Psychological Research

Social ostracism, a negative affective experience in interpersonal interactions, is thought to modulate the gaze-cueing effect (GCE). However, it is unclear whether the impact of social exclusion on the GCE is related to the identity of the cueing face. Therefore, the present study employed a two-phase paradigm to address this issue. In the first phase, two groups of participants were instructed to complete a Cyberball game with two virtual avatars to establish a binding relationship between a specific face's identity and the emotions of social exclusion or inclusion...

People not only judge repeatedly perceived information as more likely being true (the so-called truth effect) they also tend to be more confident after judging the validity of repeated information. These phenomena are assumed to be caused by a higher subjective feeling of ease (i.e., fluency) when processing repeated (vs. new) information. Based on the suggestion that a higher number of coherent mental activations is promoting a fluency experience, we argue that besides repetition an already existing information network, that is (nonspecific) prior knowledge, can enhance fluency...

The recent review by Eaves et al. (Psychological Research/Psychologische Forschung, 2022) outlines the research conducted to-date on combined action-observation and motor imagery (AOMI), and more specifically, its added benefit to learning. Of interest, these findings have been primarily attributed to the dual action simulation hypothesis, whereby AO and MI activate separable representations for action that may be later merged when they are congruent with one another. The present commentary more closely evaluates this explanation...

Our commentary expands the multisensory and modulating factors proposed by Kruger et al.'s (2023) internal models of action imagery and sensory crossovers. We will discuss the essence of imagery experiences as conceptual intersections among sensory, movement and affective properties that require further neuro-anatomical-contextual mapping to better understand the practical application of imagery. Accordingly, we will propose alternative ideas of daisy-chaining and motor imagery systems. The role of imagery speed, and other properties of movement for refining movement and self-regulation will be considered along with sex as a modulating factor in intra-individual abilities to image movement...

Decorative pictures (DP) are often used in multimedia task materials and are commonly considered so-called seductive details as they are commonly not task-relevant. Typically, DP result in mixed effects on behavioral performance measures. The current study focused on the effects of DP on the cognitive load during text reading and working memory task performance. The theta and alpha frequency band power of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and pupil dilation served as proxies of cognitive load. The number of fixations, mean fixation durations, and the number of transitions served as proxies of the attentional focus...

Monitoring errors consumes limited cognitive resources and can disrupt subsequent task performance in multitasking scenarios. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence concerning this interference with prospective estimation of time. In this study, we sought to investigate this issue through a serial multitasking experiment, employing a temporal bisection task as the primary task. We introduced two task contexts by implementing two different concurrent tasks. In one context, participants were tasked with discriminating the size difference between two visual items, while in the other context, they were required to judge the temporal order of similar visual items...

It has been recently demonstrated that hand stimuli presented in a first-, with respect to a third-, person perspective were prioritized before awareness independently from their identity (i.e., self, or other). This pattern would represent an unconscious advantage for self-related bodily stimuli rooted in spatial perspective. To deeper investigate the role of identity, we employed a breaking-Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm in which a self- or other-hand presented in first- or third-person perspective was displayed after a conscious identity-related prime (i...

We examined two theories of the mechanisms that enable error correction via corrective feedback. One theory focuses on enhancing the encoding of corrective feedback (corrective feedback-encoding facilitation account). The other is the recursive reminding theory, which considers memory integration between an initial event with error generation and a subsequent event involving correct answer feedback. The Japanese idiom pronunciation task was used in two experiments, in which it was manipulated whether the generated errors were visually presented, as well as corrective feedback...

Not applicable.

Contingency learning can involve learning that the identity of one stimulus in a sequence predicts the identity of the next stimulus. It remains unclear, however, whether such learning speeds responses to the next stimulus only by reducing the threshold for triggering the expected response after stimulus onset or also by preparing the expected response before stimulus onset. To distinguish between these competing accounts, we manipulated the probabilities with which each of two prime arrows (Left and Right) were followed by each of two probe arrows (Up and Down) in a prime-probe task while using force-sensitive keyboards to monitor sub-threshold finger force...

It is easier to execute a response in the promise of a reward and withhold a response in the promise of a punishment than vice versa, due to a conflict between cue-related Pavlovian and outcome-related instrumental action tendencies in the reverse conditions. This robust learning asymmetry in go and nogo learning is referred to as the Pavlovian bias. Interestingly, it is similar to motivational tendencies reported for affective facial expressions, i.e., facilitation of approach to a smile and withdrawal from a frown...

Several studies demonstrated that explicit forms of negation processing (e.g., "I don't know") recruits motor inhibitory mechanisms. However, whether this is also true for implicit negation, in which the negative meaning is implicated but not explicitly lexicalized in the sentence (e.g., "I ignore"), has never been studied before. Two Go/No-Go studies, which differed only for the time-windows to respond to the Go stimulus, were carried out. In each, participants (N = 86 in experiment 1; N = 87 in experiment 2) respond to coloured circle while reading task-irrelevant affirmative, explicit negative and implicit negative sentences...

Attention can be captured by the presence of distractors that match the current content of working memory in the visual field. This memory-driven capture is well established when observers adopt diffused attentional settings prior to the onset of memory-matching distractors. However, it remains unclear whether memory-driven capture can occur when observers are in a state of focused attention. The present study attempted to address this question by examining whether memory-matching distractors can disrupt performance on a focused attention task...

Collaborative memory research has focused primarily on the effects of collaboration at recall with collaboration during encoding receiving less attention. In the present study, collaboration was investigated both at encoding and at retrieval to determine its effects and possible interactions. The aim was to clarify whether the collaborative inhibition effect depended on whether the encoding was with the same or with a different partner. A total of 320 participants (160 Italian and 160 Spanish undergraduate students) were administered a modified version of the collaborative memory paradigm with a new categorization task of verbal affective stimuli at encoding...

Previous research and theories have demonstrated that attentional control plays a crucial role in explaining the choking phenomenon (i.e., the performance decrements) under pressure situations. Attentional control is thought to function through two distinct control strategies: proactive control (i.e., a sustained and anticipatory strategy of control) and reactive control (i.e., a transient strategy of control). However, little is known about how performance pressure affects these control strategies. The present study was designed to address this issue...

Response inhibition refers to suppressing a prepotent motor response and is often studied and discussed as an act of cognitive control. Much less attention was given to the potential contribution of motor control processes to response inhibition. Accumulated empirical findings show that a perceptual effect temporally contiguous with a response improves motor control performance. In the current study, we followed this work by manipulating action-effect temporal contiguity to enhance motor performance and investigated its impact on response selection and inhibition...

Our aim was to study the processes involved in the spatial coding of the body during actions producing multiple simultaneous effects. We specifically aimed to challenge the intentional-based account, which proposes that the effects used to code responses are those deemed relevant to the agent's goal. Accordingly, we used a Simon paradigm (widely recognized as a suitable method to investigate the spatial coding of responses) combined with a setup inducing a multimodal discrepancy between visual and tactile/proprioceptive effects (known to be crucial for body schema construction and action control)...

Frank et al.'s (2023) perceptual-cognitive scaffold meaningfully extends the cognitive action architecture approach and we support this interdisciplinary advancement. However, there are theoretical and applied aspects that could be further developed within this research to maximise practical impact across domains such as sport. In particular, there is a need to consider how these mechanisms (1) might critically inform or relate to other prominent theories within sport (e.g., constrained action hypothesis and ecological approaches) and, (2) reflect the real-world challenges experienced by athletes...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Human memory consists of different underlying processes whose interaction can result in counterintuitive findings. One phenomenon that relies on various types of mnemonic processes is the repetition priming effect for unfamiliar target faces in familiarity decisions, which is highly variable and may even reverse. Here, we tested the hypothesis that this reversed priming effect may be due to a conflict between target fluency signals and episodic retrieval processes. After replicating the reverse priming effect, three different manipulations were effective in diminishing it...