{"title":"EXPRESS: Can location cues facilitate attentional suppression?","authors":"Daniel Poole, Jim Grange, Elizabeth Milne","doi":"10.1177/17470218251357942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218251357942","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The spatial cueing paradigm has illustrated that location cues result in attentional enhancement of target stimuli. However, evidence is mixed on whether proactive attentional suppression can be cued in a similar way. In this registered report, we used a hybrid flanker-visual search-spatial cueing paradigm in which participants were presented with informative or non-informative cues regarding the upcoming location of a target-feature matching distractor in the search array. We aimed to replicate and extend a previous study which found evidence that cues support attentional suppression (Munneke, Van der Stigchel & Theeuwes, 2008. Acta Psychologia, 129 (1): 101 - 107). We repeated the experiment with informative and non-informative cue conditions blocked (Experiment 2) and with possible target and distractor locations separated (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments (total n = 554) we did not observe any evidence of cueing enhanced attentional suppression. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 3, participant responses were slightly slower in the informative cue condition, suggesting that the cue itself captured attention when cue-type was interleaved and thus unpredictable trial-to-trial. Surprisingly, post experiment assessment of distractor learning suggested participants had not learnt the association between cue and distractor location in any experiment. These findings do not support spatial cue enhanced attentional suppression.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"17470218251357942"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144554300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ruiyao Zheng, Meng Zhang, Marc Guasch, Pilar Ferré
{"title":"Exploring the differences in processing between Chinese emotion and emotion-laden words: A cross-task comparison study.","authors":"Ruiyao Zheng, Meng Zhang, Marc Guasch, Pilar Ferré","doi":"10.1177/17470218241296695","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241296695","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Affective words can be classified into two types: emotion words (EM words, e.g., \"happy\") and emotion-laden words (EL words, e.g., \"wedding\"). Several studies have shown differences in processing between EM and EL words, although results are inconclusive. These two types of words may have representational differences because affective content is an inherent part of the semantic features of EM words (i.e., denotative meaning) but not of EL words, whose affective content is part of their connotative meaning (i.e., these words do not name emotions, but are associated with emotions). In this study, we tested a set of Chinese EM and EL words. Both conditions included positive and negative words. The study involved two tasks, an implicit task, in which emotional content was not relevant (lexical decision task, LDT), and an explicit task, in which the emotional content was relevant (affective categorisation task, ACT). Our results showed that participants responded faster to EM words than to EL words. This advantage was mostly observed in the ACT and with negative words. These results reveal differences in processing between EM and EL words which can be related to the greater relevance of affective content in the meaning of EM words compared with EL words.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1426-1437"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142506675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Implicit learning in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders: Exploring the effects of individual differences.","authors":"Adamantia Ziva, Eleni Ziori","doi":"10.1177/17470218241281639","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241281639","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Implicit learning plays an important role in the acquisition of various skills that are often deficient in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examines the implicit learning ability of children and adolescents with ASD, by comparing it to that of a typical group of peers, using the Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) task. In addition, this study investigates whether the above ability is associated with individual characteristics, namely intelligence quotient (IQ), ASD symptoms severity, and individual perception style (global/holistic or local/focused). The sample consisted of 20 individuals with mild to relatively severe ASD symptoms and 20 age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) individuals. The unconscious (implicit) nature of learning was assessed via a subjective measure, the \"no-loss gambling\" method, which allows an unbiased evaluation of the confidence accompanying each judgement. The results provided evidence of implicit learning, which was preserved in the ASD group, although reduced relative to the typical group. Multiple linear regressions with interaction terms between group and participants' scores on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI), the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), and performance on a Navon-type task examined whether the possible relationships between each of the above scores and AGL and implicit learning differ in the two groups. Implicit learning was not significantly associated with IQ, ASD symptoms severity, or individual perception style (except for perception style in terms of reaction times [RTs] for the TD group). These results confirm and extend earlier findings supporting the resilience of implicit learning to individual differences.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1379-1398"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142111400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The influence of familiarisation and item repetition on the name agreement effect in picture naming.","authors":"Ruth E Corps, Antje S Meyer","doi":"10.1177/17470218241274661","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241274661","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Name agreement (NA) refers to the degree to which speakers agree on a picture's name. A robust finding is that speakers are faster to name pictures with high agreement (HA) than those with low agreement (LA). This NA effect is thought to occur because LA pictures strongly activate several names, so speakers need time to select one. HA pictures, in contrast, strongly activate a single name, so there is no need to select one name out of several alternatives. Recent models of lexical access suggest that the structure of the mental lexicon changes with experience. Thus, speakers should consider a range of names when naming LA pictures, but the extent to which they consider each of these names should change with experience. We tested these hypotheses in two picture-naming experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were faster to name LA than HA pictures when they named each picture once. Importantly, they were faster to produce modal names (provided by most participants) than alternative names for LA pictures, consistent with the view that speakers activate multiple names for LA pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were familiarised with the modal name before the experiment and named each picture three times. Although there was still an NA effect when participants named the pictures the first time, it was reduced in comparison to Experiment 1 and was further reduced with each picture repetition. Thus, familiarisation and repetition reduced the NA effect but did not eliminate it, suggesting speakers activate a range of plausible names.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1487-1499"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181635/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141913760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Absolute, not perceived, delay modulates agency judgement: Evidence for cognitive impenetrability of sense of agency.","authors":"Merve Erdoğan, Fuat Balcı","doi":"10.1177/17470218241306433","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241306433","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The sense of agency, which refers to awareness of causing events, is consistently influenced by the time interval between actions and their outcomes such that longer delays diminish the perceived strength of the agency. This study investigated whether the sense of agency is modulated by the distance between experienced delays or by their subjective discriminability, which is known to be subject to Weber's law (discriminability being a function of ratios rather than absolute differences between time intervals). To this end, participants executed keypress actions leading to outcomes at varying delays. In one experiment, delays were equidistant on a logarithmic scale (constant ratio relationship), while in the other experiment, they were equidistant on a linear scale (constant distance relationship). Our results showed that judgments of the agency were predicted better by actual temporal proximity between actions and outcomes compared with their subjective discriminability. Beyond providing a more complete picture regarding the effect of outcome delays on the sense of agency, these findings have broader implications for the mechanistic underpinnings of the sense of agency. They imply that even explicit judgments of agency can be influenced by certain factors transcending conscious experience.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1416-1425"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181639/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142755129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carl Bunce, Clare Press, Katie Lh Gray, Richard Cook
{"title":"Perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance when observing social interactions: The effects of dyad arrangement and orientation.","authors":"Carl Bunce, Clare Press, Katie Lh Gray, Richard Cook","doi":"10.1177/17470218241275595","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241275595","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In recent years, there has been growing interest in how we perceive dyadic interactions between people. It has been proposed that pairs of individuals shown upright and face-to-face recruit a form of configural processing, similar to that engaged by upright faces. This processing is thought to aid the detection and interpretation of social interactions. Dyadic arrangements shown back-to-back or upside-down are not thought to engage configural dyad processing. One of the key advantages conveyed by configural face processing is greater sensitivity to the spatial relationships between facial features when faces are viewed upright, than when viewed upside-down. If upright dyads arranged face-to-face engage similar configural processing that is not engaged by non-facing or inverted dyads, participants should therefore exhibit disproportionate sensitivity to the spatial relations between the constituent actors under these conditions. In four well-powered experiments, we find no evidence for this prediction: Participants exhibited similar levels of sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance regardless of whether dyads were shown upright or inverted, face-to-face, or back-to-back. In contrast, we observe clear evidence that upright presentation affords greater sensitivity to interfeature spatial relationships (interocular distance) when viewing faces. These results suggest that any configural processing engaged by upright facing dyads likely differs qualitatively from that engaged by upright faces.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1474-1486"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141913761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shirley Pandya, Victoria I Nicholls, Alexandra Krugliak, Simon W Davis, Alex Clarke
{"title":"Context and semantic object properties interact to support recognition memory.","authors":"Shirley Pandya, Victoria I Nicholls, Alexandra Krugliak, Simon W Davis, Alex Clarke","doi":"10.1177/17470218241283028","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241283028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We have a great capacity to remember a large number of items, yet memory is selective. While multiple factors dictate why we remember some things and not others, it is increasingly acknowledged that some objects are more memorable than others. Recent studies show semantically distinctive objects are better remembered, as are objects located in expected scene contexts. However, we know little about how object semantics and context interact to facilitate memory. Here we test the intriguing hypothesis that these factors have complementary benefits for memory. Participants rated the congruency of object-scene pairs, followed by a surprise memory test. We show that object memory is best predicted by semantic familiarity when an object-scene pairing was congruent, but when object-scene pairings were incongruent, semantic statistics have an especially prominent impact. This demonstrates both the item and its schematic relationship to the environment interact to shape what we will and will not remember.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1335-1347"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181638/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142140895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The assessment of attentional bias to cleanliness stimuli in different versions of the dot-probe task: Evidence for a motivational account.","authors":"Merve Boğa, Dirk Wentura","doi":"10.1177/17470218241281694","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241281694","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Vogt et al. (2011) investigated the role of goal-relevance in attention. Specifically, they induced the emotional state of disgust and showed an attentional bias (AB) to goal-related stimuli (i.e., cleanliness pictures) using the dot-probe task. In two experiments, we tested (a) an alternative interpretation and (b) the role of an important methodological feature of the dot-probe task. As the effect can be interpreted alternatively as affective counter-regulation (i.e., cleanliness-related pictures attracted attention because they are positive in the negative disgust state), we added positive stimuli to test whether the AB in the disgust state extends to these stimuli. In Experiment 1, we used the location dot-probe task. That is, participants had to categorise the location of the target. It can be argued that this task confounds attentional processes with response priming processes. In Experiment 2, we used a discrimination dot-probe task, that is, participants had to categorise a target feature that varied orthogonally to location, thus eliminating the confound. In Experiment 1, we did not replicate the effect of emotional state on AB for cleanliness stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2, we did. Mean AB scores for positive stimuli were not affected by emotional state. Two conclusions were drawn: First, the result of Experiment 2 supports the motivational account of Vogt and colleagues. Second, the results support the use of the discrimination task for both theoretical reasons (i.e., effects can be more clearly interpreted as based on attentional processes) and empirical reasons (i.e., the location task did not replicate the expected pattern).</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1260-1273"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142111401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ying Fu, Simon P Liversedge, Xuejun Bai, Maleeha Moosa, Chuanli Zang
{"title":"Word length and frequency effects in natural Chinese reading: Evidence for character representations in lexical identification.","authors":"Ying Fu, Simon P Liversedge, Xuejun Bai, Maleeha Moosa, Chuanli Zang","doi":"10.1177/17470218241281798","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241281798","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Word length and frequency are two of the \"big three\" factors that affect eye movements in natural reading. Although these factors have been extensively investigated, all previous studies manipulating word length have been confounded with changes in visual complexity (longer words have more letters and are more visually complex). We controlled stroke complexity across one-character (short) and two-character (long) high- and low-frequency Chinese words (to avoid complexity confounds) and recorded readers' eye movements during sentence reading. Both word length and frequency yielded strong main effects for fixation time measures. For saccadic targeting and skipping probability, word length effects, but not word frequency effects, occurred. Critically, the interaction was not significant regardless of stroke complexity, indicating that word length and frequency independently influence lexical identification and saccade target selection during Chinese reading. The results provide evidence for character-level representations during Chinese word recognition in natural reading.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1438-1449"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181640/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142111403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hope of success relates to the memory for unsolved compared to solved anagrams.","authors":"Romain Ghibellini, Beat Meier","doi":"10.1177/17470218241269310","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17470218241269310","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It is widely believed that unfinished tasks are better remembered than finished tasks, a phenomenon labelled the \"Zeigarnik-Effect.\" It has been argued that this advantage relies on the persisting tension inherent in uncompleted intentions. However, this interpretation has been challenged. First, the memory advantage could not be reliably replicated. Second, a memory advantage can still be observed when the unfinished status of an uncompleted intention is inherently terminated, rendering the \"persisting tension\" explanation unlikely. The goal of this study was to investigate the potential memory advantage of interrupted but finished tasks and its relation to the personality disposition achievement motivation, specifically, hope of success and fear of failure. This goal was motivated by the hypothesis that the experience of a discrepancy between the anticipation of success and the subsequent failure would relate to the memory for an unfinished task, and that this discrepancy experience would be stronger for people high in hope of success. A large sample of adults (>1,000 participants) was presented with 12 anagrams. If they did not solve an anagram within 60 s, they were shown the solution. Afterwards, we measured free recall of the anagram solutions and assessed achievement motivation. Overall, participants recalled more unsolved anagrams than solved anagrams. However, only individuals high in hope of success displayed a greater tendency to remember unsolved anagrams. This study supports the idea that a discrepancy experience rather than persisting tension coincides with memory for unsolved tasks.</p>","PeriodicalId":20869,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1274-1279"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141793222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}