Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP

Subjective time perception can change based on a stimulus's valence and expectancy. Yet, it is unclear how these two factors might interact to shape our sense of how long something lasts. Here, we conducted two experiments examining the effects of temporal and probabilistic expectancy on the perceived duration of images with varying emotional valence. In Experiment 1, we varied the temporal predictive cue with varying stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), while in Experiment 2, we manipulated the cue-emotion probabilistic associations...

Congruency effects in conflict tasks are typically larger after congruent compared to incongruent trials. This congruency sequence effect (CSE) indicates that top-down adjustments of cognitive control transfer between processing episodes, at least when controlling for bottom-up memory processes by alternating between stimulus-response (S-R) sets in confound-minimised designs. According to the control-retrieval account, cognitive control is bound to task-irrelevant context features (e.g., stimulus position or modality) and retrieved upon subsequent context feature repetitions...

Action imagery is the ability to mentally simulate the execution of an action without physically performing it. Action imagery is assumed to rely at least partly on similar mechanisms as action execution. Therefore, we expected that imagery and execution durations are constrained by the number of folds in a Paper Folding Task. Analogously, individual differences in execution durations were expected to be reflected in imagery durations. 28 participants performed two imagery conditions (computer vs paper) and one execution condition (paper) where two-dimensional grids of a three-dimensional cube were (mentally) folded to determine whether two selected edges overlap or not...

The contribution of uncontrolled processes to evaluative learning has been examined in evaluative conditioning procedures by comparing evaluations of conditioned stimuli between tasks or within tasks but between learning instruction conditions. In the present research, we introduced a new procedure that keeps both tasks and instructions constant. In addition, we introduced ambivalence measures to address this uncontrollability question. The new procedure involves forming an impression of conditioned stimuli based on their pairing with one unconditioned stimulus while attending but discarding the influence of another unconditioned stimulus holding the same (congruent trials) vs...

Pre-crastination refers to the tendency to begin a task as soon as possible, even at the cost of additional effort. This phenomenon is consistently observed in tasks in which participants are asked to select one of two buckets to carry to a target (Rosenbaum et al., 2014). Surprisingly, on a high proportion of trials participants choose the bucket that is closer to them (and further from the target) as opposed to the bucket that is further from them (and closer to the target). In other words, participants tend to complete the task of picking up a bucket as soon as possible, even when this requires additional physical effort...

Experience with instances that vary in their surface features helps individuals to form abstract task knowledge, leading to transfer of that knowledge to novel contexts. The current study sought to examine the role of this variability effect in how adults and school-aged children learn to engage cognitive control. We focused on the engagement of cognitive control in advance (proactive control) and in response to conflicts (reactive control) in a cued task-switching paradigm, and conducted four preregistered online experiments with adults (Experiment 1A: N = 100, Experiment 1B: N = 105) and 9- to 10-year-olds (Experiment 2A: N = 98, Experiment 2B: N = 97)...

Substantial individual variation exists in the frequency of gestures produced while speaking. This study investigated the associations between cognitive abilities, empathy levels, and personality traits with the frequency of representational gestures. A cartoon narration task and a social dilemma solving task were used to elicit gestures. Predictor variables were selected based on prior research on individual differences in gesture production and the cognitive and communicative functions of gestures in speech...

Previous research has shown that languages from nearby families are easier to learn as second languages (L2) than languages from more distant families, attributing this difference to the presence of shared elements between the native language (L1) and L2. Building on this idea, we hypothesized that suffixes present in L1 might facilitate complex word acquisition in L2. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 76 late French-English bilinguals and tasked them with learning a set of 80 English derived-words containing suffixes that also exist in French (e...

Naming a picture (e.g., "duck") in the context of semantically related pictures (e.g., "eagle", "stork", "parrot") takes longer than naming it in the context of unrelated pictures (e.g., "knave", "toast", "atlas"). Adaptive models of word production attribute this semantic interference effect in blocked-cyclic naming (BCN) to an adaptive mechanism that makes competitor words (e.g., the semantically related word "eagle" for the target word "duck") which are activated but not selected for production less accessible for future retrieval...

Prior research suggests that real-time phonological competition processes are stabilized in early childhood (Fernald et al., 2006). However, recent work suggests that development of these processes continues throughout adolescence (Huang & Snedeker, 2011; Rigler et al., 2015). This study aimed to investigate whether these developmental changes are based solely within the lexical system or are due to domain general changes. This study also aimed to investigate the development of real-time lexical-semantic activation...

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The influences of shared orthography, semantics, and phonology on bilingual cognate processing have been investigated extensively. However, mixed results have been found regarding the effects of phonological similarity on L2 cognate processing. In addition, most existing studies examining the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing have been conducted on alphabetic scripts, in which phonology and orthography are always associated. Hence, in this study, we recruited Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals who used two logographic scripts, traditional Chinese and Japanese Kanji, to examine the influence of phonological similarity on L2 cognate lexical decision...

Visual-spatial contextual cueing learning underpins the daily lives of older adults, enabling them to navigate their surroundings, perform daily activities, and maintain cognitive function. While the contextual cueing effect has received increasing attention from researchers, the relationship between this cognitive ability and healthy aging remains controversial. To investigate whether visual-spatial contextual cueing learning declines with age, we examined the contextual learning patterns of older (60-71 years old) and younger adults (18-26 years old) using a contextual-guided visual search paradigm and response variability measurements...

Knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of effortful listening could help to reduce cases of social withdrawal and mitigate fatigue, especially in older adults. However, the relationship between transient effort and longer-term fatigue is likely to be more complex than originally thought. Here, we manipulated the presence/absence of monetary reward to examine the role of motivation and mood state in governing changes in perceived effort and fatigue from listening. In an online study, 185 participants were randomly assigned to either a 'reward' (n = 91) or 'no-reward' (n = 94) group and completed a dichotic listening task along with a series of questionnaires assessing changes over time in perceived effort, mood, and fatigue...

Previous studies have shown that choices about how to configure stepping-stones to be used as playground or exercise equipment reflect a person's action capabilities. In two experiments, we investigated whether choices about how to configure stepping-stones to be used as a path for locomotion additionally reflect the goals for which or the constraints under which the path is to be used. In Experiment 1, participants created stepping-stone configurations (with rubber mats) that would allow them to cross a given space quickly, comfortably, or carefully...

People often learn of new scientific findings from brief news reports, and may discount or ignore prior research, potentially contributing to misunderstanding of findings. In this preregistered study, we investigated how people interpret a brief news report on a new drug for weight loss. Participants read an article that either highlighted the importance of prior research when judging the drug's effectiveness, or made no mention of this issue. For articles describing no prior research, mean confidence in the drug was 62%...

Combined action observation and motor imagery (AO+MI) can improve movement execution (ME) in healthy adults and certain patient populations. However, it is unclear how the specificity of the observation component during AO+MI influences ME. As generalised observation could result in more flexible AO+MI rehabilitation programs, this study investigated whether observing typing of target words (specific condition) or non-matching words (general condition) during AO+MI would have different effects on keyboard typing in healthy young adults...

Previous work has investigated the information-based mechanism for learning and transfer of learning in coordinated rhythmic movement (Leach, Kolokotroni & Wilson, 2021a, b). In those papers, we trained young adults to produce either 90° or 60° and showed in both cases that learning entailed learning to use relative position as the information for relative phase. This variable then supported transfer of learning to untrained coordinations +/30° on either side. In this paper, we replicate the 90° study with younger adults and extend it by training older adults (aged between 55 and 65)...

Attention can be covertly shifted to peripheral stimuli in order to improve their processing. However, attention is also then inhibited against returning to the previously attended location; thus, both detection and discrimination of a stimulus presented at that location decrease (the inhibition of return effect; IOR). The after-effect of the covert orienting hypothesis (ACOH) postulates a close link between attention shifting, IOR, and oculomotor control. The fixation offset, which improves the generation of saccades, decreases IOR in detection tasks, suggesting a close link between IOR and oculomotor control...

There are conflicting findings regarding the accuracy of metamemory for scene pictures. Judgments of stimulus memorability in general (memorability judgments, MJs) have been reported to be unpredictive of actual image memorability. However, other studies have found that judgments of learning (JOLs) - predictions of one's own later memory performance for recently studied items - are moderately predictive of people's own actual recognition memory for pictures. The current study directly compared the relative accuracy and cue basis of JOLs and MJs for scene pictures...