Search

Cognition and action are often intertwined in everyday life. It is thus pivotal to understand how cognitive processes operate with concurrent actions. The present study aims to assess how simple physical effort operationalized as isometric muscle contractions affects visual attention and inhibitory control. In a dual-task paradigm, participants performed a singleton search task and a handgrip task concurrently. In the search task, the target was a shape singleton among distractors with a homogeneous but different shape. A salient-but-irrelevant distractor with a unique color (i.e., color singleton) appeared on half of the trials (Singleton distractor present condition), and its presence often captures spatial attention. Critically, the visual search task was performed by the participants with concurrent hand grip exertion, at 5% or 40% of their maximum strength (low vs. high physical load), on a hand dynamometer. We found that visual search under physical effort is faster, but more vulnerable to distractor interference, potentially due to arousal and reduced inhibitory control, respectively. The two effects further manifest in different aspects of RT distributions that can be captured by different components of the ex-Gaussian model using hierarchical Bayesian method. Together, these results provide behavioral evidence and a novel model for two dissociable cognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of simple muscle exertion on the ongoing visual search process on a moment-by-moment basis.

In 1995, Theeuwes and Godthelp published a paper called “self-explaining roads,” in which they argued for the development of a new concept for approaching safe road design. Since this publication, self-explaining roads (SER) became one of the leading principles in road design worldwide. The underlying notion is that roads should be designed in such a way that road users immediately know how to behave and what to expect on these roads. In other words, the environment should be designed such that it elicits adequate and safe behavior. The present paper describes in detail the theoretical basis for the idea of SER and explains why this has such a large effect on human behavior. It is argued that the notion is firmly rooted in the theoretical framework of statistical learning, subjective road categorization and the associated expectations. The paper illustrates some successful implementation and describes recent developments worldwide.

Citation: Ekroll, V., Svalebjørg, M., Pirrone, A. et al. The illusion of absence: how a common feature of magic shows can explain a class of road accidents. Cogn. Research 6, 22 (2021). The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to the potential role of a recently discovered visual illusion in creating traffic accidents. The illusion consists in a compelling and immediate experience that the space behind an occluding object in the foreground is empty. Although the illusion refers to a region of space, which is invisible due to occlusion (a blind spot), there is evidence to suggest that it is nevertheless driven by visual mechanisms and that it can be just as deceptive and powerful as ordinary visual illusions. We suggest that this novel illusion can make situations involving blind spots in a road user's field of view even more dangerous than one would expect based on the lack of visibility by itself. This could be because it erroneously makes the road user feel that (s)he has actually seen everything there is to see, and thus has verified that the blind spot is empty. This hypothesis requires further testing before definitive conclusions can be drawn, but we wish to make researchers and authorities involved in the analysis of traffic accidents and on-the-spot crash investigations aware of its potential role in order to encourage registration of relevant data and facilitate further research.

AimPrevious research has focused on accuracy associated with real and fake news presented in the form of news headlines only, which does not capture the rich context news is frequently encountered in real life. Additionally, while previous studies on evaluation of real and fake news have mostly focused on characteristics of the evaluator (i.e., analytical reasoning), characteristics of the news stimuli (i.e., news source credibility) and the interplay between the two have been largely ignored. To address these research gaps, this project examined the role of analytical reasoning and news source credibility on evaluation of real and fake full-length news story articles. The project considered both accuracy and perceived credibility ratings as outcome variables, thus qualifying previous work focused solely on news detection accuracy.MethodWe conducted two independent but parallel studies, with Study 2 as a direct replication of Study 1, employing the same design but in a larger sample (Study 1:N = 292 vs. Study 2:N = 357). In both studies, participants viewed 12 full-length news articles (6 real, 6 fake), followed by prompts to evaluate each article’s veracity and credibility. Participants were randomly assigned to view articles with a credible or non-credible source and completed the Cognitive Reflection Test as well as short demographic questions.FindingsConsistent across both studies, higher analytical reasoning was associated with greater fake news accuracy, while analytical reasoning was not associated with real news accuracy. In addition, in both studies, higher analytical reasoning was associated with lower perceived credibility for fake news, while analytical reasoning was not associated with perceived credibility for real news. Furthermore, lower analytical reasoning was associated with greater accuracy for real (but not fake) news from credible compared to non-credible sources, with this effect only detected in Study 2.ConclusionsThe novel results generated in this research are discussed in light of classical vs. naturalistic accounts of decision-making as well as cognitive processes underlying news articles evaluation. The results extend previous findings that analytical reasoning contributes to fake news detection to full-length news articles. Furthermore, news-related cues such as the credibility of the news source systematically affected discrimination ability between real and fake news.

Visual inspection of luggage using X-ray technology at airports is a time-sensitive task that is often supported by automated systems to increase performance and reduce workload. The present study evaluated how time pressure and automation support influence visual search behavior and performance in a simulated luggage screening task. Moreover, we also investigated how target expectancy (i.e., targets appearing in a target-often location or not) influenced performance and visual search behavior. We used a paradigm where participants used the mouse to uncover a portion of the screen which allowed us to track how much of the stimulus participants uncovered prior to their decision. Participants were randomly assigned to either a high (5-s time per trial) or a low (10-s time per trial) time-pressure condition. In half of the trials, participants were supported by an automated diagnostic aid (85% reliability) in deciding whether a threat item was present. Moreover, within each half, in target-present trials, targets appeared in a predictable location (i.e., 70% of targets appeared in the same quadrant of the image) to investigate effects of target expectancy. The results revealed better detection performance with low time pressure and faster response times with high time pressure. There was an overall negative effect of automation support because the automation was only moderately reliable. Participants also uncovered a smaller amount of the stimulus under high time pressure in target-absent trials. Target expectancy of target location improved accuracy, speed, and the amount of uncovered space needed for the search. Significance Statement Luggage screening is a safety–critical real-world visual search task which often has to be done under time pressure. The present research found that time pressure compromises performance and increases the risk to miss critical items even with automation support. Moreover, even highly reliable automated support may not improve performance if it does not exceed the manual capabilities of the human screener. Lastly, the present research also showed that heuristic search strategies (e.g., areas where targets appear more often) seem to guide attention also in luggage screening.

We investigated the effect of expertise on the wisdom of crowds. Participants completed 60 trials of a numerical estimation task, during which they saw 50–100 asterisks and were asked to estimate how many stars they had just seen. Experiment 1 established that both inner- and outer-crowd wisdom extended to our novel task: Single responses alone were less accurate than responses aggregated across a single participant (showing inner-crowd wisdom) and responses aggregated across different participants were even more accurate (showing outer-crowd wisdom). In Experiment 2, prior to beginning the critical trials, participants did 12 practice trials with feedback, which greatly increased their accuracy. There was a benefit of outer-crowd wisdom relative to a single estimate. There was no inner-crowd wisdom effect, however; with high accuracy came highly restricted variance, and aggregating insufficiently varying responses is not beneficial. Our data suggest that experts give almost the same answer every time they are asked and so they should consult the outer crowd rather than solicit multiple estimates from themselves.

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of predictability on dual-task performance by systematically manipulating predictability in either one of two tasks, as well as between tasks. According to capacity-sharing accounts of multitasking, assuming a general pool of resources two tasks can draw upon, predictability should reduce the need for resources and allow more resources to be used by the other task. However, it is currently not well understood what drives resource-allocation policy in dual tasks and which resource allocation policies participants pursue. We used a continuous tracking task together with an audiomotor task and manipulated advance visual information about the tracking path in the first experiment and a sound sequence in the second experiments (2a/b). Results show that performance predominantly improved in the predictable task but not in the unpredictable task, suggesting that participants did not invest more resources into the unpredictable task. One possible explanation was that the re-investment of resources into another task requires some relationship between the tasks. Therefore, in the third experiment, we covaried the two tasks by having sounds 250 ms before turning points in the tracking curve. This enabled participants to improve performance in both tasks, suggesting that resources were shared better between tasks.

People with visual impairment often rely on their residual vision when interacting with their spatial environments. The goal of visual accessibility is to design spaces that allow for safe travel for the large and growing population of people who have uncorrectable vision loss, enabling full participation in modern society. This paper defines the functional challenges in perception and spatial cognition with restricted visual information and reviews a body of empirical work on low vision perception of spaces on both local and global navigational scales. We evaluate how the results of this work can provide insights into the complex problem that architects face in the design of visually accessible spaces.

Past research suggests that an uncritical or ‘lazy’ style of evaluating evidence may play a role in the development and maintenance of implausible beliefs. We examine this possibility by using a quasi-experimental design to compare how low- and high-quality evidence is evaluated by those who do and do not endorse implausible claims. Seven studies conducted during 2019–2020 provided the data for this analysis (N = 746). Each of the seven primary studies presented participants with high- and/or low-quality evidence and measured implausible claim endorsement and evaluations of evidence persuasiveness (via credibility, value, and/or weight). A linear mixed-effect model was used to predict persuasiveness from the interaction between implausible claim endorsement and evidence quality. Our results showed that endorsers were significantly more persuaded by the evidence than non-endorsers, but both groups were significantly more persuaded by high-quality than low-quality evidence. The interaction between endorsement and evidence quality was not significant. These results suggest that the formation and maintenance of implausible beliefs by endorsers may result from less critical evidence evaluations rather than a failure to analyse. This is consistent with a limited rather than a lazy approach and suggests that interventions to develop analytical skill may be useful for minimising the effects of implausible claims.

Misinformation often has an ongoing effect on people’s memory and inferential reasoning even after clear corrections are provided; this is known as the continued influence effect. In pursuit of more effective corrections, one factor that has not yet been investigated systematically is the narrative versus non-narrative format of the correction. Some scholars have suggested that a narrative format facilitates comprehension and retention of complex information and may serve to overcome resistance to worldview-dissonant corrections. It is, therefore, a possibility that misinformation corrections are more effective if they are presented in a narrative format versus a non-narrative format. The present study tests this possibility. We designed corrections that are either narrative or non-narrative, while minimizing differences in informativeness. We compared narrative and non-narrative corrections in three preregistered experiments (totalN = 2279). Experiment 1 targeted misinformation contained in fictional event reports; Experiment 2 used false claims commonly encountered in the real world; Experiment 3 used real-world false claims that are controversial, in order to test the notion that a narrative format may facilitate corrective updating primarily when it serves to reduce resistance to correction. In all experiments, we also manipulated test delay (immediate vs. 2 days), as any potential benefit of the narrative format may only arise in the short term (if the story format aids primarily with initial comprehension and updating of the relevant mental model) or after a delay (if the story format aids primarily with later correction retrieval). In all three experiments, it was found that narrative corrections are no more effective than non-narrative corrections. Therefore, while stories and anecdotes can be powerful, there is no fundamental benefit of using a narrative format when debunking misinformation.

The illusory truth effect occurs when the repetition of a claim increases its perceived truth. Previous studies have demonstrated the illusory truth effect with true and false news headlines. The present study examined the effects that different ratings made during initial exposure have on the illusory truth effect with news headlines. In two experiments, participants (total N = 575) rated a set of news headlines in one of two conditions. Some participants rated how interesting they were, and others rated how truthful they were. Participants later rated the perceived accuracy of a larger set of headlines that included previously rated and new headlines. In both experiments, prior exposure increased perceived accuracy for participants who made initial interest ratings, but not for participants who made initial truthfulness ratings. The increase in perceived accuracy that accompanies repeated exposure was attenuated when participants considered the accuracy of the headlines at initial exposure. Experiment 2 also found evidence for a political bias: participants rated politically concordant headlines as more accurate than politically discordant headlines. The magnitude of this bias was related to performance on a cognitive reflection test; more analytic participants demonstrated greater political bias. These results highlight challenges that fake news presents and suggest that initially encoding headlines’ perceived truth can serve to combat the illusion that a familiar headline is a truthful one.

To better understand the spread of fake news in the Internet age, it is important to uncover the variables that influence the perceived truth of information. Although previous research identified several reliable predictors of truth judgments—such as source credibility, repeated information exposure, and presentation format—little is known about their simultaneous effects. In a series of four experiments, we investigated how the abovementioned factors jointly affect the perceived truth of statements (Experiments 1 and 2) and simulated social media postings (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 1 explored the role of source credibility (high vs. low vs. no source information) and presentation format (with vs. without a picture). In Experiments 2 and 3, we additionally manipulated repeated exposure (yes vs. no). Finally, Experiment 4 examined the role of source credibility (high vs. low) and type of repetition (congruent vs. incongruent vs. no repetition) in further detail. In sum, we found no effect of presentation format on truth judgments, but strong, additive effects of source credibility and repetition. Truth judgments were higher for information presented by credible sources than non-credible sources and information without sources. Moreover, congruent (i.e., verbatim) repetition increased perceived truth whereas semantically incongruent repetition decreased perceived truth, irrespectively of the source. Our findings show that people do not rely on a single judgment cue when evaluating a statement’s truth but take source credibility and their meta-cognitive feelings into account.

The “surprisingly popular” method (SP) of aggregating individual judgments has shown promise in overcoming a weakness of other crowdsourcing methods—situations in which the majority is incorrect. This method relies on participants’ estimates of other participants’ judgments; when an option is chosen more often than the average metacognitive judgments of that option, it is “surprisingly popular” and is selected by the method. Although SP has been shown to improve group decision making about factual propositions (e.g., state capitals), its application to future outcomes has been limited. In three preregistered studies, we compared SP to other methods of aggregating individual predictions about future events. Study 1 examined predictions of football games, Study 2 examined predictions of the 2018 US midterm elections, and Study 3 examined predictions of basketball games. When applied to judgments made by objectively assessed experts, SP performed slightly better than other aggregation methods. Although there is still more to learn about the conditions under which SP is effective, it shows promise as a means of crowdsourcing predictions of future outcomes.

The last few years have seen a rapid growth of interest amongst researchers in the crossmodal correspondences. One of the correspondences that has long intrigued artists is the putative association between colours and odours. While traditionally conceptualised in terms of synaesthesia, over the last quarter century or so, at least 20 published peer-reviewed articles have assessed the consistent, and non-random, nature of the colours that people intuitively associate with specific (both familiar and unfamiliar) odours in a non-food context. Having demonstrated such consistent mappings amongst the general (i.e. non-synaesthetic) population, researchers have now started to investigate whether they are shared cross-culturally, and to document their developmental acquisition. Over the years, several different explanations have been put forward by researchers for the existence of crossmodal correspondences, including the statistical, semantic, structural, and emotional-mediation accounts. While several of these approaches would appear to have some explanatory validity as far as the odour-colour correspondences are concerned, contemporary researchers have focussed on learned associations as the dominant explanatory framework. The nature of the colour-odour associations that have been reported to date appear to depend on the familiarity of the odour and the ease of source naming, and hence the kind of association/representation that is accessed. While the bidirectionality of odour-colour correspondences has not yet been rigorously assessed, many designers are nevertheless already starting to build on odour-colour crossmodal correspondences in their packaging/labelling/branding work.

Background The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making are important tools for integrating information between individuals, which can exceed the capacity of individual judgments. They are based on different forms of information integration. The wisdom of crowds refers to the aggregation of many independent judgments without deliberation and consensus, while collective decision-making is aggregation with deliberation and consensus. Recent research has shown that collective decision-making outperforms the wisdom of crowds. Additionally, many studies have shown that metacognitive knowledge of subjective confidence is useful for improving aggregation performance. However, because most of these studies have employed relatively simple problems; for example, involving general knowledge and estimating values and quantities of objects, it remains unclear whether their findings can be generalized to real-life situations involving complex information integration. This study explores the performance and process of the wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making by applying the wisdom of crowds with weighted confidence to a survival situation task commonly used in studies of collective decision-making. Results The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making outperformed individual judgment. However, collective decision-making did not outperform the wisdom of crowds. Contrary to previous studies, weighted confidence showed no advantage from comparison between confidence-weighted and non-weighted aggregations; a simulation analysis varying in group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting revealed interaction between group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting. This reveals that it is because of small group size and not the peculiarity of the survival task that results in no advantage of weighted confidence. Conclusions The study’s findings suggest that the wisdom of crowds could be applicable to complex problem-solving tasks, and interaction between group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting is important for confidence-weighted aggregation effects.

It has widely been accepted that aggregating group-level decisions is superior to individual decisions. As compared to individuals, groups tend to show a decision advantage in their response accuracy. However, there has been a lack of research exploring whether group decisions are more efficient than individual decisions with a faster information-processing speed. To investigate the relationship between accuracy and response time (RT) in group decision-making, we applied systems’ factorial technology, developed by Townsend and Nozawa (Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39, 321–359, 1995) and regarded as a theory-driven methodology, to study the information-processing properties. More specifically, we measured the workload capacity CAND(t), which only considers the correct responses, and the assessment function of capacity AAND(t), which considers the speed-accuracy trade-off, to make a strong inference about the system-level processing efficiency. A two-interval, forced-choice oddball detection task, where participants had to detect which interval contains an odd target, was conducted in Experiment 1. Then, in Experiment 2, a yes/no Gabor detection task was adopted, where participants had to detect the presence of a Gabor patch. Our results replicated previous findings using the accuracy-based measure: Group detection sensitivity was better than the detection sensitivity of the best individual, especially when the two individuals had similar detection sensitivities. On the other hand, both workload capacity measures, CAND(t) and AAND(t), showed evidence of supercapacity processing, thus suggesting a collective benefit. The ordered relationship between accuracy-based and RT-based collective benefit was limited to the AAND(t) of the correct and fast responses, which may help uncover the processing mechanism behind collective benefits. Our results suggested that AAND(t), which combines both accuracy and RT into inferences, can be regarded as a novel and diagnostic tool for studying the group decision-making process.

Most everyday activities involve delayed intentions referring to different event structures and timelines. Yet, past research has mostly considered prospective memory (PM) as a dual-task phenomenon in which the primary task to fulfill PM intentions is realized within an ongoing secondary task. We hypothesized that these simplified simulations of PM may have obscured the role of spatial relational processing that is functional to represent and meet the increased temporal demands in more complex PM scenarios involving multiple timelines. To test this spatiotemporal hypothesis, participants monitored four digital clocks, with PM deadlines referring either to the same clock (single-context condition) or different clocks (multiple-context condition), along with separate tests of spatial ability (mental rotation task) and executive functioning (working memory updating). We found that performance in the mental rotation task incrementally explained PM performance in the multiple-context, but not in the single-context, condition, even after controlling for individual differences in working memory updating and ongoing task performance. These findings suggest that delayed intentions occurring in multiple ongoing task contexts reflect independent contributions of working memory updating and mental rotation and that spatial relational processing may specifically be involved in higher cognitive functions, such as complex PM in multiple contexts or multitasking.

Debate regarding the best way to test and measure eyewitness memory has dominated the eyewitness literature for more than 30 years. We argue that resolution of this debate requires the development and application of appropriate measurement models. In this study we developed models of simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations and used these to compare these procedures in terms of underlying discriminability and response bias, thereby testing a key prediction of diagnostic feature detection theory, that underlying discriminability should be greater for simultaneous than for stopping-rule sequential lineups. We fit the models to the corpus of studies originally described by Palmer and Brewer (2012, Law and Human Behavior, 36(3), 247–255), to data from a new experiment and to eight recent studies comparing simultaneous and sequential lineups. We found that although responses tended to be more conservative for sequential lineups there was little or no difference in underlying discriminability between the two procedures. We discuss the implications of these results for the diagnostic feature detection theory and other kinds of sequential lineups used in current jurisdictions.

Background In criminal investigations, uncooperative witnesses might deny knowing a perpetrator, the location of a murder scene or knowledge of a weapon. We sought to identify markers of recognition in eye fixations and confidence judgments whilst participants told the truth and lied about recognising faces (Experiment 1) and scenes and objects (Experiment 2) that varied in familiarity. To detect recognition we calculated effect size differences in markers of recognition between familiar and unfamiliar items that varied in familiarity (personally familiar, newly learned). Results In Experiment 1, recognition of personally familiar faces was reliably detected across multiple fixation markers (e.g. fewer fixations, fewer interest areas viewed, fewer return fixations) during honest and concealed recognition. In Experiment 2, recognition of personally familiar non-face items (scenes and objects) was detected solely by fewer fixations during honest and concealed recognition; differences in other fixation measures were not consistent. In both experiments, fewer fixations exposed concealed recognition of newly learned faces, scenes and objects, but the same pattern was not observed during honest recognition. Confidence ratings were higher for recognition of personally familiar faces than for unfamiliar faces. Conclusions Robust memories of personally familiar faces were detected in patterns of fixations and confidence ratings, irrespective of task demands required to conceal recognition. Crucially, we demonstrate that newly learned faces should not be used as a proxy for real-world familiarity, and that conclusions should not be generalised across different types of familiarity or stimulus class.

Teachers sometimes believe in the efficacy of instructional practices that have little empirical support. These beliefs have proven difficult to efface despite strong challenges to their evidentiary basis. Teachers typically develop causal beliefs about the efficacy of instructional practices by inferring their effect on students’ academic performance. Here, we evaluate whether causal inferences about instructional practices are susceptible to an outcome density effect using a contingency learning task. In a series of six experiments, participants were ostensibly presented with students’ assessment outcomes, some of whom had supposedly received teaching via a novel technique and some of whom supposedly received ordinary instruction. The distributions of the assessment outcomes was manipulated to either have frequent positive outcomes (high outcome density condition) or infrequent positive outcomes (low outcome density condition). For both continuous and categorical assessment outcomes, participants in the high outcome density condition rated the novel instructional technique as effective, despite the fact that it either had no effect or had a negative effect on outcomes, while the participants in the low outcome density condition did not. These results suggest that when base rates of performance are high, participants may be particularly susceptible to drawing inaccurate inferences about the efficacy of instructional practices.

BackgroundSpatial thinking skills are strongly correlated with achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and emerging research suggests that interventions aimed at building students’ skills will likely yield measurable impacts on learning across K-12 settings. The importance of spatial thinking in science has received increased attention in academic discussions; however, the intentional practice of teaching spatial thinking skills is still largely absent from K-12 education. The translation of science into educational practice is challenging for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty “translating” research findings into practical applications and limited resources to support its development, implementation, and evaluation. Given these obstacles, one may ask “can spatial thinking be brought to the classroom?” In this paper, we argue that in order to effectively move research into the classroom, we must first systematically explorehowspatial thinking can be translated into practice.ApproachWe present a use-inspired, integrative framework that draws upon planned action and translation science theories, as well as research from cognitive, developmental, educational, and implementation sciences, to guide the infusion of spatial thinking into science curricula. In theKnowledge Translation Framework(KTF), translation is conceived as a multistage process, proceeding through seven stages: (1) the identification of relevant disciplinary and contextual knowledge, (2) the synthesis and translation of knowledge into guidelines to support the infusion of knowledge into the curriculum, (3) the development of tools to support curriculum development, implementation, and track the translation process, (4) the iterative development and refinement of the spatially-enhanced curriculum, (5) the creation of an analysis plan to evaluate the impact of the spatial enhancements and other contextual features on learning, (6) the development and implementation of an intervention plan, and (7) the evaluation of the intervention.ConclusionThe KTF is a use-inspired, integrative framework that unpacks the translation process and offers practical guidance on how a team may synthesize scientific and contextual knowledge, infuse it into a curriculum, and evaluate its impact in ways that will yield scientific understandingandpractical knowledge. We also provide illustrative examples of how this approach was used to spatially enhance an elementary science curriculum.

Background This study investigated the impact of handedness on a common spatial abilities task, the mental rotation task (MRT). The influence of a right-handed world was contrasted with people’s embodied experience with their own hands by testing both left- and right-handed people on an MRT of right- and left-hand stimuli. An additional consideration is the influence of matching the shape of the hand stimuli with the proprioception of one’s own hands. Two orthogonal hypothesis axes were crossed to yield four competing hypotheses. One axis contrasted (i) embodied experience versus (ii) world knowledge; the other axis contrasted (a) the match between the visual image of a hand on the screen and one’s own hand versus (b) the resemblance of the shape outline information from the hand stimuli with the proprioception of one’s own hands. Results Among people with mixed handedness, right-handers performed more accurately for left-hand stimuli, while left-handers had a trend for higher accuracy for right-hand stimuli. For people with extreme handedness, right-handers outperformed left-handers. Regardless of group, there was no significant variation in performance for left-hand stimuli, with only right-hand stimuli producing significant variation. Conclusions No hypothesis fully aligned with all the data. For left-hand stimuli, the consistent performance across groups does not provide support for embodied experience, while world knowledge might influence all groups similarly. Alternatively, the within-group variation for mixed-handed people supports embodied experience in the hand MRT, likely processed through visual-proprioceptive integration.

Basic cognitive research can help to explain our response to wine, and the myriad factors that affect it. Wine is a complex, culture-laden, multisensory stimulus, and our perception/experience of its properties is influenced by everything from the packaging in which it is presented through the glassware in which it is served and evaluated. A growing body of experiential wine research now demonstrates that a number of contextual factors, including everything from the colour of the ambient lighting through to background music can exert a profound, and in some cases predictable, influence over the tasting experience. Sonic seasoning - that is, the matching of music or soundscapes with specific wines in order to accentuate or draw attention to certain qualities/attributes in the wine, such as sweetness, length, or body, also represents a rapidly growing area of empirical study. While such multisensory, experiential wine research undoubtedly has a number of practical applications, it also provides insights concerning multisensory perception that are relevant to basic scientists. Furthermore, the findings of the wine research are also often relevant to those marketers interested in understanding how the consumers’ perception of any other food or beverage product can potentially be modified.

Background Social media is an increasingly popular outlet for leisure and social interaction. On many social media platforms, the user experience involves commenting on or responding to user-generated content, such as images of cats, food, and people. In two experiments, we examined how the act of commenting on social media images impacts subsequent memory of those images, using Instagram posts as a test case. This project was inspired by recent findings of laboratory studies of conversation which found that describing a picture for a conversational partner boosts recognition memory for those images. Here we aimed to understand how this finding translates to the more ecologically valid realm of social media interactions. A second motivation for the study was the popularity of food- and dieting-related content on Instagram and prior findings that use of Instagram in particular is associated with disordered eating behaviors. Results Across two experiments, we observed that commenting on Instagram posts consistently boosted subsequent recognition and that correct recognition increased with comment length. Stable individual differences in recognition memory were observed, and “unhealthy” food images such as chocolates were particularly well remembered; however, these memory findings did not relate to self-reported eating behavior. Conclusions Taken together, our findings show that the way in which we engage with social media content shapes subsequent memory of it, raising new questions about how our online lives persist in memory over time, potentially shaping future behavior.

Considering how spatial thinking connects to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) outcomes, recent studies have evaluated how spatial interventions impact elementary students’ math learning. While promising, these interventions tend to overlook other factors affecting math learning; perceptions of math abilities, beliefs about math, and math anxiety can also impact math performance. Additionally, perceptions of spatial skill and spatial anxiety impact spatial performance. This study investigated how elementary teachers’ perceptions of spatial thinking connects with math perceptions. Specifically, we focused on teachers’ attitudes and beliefs around three topics: teaching and learning math, spatial abilities, and spatial thinking in mathematics. We found that lower spatial anxiety related to lower anxiety about teaching math, greater alignment between math beliefs and math standards, and greater efficacy in teaching and learning math. Further, a factor analysis showed one factor that connected stereotypical math thinking with both math and spatial anxiety, and another that connected spatial competencies, teaching and learning math, and spatial thinking within math. To further evaluate spatial thinking in math, we introduced a math categorization and verified it using teachers’ ratings of teaching difficulty, visualization helpfulness, and spatial-thinking involvement. Structural equation models revealed that the level of spatial-thinking categorization was the best model of all three of the teachers’ ratings. Overall, results showed numerous connections between teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and spatial thinking. Future intervention studies should consider teachers who are spatial and/or math-anxious, and future research should investigate the role of stereotypical thinking in spatial and math anxiety.

Background Anyone who has ever found themselves lost while driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood or forgotten where they parked their car can appreciate the importance of being able to navigate their environment. Navigation, or wayfinding, is a large-scale spatial ability that involves keeping track of the relative positions of objects and features in space, which allows for determining the path to a goal location. Early experiences shape spatial skill development, and research finds sex differences in spatial behaviors from preschool through adulthood, with males consistently outperforming females. The basis for sex differences in spatial aptitude is still debated, but explanations include differences in childhood spatial experience, the use of strategies for solving large-scale spatial problems, and spatial anxiety. The current study seeks to understand childhood wayfinding factors that may influence sex and individual differences in wayfinding strategies and wayfinding anxiety in adulthood. Method One hundred fifty-nine undergraduate psychology students reported their childhood wayfinding experience (i.e., time spent outside, distance traveled), current use of wayfinding strategies (i.e., route strategy, orientation strategy), and current wayfinding anxiety and general anxiety levels. Results Independent samples t tests revealed that, compared with females, males reported spending more time outside and traveling farther distances as children, having less current wayfinding anxiety and route strategy use, and having more current orientation strategy use. Mediation analyses found that distance traveled, but not time spent outdoors, during childhood mediated sex differences in route strategy use and wayfinding anxiety in adults, even when controlling for general anxiety. Furthermore, when controlling for participant sex and general anxiety, current wayfinding anxiety mediated the relationship between distance traveled during childhood and route strategy use in adults. Conclusion The current findings provide potential environmental explanations for sex and individual differences in large-scale spatial behaviors, including wayfinding. Specifically, sex differences in early wayfinding experience may explain why males and females develop different strategies for navigating and different levels of wayfinding anxiety. Furthermore, regardless of sex, allowing children to explore and navigate their outdoor environments away from home may help lessen their fears about navigating and, in turn, improve the strategies they choose to traverse unfamiliar territories.

Retrieval practice, such as filling in blanks or taking quizzes, is firmly established as an effective study strategy. However, the underlying mechanism of how retrieval practice benefits memory is still unclear. One current theory, the episodic context account, proposes that retrieval enhances memory by reinstating a prior learning context. This retrieved context is then strengthened and updated to include context at the time of recall, which later serves as an effective retrieval cue. However, few studies have directly tested this hypothesis. We did so by examining participants’ memory for the initial study context. Across three experiments, participants encoded cue-target pairs presented in different colors and either restudied or practiced retrieving the targets. If retrieval practice benefits memory by reinstating the prior episodic context, participants who successfully retrieved the items during practice should have enhanced memory for context details (i.e. font color) compared to participants who restudied the pairs. Contrary to this prediction, memory for font colors did not differ between the restudy condition and the retrieval practice condition. Even when font color was actively attended to and integrated with the to-be-remembered items, retrieval practice did not increase memory for this aspect of context. Our results suggest that the context reinstated during retrieval practice is limited in nature. Aspects of the context that are not essential to retrieval of the item are not strengthened by retrieval practice.

Background Users can make judgments about web pages in a glance. Little research has explored what semantic information can be extracted from a web page within a single fixation or what mental representations users have of web pages, but the scene perception literature provides a framework for understanding how viewers can extract and represent diverse semantic information from scenes in a glance. The purpose of this research was (1) to explore whether semantic information about a web page could be extracted within a single fixation and (2) to explore the effects of size and resolution on extracting this information. Using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, Experiment 1 explored whether certain semantic categories of websites (i.e., news, search, shopping, and social networks/blogs) could be detected within a RSVP stream of web page stimuli. Natural scenes, which have been shown to be detectable within a single fixation in the literature, served as a baseline for comparison. Experiment 2 examined the effects of stimulus size and resolution on observers’ ability to detect the presence of website categories using similar methods. Results Findings from this research demonstrate that users have conceptual models of websites that allow detection of web pages from a fixation’s worth of stimulus exposure, when provided additional time for processing. For website categories other than search, detection performance decreased significantly when web elements were no longer discernible due to decreases in size and/or resolution. The implications of this research are that website conceptual models rely more on page elements and less on the spatial relationship between these elements. Conclusions Participants can detect websites accurately when they were displayed for less than a fixation and when the participants were allowed additional processing time. Subjective comments and stimulus onset asynchrony data suggested that participants likely relied on local features for the detection of website targets for several website categories. This notion was supported when the size and/or resolution of stimuli were decreased to the extent that web elements were indistinguishable. This demonstrates that schemas or conceptualizations of websites provided information sufficient to detect websites from approximately 140 ms of stimulus exposure.

Neutral information enjoys beneficial processing when it is associated with self and significant others, but less is known about how the identity referential advantage is constructed in the initial stages of a relationship. We offer a novel solution by asking if a newly met stranger could provide a processing advantage in a shape-identity matching task where shapes were associated with the names of different identities. Each participant was paired with a newly met partner in a joint shape-identity matching task in which three shapes were associated with the names of the participant or his/her best friend, the partner, and a stranger, respectively. The participants judged whether or not the shape and name correctly matched. Intriguingly, the trials related to a newly met partner exhibited instant referential saliency, which was more accurate and faster than that related to the stranger’s name (baseline) when the partner was physically present (experiments 1, 2, 4, 5), but not when the partner was absent (experiment 3). Self-advantage, however, was robust and lasting. The precursor of physical presence when forming referential saliency toward a stranger and its distinct temporal dynamics imply a novel referential benefit unendowed with familiarity, which is qualitatively different from the well-documented self/friend-advantage effect. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-019-0186-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Testing oneself (i.e., doing retrieval practice) is an effective way to study. We attempted to make learners choose to test themselves more often. In Experiment 1, participants were asked how they wanted to study and were given four options: retrieval with no hint (e.g., idea: ______), a two-letter hint (e.g., idea: s____r), a four-letter hint (e.g., idea: se__er), or a presentation trial (e.g., idea: seeker). They tested themselves on the majority of trials. In Experiment 2, when the hint options were removed, they chose restudy rather than pure test on the majority of trials. These findings show that people prefer self-testing over restudy as long as they can get the answer right on the test. However, we would not recommend hints if they impaired learning compared to pure testing. Experiment 3 showed that this was not the case; the three retrieval conditions from Experiment 1 led to equivalent amounts of learning, and all three outperformed the pure presentation condition. We used different materials in Experiment 4 and found that the hints made retrieval slightly less beneficial when the hints made it possible to guess the answers without thinking back to the study phase (e.g., whip: pu__sh). In summary, hints catalyzed people’s intuitive desire to self-test, without any downside for learning, thus making their self-regulated study more enjoyable and effective.

Most experiments in event perception and cognition have focused on events that are only a few minutes in length, and the previous research on popular movies is consistent with this temporal scope. Scenes are generally between a few seconds and a few minutes in duration. But popular movies also offer an opportunity to explore larger events—variously called acts, major parts, or large-scale parts by film theorists—in which the boundaries often have few if any unique physical attributes. These units tend to be between about 20 to 35 min in duration. The present study had observers watch seven movies they had not seen before and, over the course of several days and with ample justifications, reflect on them, and then segment them into two to six parts with the aid of a running description of the narrative. Results showed consistency across viewers’ segmentations, consistency with film-theoretic segmentations, and superiority over internet subjects who had access to only the scenarios used by the movie viewers. Thus, these results suggest that there are large scale events in movies; they support a view that their events are organized meronomically, layered with units of different sizes and with boundaries shared across layers; and they suggest that these larger-scale events can be discerned through cognitive, not perceptual, means.

Background Deception is a prevalent component of human interaction. However, meta-analyses suggest that discriminating between truthful and deceptive statements is a very arduous task and accuracy on these judgments is at chance levels. To complicate matters further, individuals tell different types of lies. The current studies examined how an individual’s ability to accurately discriminate between truthful and deceptive statements is affected by the way truths and lies are conveyed. Participants judged the veracity of statements given by speakers who told truths or lies about a performed action by describing that action or denying that it had occurred. Additionally, these statements also differed with regard to how often the lie had been repeated (i.e., practiced), either once or thrice. Results The results were largely in line with the prevailing notion that it is difficult to successfully differentiate between truthful and deceptive statements, but also showed that performance was moderated by statement type and repetition. The results revealed that participants were more accurate in discriminating unrepeated descriptions than repeated descriptions, but this difference was not seen for denial statements. Additionally, participants were more likely to believe practiced (repeated) statements, both truthful and deceptive. Conclusion The results show that repeated statements as well as shorter denials can increase the difficulty of differentiating truthful from deceptive statements. Additionally, these findings suggest that truthful statements also benefit from repetition with regard to enhancing their believability.

True and false intentions (i.e., lies and truths about one’s future actions) is a relatively new research topic, despite the high societal value of being able to predict future criminal behavior (e.g., in the case of an alleged terrorist attack). The current study examined how true and false intentions are mentally represented - the knowledge of which can aid the development of new deception detection methods. Participants (N = 151) were asked either to form a true intention about a future task (i.e., retrieve objects from an office) or to form a false intention about the same task (i.e., prepare a cover story about retrieving objects from an office) to conceal their actual intention (i.e., leave a secret note in the office). The schema consistency of the task was manipulated by presenting participants with a list of office supplies (schema-consistent) or random objects (schema-inconsistent) to be retrieved from the office. The abstractness of mental construal was operationalized as the number of categories used by participants to organize the task-relevant objects into thematic groups. We predicted, based on construal level theory (CLT) and action identification theory, that participants would mentally represent true intentions more concretely (i.e., use a larger number of categories) than false intentions, particularly for schema-inconsistent (versus schema-consistent) future tasks. The results of the study lend no support for these predictions. Instead, a Bayesian analysis revealed strong evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. The findings indicate that predictions from CLT do not readily translate into deception contexts. The results are discussed in light of recent failed attempts to apply CLT to research on true and false intentions, and highlight the need for alternative approaches to the topic. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-019-0173-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Visualizing data through graphs can be an effective way to communicate one’s results. A ubiquitous graph and common technique to communicate behavioral data is the bar graph. The bar graph was first invented in 1786 and little has changed in its format. Here, a replacement for the bar graph is proposed. The new format, called a hat graph, maintains some of the critical features of the bar graph such as its discrete elements, but eliminates redundancies that are problematic when the baseline is not at zero. Hat graphs also include design elements based on Gestalt principles of grouping and graph design principles. The effectiveness of the hat graph was tested in five empirical studies. Participants were nearly 40% faster to find and identify the condition that led to the biggest difference from baseline to final test when the data were plotted with hat graphs than with bar graphs. Participants were also more sensitive to the magnitude of an effect plotted with a hat graph compared with a bar graph that was restricted to having its baseline at zero. The recommendation is to use hat graphs when plotting data from discrete categories.

Interpretation of volumetric medical images represents a rapidly growing proportion of the workload in radiology. However, relatively little is known about the strategies that best guide search behavior when looking for abnormalities in volumetric images. Although there is extensive literature on two-dimensional medical image perception, it is an open question whether the conclusions drawn from these images can be generalized to volumetric images. Importantly, volumetric images have distinct characteristics (e.g., scrolling through depth, smooth-pursuit eye-movements, motion onset cues, etc.) that should be considered in future research. In this manuscript, we will review the literature on medical image perception and discuss relevant findings from basic science that can be used to generate predictions about expertise in volumetric image interpretation. By better understanding search through volumetric images, we may be able to identify common sources of error, characterize the optimal strategies for searching through depth, or develop new training and assessment techniques for radiology residents.

A significant problem in eyewitness identification occurs when witnesses view a suspect in one venue such as a mugshot and then later in a lineup where the suspect is the only previously viewed person. Prior research has documented that the witness may select the suspect from the lineup due either to misplaced familiarity from seeing the mugshot or to their prior commitment from identifying the suspect from the mugshot. Two experiments attempted to minimize these biases by using repeated identical lineups, such that both targets and fillers were repeated, to determine if such a procedure could be useful. Across two experiments, we also varied the delay between seeing the event and the first lineup, as well as the delay between lineups. Despite the use of identical lineups, we continued to observe the effects of commitment and misplaced familiarity, so our procedure did not remove these problems. In addition, we also found that both repeated lineups and increasing delays can influence people’s tendency to choose and their willingness to maintain their decisions, regardless of accuracy. Most importantly, however, despite the negative effects of repeated lineups and the relatively long delays used in our experiments, we obtained strong relations between confidence and accuracy when using confidence-accuracy characteristic plots. High confidence responses were associated with high accuracy. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-019-0168-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background Research examining the relation between spatial skills and the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields has focused on small-scale spatial skills, even though some STEM disciplines—particularly the geography and geoscience (GEO) fields—involve large-scale spatial thinking at the core of their professional training. In Study 1, we compared large-scale navigation skills of experienced geologists with those of experienced psychologists, using a novel virtual navigation paradigm as an objective measure of navigation skills. In Study 2, we conducted a longitudinal study with novice Geographic Information Systems (GIS) students to investigate baseline navigational competence and improvement over the course of an academic semester. Results In Study 1, we found that geologists demonstrated higher navigational competence and were more likely to be categorized as integrating separate routes, compared to their non-STEM counterparts. In Study 2, novice GIS students showed superior baseline navigational competence compared to non-STEM students, as well as better spatial working memory and small-scale mental rotation skills, indicating self-selection. In addition, GIS students’ spatial skills improved more over the course of a semester than those of non-STEM students. Conclusions Our findings highlight the importance of large-scale spatial thinking for enrollment and success in the GEO fields but likely also across the broader range of thinking involving spatial distributions. We discuss the potential of GIS tools to develop spatial skills at an early age.

Inspecting digital imaging for primary diagnosis introduces perceptual and cognitive demands for physicians tasked with interpreting visual medical information and arriving at appropriate diagnoses and treatment decisions. The process of medical interpretation and diagnosis involves a complex interplay between visual perception and multiple cognitive processes, including memory retrieval, problem-solving, and decision-making. Eye-tracking technologies are becoming increasingly available in the consumer and research markets and provide novel opportunities to learn more about the interpretive process, including differences between novices and experts, how heuristics and biases shape visual perception and decision-making, and the mechanisms underlying misinterpretation and misdiagnosis. The present review provides an overview of eye-tracking technology, the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in medical interpretation, how eye tracking has been employed to understand medical interpretation and promote medical education and training, and some of the promises and challenges for future applications of this technology.

Navigation systems are ubiquitous tools to assist wayfinders of the mobile information society with various navigational tasks. Whenever such systems assist with self-localization and path planning, they reduce human effort for navigating. Automated navigation assistance benefits navigation performance, but research seems to show that it negatively affects attention to environment properties, spatial knowledge acquisition, and retention of spatial information. Very little is known about how to design navigation systems for pedestrian navigation that increase both navigation performance and spatial knowledge acquisition. To this end, we empirically tested participants (N = 64) using four different navigation system behaviors (between-subject design). Two cognitive processes with varying levels of automation, self-localization and allocation of attention, define navigation system behaviors: either the system automatically executes one of the processes (high level of automation), or the system leaves the decision of when and where to execute the process to the navigator (low level of automation). In two experimental phases, we applied a novel empirical framework for evaluating spatial knowledge acquisition in a real-world outdoor urban environment. First, participants followed a route assisted by a navigation system and, simultaneously, incidentally acquired spatial knowledge. Second, participants reversed the route using the spatial knowledge acquired during the assisted phase, this time without the aid of the navigation system. Results of the route-following phase did not reveal differences in navigation performance across groups using different navigation system behaviors. However, participants using systems with higher levels of automation seemed not to acquire enough spatial knowledge to reverse the route without navigation errors. Furthermore, employing novel methods to analyze mobile eye tracking data revealed distinct patterns of human gaze behavior over time and space. We thus can demonstrate how to increase spatial knowledge acquisition without harming navigation performance when using navigation systems, and how to influence human navigation behavior with varying navigation system behavior. Thus, we provide key findings for the design of intelligent automated navigation systems in real-world scenarios.

Previous research has demonstrated reliable fluctuations in attentional processes during the course of the day. Everyday life experience sampling, during which participants respond to “probes” delivered at random intervals throughout the day on their mobile devices, is an effective tool for capturing such diurnal fluctuations in a naturalistic way. The existence of diurnal fluctuations in the case of mind-wandering, however, has not been examined to date. We did so in two studies. In the first study, we employed everyday experience sampling to obtain self-reports from 146 university students who rated the degree of free movement in their thoughts multiple times per day over five days. These time course data were analyzed using multilevel modelling. Freely moving thought was found to fluctuate reliably over the course of the day, with lower ratings reported in the early morning and afternoon and higher ratings around midday and evening. In the second study, we replicated these effects with a reanalysis of data from a past everyday experience-sampling study. We also demonstrated differences in parameter values for the models representing freely moving thought and two common conceptualizations of mind-wandering: task-unrelated thought and stimulus-independent thought. Taken together, the present results establish and replicate a complex pattern of change over the course of the day in how freely thought moves, while also providing further evidence that freedom of movement is dissociable from other dimensions of thought such as its task-relatedness and stimulus-dependence. Future research should focus on probing possible mechanisms behind circadian fluctuations of thought dynamics. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-018-0141-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The visual environment contains predictable information - “statistical regularities” - that can be used to aid perception and attentional allocation. Here we investigate the role of statistical learning in facilitating search tasks that resemble medical-image perception. Using faux X-ray images, we employed two tasks that mimicked two problems in medical-image perception: detecting a target signal that is poorly segmented from the background; and discriminating a candidate anomaly from benign signals. In the first, participants searched a heavily camouflaged target embedded in cloud-like noise. In the second, the noise opacity was reduced, but the target appeared among visually similar distractors. We tested the hypothesis that learning may be task-specific. To this end, we introduced statistical regularities by presenting the target disproportionately more frequently in one region of the space. This manipulation successfully induced incidental learning of the target’s location probability, producing faster search when the target appeared in the high-probability region. The learned attentional preference persisted through a testing phase in which the target’s location was random. Supporting the task-specificity hypothesis, when the task changed between training and testing, the learned priority did not transfer. Eye tracking showed fewer, but longer, fixations in the detection than in the discrimination task. The observation of task-specificity of statistical learning has implications for theories of spatial attention and sheds light on the design of effective training tasks.

Referential success is crucial for collaborative task-solving in shared environments. In face-to-face interactions, humans, therefore, exploit speech, gesture, and gaze to identify a specific object. We investigate if and how the gaze behavior of a human interaction partner can be used by a gaze-aware assistance system to improve referential success. Specifically, our system describes objects in the real world to a human listener using on-the-fly speech generation. It continuously interprets listener gaze and implements alternative strategies to react to this implicit feedback. We used this system to investigate an optimal strategy for task performance: providing an unambiguous, longer instruction right from the beginning, or starting with a shorter, yet ambiguous instruction. Further, the system provides gaze-driven feedback, which could be either underspecified (“No, not that one!”) or contrastive (“Further left!”). As expected, our results show that ambiguous instructions followed by underspecified feedback are not beneficial for task performance, whereas contrastive feedback results in faster interactions. Interestingly, this approach even outperforms unambiguous instructions (manipulation between subjects). However, when the system alternates between underspecified and contrastive feedback to initially ambiguous descriptions in an interleaved manner (within subjects), task performance is similar for both approaches. This suggests that listeners engage more intensely with the system when they can expect it to be cooperative. This, rather than the actual informativity of the spoken feedback, may determine the efficiency of information uptake and performance.

Previous work has found that people are drawn to explanations of psychological phenomena when these explanations contain neuroscience information, even when that information is irrelevant. This preference may be due to a general preference for reductive explanations; however, prior work has not investigated whether people indeed prefer such explanations or whether this preference varies by scientific discipline. The current study asked 82 participants to choose which methods would be most appropriate for investigating topics in six scientific fields. Participants generally preferred methods that either matched the field of investigation (e.g., biology for biology) or that came from the immediately more reductive field (e.g., chemistry for biology). Both of these patterns were especially evident for the pairing of psychology and neuroscience. Additionally, participants selected significantly more methods as being useful for explaining neuroscience phenomena. These results suggest that people’s sense of the relations among scientific fields are fairly well calibrated but display some general attraction to neuroscience.

Police departments often use verbal confidence measures (highly confident, somewhat confident) with a small number of values, whereas psychologists measuring the confidence–accuracy relationship typically use numeric scales with a large range of values (20-point or 100-point scales). We compared verbal and verbal + numeric confidence scales for two different lineups, using either two or four levels of confidence. We found strong confidence–accuracy relationships that were unaffected by the nature of the scale at the highest level of confidence. High confidence corresponded to high accuracy with both two- and four-level scales, and the scale type (verbal only or verbal + numeric) did not matter. Police using a simple scale of “highly confident” and “somewhat confident” can, according to our results, rest assured that high confidence indicates high accuracy on a first identification from a lineup. In addition, our two lineups differed greatly in difficulty, yet the confidence–accuracy relationship was quite strong for both lineups, although somewhat lower for the more difficult lineup.

People learn environments through direct experience with the environment and/or through map study. Further, the different perspectives taken while learning an environment influence the knowledge acquired. After all, different information about an environment is readily available through route (e.g. by navigation) and survey (e.g. with maps) perspectives. Having a choice between direct experience and map use, or between different perspectives, suggests a role of metacognitive control in environment learning. That is, when in a new environment, learners may exercise metacognitive control by selectively choosing and implementing specific learning strategies, such as switching between perspectives. Strategy choice may depend on specific constraints, such as perspective, range of view, or amount of time to learn (to name a few). For example, people may check a map (e.g. on smartphones or GPS devices) to complement developing route knowledge. The present review discusses the role of metacognition in environment learning and outlines new directions for research to bridge these fields by examining how strategic metacognitive control over perspective switching affects environment learning. Such explorations can inform real-world environment learning and navigational aids design.

Searching for unfamiliar faces in crowds is an important task in modern society. In surveillance and security settings, it is sometimes critical to locate a target individual quickly and accurately. In this study, we examine whether we can improve search efficiency in these visual search tasks by changing the face information that is provided to participants. In Experiment 1, we compare speed and accuracy of visual search when searching for unfamiliar and familiar faces after being exposed to either a single exemplar image or a face average created from multiple images of the target face. In Experiment 2, we compare search efficiency when single exemplars and multiple exemplars are provided. Consistent with studies of unfamiliar face matching tasks, we find that, relative to a single image, having multiple images of the target improves the accuracy of visual search. In Experiment 3, we compared search performance for face averages and multiple exemplars while also varying crowd size. Multiple exemplars conferred an additional advantage over face averages, suggesting that exposure to within-face variability results in the best search performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for face-in-a-crowd search and visual search tasks more generally.

Contains fulltext : 195646.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) What do we think about when we mind wander and where do these thoughts come from? We tested the idea that semantically rich stimuli yield patterns of mind wandering that are closely coupled with the stimuli compared to being more internally triggered. We analyzed the content of 949 self-reported zone outs (1218 thoughts) and 519 of their triggers from 88 participants who read an instructional text and watched a film for 20 min each. We found that mind wandering associated with memory retrieval was more frequent than prospection and introspection across both stimuli. Over 70% of autobiographical and semantic memory retrievals were triggered by the content of the stimuli, compared to around 30% for prospective and introspective thoughts. Further, latent semantic analysis revealed that semantic and unspecific memories were more “semantically” similar to their triggers than prospective and introspective thoughts, suggesting that they arise from spontaneous associations with the stimulus. These findings suggest a re-evaluation of how internal concerns and the external world give rise to mind wandering and emphasize the importance of studying mind wandering in semantically rich contexts akin to much of the real world. 14 p.

People vary in their ability to identify faces, and this variability is relatively stable across repeated testing. This suggests that recruiting high performers can improve identity verification accuracy in applied settings. Here, we report the first systematic study to evaluate real-world benefits of selecting high performers based on performance in standardized face identification tests. We simulated a recruitment process for a specialist team tasked with detecting fraudulent passport applications. University students (n = 114) completed a battery of screening tests followed by a real-world face identification task that is performed routinely when issuing identity documents. Consistent with previous work, individual differences in the real-world task were relatively stable across repeated tests taken 1 week apart (r = 0.6), and accuracy scores on screening tests and the real-world task were moderately correlated. Nevertheless, performance gains achieved by selecting groups based on screening tests were surprisingly small, leading to a 7% improvement in accuracy. Statistically aggregating decisions across individuals—using a ‘wisdom of crowds’ approach—led to more substantial gains than selection alone. Finally, controlling for individual accuracy of team members, the performance of a team in one test predicted their performance in a subsequent test, suggesting that a ‘good team’ is not only defined by the individual accuracy of team members. Overall, these results underline the need to use a combination of approaches to improve face identification performance in professional settings. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-018-0114-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The current study investigated whether long-term experience in music or a second language is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning. Early studies suggested the possibility of a cognitive advantage from musical training and bilingualism but have failed to be replicated by recent findings. Further, each form of expertise has been independently investigated leaving it unclear whether any benefits are specifically caused by each skill or are a result of skill learning in general. To assess whether cognitive benefits from training exist, and how unique they are to each training domain, the current study compared musicians and bilinguals to each other, plus to individuals who had expertise in both skills, or neither. Young adults (n = 153) were categorized into one of four groups: monolingual musician; bilingual musician; bilingual non-musician; and monolingual non-musician. Multiple tasks per cognitive ability were used to examine the coherency of any training effects. Results revealed that musically trained individuals, but not bilinguals, had enhanced working memory. Neither skill had enhanced inhibitory control. The findings confirm previous associations between musicians and improved cognition and extend existing evidence to show that benefits are narrower than expected but can be uniquely attributed to music compared to another specialized auditory skill domain. The null bilingual effect despite a music effect in the same group of individuals challenges the proposition that young adults are at a performance ceiling and adds to increasing evidence on the lack of a bilingual advantage on cognition.

Research on learning and education is increasingly influenced by theories of embodied cognition. Several embodiment-based interventions have been empirically investigated, including gesturing, interactive digital media, and bodily activity in general. This review aims to present the most important theoretical foundations of embodied cognition and their application to educational research. Furthermore, we critically review recent research concerning the effectiveness of embodiment interventions and develop a taxonomy to more properly characterize research on embodied cognition. The main dimensions of this taxonomy are bodily engagement (i.e. how much bodily activity is involved) and task integration (i.e. whether bodily activities are related to a learning task in a meaningful way or not). By locating studies on the 2 × 2 grid resulting from this taxonomy and assessing the corresponding learning outcomes, we identify opportunities, problems, and challenges of research on embodied learning.