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How do we decide what to say to ensure our meanings will be understood? The Rational Speech Act model (RSA, Frank & Goodman, 2012) asserts that speakers plan what to say by comparing the informativity of words in a particular context. We present the first example of an RSA model of sentence level (who-did-what-to-whom) meanings. In these contexts, the set of possible messages must be abstracted from entities in common ground (people and objects) to possible events (Jane eats the apple, Marco peels the banana), with each word contributing unique semantic content. How do speakers accomplish the transformation from context to compositional, informative messages? In a communication game, participants described transitive events (e.g. Jane pets the dog), with only two words, in contexts where two words either were or were not enough to uniquely identify an event. Adults chose utterances matching the predictions of the RSA even when there was no possible fully 'successful' utterance. Thus we show that adults’ communicative behavior can be described by a model that accommodates informativity in context, beyond the set of possible entities in common ground. This study provides the first evidence that adults' language production is affected, at the level of argument structure, by the graded informativity of possible utterances in context, and suggests that full- blown natural speech may result from speakers who model and adapt to the listener’s needs.

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) measures the ability to suppress an initial (incorrect) intuition and to reflect when solving three mathematical problems. It rapidly became popular for its impressive power to predict how well people reason and make decisions. Despite the popularity of the CRT, a major issue complicates its interpretation: the numerical nature of the CRT confounds reflection ability with mathematical ability. In addition, the statistical and psychometric properties of the CRT are suboptimal and an increasing proportion of participants have become familiar with it. We have addressed these issues by developing the Verbal CRT (CRT-V), a novel 10-item measure of cognitive reflection, using non-mathematical problems with good statistical and psychometric properties and with low familiarity. First, we selected suitable items with relatively low familiarity and optimal difficulty as identified in two different populations (Studies 1 and 2) and with high content validity as judged by an expert panel (Study 3). Second, we demonstrated a good criterion and construct validity for the test in different populations with a wide range of variables (Studies 4-6) and a good internal consistency and test-retest reliability (Study 7). The Verbal CRT was less associated with numeracy than the original CRT and was not biased against women as was the case with the original CRT. The Verbal CRT can complement existing tests of cognitive reflection; it will be especially appropriate for use in general adult populations and in populations that are less educated and mathematically anxious.

Body-worn videos enable domestic violence complainants’ first statements to be presented to in court to a jury if a complainant declines to attend. Footage of residential incidents might capture information not relevant to issues in dispute, but which might prejudicially influence juries’ fact-finding. The current research examined whether low salience case-irrelevant changes to background information biased mock juror decision-making. Participant mock jurors (n = 1,108) randomly viewed videos, or extracted audio only, depicting a female actor-complainant providing an alleged domestic abuse statement. Videos depicted toddler’s toys, games and sports equipment, a bookcase, or no additional furniture. The defendant’s mitigating statement referred to the complainant as depressed or of low mood. When the complainant was described as depressed, guilty verdict rates were significantly higher when participants heard audio than when they watched footage. Guilty verdict rates were also significantly lower when videos displayed games and sports equipment. Participants’ pre-existing attitudes towards blaming domestic abuse victims mitigated defendant guilt attributions. Higher perpetrator or situational blame aggravated blame. In summary, case-irrelevant background residential information implying different family relationships can influence juror verdicts, demonstrating a risk to trial fairness from extra-legal information presentation. It is important that courts worldwide are aware of this risk.

How do our valuation systems change to homeostatically correct undesirable psychological or physiological states, such as those caused by hunger? There is evidence that hunger increases discounting for food rewards, biasing choices towards smaller but sooner food reward over larger but later reward. However, it is not understood how hunger modulates delay discounting for non-food items. We outline and quantitatively evaluate six possible models of how our valuation systems modulate discounting of various commodities in the face of the undesirable state of being hungry. With a repeated-measures design, an experimental hunger manipulation, and quantitative modeling, we find strong evidence that hunger causes large increases in delay discounting for food, with an approximately 25% spillover effect to non-food commodities. The results provide evidence that in the face of hunger, our valuation systems increase discounting for commodities, which cannot achieve a desired state change as well as for those commodities that can. Given that strong delay discounting can cause negative outcomes in many non-food (consumer, investment, medical, or inter-personal) domains, the present findings suggest caution may be necessary when making decisions involving non-food outcomes while hungry.

By definition, individuals with absolute pitch (AP) can categorize an isolated musical note with near perfect accuracy without a reference pitch. This definition implies a uniformity of performance across people; however, in reality AP is a complex, multidimensional ability, shaped by both early and recent auditory experiences. In the present study we assess how individual differences in working memory, musical expertise, and language background relate to the accuracy with which an AP possessor can identify an isolated musical note. In a standard test of AP ability, all AP participants performed virtually perfectly. When tested on more challenging notes, drawn from less frequently experienced timbres and octave ranges, we found that working memory positively related to note categorization performance, though only among individuals who reported a tonal language background. This interaction between tonal language and working memory, however, may have been partly grounded by differences in musical expertise reported between tonal and non-tonal language. Supporting this possibility, in a follow-up analysis we observed a general interaction between working memory performance and musical expertise across all participants. Taken together, these results highlight the complexity of AP categorization when considered as an auditory skill rather than a native talent. The observation that working memory may be an important component of auditory processing in AP when the to-be-judged sounds are less easily categorized is consistent with recent theoretical accounts of how working memory and expertise relate to auditory recognition more broadly.

The prevalence of obesity has driven searches for cognitive or behavioural economic factors related to Body Mass Index (BMI). One compelling candidate is delay discounting: those who prefer smaller sooner rewards over larger but later rewards are hypothesised to have higher BMI. The findings in the literature are mixed however, with meta analyses suggesting only a very small correlation between discounting and BMI. Here we present novel empirical data (N=381) and Bayesian analyses which suggest no such relationship between discounting of either monetary or weight loss rewards and BMI. We also find evidence against our novel proposal that discounting moderates the rate of BMI gain over time. We also present our data in the context of a random effects Bayesian meta-analytical result which does suggest the presence of a small correlation overall. The strength of the correlation is so weak (2.25% shared variance) that its practical significance may be minor to non existent. However because we found decisive evidence for unaccounted for study-level variance, due to study heterogeneity, we argue that we should treat such meta-analytic correlations with extreme caution. While the relationship between discounting and health outcomes such as BMI remain theoretically appealing, our empirical and meta-analytic results suggest we should be cautious in inferring a correlational, let alone a causal, role for discounting processes in driving BMI or moderating BMI gain with age.

Introduction: Consumption of snacks and food can be reduced by placing them further away from an individual, known as the Proximity Effect. This effect is generally thought to be robust, and observable between when snacks are presented at 20cm and 70cm. It is assumed that this effect occurs without conscious awareness or processing, but no study has experimentally tested whether the effect occurs via non-conscious processing. Method: A sample of 84 individuals is targeted, with each individual being assigned to one of four conditions via computerised random number sequence. A 2(Distance; 20cm, 70cm) x 2(Attention State; Distraction/Video, Control/No Video) between subjects design is implemented, with all individuals being presented with a bowl containing 250g of M&M’s. Individuals will either be asked to watch a 5-minute video clip, or sit quietly for 5 minutes. Snack consumption is measured at two levels: likelihood of consumption (any snack consumed vs none consumed), and actual consumption (continuous, measured in grams). Snacks will be removed after the 5 minute period, with individuals then being asked to complete a short questionnaire. Analysis: A binary logistic regression will be conducted to test for differences in likelihood of consumption. Actual consumption will be analysed through a 2x2 ANCOVA. Covariates of Perceived Effort and Visual Salience will be included in models for both analyses to assess the influence of these factors. Sensitivity analysis will be conducted for when outliers, those who were aware of the study intent, and those influenced by their environment are removed from analysis. All outcomes will be reported.Discussion: The proposed study will assess whether individuals consume more snacks when presented closer (proximity effect), as well as if consumption is higher when watching a short video clip, and the interaction between the two factors. Outcomes of the study will allow researchers to determine whether the proximity effect is likely to occur via non-conscious processing and without conscious awareness, or whether the effect occurs while individuals are aware of their behaviour. The results may influence future research and choice architects to ensure less-healthy snacks are placed further away if individuals are distracted with another stimulus to prevent mindless eating.

To navigate the world safely, we often need to rapidly ‘change our mind’ about decisions. Current models assume that initial decisions and change-of-mind decisions draw upon common sources of sensory evidence. In two-choice scenarios, this evidence may be ‘relative’ or ‘absolute’. For example, when judging which of two objects is the brightest, the luminance difference and luminance ratio between the two objects are sources of ‘relative’ evidence, which are invariant across additive and multiplicative luminance changes. Conversely, the overall luminance of the two objects combined is a source of ‘absolute’ evidence, which necessarily varies across symmetric luminance manipulations. Previous studies have shown that initial decisions are sensitive to both relative and absolute evidence; however, it is unknown whether change-of-mind decisions are sensitive to absolute evidence. Here, we investigated this question across two experiments. In each experiment participants indicated which of two flickering greyscale squares was brightest. Following an initial decision, the stimuli remained on screen for a brief period and participants could change their response. To investigate the effect of absolute evidence, the overall luminance of the two squares was varied whilst either the luminance difference (Experiment 1) or luminance ratio (Experiment 2) was held constant. In both experiments we found that increases in absolute evidence led to faster, less accurate initial responses and slower changes of mind. Change-of-mind accuracy decreased when the luminance difference was held constant, but remained unchanged when the luminance ratio was fixed. The initial response effects could be explained by the presence of input-dependent noise within the decision process, varying either within or across trials. However, the change-of-mind effects could not be captured by existing models, nor by two modified models which included input-dependent noise sources. This suggests that that the continued integration of sensory evidence following an initial decision operates differently to that described in existing theoretical accounts.

Events that conform to our expectations, i.e, are congruent with our world knowledge or schemas, are better remembered than unrelated events. Yet events that conflict with schemas can also be remembered better. We examined this apparent paradox in four experiments, in which schemas were established by training ordinal relationships between randomly-paired objects, while episodic memory was tested for the number of objects on each trial. Better memory was found for both congruent and incongruent trials, relative to unrelated trials, producing memory performance that was a “U-shaped” function of congruency. Furthermore, the incongruency advantage, but not congruency advantage, emerged even if the information probed by the memory test was irrelevant to the schema, while the congruency advantage, but not incongruency advantage, also emerged after initial encoding. Schemas therefore augment episodic memory in multiple ways, depending on the match between novel and existing information.

Experts regularly make inconsistent judgments when judging the same case twice. Previous research on expert inconsistency has focused largely on individual or situational factors. Here we focus directly on the cases themselves. First, using a theoretical model, we study how inconsistency and confidence are affected by how strongly experts agree about a case. Second, we empirically test the models predictions in two real-world datasets: diagnosticians rating the same mammograms or images of the lower spine twice. Our analyses converge to the same, novel results: cases on which diagnosticians strongly agree are associated with highly confident initial decisions that were unlikely to change---independent of whether the majority decision was correct or incorrect. Moreover, our results provide clear advice on how to act when faced with two conflicting decisions from a single expert: Choose the more confident decision.

Although euphemisms are intended to put a more positive spin on the words they replace, some euphemisms are ineffective. Our study examined the effectiveness of a popular euphemism for persons with disabilities, special needs. Most style guides prescribe against using the euphemism special needs and recommend instead using the non-euphemized term disability; disability advocates argue adamantly against the euphemism special needs, which they find offensive. In contrast, many parents of children with disabilities prefer to use special needs rather than disability. But no empirical study has examined whether special needs is more or less positive than the term it replaces. Therefore, we gathered a sample of adult participants from the general population (N = 530) and created a set of vignettes that allowed us to measure how positively children, college students, and middle-age adults are viewed when they are described as having special needs, having a disability, having a certain disability (e.g., is blind, has Down syndrome), or with no label at all. We predicted and observed that persons are viewed more negatively when described as having special needs than when described as having a disability or having a certain disability, indicating that special needs is an ineffective euphemism. Even for members of the general population who have a personal connection to disability (e.g., as parents of children with disabilities), the euphemism special needs is no more effective than the non euphemized term disability. We also collected free associations to the terms special needs and disability and found that special needs is associated with more negativity; special needs conjures up more associations with developmental disabilities (such as intellectual disability) whereas disability is associated with a more inclusive set of disabilities; and special needs evokes more unanswered questions. These findings recommend against using the euphemism special needs.

This paper investigates how cognition facilitates the adoption of new words through a study of the large-scale Reddit corpus, which contains written, threaded conversations conducted over the internet. Parameters for the cognitive architecture are estimated. Using ACT-R's account of declarative memory, the activation of memory chunks representing words is traced and compared to usage statistics sampled from a year of data. Potential values for decay and retrieval threshold are identified according to model fit and growth rates of word adoption. The resulting estimate for the decay parameter, d, is 0.22, and the estimate for the retrieval threshold parameter, rt, lies between 3.4 and 4.5.

Representative design refers to the idea that experimental stimuli should be sampled or designed such that they represent the environments to which measured constructs are supposed to generalize. In this article we investigate the role of representative design in achieving valid and reliable psychological assessments, by focusing on a widely used behavioral measure of risk taking-the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Specifically, we demonstrate that the typical implementation of this task violates the principle of representative design, thus conflicting with the expectations people likely form from real balloons. This observation may provide an explanation for the previously observed limitations in some of the BART's psychometric properties (e.g., convergent validity with other measures of risk taking). To experimentally test the effects of improved representative designs, we conducted two extensive empirical studies (N = 772 and N = 632), finding that participants acquired more accurate beliefs about the optimal behavior in the BART because of these task adaptions. Yet, improving the task's representativeness proved to be insufficient to enhance the BART's psychometric properties. It follows that for the development of valid behavioral measurement instruments-as are needed, for instance, in functional neuroimaging studies-our field has to overcome the philosophy of the "repair program" (i.e., fixing existing tasks). Instead, we suggest that the development of valid task designs requires novel ecological assessments, aimed at identifying those real-life behaviors and associated psychological processes that lab tasks are supposed to capture and generalize to. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Preferential choices are often explained using models within the evidence accumulation framework: value drives the drift rate at which evidence is accumulated until a threshold is reached and an option is chosen. Although rarely stated explicitly, almost all such models assume that decision makers have knowledge at the onset of the choice of all available attributes and options. In reality however, choice information is viewed piece-by-piece, and is often not completely acquired until late in the choice, if at all. Across four eye-tracking experiments, we show that whether the information was acquired early or late is irrelevant in predicting choice: all that matters is whether or not it was acquired at all. Models with potential alternative assumptions were posited and tested, such as 1) accumulation of instantaneously available information or 2) running estimates as information is acquired. These provided poor fits to the data. We are forced to conclude that participants either are clairvoyant, accumulating using information before they have looked at it, or delay accumulating evidence until very late in the choice, so late that the majority of choice time is not time in which evidence is accumulated. Thus, although the evidence accumulation framework may still be useful in measurement models, it cannot account for the details of the processes involved in decision making.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 115(6) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2018-63189-002). In the article, the original supplemental material has been revised to include a clarifying note to the Tests of model fit over larger sample (Samples C-G) section and post-peer review analyses added to the Post-peer review Factor Analytic Tests section. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Philosophers and behavioral scientists refer to wisdom as unbiased reasoning that guides one toward a balance of interests and promotes a good life. However, major instruments developed to test wisdom appear biased, and it is unclear whether they capture balance-related tendencies. We examined whether shifting from global, de-contextualized reports to state-level reports about concrete situations provides a less biased method to assess wise reasoning (e.g., intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, consideration of the broader context at hand and perspectives of others, integration of these perspectives or compromise), which may be aligned with the notion of balancing interests. Results of a large-scale psychometric investigation (N = 4,463) revealed that the novel Situated WIse Reasoning Scale (SWIS) is reliable and appears independent of psychological biases (attribution bias, bias blind spot, self-deception, and impression management), whereas global wisdom reports are subject to such biases. Moreover, SWIS scores were positively related to indices of living well (e.g., adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness), and balancing of cooperative and self-protective interests, goals (influence-vs.-adjustment), and causal inferences about conflict (attribution to the self-vs.-other party). In contrast, global wisdom reports were unrelated or negatively related to balance-related measures. Notably, people showed modest within-person consistency in wise reasoning across situations or over time, suggesting that a single-shot measurement may be insufficient for whole understanding of trait-level wisdom. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on wisdom, judgment and decision making, well-being, and prosociality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

We discuss two relatively understudied yet important phenomena relevant to the ecologically crucial task of gathering reliable information from human faces. First, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) predicts aggressiveness judgments and is associated with aggression-related behavior and life history outcomes. A significant body of research indicates fWHR is an honest evolutionary signal of propensity to aggression yet little is known about how or if this signal is preserved in judgments across race boundaries. Evidence for a universal relationship between increased fWHR and enhanced aggression perception has been found using Asian and white face stimuli, but race moderated the relationship between high fWHR and ratings in a pain ascription task using black and white faces. Second, we examine research on olfactory cues to face perception and focus particular attention on the possibility that face judgments may be influenced by putrescine, an organic compound found recently to heighten threat and escape-related cognitions in a single subliminal odor presentation study. Here we probe how fWHR and face race interact in aggression judgments during subliminal exposure to putrescine and a control condition. We present a standardized method of subliminal putrescine delivery and find null effects of putrescine on face judgments. Overall, our primarily white participants show a reduced difference in aggressiveness ratings to black faces from low to high levels of fWHR compared to the same contrast in white face stimuli, consistent with an account in which black faces are not perceived with the same configural precision as white faces.

In everyday life we are constantly updating our moral judgements of people and actions as we learn new information. We developed a novel paradigm to investigate how people update their moral judgements of fairness-related actions upon receiving contextual information regarding the deservingness of the action recipient. Participants (N = 313) observed a variant of the dictator game, whereby a ‘Decision-maker’ was given 10 dollars and decided how much of this amount to share with another person termed the ‘Receiver’. Participants first made an initial, context-absent judgement of the Decision-maker’s offer to the Receiver, and then a subsequent judgement of the same offer after learning contextual information regarding the Receiver’s previous offer to another person (context-present judgement). This sequence was repeated for varying combinations of Decision-maker and Receiver offers. Functional Principle Component Analyses revealed that participants showed patterns of judgements across offers that were interpretable in relation to moral norms, but that these patterns varied across individuals. Participants who endorsed equal-split (5 dollar) offers in their context-absent judgements also endorsed offers made by Decision-makers that were similar to the previous offer made by the Receiver (i.e. indirectly reciprocal offers). Participants who endorsed high (>5 dollar) offers in context-absent judgements also endorsed Decision-maker offers that were more generous than those made by the Receiver. Our findings show that most participants flexibly switched from relying on commonly studied context-independent norms (generosity, equality), to relying on related, context-dependent norms (relative generosity, indirect reciprocity), as they successfully integrate contextual information. The paradigm we have developed also provides a novel framework for investigating how moral judgements evolve in real time as people learn more information about a given situation.

The present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task (pressing left and right key according to the locations of stimuli) in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for positive stimuli (flowers) and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli (spiders), but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect (Simon effect) when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded approach/avoidance action coding. Stimulus valence modulated the Simon effect (but did not reverse it) when the valence was task-relevant (Experiment 3) as well as when it was task-irrelevant (Experiment 4). Therefore, stimulus valence influences task-set selection and response selection, but the influence on the latter is limited to conditions where responses afford approach/avoidance action coding.

This study used a Web-based naturalistic story-reading paradigm to investigate the impact of number of exposures on incidental acquisition and long-term retention of new meanings for known words by native English-speaking adults. Participants read one of four custom written stories in which they encountered novel meanings (e.g., a safe concealed within a piece of furniture) for familiar words (foam). These meanings appeared two, four, six, or eight times in the narrative. Results showed reasonably good memory of the new meanings, assessed by cued recall of novel meanings and word forms, after only two exposures, emphasizing the importance of initial encounters. Accuracy in cued recall of novel meanings showed a linear, incremental increase with more exposures. There was no significant forgetting after 1 week, regardless of the number of exposures during training, demonstrating the efficiency with which adults acquire new word meanings incidentally through reading and retain them over time. Open Practices: This article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data and analysis scripts are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ybu6r. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Humans can see through the complexity of scenes, faces, and objects by quickly extracting their redundant low-spatial and low-dimensional global properties, or their style. It remains unclear, however, whether semantic coding is necessary, or whether visual stylistic information is sufficient, for people to recognize and discriminate complex images and categories. In two experiments, we systematically reduce the resolution of hundreds of unique paintings, birds, and faces, and test people's ability to discriminate and recognize them. We show that the stylistic information retained at extremely low image resolutions is sufficient for visual recognition of images and visual discrimination of categories. Averaging over the 3 domains, people were able to reliably recognize images reduced down to a single pixel, with large differences from chance discriminability across 8 different image resolutions. People were also able to discriminate categories substantially above chance with an image resolution as low as 2 × 2 pixels. We situate our findings in the context of contemporary computational accounts of visual recognition and contend that explicit encoding of the local features in the image, or knowledge of the semantic category, is not necessary for recognizing and distinguishing complex visual stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

An emerging area of research in cognitive science is the utilization of networks to model the structure and processes of the mental lexicon in healthy and clinical populations, like aphasia. Previous research has focused on only one type of word similarity at a time (e.g., semantic relationships), even though words are multi-faceted. Here, we investigate lexical retrieval in a picture naming task from people with Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia and healthy controls by utilizing a multiplex network structure that accounts for the interplay between multiple semantic and phonological relationships among words in the mental lexicon. Extending upon previous work, we focused on the global network measure of closeness centrality which is known to capture spreading activation, an important process supporting lexical retrieval. We conducted a series of logistic regression models predicting the probability of correct picture naming. We tested whether multiplex closeness centrality was a better predictor of picture naming performance than single-layer closeness centralities, other network measures assessing local and meso-scale structure, psycholinguistic variables and group differences. We also examined production gaps, or the difference between the likelihood of producing a word with the lowest and highest closeness centralities. Our results indicated that multiplex closeness centrality was a significant predictor of picture naming performance, where words with high closeness centrality were more likely to be produced than words with low closeness centrality. Additionally, multiplex closeness centrality outperformed single-layer closeness centralities and other multiplex network measures, and remained a significant predictor after controlling for psycholinguistic variables and group differences. Furthermore, we found that the facilitative effect of closeness centrality was similar for both types of aphasia. Our results underline the importance of integrating multiple measures of word similarities in cognitive language networks for better understanding lexical retrieval in aphasia, with an eye towards future clinical applications.

Humans often seek information to minimise the pervasive effect of uncertainty on decisions. Current theories explain how much knowledge people should gather prior to a decision, based on the cost-benefit structure of the problem at hand. Here, we demonstrate that this framework omits a crucial agent-related factor: the cognitive effort expended while collecting information. Using a novel paradigm, we unveil a speed-efficiency trade-off whereby more informative samples actually take longer to find. Crucially, under sufficient time pressure, humans can break this trade-off, sampling both faster and more efficiently. Computational modelling demonstrates the existence of a hidden cost of cognitive effort which, when incorporated into theoretical models, provides a better account of peoples behaviour and also predicts self-reported fatigue accumulated during active sampling. By measuring metacognitive accuracy and uncertainty-reward preferences on a static, passive version of the task, we further validate the theoretical constructs captured by our model. Overall, the results show that the way people seek knowledge to guide their decisions is shaped not only by task-related costs and benefits, but also crucially by the quantifiable computational costs incurred.

Criticisms of nudging suggest that nudges infringe on decision makers’ autonomy. Yet, little empirical research has explored whether people who are subjected to nudges agree. In three between-group experiments (N = 2083), we subject participants to contrasting choice architectures and measure experiences of autonomy, choice-satisfaction, perceived threat to freedom of choice, and objection to the choice architecture. Participants who received a prosocial opt-out default nudge made more prosocial choices but did not report lower autonomy or choice satisfaction than participants in opt-in default or active-choice conditions. This was the case even when the presence of the nudge was disclosed, and when monetary choice stakes were introduced. With monetary choice stakes, participants perceived the threat to freedom of choice as slightly higher in the nudge condition than in the other conditions, but objection to the choice architecture did not differ between the conditions. Taken together, our results suggest that default nudges are less manipulative and autonomy-infringing than sometimes feared. We recommend that policymakers include measures of choice experiences when testing out new interventions.

In many choice environments, it seems that risks and rewards or probabilities and payoffs are tightly coupled such that high payoffs only occur with low probabilities. This structure may, in the face of uncertainty, afford an adaptive mind an opportunity to exploit it---for instance, by using the size of potential rewards to infer otherwise unknown probabilities of obtaining them. However, a mind can only adapt to and exploit an environmental structure if it is frequent and recurrent. We show that the ecology of competition makes the association of high rewards with low probabilities ubiquitous. It is a consequence of an ecological principle known as the ideal free distribution. This principle posits that the number of competitors in a resource patch is proportional to the gross total amount of resources in it. This principle implies a predictable inverse relationship between probabilities and payoffs, the risk\--reward structure. Harnessing this principle, we develop an ecological theory that identifies important boundary conditions for the structure. For instance, heterogeneity of resources in a given patch, computational limits among competitors, and scarcity of resources, systematically distort the risk-reward structure. Finally, we show that peoples mental representations of the risk--reward structure often conform to the distortions that are associated with these different ecological conditions. Grounding peoples inferences in the theory of the competitive risk-reward ecology makes it possible to predict when an adaptive decision maker should use the risk-reward structure. In sum, our framework demonstrates that the predictability of specific behaviors of a boundedly rational mind will only be possible if theories of the mind and the environment are coupled.

Evidence accumulation models have been used to describe the cognitive processes underlying performance in tasks involving 2-choice decisions about unidimensional stimuli, such as motion or orientation. Given the multidimensionality of natural stimuli, however, we might expect qualitatively different patterns of evidence accumulation in more applied perceptual tasks. One domain that relies heavily on human decisions about complex natural stimuli is fingerprint discrimination. We know little about the ability of evidence accumulation models to account for the dynamic decision process of a fingerprint examiner resolving if 2 different prints belong to the same finger or different fingers. Here, we apply a dynamic decision-making model-the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA)-to fingerprint discrimination decisions to gain insight into the cognitive processes underlying these complex perceptual judgments. Across 3 experiments, we show that the LBA provides an accurate description of the fingerprint discrimination decision process with manipulations in visual noise, speed-accuracy emphasis, and training. Our results demonstrate that the LBA is a promising model for furthering our understanding of applied decision-making with naturally varying visual stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Real-world decisions often take place under radical uncertainty—where outcomes cannot be enumerated and probabilities cannot be assigned. Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is a theory of choice under radical uncertainty. Whereas most theories of choice assume that people rely on (potentially biased) probabilistic judgments, such theories cannot account for adaptive decision-making when probabilities cannot be assigned. CNT proposes that people use narratives—structured causal hypotheses—rather than probabilities, as the currency of thought that unifies our sense-making and decision-making faculties. According to CNT, narratives arise from the interplay between individual cognition and the social environment, with reasoners adopting a narrative to explain the available evidence; using that narrative to imagine plausible futures; and affectively evaluating those imagined futures to make a choice. Evidence from many different areas of the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences supports this basic model, including lab experiments, interview studies, and econometric analyses. We describe several varieties of narratives that govern decisions, documenting the psychological mechanisms governing their evaluation and their use in decision-making. We suggest two ways in which narratives and affect work together to support adaptive decision-making—evaluating the compatibility of imagined futures and goals and maintaining conviction to act in the face of ambivalent reasons and changing information. We conclude by discussing practical implications of CNT and its generativity for future research.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was labeled a global pandemic by the WHO in March of 2020. During that same month, the number of confirmed cases and the death rate grew exponentially in the United States, creating a serious public-health emergency. Unfortunately, many Americans dismissed the pandemic as a hoax and failed to properly engage in helpful behaviors like social-distancing and increased hand-washing. Here, we examine a disposition—willingness to engage in analytic-thinking—that might predict beliefs that the pandemic is a hoax and failures to change behavior in positive ways. Our results indicate that individuals less willing to engage effortful, deliberative, and reflective cognitive processes were more likely to believe the pandemic was a hoax, and less likely to have recently engaged in social-distancing and hand-washing. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity is the tendency to perceive meaning in important-sounding, nonsense statements. To understand how bullshit receptivity differs across domains, we develop a scale to measure scientific bullshit receptivity — the tendency to perceive truthfulness in nonsensical scientific statements. Across three studies (total N = 1,948), scientific bullshit receptivity was positively correlated with pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity. Both types of bullshit receptivity were positively correlated with belief in science, conservative political beliefs, and faith in intuition. However, compared to pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity, scientific bullshit receptivity was more strongly correlated with belief in science, and less strongly correlated with conservative political beliefs and faith in intuition. Finally, scientific literacy moderated the relationship the two types of bullshit receptivity; the correlation between the two types of receptivity was weaker for individuals scoring high in scientific literacy.

Gawronski, Armstrong, Conway, Friesdorf and Hütter (2017, GACFH) presented a model of choices in utilitarian moral dilemmas, those in which following a moral principle or norm (the deontological response) leads to worse consequences than violating the principle (the utilitarian response). In standard utilitarian dilemmas, the utilitarian option involves action (which causes some harm in order to prevent greater harm), and the deontological response, omission. GACFH propose that responses in such dilemmas arise in three different ways: a psychological process leading to a deontological choice, a different process leading to a utilitarian choice, or a bias toward inaction or action. GACFH attempt to separate these three processes with new dilemmas in which action and omission are switched, and dilemmas in which the utilitarian and deontological processes lead to the same choice. They conclude that utilitarian and deontological responses are indeed separable, and that past research has missed this fact by treating them as naturally opposed. We argue that a bias toward harmful inaction is best understood as an explanation of deontological responding rather than as an alternative process. It thus should be included as an explanation of deontological responding, not an alternative response type. We also argue that GACFH’s results can be largely explained in terms of subjects’ unwillingness to accept the researchers’ assumptions about which consequence is worse and which course of action is consistent with a moral norm. This problem is almost inherent in the attempt to switch act and omission while maintaining equivalent norms. We support this argument with data from experiments with new and old scenarios, in which we asked subjects to judge both norms and consequences. We also find that GACFH’s results are not as consistent as they appear to be in the paper.

The present study investigated how task-irrelevant attributes of a stimulus affected responses in a multiattribute version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In Experiment 1, participants categorized images of Black and White male and female individuals on the basis of either race or gender. Both the race and gender of the individuals affected task performance regardless of which attribute was currently relevant to performing the task, yielding the IAT effects on both attributes. However, the influences of a task-irrelevant attribute depended on whether the task-relevant attribute was categorized compatibly or incompatibly with the underlying implicit biases. These results suggest that individuals are still categorized implicitly based on task-irrelevant social attributes and that the explicit categorization required in the standard IAT has a considerable impact on implicit social biases. Experiment 2 considered a third, nonsocial attribute (the color of the picture frame) and reproduced task-irrelevant IAT effects and their dependence on explicit categorization. However, Experiments 3 and 4 suggested that the task-irrelevant IAT effects based on social attributes are determined by whether the task-relevant attribute is a social or nonsocial attribute. The results raise fundamental questions about the basic assumptions underpinning the interpretations of the results from the IAT. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Interest in wisdom in the cognitive sciences, psychology, and education has been paralleled by conceptual confusions about its nature and assessment. To clarify these issues and promote consensus in the field, wisdom researchers met in Toronto in July of 2019, resolving disputes through discussion. Guided by a survey of scientists who study wisdom-related constructs, we established a common wisdom model, observing that empirical approaches to wisdom converge on the morally-grounded application of metacognition to reasoning and problem-solving. After outlining the function of relevant metacognitive and moral processes, we critically evaluate existing empirical approaches to measurement and offer recommendations for best practices. In the subsequent sections, we use the common wisdom model to selectively review evidence about the role of individual differences for development and manifestation of wisdom, approaches to wisdom development and training, as well as cultural, subcultural, and social-contextual differences. We conclude by discussing wisdom’s conceptual overlap with a host of other constructs and outline unresolved conceptual and methodological challenges.

Typical approaches to study practical wisdom are person-centric, use faulty methods and produce insights of little relevance to construct’s definition. We propose that understanding the mental processes underlying practical wisdom require a social-ecological framework, supported by emerging empirical insights. Wise reasoning (i.e., intellectual humility, open-mindedness, recognition of broader perspectives and possible changes, integration of diverse viewpoints) varies dramatically across cultures, regions, economic strata, and situational contexts. By adopting a social-ecological perspective, psychologists can address some paradoxes about wisdom, including biases and errors in decontextualized versus context-variable assessments and a greater propensity for wise reasoning about social versus personal challenges, despite greater knowledge about personal issues. Moreover, an ecological perspective suggests the propensity for practical wisdom in the population can also shape its ecology and surroundings. This new approach to wisdom is enriching our understanding and exploration of practical wisdom as a mental process and an ecological asset for societies at large.

Decision making is a vital aspect of our everyday functioning, from simple perceptual demands to more complex and meaningful decisions. The strategy adopted to make such decisions is often viewed as balancing elements of speed and caution, i.e. making fast or careful decisions. Using sequential sampling models to analyse decision making data can allow us to tease apart strategic differences, such as being more or less cautious, from processing differences, which would otherwise be indistinguishable in behavioural data. Our study used a multiple object tracking task where student participants and a highly skilled military group were compared on their ability to track several items at once. Using a mathematical model of decision making (the linear ballistic accumulator), we show the underpinnings of how two groups differ in performance. Results showed a large difference between the groups on accuracy, with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) group outperforming students. An interaction effect was observed between groups and level of difficulty in response times, where RAAF response times slowed at a greater rate than the student group as difficulty increased. Model results indicated that the RAAF personnel were more cautious in their decisions than students, and had faster processing in some conditions. Our study shows the strength of sequential sampling models, as well as providing a first attempt at fitting a sequential sampling model to data from a multiple object tracking task.

Uncertainty plays a critical role in reinforcement learning and decision making. However, exactly how it influences behavior remains unclear. Multiarmed-bandit tasks offer an ideal test bed, since computational tools such as approximate Kalman filters can closely characterize the interplay between trial-by-trial values, uncertainty, learning, and choice. To gain additional insight into learning and choice processes, we obtained data from subjects’ overt allocation of gaze. The estimated value and estimation uncertainty of options influenced what subjects looked at before choosing; these same quantities also influenced choice, as additionally did fixation itself. A momentary measure of uncertainty in the form of absolute prediction errors determined how long participants looked at the obtained outcomes. These findings affirm the importance of uncertainty in multiple facets of behavior and help delineate its effects on decision making.

Objectives Across the life span, deficits in executive functioning (EF) are associated with poor behavioral control and failure to achieve goals. Though EF is often discussed as one broad construct, a prominent model of EF suggests that it is composed of three subdomains: inhibition, set shifting, and updating. These subdomains are seen in both younger (YA) and older adults (OA), with performance deficits across subdomains in OA. Therefore, our goal was to investigate whether subdomains of EF might be differentially affected by age, and how these differences may relate to broader global age differences in EF. Methods To assess these age differences, we conducted a meta-analysis at multiple levels, including task level, subdomain level, and of global EF. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that there would be overall differences in EF in OA. Results Using 1,268 effect sizes from 401 articles, we found overall differences in EF with age. Results suggested that differences in performance are not uniform, such that variability in age effects emerged at the task level, and updating was not as affected by age as other subdomains. Discussion These findings advance our understanding of age differences in EF, and stand to inform early detection of EF decline.

Algorithms consistently perform well on various prediction tasks, but people often mistrust their advice. Here, we demonstrate one component that affects people’s trust in algorithmic predictions: response time. In seven studies (total N = 1928 with 14,184 observations), we find that people judge slowly generated predictions from algorithms as less accurate and they are less willing to rely on them. This effect reverses for human predictions, where slowly generated predictions are judged to be more accurate. In explaining this asymmetry, we find that slower response times signal the exertion of effort for both humans and algorithms. However, the relationship between perceived effort and prediction quality differs for humans and algorithms. For humans, prediction tasks are seen as difficult and observing effort is therefore positively correlated with the perceived quality of predictions. For algorithms, however, prediction tasks are seen as easy and effort is therefore uncorrelated to the quality of algorithmic predictions. These results underscore the complex processes and dynamics underlying people’s trust in algorithmic (and human) predictions and the cues that people use to evaluate their quality.

Abstract. Language comprehenders have been arguing to mentally represent the implied orientation of objects. However, compared to the effects of shape, size, and color, the effect of orientation is rather small. We examined a potential explanation for the relatively low magnitude of the orientation effect: Object size moderates the orientation effect. Theoretical considerations led us to predict a smaller orientation effect for small objects than for large objects in a sentence–picture verification task. We furthermore investigated whether this pattern generalizes across languages (Chinese, Dutch, and English) and tasks (picture-naming task). The results of the verification task show an orientation effect overall, which is not moderated by object size (contrary to our hypothesis) and language (consistent with our hypothesis). Meanwhile, the preregistered picture–picture verification task showed the predicted interaction between object size and orientation effect. We conducted exploratory analyses to address additional questions.

Humans show metacontrol of decision making, that is they adapt their reliance on decision-making strategies toward situational differences such as differences in reward magnitude. Specifically, when higher rewards are at stake, individuals increase reliance on a more accurate but cognitively effortful strategy. We investigated whether the personality trait Need for Cognition (NFC) explains individual differences in metacontrol. Based on findings of cognitive effort expenditure in executive functions, we expected more metacontrol in individuals low in NFC. In two independent studies, metacontrol was assessed by means of a decision-making task that dissociates different reinforcement-learning strategies and in which reward magnitude was manipulated across trials. In contrast to our expectations, NFC did not account for individual differences in metacontrol of decision making. In fact, a Bayesian analysis provided moderate to strong evidence against a relationship between NFC and metacontrol. Beyond this, there was no consistent evidence for relationship between NFC and overall model-based decision making. These findings show that the effect of rewards on the engagement of effortful decision-making strategies is largely independent of the intrinsic motivation for engaging in cognitively effortful tasks and suggest a differential role of NFC for the regulation of cognitive effort in decision making and executive functions.

What do we communicate with causal explanations? Upon being told, "E because C", one might learn that C and E both occurred, and perhaps that there is a causal relationship between C and E. In fact, causal explanations systematically disclose much more than this basic information. Here, we offer a communication-theoretic account of explanation that makes specific predictions about the kinds of inferences people draw from others' explanations. We test these predictions in a case study involving the role of norms and causal structure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that people infer the normality of a cause from an explanation when they know the underlying causal structure. In Experiment 2, we show that people infer the causal structure from an explanation if they know the normality of the cited cause. We find these patterns both for scenarios that manipulate the statistical and prescriptive normality of events. Finally, we consider how the communicative function of explanations, as highlighted in this series of experiments, may help to elucidate the distinctive roles that normality and causal structure play in causal judgment, paving the way toward a more comprehensive account of causal explanation.

Comparisons can often be framed in different but equivalent ways. For example, "A is better than B," can also be expressed as "B is worse than A." In 7 studies (and 4 further studies in the Supplemental Materials available in the OSF) we find that logically equivalent comparison frames have divergent effects on judgments and choices for the items being compared as well as other members of the set from which those items were drawn. These effects are asymmetric, affecting inferior items more strongly than superior ones. We propose a "comparison framing" account that draws on theory in linguistics on the markedness of adjectives (Cruse, 1976; Lehrer, 1985) to explain these results. We show that this account fits the data better than 2 previous accounts of attribute framing: automatic valenced associations (Levin et al., 1998) and leakage of information (McKenzie & Nelson, 2003). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Agents that can make better use of computation, experience, time, and memory can solve a greater range of problems more effectively. A crucial ingredient for managing such finite resources is intelligently chosen abstract representations. But, how do abstractions facilitate problem solving under limited resources? What makes an abstraction useful? To answer such questions, we review several trends in recent reinforcement-learning research that provide insight into how abstractions interact with learning and decision making. During learning, abstraction can guide exploration and generalization as well as facilitate efficient tradeoffs---e.g., time spent learning versus the quality of a solution. During computation, good abstractions provide simplified models for computation while also preserving relevant information about decision-theoretic quantities. These features of abstraction are not only key for scaling up artificial problem solving, but can also shed light on what pressures shape the use of abstract representations in humans and other organisms.

The study of cognitive processes is built on a close mapping between three components: overt gaze behavior - overt choice - covert processes. To validate this overt-covert mapping in the domain of decision making we collected eye-movement data during decisions between risky gamble problems. Applying a forward inference paradigm, participants were instructed to use specific decision strategies to solve those gamble problems (maximizing expected values or applying different choice heuristics) during which gaze behavior was recorded. We revealed differences between overt behavior, as indicated by eye movements, and covert decision processes, instructed by the experimenter. However, our results indicate that the overt-covert mapping is for some eye-movement measures not as close as expected by current decision theory, and hence question reverse inference as being prone to fallacies due to a violation of its prerequisite, that is, a close overt-covert mapping. We propose a framework to rehabilitate reverse inference.

Forensic science techniques are often used in criminal trials to infer the identity of theperpetrator of crime and jurors often find this evidence very persuasive. Unfortunately, two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions are forensic science testing errors and false or misleading forensic testimony (Saks & Koehler, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand jurors pre- existing beliefs about forensic science, as these beliefs may impact how they evaluate forensic evidence in the courtroom. In this study, we examine people’s perceptions of the likelihood of error and human judgment involved at each stage of the forensic science process (i.e., collection, storage, testing, analysis, reporting, and presenting). In addition, we examine peoples’ perceptions of the accuracy of — and human judgment involved in — 16 different forensic techniques. We find that, in contrast to what would be expected by the CSI effect literature, participants believed that the process of forensic science involved considerable human judgment and was relatively error-prone. In addition, participants had wide-ranging beliefs about the accuracy of various forensic techniques, ranging from 65.18% (document analysis) up to 89.95% (DNA). For some forensic techniques, estimates were lower than that found in experimental proficiency studies, suggesting that our participants are more skeptical of certain forensic evidence than they need to be. Keywords: Forensic science, forensic evidence, accuracy, error rate, CSI effect.

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is an assimilative change in liking of neutral conditioned stimuli (CS) following pairings with positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus, US). Dual-process theories postulate that, in addition to a controlled propositional process underlying conscious learning of CS-US contingencies, a second automatic and associative learning process exists that underlies EC effects. A central argument for dual-process theories is the dissociation between US expectancy and CS evaluation in extinction learning: When CSs are presented alone subsequent to CS-US pairings, participants cease to expect USs but continue to exhibit EC effects. This dissociation is typically interpreted as demonstration that EC is resistant to extinction, and consequently, that EC is driven by a distinct learning process. We tested an alternative single-process account, namely that expectancy-liking dissociations are caused by different judgment strategies afforded by the dependent measures rather than due to separable learning processes. According to this view, CS evaluations are by default integrative judgments---summaries of large portions of the learning history---whereas US expectancy reflects momentary judgments focusing on recent events. In a counterconditioning and two extinction experiments, we eliminate the expectancy-liking dissociations reported in the literature by inducing nondefault momentary evaluative judgments, and demonstrate a reversed dissociation when we additionally induced integrative expectancy judgments. Our findings corroborated a-priori predictions based on MINERVA 2, a formal single-process memory model. Hence, dissociations between US expectancy and conditioned CS liking reflect judgment properties and can be accounted for parsimoniously by a single learning process.

Both humans and non-human animals regularly encounter decisions involving risk and uncertainty. This paper provides an overview of our research program examining risky decisions in which the odds and outcomes are learned through experience in people and pigeons. We summarize the results of 15 experiments across 8 publications, with a total of over 1300 participants. We highlight 4 key findings from this research: (1) people choose differently when the odds and outcomes are learned through experience compared to when they are described; (2) when making decisions from experience, people overweight values at or near the ends of the distribution of experienced values (i.e., the best and the worst, termed the “extreme-outcome rule”), which leads to more risk seeking for relative gains than for relative losses; (3) people show biases in self-reported memory whereby they are more likely to report an extreme outcome than an equally-often experienced non-extreme outcome, and they judge these extreme outcomes as having occurred more often; and (4) under certain circumstances pigeons show similar patterns of risky choice as humans, but the underlying processes may not be identical. This line of research has stimulated other research in the field of judgement and decision making, illustrating how investigations from a comparative perspective can lead in surprising directions.

Decision-making competence (DMC) has potential utility in incrementally predicting decision-making behavior relative to general mental ability (g). However, prior research presents an incomplete depiction of the degree to which these two constructs overlap. This paper evaluated both theoretical and empirical discriminant validity evidence for DMC. Theoretically, DMC and g are distinct constructs though highly interconnected; both constructs exist within the intelligence nomological network. However, our empirical findings demonstrate scores on the Adult-Decision Making Competence assessment, are largely indistinguishable from g. Future research should treat DMC as an acquired skill as opposed to an underlying individual difference.

A recent surge of interest in the empirical measurement of mind-wandering has led to an increase in the use of thought-probing to measure attentional states, which has led to large variation in methodologies across studies (Weinstein in Behavior Research Methods, 50, 642-661, 2018). Three sources of variation in methodology include the frequency of thought probes during a task, the number of response options provided for each probe, and the way in which various attentional states are framed during the task instructions. Method variation can potentially affect behavioral performance on the tasks in which thought probes are embedded, the experience of various attentional states within those tasks, and/or response biases to the thought probes. Therefore, such variation can be problematic, both pragmatically and theoretically. Across three experiments, we examined how manipulating probe frequency, response options, and framing affected behavioral performance and responses to thought probes. Probe frequency and framing did not affect behavioral performance or probe responses. But, in light of the present results, we argue that thought probes need at least three responses, corresponding to on-task, off-task, and task-related interference. When researchers are specifically investigating mind-wandering, the probe responses should also distinguish between mind-wandering, external distraction, and mind-blanking.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a window into how the brain is processing language. Here, we propose a theory that argues that ERPs such as the N400 and P600 arise as side effects of an error-based learning mechanism that explains linguistic adaptation and language learning. We instantiated this theory in a connectionist model that can simulate data from three studies on the N400 (amplitude modulation by expectancy, contextual constraint, and sentence position), five studies on the P600 (agreement, tense, word category, subcategorization and garden-path sentences), and a study on the semantic P600 in role reversal anomalies. Since ERPs are learning signals, this account explains adaptation of ERP amplitude to within-experiment frequency manipulations and the way ERP effects are shaped by word predictability in earlier sentences. Moreover, it predicts that ERPs can change over language development. The model provides an account of the sensitivity of ERPs to expectation mismatch, the relative timing of the N400 and P600, the semantic nature of the N400, the syntactic nature of the P600, and the fact that ERPs can change with experience. This approach suggests that comprehension ERPs are related to sentence production and language acquisition mechanisms.

Cognitive control is applied in situations that require overriding a habitual and automatic response. The conflict monitoring hypothesis and the Expected Value of Control (EVC) theory as its extension posit a control system responsible for detecting conflicting occasions and adapting to them dynamically within a task. Here we evaluate this prediction in two versions of one of the most popular tasks in cognitive control, namely the Stroop task. We hypothesized that nearby-items interference combines with task interference in the multi-item version effectively turning it into a multi-task that may challenge cognitive control. Adopting an alternative methodology tracking within-task performance, we compared the classical multi-item version of the Stroop task and its single-item counterpart in adults and children. The results revealed a within-task performance decline only in the multi-item version of the task, in both incongruent and neutral conditions, modulated by the presumed maturity of the control system. These findings suggest capacity constraints in control implementation and allocation under conditions requiring parallel execution of multiple cognitive tasks. Task complexity and demands seem to modulate effects on performance. We discuss implications for cognitive control as well as substantial concerns regarding the calculation and use of indices of interference based on the commonly used multi-item version of the Stroop task.