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There is an ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding the nature and role of the mental representations involved in solving arithmetic word problems. In this study, we took a closer look at the interplay between mental representations, drawing production, and strategy choice. We used dual-strategy isomorphic word problems sharing the same mathematical structure, but differing in the entities they mentioned in their problem statement. Due to the non-mathematical knowledge attached to these entities, some problems were believed to lead to a specific (cardinal) encoding compatible with one solving strategy, whereas other problems were thought to foster a different (ordinal) encoding compatible with the other solving strategy. We asked 59 children and 52 adults to solve 12 of those arithmetic word problems and to make a diagram of each problem. We hypothesized that the diagrams of both groups would display prototypical features indicating either a cardinal representation or an ordinal representation, depending on the entities mentioned in the problem statement. Joint analysis of the drawing task and the problem-solving task showed that the cardinal and ordinal features of the diagrams are linked with the hypothesized semantic properties of the problems and, crucially, with the choice of one solving strategy over another. We showed that regardless of their experience, participants' strategy use depends on their problem representation, which is influenced by the non-mathematical information in the problem statement, as revealed in their diagrams. We discuss the relevance of drawing tasks for investigating mental representations and fostering mathematical development in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to the environment is a universal property of perception across all sensory modalities. It can enhance the salience of new events in an ongoing background and helps maintain perceptual constancy in the face of variable sensory input. Several contrastive adaptation effects have been identified using sounds within the categories of human voice and musical instruments. The present study investigated whether such contrast effects can occur between voice and nonvoice stimulus categories. A 10-step continuum between "voice" (/a/, /o/, or /u/ vowels) and "instrument" (bassoon, horn, or viola) sounds was generated for each of the nine possible pairs. In each trial, an adaptor, either a voice or instrument, was played four times and was followed by a target from along the appropriate continuum. When trials with voice and instrumental adaptors were grouped into separate blocks, strong contrastive adaptation effects were observed, with the target more likely to be identified as a voice following instrumental adaptors and vice versa (Experiment 1). The effects were not observed for visual image adaptors (Experiment 2). The effects were somewhat larger when the adaptors and the target were presented to the same than to different ears, but significant adaptation was observed in both conditions, suggesting contributions of central mechanisms, following binaural integration (Experiment 3). The effect accumulated when the same type of adaptor was presented consecutively and persisted following the end of the adaptors (Experiment 4). The discovery of voice-nonvoice contrastive pairs opens the possibility of studying perceptual or neuronal voice selectivity while keeping acoustic features constant. Public Significance Statement: Our study suggests that the perceptual boundary between voice and nonvoice is dependent on the preceding auditory context in a contrastive way. These context effects can build up when similar contexts are presented consecutively and can persist across time even when the context is no longer present. The results highlight the possibility of manipulating the perceptual identity of a sound as voice or nonvoice while keeping the acoustic signal the same, therefore addressing a common challenge in previous voice perception research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School context can shape relative intervention response in myriad ways due to factors, such as instructional quality, resource allocation, peer effects, and correlations between the school context and characteristics of enrolled students (e.g., higher-poverty students attending higher-poverty schools). In the current study, we used data from 16,000 U.S. Grade 3 students in a community-based supplemental reading intervention program to investigate the degree to which school context factors (percentage eligible for free/reduced-price lunch [FRPL], school-level achievement) relate to the differences in triannual reading fluency growth rates between students actively receiving supplemental intervention (active recipients) and those that formerly received intervention (and therefore only received general class instruction at this time; former recipients). Using Bayesian multilevel modeling, our findings indicate that school-level FRPL eligibility played a more prominent factor in growth rate differences between these two groups than school-level reading achievement. However, school-level reading achievement was much more strongly related to reading fluency differences between active and former intervention recipients at the beginning of the school year (when controlling for FRPL). Implications for investigating school-level heterogeneity in intervention response and sustainability are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether behaviors of targets presented on other trials could influence representational momentum of a current target was examined. In Experiment 1, each participant received a stimulus set in which (a) 80% of trials presented a moving target and 20% of trials presented a stationary target or (b) 20% of trials presented a moving target and 80% of trials presented a stationary target. In Experiment 2, each participant received a stimulus set in which (a) 80% of trials presented rightward motion and 20% of trials presented leftward motion, (b) 50% of trials presented rightward motion and 50% of trials presented leftward motion, or (c) 20% of trials presented rightward motion and 80% of trials presented leftward motion. Representational momentum of a moving target was not influenced by whether the majority of other trials in the stimulus set presented a stationary target, motion in the same direction, or motion in the opposite direction. The results suggest that behavior of targets on other trials was not effective in creating expectations that influenced representational momentum of the current target. Implications for theories of representational momentum are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Item position effect (IPE) refers to situations where an item performs differently when it is administered in different positions on a test. The majority of previous research studies have focused on investigating IPE under linear testing. There is a lack of IPE research under adaptive testing. In addition, the existence of IPE might violate Item Response Theory (IRT)’s item parameter invariance assumption, which facilitates applications of IRT in various psychometric tasks such as computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Ignoring IPE might lead to issues such as inaccurate ability estimation in CAT. This article extends research on IPE by proposing and evaluating approaches to controlling position effects under an item‐level computerized adaptive test via a simulation study. The results show that adjusting IPE via a pretesting design (approach 3) or a pool design (approach 4) results in better ability estimation accuracy compared to no adjustment (baseline approach) and item‐level adjustment (approach 2). Practical implications of each approach as well as future research directions are discussed as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populist radical right (PRR) parties are often more successful in some regions of their countries than in others. However, previous research shows that the relationship between context and PRR support is not straightforward. We develop and test an expanded framework linking local conditions to PRR support through two causal mechanisms. First, we argue economic and cultural contextual factors can influence citizens by fostering a sense of perceived local decline, which in turn predicts both populist and nativist attitudes and, hence, PRR support (mediation). Second, we expect that citizens with fewer resources and stronger local embeddedness are more strongly influenced by the context in which they live (moderation). Combining geocoded survey data with contextual data from four countries (DE, FR, GB and NL), we show that the link between local context and PRR support is indeed mediated and moderated, providing a better understanding of the spatial distribution behind recent PRR success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does economic inequality dampen support for the political system? This question has been answered in the affirmative in prior work studying the relationship between economic inequality and various manifestations of political system support across countries or US states. However, recent work challenges the premise underlying such analyses by showing that citizens are generally ignorant about national‐level inequality. Relatedly, work on contextual effects finds that economic and social phenomena are particularly consequential for political attitudes when they reflect palpable everyday experiences. Combining these insights, we suggest that a more theoretically and methodologically appropriate test of the proposition that economic inequality reduces political system support should focus on local, neighbourhood‐level economic inequality, which citizens encounter on a daily basis. By linking multiple geo‐referenced surveys – both cross‐sectional and longitudinal – with Danish registry data, we create micro‐contextual measures of local economic inequality and relate them to a range of indicators of political system support. We find no evidence indicating that local inequality reduces political system support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the effects of sentence context and tonal information on spoken word recognition processes in Cantonese Chinese. We recruited 60 native Cantonese listeners to participate in the eye-tracking experiment. The target words (phonologically similar words) were manipulated to either (1) a congruent context or (2) an incongruent context in the experiment. The resulting eye-movement patterns in the incongruent context condition clearly revealed that (1) sentence context produced a garden-path effect in the initial stage of the spoken word recognition processes and then (2) the lexical tone of the word (bottom-up information) overrode the contextual effects to help listeners to discriminate between different similar-sounding words during lexical access. In conclusion, the patterns of eye-tracking data show the interactive processes between the lexical tone (an acoustic cue within a Cantonese word) and sentence context played in different phases to the spoken word recognition of Cantonese Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: We examined how context is used to facilitate reading in the second language (L2) compared with the first language (L1), and how L2 availability and age modulate these context effects. Methodology: Using self-paced reading, participants read high- and low-constraint Hebrew sentences. In Experiment 1, L1 (n = 45) and L2 (n = 48) Hebrew readers were compared, whereas in Experiment 2, only L2 readers (n = 131) were examined, testing modulations by L2 availability and age. Data and analysis: Reading times of target, post target, and sentence final words were analyzed using linear-mixed-effects models. Findings: In Experiment 1, L2 readers differed from L1 readers in contextual processing, as evident in the significant interaction between context type and language background on the final word measure. In Experiment 2, L2 readers with lower L2 availability scores differed from those with higher scores, and younger readers differed from older ones, in the way high- and low-constraining context affected their reading behavior in the target word and in the final word of the sentence. These differences were indicated by significant interactions between context type and L2 availability as well as between context type and age group. These findings are best understood under a compensatory processing account. Originality: By complementing L1–L2 group comparisons with in-depth examination of the L2 profile, the current study reveals a continuous effect of L2 availability, such that a lower L2 availability is associated with a greater reliance on context. Furthermore, the inclusion of older and younger adults provides converging evidence to the use of contextual support as a compensatory mechanism when lexical processing is more effortful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 50 years, consumer researchers have presented extensive evidence that consumer preference can be swayed by the decision context, particularly the configuration of the choice set. Importantly, behavioral research on context effects has inspired prominent quantitative research on multialternative decision-making published in leading psychology, management, economics, and general interest journals. While both streams of research seem to agree that context effects are an important research area, there has been relatively limited interaction, communication, and collaboration between the two research camps. In this article, we seek to initiate an active dialogue between the two sides. We begin by providing a critical overview of the two literatures on context effects, discussing both their strengths and weaknesses, as well as disparities and complementarities. Here, we place particular emphasis on deepening consumer researchers' understanding of context effects by drawing on prominent quantitative research published in non-marketing journals over the last decades. Importantly, we provide a roadmap for the future that can inspire further research and potential collaborations between the two camps, overcoming silos in knowledge creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding exit choice behaviour is essential for optimising safety management strategies in building evacuations. Previous research focused on contextual attributes, such as spatial information, influencing exit choice, often using utility models based on monotonic functions of attributes. However, during emergencies, evacuees typically make rapid, less calculated decisions. The choice of context can significantly impact the evaluation of attributes, leading to preference reversals within the same choice set but under varying context conditions. This cognitive psychological phenomenon, known as context effects, encompasses the compromise effect, the similarity effect, and the attraction effect. While researchers have long recognised the pivotal role of context effects in human decision making, their incorporation into computer-aided evacuation management remains limited. To address this gap, we introduce context effects (CE) in a social force (SF) model, CE-SF. Evaluating CE-SF's performance against the UF-SF model, which considers only the utility function (UF), we find that CE-SF better replicates exit choice behaviour across urgency levels, highlighting its potential to enhance evacuation strategies. Notably, our study identifies three distinct context effects during evacuations, emphasising their importance in advancing safety measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musicians display a variety of auditory perceptual benefits relative to people with little or no musical training; these benefits are collectively referred to as the "musician advantage." Importantly, musicians consistently outperform nonmusicians for tasks relating to pitch, but there are mixed reports as to musicians outperforming nonmusicians for timbre-related tasks. Due to their experience manipulating the timbre of their instrument or voice in performance, we hypothesized that musicians would be more sensitive to acoustic context effects stemming from the spectral changes in timbre across a musical context passage (played by a string quintet then filtered) and a target instrument sound (French horn or tenor saxophone; Experiment 1). Additionally, we investigated the role of a musician's primary instrument of instruction by recruiting French horn and tenor saxophone players to also complete this task (Experiment 2). Consistent with the musician advantage literature, musicians exhibited superior pitch discrimination to nonmusicians. Contrary to our main hypothesis, there was no difference between musicians and nonmusicians in how spectral context effects shaped instrument sound categorization. Thus, musicians may only outperform nonmusicians for some auditory skills relevant to music (e.g., pitch perception) but not others (e.g., timbre perception via spectral differences). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In real-world marketplaces, one may encounter an alternative that is inferior to another one in the assortment. While the presence of such seemingly irrelevant inferior alternatives should ostensibly have no influence on consumers' decisions, an extensive literature using stylized lab experiments has found that, surprisingly, their presence matters. Specifically, the dominance effect suggests that the presence of an inferior alternative shifts consumer's preferences toward the alternative made to be superior. However, null results in some recent lab studies and a lack of real-world evidence call into question whether, when, and how the effect exists. In this work, we find clear evidence that dominance matters in the wild. We also identify an important moderator for the dominance effect—preference uncertainty—and test it in both a real-world marketplace for digital freelance services and a lab experiment. Further, we find evidence for additional moderators that help explain how the effect works, including the count of dominated alternatives and the magnitude of dominance, consistent with a perceptual mechanism. This work is the first to use consequential field data to shed light on when and why the dominance effects occur, with implications for marketers, choice architects, user interface designers, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' decisions under risk tend to be in line with the notion that "losses loom larger than gains." This loss aversion in decision making is commonly understood as a stable individual preference that is manifested across different contexts. The presumed stability and generality, which underlies the prominence of loss aversion in the literature at large, has been recently questioned by studies reporting how loss aversion can disappear, and even reverse, as a function of the choice context. The present study investigated whether loss aversion reflects a trait-like attitude of avoiding losses or rather individuals' adaptability to different contexts. We report three experiments investigating the within-subject context sensitivity of loss aversion in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Our results show that the choice context can shift people's loss aversion, though somewhat inconsistently. Moreover, individual estimates of loss aversion are shown to have a considerable degree of stability. Altogether, these results indicate that even though the absolute value of loss aversion can be affected by external factors such as the choice context, estimates of people's loss aversion still capture the relative dispositions toward gains and losses across individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-making has been observed to be systematically affected by decoys, i.e., options that should be irrelevant, either because unavailable or because manifestly inferior to other alternatives, and yet shift preferences towards their target. Decoy effects have been extensively studied both in humans and in several other species; however, evidence in non-human primates remains scant and inconclusive. To address this gap, this study investigates how choices in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) are affected by different types of decoys: asymmetrically dominated decoys, i.e., available and unavailable options that are inferior to only one of the other alternatives, and phantom decoys, i.e., unavailable options that are superior to another available alternative. After controlling for the subjective strength of initial preferences and the distance of each decoy from its target in attribute space, results demonstrate a systematic shift in capuchins’ preference towards the target of both asymmetrically dominated decoys (whether they are available or not) and phantom decoys, regardless of what options is being targeted by such decoys. This provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of decoy effects in non-human primates, with important theoretical and methodological implications for future comparative studies on context effects in decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in intergroup threat theory, much research has illustrated the negative impact of the contextual presence of ethnic minorities construed as threats by the mainstream society on racial attitudes. This study examines the possibility that the presence of other "non-threatening" ethnic minorities could undermine such negative impact. We contend that the presence of genuine diversity can promote multicultural experiences and reduce people's tendency to single out specific ethnic groups as threatening. Analysis of telephone survey (N = 2407) and government by-census data in Hong Kong shows that proportion of district residents being South Asians and proportion of district residents using Mandarin as their usual spoken language were associated with lower levels of social and political tolerance when proportion of district residents being other ethnic minorities was low. The negative impact became weaker when proportion of other ethnic minorities increased. The pattern of results was more conspicuous among less educated citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence and theoretical models suggest that phonetic category perception involves two stages of auditory and phonetic processing. However, few studies examined the time course of these two processing stages. With brief stop consonant segments as context stimuli, this study examined the temporal dynamics of stop consonant perception by varying the inter-stimulus interval between context and target stimuli. The results suggest that phonetic category activation of stop consonants may appear before 100 ms of processing time. Furthermore, the activation of phonetic categories resulted in contrast context effects on identifying the target stop continuum; the auditory processing of stop consonants resulted in a different context effect from those caused by phonetic category activation. The findings provide further evidence for the two-stage model of speech perception and reveal the time course of auditory and phonetic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of magnitude, crucial for a mental representation of the physical world, is often subject to significant biases. Many of these biases are similar across sensory modalities, implying a generalized perception of magnitude. At the same time, some physical magnitudes might have a dedicated modality-specific calibration mechanism to enhance perceptual sensitivity. We examined this question of generalized versus modality-specific processes testing between- and within-modalities' contextual effects on the perception of magnitude. In a constant stimuli procedure, a central standard was embedded in shorter and longer contextual standards. These contextual standards were sampled in either a relatively wider or narrower range of durations. Participants were asked to determine which of the two consecutive durations was longer. Better perceptual sensitivity was found for narrower contexts, with stronger effects in trials in which the standard was presented first. Interestingly, narrower context enhanced sensitivity for standards within the same modality but had no effect on standards of another modality. A unidirectional transfer of contextual effects was observed under certain conditions from auditory, the dominant modality in performing temporal judgments, to vision. These results suggest that the perceptual system appears to develop modality-specific calibration mechanisms, most likely, to enhance perceptual sensitivity and maintain sensory specialization. Public Significance Statement: This study shows that both the visual and the auditory modalities use contextual information to calibrate sensitivity of duration perception; however, duration perception is only calibrated by modality-specific context, presumably to maintain sensory specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purchase decisions typically involve tradeoffs between attributes associated with desirability (e.g. quality) and feasibility (e.g. price). In this article, we examine how the decision context impacts consumers' preference between a high-desirability (HD) option and a high-feasibility (HF) alternative. Nineteen studies demonstrate a novel context effect, the "upscaling effect," whereby introducing a symmetrically dominated decoy option to a set (i.e. an option that is inferior compared to all alternatives in the set) leads to an increase in the choice share of the HD option. To account for the upscaling effect, we advance a two-stage model of consumer decision-making for decisions that involve tradeoffs between desirability and feasibility. According to our model, when the decision context provides a reason for choosing either option, such as when a decoy option is added to the set, consumers prioritize reasons that support choice of HD options over HF alternatives. Our model can explain the upscaling effect, as well as other findings reported in the literature, such as asymmetric attraction effects (Heath and Chatterjee 1995) and asymmetric sales promotion effects (Blattberg and Wisniewski 1989). Furthermore, the upscaling effect holds important managerial implications because it provides an effective way to increase sales of high-end products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers have discovered much about how disgust works, its neural basis, its relationship with immune function, its connection with mating, and some of its antecedents and consequents. Despite these advances in our understanding, an under-explored area is how disgust may be used to serve a communicative function, including how individuals might strategically downplay or exaggerate the disgust display in front of different audiences. Here, we generated two hypotheses about potential communicative functions of disgust, and tested these hypotheses in four countries (Turkey, Croatia, Germany, and Norway). We found no evidence in support of either hypothesis in any country. Discussion focuses on the likely falsity of the two central hypotheses, alternative interpretations of our findings, and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Despite well-documented cognitive and physical declines with age, older adults tend to report higher emotional well-being than younger adults, even during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To understand this paradox, as well as investigate the effects of specific historical contexts, the current study examined age differences in emotion regulation related to the events of 2020 in the United States. We predicted that, due to older adults' theorized greater prioritization of hedonic goals and avoidance of arousal, older adults would report more positivity-upregulation and acceptance tactics than younger adults. Research Design and Methods Eighty-one younger adults (aged 18–25) and 85 older adults (age 55+) completed a retrospective survey on their emotion regulation tactic usage for 3 specific events: the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the killing of George Floyd, and the presidential election. Results Older adults tended to rely most on acceptance-focused tactics, while younger adults tended to rely on a more even variety of tactics. However, age differences in tactic preferences varied by event, possibly due to younger adults' greater emotion regulation flexibility. Discussion and Implications Older adults' higher emotional well-being may not be primarily a result of age differences in positivity-related emotion regulation tactics but more about differences in acceptance use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an influential article, Shah et al. (2015) hypothesized that resource scarcity weakens the effect of irrelevant contextual factors on economic valuations. The hypothesis that "scarcity frames value" qualifies the applicability of standard theories of rational choice and suggests a revised psychological foundation. In support, Shah et al. showed that differences in the willingness to pay for a commodity depending on where it was purchased (a fancy hotel vs. a run-down store) and in the willingness to travel to receive a fixed discount depending on the size of the purchase (a cheap vs. an expensive computer) were smaller among those with low personal incomes. In a large-scale preregistered experiment (N = 3,442), we tested whether scarcity framed value during the COVID-19 pandemic as well. The sample exhibited the canonical context effects overall. Consistent with the hypothesis, these effects tended to be smaller among those facing higher scarcity of personal income. Extending the original findings, economic valuations of low-income earners improved, particularly when scarcity was on the minds of the participants, as those with high financial and other resource scarcity concerns were less susceptible to the context effects. Our findings indicate that scarcity frames value, especially when it is cognitively salient, and emphasize the importance of considering contextual factors when attempting replications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on multiattribute decision-making has repeatedly shown that people's preferences for options depend on the set of other options they are presented with, that is, the choice context. As a result, recent years have seen the development of a number of psychological theories explaining context effects. However, much less attention has been given to the statistical analyses of context effects. Traditionally, context effects are measured as a change in preference for a target option across two different choice sets (the so-called relative choice share of the target, or RST). We first show that the frequently used definition of the RST measure has some weaknesses and should be replaced by a more appropriate definition that we provide. We then show through a large-scale simulation that the RST measure as previously defined can lead to biased inferences. As an alternative, we suggest a Bayesian approach to estimating an accurate RST measure that is robust to various circumstances. We applied the two approaches to the data of five published studies (total participants, N = 738), some of which used the biased approach. Additionally, we introduce the absolute choice share of the target (or AST) as the appropriate measure for the attraction effect. Our approach is an example of evaluating and proposing proper statistical tests for axiomatic principles of decision-making. After applying the AST and the robust RST to published studies, we found qualitatively different results in at least one-fourth of the cases. These results highlight the importance of utilizing robust statistical tests as a foundation for the development of new psychological theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the known health benefits and the potential for substituting less environmentally sustainable consumed foods such as meat, the current intake of pulses in developed countries remains less than recommended. Barriers are related to sensory characteristics and lack of knowledge about preparation, while drivers of environmental benefits are intangible. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of additional information about health or environmental benefits of pulses on the acceptance of novel pulse‐based products from chickpeas, black beans, and faba beans. Perceptions of these pulse‐based spreads in a blind and informed stage were assessed with 202 consumers in urban and suburban areas of Denmark. In general, the familiar chickpea spread followed by the relatively most unfamiliar black bean spread was liked the most. Only for these two products, additional information increased hedonic perception, regardless of the context (health or environmental benefits). If consumers did not like the spread, as found for the faba bean spread, providing additional information did not significantly alter this perception. Participants' preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) in a discrete choice experiment corresponded to hedonic scores, whereas providing additional information increased the WTP. These findings suggest that extrinsic cues such as health or environmental benefits may only be useful in products with an acceptable baseline taste profile. Moreover, black beans might be investigated as a promising source for further product development due to their acceptance by consumers besides being the comparably most unfamiliar pulse type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the cognitive experience of novel pictorial scenes, using observers' words. On each of two critical trials, a single novel scene (a photo) was presented briefly, after which observers described what they saw. The reports were highly valid, assessed against details of the stimuli. The most frequent concepts used by the observers defined scene gist empirically – there was wide agreement on the basic scene interpretation. The average extent of the reports, or cognitive bandwidth, was fairly high overall: a median of 14.4 correct meaningful words per scene. However, there was a wide range of report lengths across observers. With length, the reports became increasingly elaborative and unique (and still correct). The longer reports document the richer and more unique side of a gist-to-elaboration continuum. In addition, a manipulation of immediately prior experience (priming with other scenes) caused an increase in the reporting of prime-related information, conveyed by a wide range of concepts, including relational concepts. The results are consistent with cognitive theories of perception and the claim of substantial cognitive bandwidth. Furthermore, the highly elaborative reports document a measured diversity of powerful scene understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making is known to be liable to several context effects. In particular, adding a seemingly irrelevant alternative (decoy) to a set of options can modify preferences: typically, by increasing choices towards whatever option clearly dominates the decoy (attraction effect), but occasionally also decreasing its appeal and generating a shift in the opposite direction (repulsion effect). Both types of decoy effects violate rational choice theory axioms and suggest dynamic processes of preference-formation, in which the value of each alternative is not determined a priori, but it is instead constructed by comparing options during the decision process. These effects are well documented, both in humans and in other species: e.g., amoebas, ants, honeybees, frogs, birds, cats, dogs. However, evidence of decoy effects in non-human primates remains surprisingly mixed. This study investigates decoy effects in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.), manipulating time pressure across different conditions, to test whether such effects require time-consuming comparative processes among available alternatives. Whereas the time-dependent nature of decoy effects is a robust finding in the human literature, this is its first investigation in non-human animals. Our results show that capuchins exhibit an attraction effect with decoys targeting their preferred food, and that this effect disappears under time pressure; moreover, we observe preliminary evidence of a repulsion effect when decoys target instead the less-preferred food, possibly due to the larger distance between decoy and target in the attribute space. Taken together, these results provide valuable insight on the evolutionary roots of comparative decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of context to facilitate the processing of words is recognized as a hallmark of skilled reading. This capability is also hypothesized to change with older age because of cognitive changes across the lifespan. However, research investigating this issue using eye movements or event-related potentials (ERPs) has produced conflicting findings. Specifically, whereas eye-movement studies report larger context effects for older than younger adults, ERP findings suggest that context effects are diminished or delayed for older readers. Crucially, these contrary findings may reflect methodological differences, including use of unnatural sentence displays in ERP research. To address these limitations, we used a coregistration technique to record eye movements (EMs) and fixation-related potentials (FRPs) simultaneously while 44 young adults (18–30 years) and 30 older adults (65+ years) read sentences containing a target word that was strongly or weakly predicted by prior context. Eye-movement analyses were conducted over all data (full EM dataset) and only data matching FRPs. FRPs were analysed to capture early and later components 70–900 ms following fixation-onset on target words. Both eye-movement datasets and early FRPs showed main effects of age group and context, while the full EM dataset and later FRPs revealed larger context effects for older adults. We argue that, by using coregistration methods to address limitations of earlier ERP research, our experiment provides compelling complementary evidence from eye movements and FRPs that older adults rely more on context to integrate words during reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offering an inferior and rarely chosen third (decoy) option to decision makers choosing between two options has a paradoxical effect: It increases the choice share of the option most similar to the decoy. This attraction effect is robust when options are numeric but rarely occurs in humans when options are visual, even though it occurs in animals. Building on psychophysics, we examined two types of visual attributes: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative visual attributes (e.g., different bottle volumes) can be perceived as magnitudes. Qualitative visual attributes (e.g., different colors), however, do not fall onto a magnitude scale. One can perceive that a bottle's volume is twice that of another bottle but not that a green bottle's color is twice that of a red bottle. We observed robust attraction effects for quantitative visual attributes (4,602 adults, 237 college-age participants), which reversed to repulsion effects when the visual attributes were qualitative (6,005 adults). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human ability to discriminate the duration of two subsequently presented stimuli is often studied with tasks that involve a comparison between a standard stimulus (with fixed duration) and comparison stimuli (with varying durations). The performance in such tasks is influenced by the presentation order of these successively presented stimuli. The so-called Type A effect refers to the impact of presentation order on the point of subjective equality. The Type B effect describes effects of presentation order on the just-noticeable-difference. Cognitive models that account for these context effects assume that participants' duration estimation is influenced by the history of previously encountered stimuli. For example, the internal reference model assumes that the magnitude of a "typical" stimulus is represented by an internal reference. This internal reference evolves throughout an experiment and is updated on every trial. Different recent models have in common that they describe how the internal reference is computed but are agnostic to the decision process itself. In this study, we develop a new model that incorporates the mechanisms of perceptual discrimination models into a diffusion model. The diffusion model focuses on the dynamics of the decision process itself and accounts for choice and response times based on a set of latent cognitive variables. We show that our model accurately predicts the accuracy and response time distribution in a classical duration discrimination task. Further, model parameters were sensitive to the Type A and B effect. The proposed model opens up new opportunities for studying human discrimination performance (e.g., individual differences). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Quantified the magnitude of the human error bias in professional investigators. • Meta-analyses showed professionals had a stronger human error bias than students. • Professionals wrongly, but confidently, believed that they were objective. • Recommendations for mitigating bias in workplace investigation are presented. Introduction: This study explored the magnitude of professional industrial investigators' bias to attribute cause to a person more readily than to situational factors (i.e., human error bias). Such biased opinions may relieve companies from responsibilities and liability, as well as compromise efficacy of suggested preventative measures. Method: Professional investigators and undergraduate participants were given a summary of a workplace event and asked to allocate cause to the factors they found causal for the event. The summary was crafted to be objectively balanced in its implication of cause equally between two factors: a worker and a tire. Participants then rated their confidence and the objectivity of their judgment. We then conducted an effect size analysis, which supplemented the findings from our experiment with two previously published research studies that used the same event summary. Results: Professionals exhibited a human error bias, but nevertheless believed that they were objective and confident in their conclusions. The lay control group also showed this human error bias. These data, along with previous research data, revealed that, given the equivalent investigative circumstances, this bias was significantly larger with the professional investigators, with an effect size of d unb = 0.97, than the control group with an effect size of only d unb = 0.32. Conclusions: The direction and strength of the human error bias can be quantified, and is shown to be larger in professional investigators compared to lay people. Practical Applications: Understanding the strength and direction of bias is a crucial step in mitigating the effects of the bias. The results of the current research demonstrate that mitigation strategies such as proper investigator training, a strong investigation culture, and standardized techniques, are potentially promising interventions to mitigate human error bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a series of studies of judgments of satisfaction with salary, manipulating the distribution of salaries of others doing the same work. The experiments were designed to compare 6 theories of contextual effects in judgment, including adaptation-level theory, correlation-regression theory, inferred distribution (ID) theory, decision by sampling (DbS), ensemble (EN) theory, and range-frequency (RF) theory. Manipulations of the frequency distribution using cubic density functions produce a double crossover of curves relating judgments to salaries; this double crossover violates implications of 4 of the theories but remains consistent with DbS and RF theories. ID theory assumes that rank is inferred from the mean and endpoints, so it fails to describe the double crossover. Manipulations of the endpoints produce changes in the heights and slopes of the curves, which are not explained by DbS and are partially inconsistent with EN theory. EN theory implies no effect of the rank of a salary and assumes that endpoints only affect judgments of salaries on the same side of the mean, contrary to the results. RF theory implies that ratings of stimuli holding the same ranks in 2 contexts with differing endpoints should be linearly related, and the data appeared consistent with this implication. RF theory is the only theory that gives a consistent account of all of the results. RF theory can be extended in order to estimate the effective context, which appears to differ systematically between people according to their full-time incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human decisions are context dependent in ways that violate classical norms of rational choice. However, these norms implicitly depend on idealized descriptive assumptions that are often unrealistic. We focus on one such assumption: that information is constant across contexts. Choice contexts often supply subtle cues—which may be embedded in frames, procedures, or menus—to which human decision makers can be highly sensitive. We review recent evidence that some important context effects reflect dynamically coherent belief and preference updating, in response to ecologically valid cues. This evidence paints a more nuanced picture of human rationality in natural choice environments and opens up prospects for nonpaternalistic forms of choice architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, it is still unclear whether there is a systematic pattern in the errors made in eyewitness recall and whether certain features of a person are more likely to lead to false identification. Moreover, we also do not know the extent of systematic errors impacting identification of a person from their body rather than solely their face. To address this, based on the contextual model of eyewitness identification (CMEI; Osborne & Davies, 2014, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28[3], 392–402), we hypothesized that having framed a target as a perpetrator of a violent crime, participants would recall that target person as appearing more like a stereotypical criminal (i.e., more threatening). In three separate experiments, participants were first presented with either no frame, a neutral frame, or a criminal frame (perpetrators of a violent crime) accompanying a target (either a face or body). Participants were then asked to identify the original target from a selection of people that varied in facial threat or body musculature. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence of bias. However, identification accuracy was highest for the most threatening target bodies high in musculature, as well as bodies paired with detailed neutral contextual information. Overall, these findings suggest that while no systematic bias exists in the recall of criminal bodies, the nature of the body itself and the context in which it is presented can significantly impact identification accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The context-dependent nature of choice is well illustrated by decoy effects, in which adding an alternative to a choice set can change the preference relations among the other alternatives. The current within-subjects study tested whether manipulating cognitive load affects the magnitude of attraction and compromise decoy effects. Participants (n = 96) made simulated online grocery shopping choices from three options described by price and quality for each grocery item they encountered. On half the 96 trials, they had to memorize a telephone number prior to encountering the choice set, after which they recalled the number. The choice task was rated significantly more difficult under load, providing some face validity for the load manipulation. Across decoy types, context effects were large and unaffected by the load manipulation. Bayesian analysis provided substantial evidence in favor of this null effect, with the study powered at better than.95 to detect a moderate effect. Across individuals, the magnitude of decoy effects was positively correlated with perception of the greater difficulty of the task under load, with this relationship fully mediated by increases in response times. These results are consistent with the idea that compromise and attraction decoy effects can operate relatively automatically and require minimal effortful processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, researchers in psychology, neuroscience, marketing, and economics have been keen to understand context effects in multialternative, multiattribute decision making. These effects occur when choices among existing alternatives are altered by the addition of a new alternative to the choice set. The effects violate classic decision theories and have led to the development of computational and mathematical models that explain how underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms give rise to the effects. This article reviews dynamic models of these effects, comparing mechanisms across models. Most models of context effects incorporate an attention mechanism, which suggests that attention plays an important role in multialternative, multiattribute decision making. I conclude by discussing recent empirical studies of attention and context effects and hypothesize that changes in attention could be responsible for recently observed reversals in context effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we used eye-tracking to investigate formality-register and morphosyntactic congruence during sentence reading. While research frequently covers participants' processing of lexical, (morpho-)syntactic, or semantic knowledge (e.g., operationalized by means of violations to which we can measure responses relative to felicitous stimuli), less attention has been devoted to the full breadth of pragmatic and context-related aspects. One such aspect is sensitivity to formality-register congruence, i.e., the match or mismatch between the register of a target word and the formality conveyed by the (linguistic) context. In particular, we investigated how congruence of linguistic register with context formality, as well as its interplay with morphosyntactic knowledge, may unfold during reading and be reflected in eye movements. In our study, 40 native German speakers read context sentences conveying a formal or informal situation, and a target sentence containing a high- or low-register verb (e.g., Engl. transl. The policeman detained the activist vs. The policeman nabbed the activist) which matched or mismatched the formality of the preceding context sentences. We additionally manipulated subject-verb agreement, with either a match (see examples above) or a mismatch thereof (e.g., Engl. transl. *The policeman detain the activist ; *The policeman nab the activist). We predicted that a violation of formality-register congruence would be reflected in longer reading times at the verb and post-verbal object region, as this would be in line with previous research on context violations (e.g., Lüdtke & Kaup, 2006 ; Reali et al., 2015 ; Traxler & Pickering, 1996). We found effects of morphosyntactic congruence on late processing stages at the verb and on earlier processing stages at the post-verbal object region. As far as formality-register congruence is concerned, only late (in total reading time analysis, in the post-verbal object region) and subtle effects emerged. The results suggest that, compared to morphosyntactic violations, formality-register congruence effects emerge quite subtly and slowly during reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How we perceptually organize a visual stimulus depends not only on the stimulus itself, but also on the temporal and spatial context in which the stimulus is presented and on the individual processing the stimulus and context. Earlier research found both attractive and repulsive context effects in perception: tendencies to organize visual input similarly to preceding context stimuli (i.e., hysteresis, attraction) co-exist with tendencies that repel the current percept from the organization that is most dominant in these contextual stimuli (i.e., adaptation, repulsion). These processes have been studied mostly on a group level (e.g., Schwiedrzik et al., 2014). Using a Bayesian hierarchical model comparison approach, the present study (N = 75) investigated whether consistent individual differences exist in these attractive and repulsive temporal context effects, with multistable dot lattices as stimuli. In addition, the temporal stability of these individual differences in context effects was investigated, and it was studied how the strength of these effects related to the strength of individual biases for absolute orientations. The results demonstrate that large individual differences in the size of attractive and repulsive context effects exist. Furthermore, these individual differences are highly consistent across timepoints (one to two weeks apart). Although almost everyone showed both effects in the expected direction, not every single individual did. In sum, the study reveals differences in how individuals combine previous input and experience with current input in their perception, and more generally, this teaches us that different individuals can perceive identical stimuli differently, even within a similar context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined changes in consumer perceptions of product types and purchase intentions when a subscription model is introduced for products normally sold on a one-time basis. It then proposed product types likely to affect consumers' purchasing intentions in the subscription economy and product categories best suited for the subscription economy. To this end, an experimental study was conducted with experts and general consumers using 99 subscription business cases. It was found that a regular delivery of products on a subscription basis gradually changes consumer perceptions of the products from utilitarian to hedonic and from search to experience ones. It was also found that consumption motivation is an important predictor of consumer purchase intentions in the subscription economy. In addition, experience-utilitarian and search-utilitarian products were associated with the highest purchase intentions among experts and general consumers, respectively. This suggests that a company's strategy should be adjusted in line with consumers' understanding of the subscription model. Therefore, suppliers need to understand the full implications of the new model, such as changed consumer perceptions and purchasing intentions, and strive to design a subscription model that is suitable for the target segments and product selections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choice context influences decision processes and is one of the primary determinants of what people choose. This insight has been used by academics and practitioners to study decision biases and to design behavioral interventions to influence and improve choices. We analyzed the effects of context-based behavioral interventions on the computational mechanisms underlying decision-making. We collected data from two large laboratory studies involving 19 prominent behavioral interventions, and we modeled the influence of each intervention using a leading computational model of choice in psychology and neuroscience. This allowed us to parametrize the biases induced by each intervention, to interpret these biases in terms of underlying decision mechanisms and their properties, to quantify similarities between interventions, and to predict how different interventions alter key choice outcomes. In doing so, we offer researchers and practitioners a theoretically principled approach to understanding and manipulating choice context in decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers and practitioners consider ethnic segregation in neighbourhoods or schools detrimental to migrants' acculturation in host societies. Empirically, however, segregation is a 'mixed bag' and its effects depend crucially on the investigated acculturation domain (e.g., negative for language skills, positive for well‐being). As most prior studies have focused on a restricted spectrum of acculturation, a comprehensive assessment within one single study is needed to establish comparability across different acculturation domains. Among over 8000 immigrant‐background students from four countries, we investigated the association of classroom segregation, defined as opportunities for contact with natives and other migrants, with a broad spectrum of acculturation (academic, attitude‐related, identity‐related, social, health‐related, and psychological criteria). Some findings were consistent (e.g., academic acculturation), some were contrary to prior research (e.g., social acculturation). In sum, our results shed light on the 'mixed bag' of segregation and contribute to the understanding of a crucial social issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While access to school is one crucial aspect of education equality, there is a lack of research on factors that influence the distance that pupils travel to school. Previous studies have failed to reveal the relationship between pupils' socio-spatial characteristics and travel distance. This paper uncovers the multilevel structure, ignored hitherto, that underpins the determinants of pupils' travel distance. Using detailed travel survey data for Beijing and an appropriate multilevel modelling approach, this research reveals that contextual variation remains, having taken account of compositional (individual-level) variables; and that contextual factors, that is, school density and neighbourhood context, are more influential when compared with individual-level factors except for education stage and housing type. The policy implications include improved planning for schools in comparatively deprived areas, increased provision of affordable housing and enhanced education opportunities for migrant children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to normative decision-making theories, the composition of a choice set should not affect people's preferences regarding the different options. This assumption contrasts with decades of research that have identified multiple situations in which this principle is violated, leading to context effects. Recently, research on context effects has been extended to the domain of experience-based choices, where it has been shown that forgone outcomes from irrelevant alternatives affect preferences -- an accentuation effect. More specifically, it has been shown that an option presented in a situation in which its outcomes are salient across several trials is evaluated more positively than in a context in which its outcomes are less salient. In the present study, we investigated whether irrelevant information affects preferences as much as relevant information. In two experiments, individuals completed a learning task with partial feedback. We found that past outcomes from non-chosen options, which contain no relevant information at all, led to the same accentuation effect as did counterfactual outcomes that provided new and relevant information. However, if the information is entirely irrelevant (from options that could not have been chosen), individuals ignored it, thus ruling out a purely perceptual account of the accentuation effect. These results provide further support for the influence of salience on learning and highlight the necessity of mechanistic accounts in decision-making research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linking local COVID-19 and population statistics to a U.S.-based survey we recently conducted, we examine the spatial variation in the impact of COVID-19 on Americans' attitudes toward China. The research strategy capitalizes on differential local COVID-19 incidence rates as varying dosages of COVID-19 impact across local contexts in the United States. Our results reveal negative yet heterogeneous effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Americans' attitudes toward China. We find that greater local exposure to COVID-19 is associated with a lower level of trust in Chinese and a less favorable attitude toward China. These findings lend consistent support to behavioral immune system theory by bridging the literature on contextual variations in public attitudes, with broader implications for U.S.-China relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memories are not always accurately recalled, and one factor that influences memory is the goal of retrieval. Evidence suggests that retrieving a memory to fit a social goal affects the content that is recollected, yet the nature of this effect, and whether this effect remains stable over time, is not fully understood. To this end, we compared the effect of retrieving a complex event (i.e., a narrative) motivated by a social versus an accuracy goal both immediately and after a 24-hour consolidation period. Three groups of young adults encoded audio narratives and recalled these narratives immediately (Session 1) and again after a 24-hour delay (Session 2). One group recalled the narratives to meet a social goal across both sessions (social); another group recalled the narratives for an accuracy goal across both sessions (accuracy); and a final group initially recalled the narratives for a social goal (Session 1) and then for an accuracy goal (Session 2; mixed). We found no effect of group on the number of details that described the overall theme (central details); however, a social goal significantly reduced the number of specific (episodic) details and altered the order in which the details were described. When the goal of retrieval changed across session (i.e., mixed group), the reduction in specific details remained but not the effect on detail order. These results demonstrate that socially motivated memory retrieval selectively alters the specific episodic content contained in the memory, leaving intact the thematic knowledge and overall structure of the memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that stigma may be an important, but heretofore underrecognized, source of heterogeneity in treatment effects of mental- and behavioral-health interventions. To support this hypothesis, we review recent evidence from randomized controlled trials and spatial meta-analyses suggesting that stigma may predict not only who responds more favorably to these health interventions (i.e., individuals with more stigma experiences), but also the social contexts that are more likely to undermine intervention effects (i.e., communities with greater structural stigma). By highlighting the potential role of personal and contextual stigma in shaping response to interventions, our review paves the way for additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four hypotheses regarding the impact of discourse context on cross-language lexical activation were tested. Highly-proficient, Spanish–English bilinguals read all-English paragraphs containing non-identical and identical cognates or noncognate controls while their eye-movements were tracked. There were four paragraph conditions based on a full crossing of semantic bias from the topic sentence and sentence containing the critical word. In analyses in which cognate status was treated categorically there was an interaction between global bias and cognates status such that the observed inhibitory effects of cognate status were attenuated in global-neutral contexts. Follow-up analyses on the non-identical cognates in which orthographic overlap was treated continuously revealed a U-shaped function between orthographic overlap and processing time, which was more pronounced in global-neutral contexts. The overall pattern of findings is consistent with a combined operation of resonant-based and feature-restriction mechanisms of context effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contextual features influence human and non-human decision making, giving rise to preference reversals. Decades of research have documented the species and situations in which these effects are observed. More recently, however, researchers have focused on boundary conditions, that is, settings in which established effects disappear or reverse. This work is scattered across academic disciplines and some results appear to contradict each other. We synthesize recent findings and resolve apparent contradictions by considering them in terms of three core categories of decision context: spatial arrangement, attribute concreteness, and deliberation time. We suggest that these categories could be understood using theories of choice representation, which specify how context shapes the information over which deliberation processes operate. The study of how the composition of choice sets affects choices has been a thriving research topic for many years now. Among the many different context effects, the three main ones, attraction, compromise, and similarity effects, have been demonstrated across a wide variety of settings and species. Research in recent years has shown that a variety of simple, seemingly irrelevant changes in the experimental setting can make each of the three main context effects disappear or even reverse. None of these effects seems to be compatible with existing theoretical approaches, or with each other, for that matter. Empirical research has far outpaced theoretical development. The current approach to context-effect research has reached a hard boundary. The field needs a coherent synthesis of the existing literature and a research agenda that overcomes the past shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When given a choice, people will avoid cognitively effortful courses of action because the experience of effort is evaluated as aversive and costly. At the same time, a body of work spanning psychology, economics, and neuroscience suggests that goods, actions, and experiences are often evaluated in the context in which they are encountered, rather in absolute terms. To probe the extent to which the evaluation of cognitive effort is also context-dependent, we had participants learn associations between unique stimuli and subjective demand levels across low-demand and high-demand contexts. We probed demand preferences and subjective evaluation using a forced-choice paradigm as well by examining effort ratings, taken both on-line (during learning) and off-line (after choice). When choosing between two stimuli objectively identical in terms of demand, participants showed a clear preference for the stimulus learned in the low- versus high-demand context and rated this stimulus as more subjectively effortful than the low-demand context in on-line but not off-line ratings, suggesting an assimilation effect. Finally, we observed that the extent to which individual participants who exhibited stronger assimilation effects in off-line demand ratings were more likely to manifest an assimilation effect in demand preferences. Broadly, our findings suggest that effort evaluations occur in a context-dependent manner and are specifically assimilated to the broader context in which they occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study assesses whether varying the encoding context of a repeated event is a potential strategy to improve recognition memory across retrieval contexts. Context variability, also known as encoding variability, has historically been investigated primarily using recall and cued recall tasks, with the consensus being that encoding variability is not necessarily beneficial for episodic retrieval. However, recent studies (see text) suggest that test type may determine the strategy’s effectiveness. Aligned with these recent findings, we found consistent benefits to simple item recognition when a word was studied in more variable contexts compared to less variable contexts across four experiments. This main effect of context variability occurred when crossed with a manipulation of repetition spacing and when crossed with a manipulation of encoding-retrieval context match. Variation in encoding contexts beyond the future retrieval context led to better item recognition than repeated study exposures within the future retrieval context. We argue that the current study and other recent findings indicate a need to re-evaluate the historical consensus on encoding variability as a beneficial strategy for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimation of time depends heavily on both global and local statistical context. Durations that are short relative to the global distribution are systematically overestimated; durations that are locally preceded by long durations are also overestimated. Context effects are prominent in duration discrimination tasks, where a standard duration and a comparison duration are presented on each trial. In this study, we compare and test two models that posit a dynamically updating internal reference that biases time estimation on global and local scales in duration discrimination tasks. The internal reference model suggests that the internal reference operates during postperceptual stages and only interacts with the first presented duration. In contrast, a Bayesian account of time estimation implies that any perceived duration updates the internal reference and therefore interacts with both the first and second presented duration. We implemented both models and tested their predictions in a duration discrimination task where the standard duration varied from trial to trial. Our results are in line with a Bayesian perspective on time estimation. First, the standard systematically biased estimation of the comparison, such that shorter standards increased the likelihood of reporting that the comparison was shorter. Second, both the previous standard and comparison systematically biased time estimation of subsequent trials in the same direction. Third, more precise observers showed smaller biases. In sum, our findings suggest a common dynamic prior for time that is updated by each perceived duration and where the relative weighting of old and new observations is determined by their relative precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]