamental motivation to represent the mental states of those around us, or whether they are limited to coordination contexts. The proposed studies will test whether mere passive co-attention with a stranger is sufficient to enhance memory. We plan two experiments to: (1) conceptually replicate Shteynberg’s (2010; JPSP) finding that seeing the same (versus different) stimuli alongside an in-group member enhances memory, and (2) test whether mere co-attention enhances memory, absent the group manipulation.
Smooth pursuit eye movements can offer a window into the interaction between sensorimotor control and cognition. The present study examined how pursuit might be affected by dual-task demands varying in sensory modality and cross-modal conflict. A second, exploratory aim was to assess whether individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity could moderate these effects. Participants were asked to track a moving target whilst performing mental calculations on visual, auditory, or bimodal digit streams. Pursuit was stabilised when attention was directed to visual input but substantially destabilised when directed to auditory input, revealing a bidirectional modality asymmetry. When attention was focused on an auditory stream in the presence of incongruent visual digits, cognitive error increased whilst pursuit variability did not, suggesting that additional conflict may tax cognitive rather than oculomotor processes. Higher WM capacity appeared to provide a modest, selective buffer, reducing pursuit variability specifically under demanding auditory conditions. We interpret these findings through a Selection-with-Support (SWS) principle: dual-task costs depend upon the representational alignment between attentional selection and the motor circuits supporting pursuit. Visual attention appears to directly support pursuit by engaging shared sensorimotor circuits, whilst auditory attention, lacking such premotor grounding, may rely upon executive control that WM can only partially sustain. The present study therefore offers a plausible mechanistic account of how attention might be motorically grounded.
Individuals routinely learn patterns from sights and sounds, yet it remains unclear how memories of those patterns compare across senses over time. Statistical learning, the implicit detection and extraction of patterns from continuous input, has been documented across sensory modalities, but most work has focused on immediate learning in unisensory contexts. This study, using a within-subject design, directly compared 24-hour consolidation trajectories of auditory, visual, and audiovisual statistical learning. Twenty-six young adults completed three statistical learning tasks across auditory, visual, and audiovisual modalities. In each task, participants were exposed to a continuous stream of stimuli with embedded triplet patterns. Learning of these patterns was tested immediately after exposure and again 24 h later. Across immediate and delayed tests, multisensory exposure yielded higher accuracy than unisensory exposure, demonstrating a robust multisensory-over-unisensory advantage. In contrast, only auditory statistical learning showed overnight gains, whereas visual and multisensory learning remained stable, suggesting a consolidation advantage for auditory input. Cross-task correlations, both at immediate test and for consolidation magnitudes, were weak, suggesting substantial modality-specific contributions to statistical learning. These findings provide the first evidence that multisensory input boosts long-term retention of learned patterns, and the consolidation of these patterns operates in a modality-specific manner. Individuals readily learn and remember patterns from sights and sounds, but how well these memories persist across senses is unclear. We compared auditory, visual, and audiovisual pattern learning within young adults. Audiovisual presentation increased test performance relative to either sense alone. However, only auditory pattern learning improved overnight. Visual and audiovisual learning remained stable. Correlations were small within sessions and for overnight change, highlighting that consolidation of newly learned patterns largely depends on specific sensory modalities rather than a single, shared process across modalities.
Research has shown that the sense of agency depends on various sources of information and can influence other cognitive processes such as visual attention and memory. This study examines whether stimulus variability is another factor that either influences or is influenced by the sense of agency. Stimulus variability reflects environmental uncertainty, which is closely linked to the sense of agency. We hypothesized that a reduced sense of agency increases perceived variability and that higher stimulus variability diminishes the sense of agency. Participants in four experiments moved 40 circle stimuli for 3 s, with a 1 s delay introduced in half the trials to reduce the sense of agency. In Experiments 1–3, color variability was manipulated. Participants reported the perceived color variability (Experiment 1), their sense of agency (Experiment 3), or both (Experiment 2). While the delay manipulation did not influence perceived color variability, color variability reduced the agency ratings. Notably, the effect of color variability emerged only when participants reported both perceived color variability and their agency ratings (Experiment 2), and it disappeared when the color variability was task-irrelevant (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 extended this design to motion-direction variability, and a similar pattern was observed where direction variability reduced the agency ratings but the delay had no effect on perceived direction variability. Together, these results suggest that stimulus variability can influence the sense of agency in a unidirectional manner and that this effect is modulated by the task relevancy of variability information.
The perception of emotional faces plays a critical role in shaping human motor responses. However, the relationship between perceived facial expressions, particularly fear, and approach-related movement remains unclear as prior research often employed ambiguous approach behaviour and tasks requiring emotion identification before action planning, potentially introducing biases from differences in recognition accuracy across emotions. To address these limitations, we examined the effect of emotional (fearful, angry, happy) faces on unambiguous approach-related movement, i.e., forward single-step initiation by using a go/no-go paradigm, in two conditions: a neutral-versus-emotional condition (motor responses depended on whether the face was emotional or neutral), or a face-gender condition. Results showed that the perception of emotional faces impacted forward single-step initiation in the neutral-versus-emotional condition only. More precisely, the motor response was stronger (higher anticipatory postural adjustments amplitude) in front of fearful and happy faces than angry faces, and faster (shorter time to reach the forward velocity peak of the centre of body mass) to fearful than to angry faces. This modulation of approach-related motor response, with facilitation of motor output for fearful relative to angry faces, may reflect a more effective preparation of forward stepping when the emotional information is compatible with the movement. Furthermore, the fact that emotional effects were observed only in the neutral-versus-emotional condition can be interpreted in terms of whether the emotional information was task-relevant or incidental.
Rafetseder et al. (2021) were the first to demonstrate that children have difficulty revising their beliefs when objects morphed from one object (e.g. a rabbit) into another (e.g. a duck). Children aged four to eight reported the second object significantly later than adults. This is surprising, because both children and adults were presented with the same initial information (“it is a rabbit”) and were exposed to the same contradictory visual evidence. We conducted three experiments to replicate the results and to and explore reasons for children’s delayed belief revision. In Experiment 1 (N = 58; 3- to 6-year-olds), we demonstrated that children only struggle to identify the second object in the gradual condition, while displaying adult-like categorical perception when the same images were presented individually outside of the morphing context. In Experiment 2 (N = 86; 6- to 11-year-olds), we found that only children aged 9 years and over showed a similar pattern to adults, and that a global processing style facilitated identification of the second object. In Experiment 3 (N = 47, 5- to 6-year-olds), when children were explicitly informed of the two possible interpretations of the morphed images, their performance improved, although not to the level observed in the individual condition of Experiment 1. These findings suggest that children of different ages struggle to revise their beliefs in a gradually changing environment for different reasons. While older children may use less efficient, potentially local, exploration strategies, younger children may have difficulties with mental imagery.
Exposure to unrealistic body ideals on social media may distort individuals’ body image, potentially leading to increased body dissatisfaction. One proposed mechanism for this phenomenon is visual adaptation: prolonged exposure to thin bodies can shift subsequent judgments of body size, leading to subsequent bodies being perceived as fatter than they are. This study investigated whether exposure to body images of varying thinness alters judgments of body size relative to one’s own bodyand whether individual differences in body image concerns moderate these aftereffects. Thirty-four young women completed a psychophysical task in which they judged whether test bodies were thinner or fatter than themselves, following adaptation to either an extremely thin or a slightly thinner (but closer-to-self) body. Results showed stronger aftereffects following exposure to extreme-thin adaptors, with lower points of subjective equality (PSEs), indicating a shift toward judging thinner bodies as equivalent to one’s own body size. The point of subjective equality (PSE) is the body size at which participants are equally likely to judge a test body as thinner or fatter than their own. Adaptation to both close-thin and extreme-thin bodies resulted in lower PSEs, consistent with a contrastive aftereffect in which test stimuli were perceived as larger following exposure to thin adaptors. Higher body concern was positively associated with larger baseline PSEs, indicating greater perceived body size. These findings support the role of visual adaptation in shaping perceptual judgments of body size and suggest that individual differences in body concern influence this process. Opponent coding may underlie this mechanism, as greater aftereffects were observed for more extreme adaptors.
Multitasking—defined as the more or less overlapping execution of two or more tasks—has been shown to impair performance and induce performance costs. Nevertheless, individuals frequently engage in multitasking for private and work-related purposes. This raises the question: Do subjective impressions about multitasking efficiency diverge from objective measures, or can multitasking indeed comprise benefits in certain conditions? While previous assessments of multitasking efficiency focused mostly on central processing limitations, they largely neglected benefits of parallel peripheral task processing in overlapping task execution. To address this empirically, we conducted two multitasking studies and compared Time on Task (ToT; Reissland Manzey, 2016), that is, the total time needed to finish both sub-tasks, in an overlapping versus a sequential dual-task condition. Experiment 1 (N = 18) applied a Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm with distinct task sets in Task 1 and Task 2. Experiment 2 (N = 32) used identical task sets to maximize between-task interference in the overlapping dual-task condition. Results of both experiments showed shorter ToT in the overlapping compared to the sequential dual-task condition, without much evidence of compensatory effects. These results suggest that the assessment of multitasking efficiency should consider the total time on task needed to perform both tasks to capture the costs of central processing limitations as well as benefits of parallel peripheral task processing. They further underscore the importance of carefully selecting and justifying the chosen evaluation metrics when assessing multitasking efficiency.
Observing others' actions can blur the boundary between self and other, leading to false memories of self-performance. Although previous research using the observation-inflation paradigm has examined the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, little is known about its persistence and the cognitive processes that sustain it. In Experiment 1, participants performed or read action phrases and later observed videos of others performing actions. During the five days before the memory test, they received corrective feedback distinguishing actions they had performed from those merely observed. Corrective feedback reduced false self-performance reports, yet participants still showed longer response times when judging previously observed action phrases than unobserved ones, suggesting that prior observation continued to influence retrieval processing even after correction. Experiment 2 employed event-related potentials to differentiate familiarity- and recollection-based processes. Larger LPC amplitudes for read-and-observed phrases, together with the absence of a reliable FN400 difference, suggested a greater contribution of recollection-related than familiarity-related processes. Together, the findings show that even when false beliefs are corrected, observed actions may continue to exert a lasting influence on subsequent memory judgments.
The sound-induced flash illusion (SiFI) is a typical auditory-dominated multisensory illusion, and its susceptibility can be modified by perceptual training. However, the effects of different training protocols and their transfer effects on SiFI remain unclear. The present study employed the SiFI paradigm combined with feedback training to examine the effects of different types of training on SiFI performance across multiple stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). SOA was manipulated in the pretest and posttest to determine whether training effects would generalize to untrained temporal intervals. Participants were assigned to four groups, including a control group that completed only the pretest and posttest and three training groups that received 5 days of combined training, audiovisual training, or visual-only training respectively. The results showed that perceptual training significantly improved performance on the SiFI task, but the magnitude of improvement differed across training modalities. Audiovisual and combined training were more effective than visual-only training, and these benefits generalized from the trained SOA to untrained SOAs, indicating transfer of the training effect across temporal intervals. These findings suggest that cross-modal training is more effective than unimodal visual training in reducing SiFI susceptibility and provide further evidence for the plasticity of multisensory perceptual processing.
In many real-life situations learning is an active process of engaging with new information, experimenting and integrating new experiences to build meaningful understanding. However, learning can have either a more active or more passive form and several factors may influence how effectively individuals learn new information in both cases. One such factor is the sense of agency, which refers to the subjective feeling of control over one’s actions, and it distinguishes active experience from passive observation. The present study aims to investigate whether differences in the sense of agency affect learning, as evaluated using the artificial grammar learning task. Participants were assigned to either an active condition, where they had full control over responses, or a passive condition, where they mostly passively observed the computer performing the task and were learning through observation. At the end of the experiment, they rated their perceived control. Results showed that participants in the active condition reported a stronger sense of agency and demonstrated higher accuracy from the very beginning of the task compared to those in the passive condition. Although both groups improved with repeated trials at a similar rate, the initial advantage for the active group persisted throughout the experiment. Overall, our study suggests that sense of agency can influence learning, and that learning is more effective when individuals feel in control of their actions.
The resolution of insight problems often requires overcoming mental fixation, yet the role of cognitive inhibition in this process remains debated. Does it serve to suppress interference or does it inappropriately inhibit the very insight needed? To clarify this issue, the present study combined the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm with an insight problem solving task, introducing the need for closure (NFC) as a key individual-differences variable. We found that inhibition of solution to the problem directly impaired insight problem solving performance. Crucially, NFC significantly moderated this inhibitory effect: high NFC participants not only exhibited a more pronounced RIF effect but also demonstrated superior insight problem solving abilities. This suggests that high NFC participants can deploy cognitive inhibition more efficiently, proactively attenuating the activation of dominant yet irrelevant representations to facilitate the restructuring of the problem representation. Our research thus reveals the “double-edged sword” effect of cognitive inhibition in insight and elucidates how motivational factors shape cognitive control in the service of creative thinking.
In event segmentation, a context shift (event boundary) commonly leads to slower response times, compared to response times for actions occurring away from boundaries. This effect is commonly considered to result from novelty and segmentation processes in working memory. It is less clear if and how familiarity affects boundary processing. In the current study, we investigated the role of contextual familiarity in boundary processing. Participants saw lists of random pictures while simultaneously listening to sound contexts that changed after each triplet of pictures and rated for each picture how much they thought it was associated to the context. Contextual familiarity was manipulated by replaying one of the sound contexts three additional times throughout a list. During list presentation, participants showed increasingly faster boundary response times for each repetition of the sound context, compared to novel contexts. This effect was not due to merely playing more contexts over time. Participants showed no boundary-related effect in the associative ratings. A subsequent temporal order memory task showed no effect of context familiarity on memory performance, suggesting boundary-related processing and event memory formation may depend on partly independent processes.
Classical musicians’ individual practice time is central to their musical life and development, yet little research has examined the cognitive and affective processes that influence its effectiveness. This study investigates boredom, mind-wandering and flow during classical music practice, both on the trait and state level (i.e., during practice in general as well as during a specific session) as experiences associated with practice effectiveness. Classical musicians (N = 105) completed two 20-minute practice sessions and filled out questionnaires beforehand, between sessions, and after the second session. Boredom during practice emerged as a negative correlate for all performance outcomes: Trait boredom during practice was negatively associated with practice satisfaction, while state boredom was negatively related to both efficacy and creativity in a specific practice session. No significant associations were found between trait or state mind-wandering during practice and any outcome variables. Flow during practice, on the other hand, was positively associated with both efficacy and creativity. These findings suggest that while boredom is robustly linked to poorer outcomes and flow to better outcomes in classical music practice, the same is not true for mind-wandering. A possible explanation may lie in heterogeneous nature of mind-wandering and the relative freedom of practice. Given that boredom was consistently associated with less effective, less creative practice and lower practice satisfaction, whereas flow states were linked to more effective practice and higher creativity, future experimental or intervention-based studies should be developed to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms by which cognitive and affective states influence musicians’ practice.
A topic of interest in the attention capture literature is the interaction between attention and conscious perception. Many studies have examined whether conscious perception of an irrelevant distracting stimulus is necessary for it to capture attention. One approach involves using measures that require subjects to rate their perceived clarity of a distractor on every trial. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the assessment of conscious perception of the distractor using such measures impacts the allocation of attention to the distractor. We investigated whether measuring conscious perception of a distractor increases its relevance to the observer, causing attention to be allocated to the distractor voluntarily rather than captured involuntarily. We examined this possibility in four experiments in which subjects completed a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task. To determine whether attention is allocated voluntarily to the distractor or captured by it, we measured two effects indicative of attention capture, the contingent capture effect and a spatial distance effect. The results suggest that when conscious perception was measured distractors captured attention irrespective of whether the distractor and target colour matched. However, when conscious perception was not being measured a robust contingent capture effect was consistently observed. Although the effect of the spatial distance manipulation was mixed, we consistently observed a larger attentional blink by target-matching distractors presented at a location far from the focally attended region when conscious perception was measured than when it was not. Thus, we concluded that measuring conscious perception of a distractor interferes with the allocation of attention to the distractor by causing it to be voluntarily attended as though it were task relevant, masking the hallmarks observed when attention is captured. The present findings suggest that previous claims made about the interaction between conscious perception and attention may be premature, necessitating either development of a new measure, or adjustments to existing measures.
Previous work has shown that serial order in verbal working memory triggers the spontaneous formation of a mental line on which the sequence of items is coded. Recent studies show that the orientation (horizontal versus vertical) and coding direction (e.g., left-to right versus right-to-left) of this spatialization can flexibly be adapted to match the task context. Here we investigate whether people spatialize a sequence of verbal items using multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously if the task probes such strategy. In two experiments, participants had to encode a letter sequence and maintain it for later reproduction. In between, they performed a vowel-consonant classification task on items that were part of the memorized sequence to probe for spatialization. Classification occurred via horizontal or vertical saccade responses that varied unpredictably from trial to trial, with a fixed (Experiment 1) or variable (Experiment 2) stimulus-response mapping. Spatial biases were observed for both horizontally (early-left, late-right) and vertically (early-up, late-down) oriented classification trials (mixed within the same block), indicating that the item sequence was spatialized in a multidimensional format (i.e. exploiting both the vertical and horizontal axes). The horizontal and vertical biases were also correlated with each other. Overall, we show for the first time that task context can probe a strategy in which people spatially code a sequence of verbal items using multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously.
Cross-sectioning task requires participants to identify the two-dimensional (2D) internal shape of cross-sectioned three-dimensional (3D) solids. This task demands advanced spatial reasoning abilities, including the mental manipulation of both two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects. While previous research has highlighted the importance of vision in understanding objects’ spatial features, the relationship between successful cross-sectioning and visual impairments remains unclear. The present study aims to investigate how early-life vision guides the ability to construct and transform spatial representations through touch, using a haptic 3D-printed version of the Santa Barbara Solid Test. Our sample consisted of four groups of participants: early blind (N = 11), late blind (N = 8, onset of blindness: after 6 years old), low vision (N = 5, vision acuity between 3/10 and 1/20), and blindfolded sighted (N = 13). All participants were asked to haptically explore and recognize cross-sections of 3D-printed solids of varying difficulty levels (N = 10 trials) and to identify the associated correct section among four options. We analyzed performance using a generalized linear mixed model, with accuracy (correct versus incorrect) as the outcome and group and difficulty as predictors. The group (i.e., onset of blindness) emerged as the only significant predictor for task performance (p-value < 0.001). In particular, early blind participants show lower probability of correctly identifying cross-section of solids compared to the other groups (all p-values ≤ 0.02). These findings show that visual deprivation in the first years of life impacts the development of effective haptic spatial skills, highlighting the need for tailored rehabilitation programs, particularly in the context of multisensory spatial reasoning.
This study explores how social status influences the processing and comprehension of euphemisms in language. Using an eye-tracking experiment, we manipulated the social status of the speaker and recipient, examining participants' reading behavior as they encountered euphemisms or literal language in dialogues. All participants recruited for this study were university students.Results showed that when low-status speakers used euphemisms, readers exhibited increased cognitive effort, as evidenced by longer fixation durations, higher fixation counts, and extended regression path durations. In contrast, high-status speakers did not induce significant differences in reading patterns between euphemistic and literal expressions. These findings suggest that social status plays a crucial role in shaping expectations about language use, with low-status speakers expected to use more direct language. Furthermore, we employed decoding analyses using a fully connected neural network to confirm that eye movement patterns could distinguish between high- and low-status contexts, underscoring the broader cognitive implications of social context on language comprehension. This research contributes to understanding the intersection of social cognition and pragmatics, highlighting the influence of social hierarchies in non-literal language processing.
