CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105985
Ashley N. Gilliam, Angela Gutchess
{"title":"Use of self-referencing memory strategies change over time with acculturation","authors":"Ashley N. Gilliam, Angela Gutchess","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105985","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105985","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although cross-cultural research identifies cognitive differences when comparing across individuals, few studies have examined how acculturation, or cultural change over time within individuals, affects cognition. To address this gap, we investigated how acculturation and change in self-construal for Chinese students in the US impacts the self-reference effect in memory over two timepoints. Participants completed a self-referencing memory task and a set of questionnaires assessing acculturation orientation and self-construal over two time points, on average 16 months apart. As individuals' orientation towards host culture and independence increased over the two time points, they exhibited a larger self-reference effect (self vs. other) in memory and a smaller other-reference (other vs. control) effect. These patterns indicated that as Chinese students became more acculturated to US culture, they exhibited more US-like patterns of behavior in memory. In contrast, between-participant variability in acculturation orientation and independence were not related to self- or other-referencing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105985"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142478037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105975
Elena Marx, Eva Wittenberg
{"title":"Temporal construal in sentence comprehension depends on linguistically encoded event structure","authors":"Elena Marx, Eva Wittenberg","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105975","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105975","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How events are ordered in time is one of the most fundamental pieces of information guiding our understanding of the world. Linguistically, this order is often not mentioned explicitly. Here, we propose that the mental construal of temporal order in language comprehension is based on event-structural properties. This prediction is based on a central distinction between states and events both in event perception and language: In perception, dynamic events are more salient than static states. In language, stative and eventive predicates also differ, both in their grammatical behavior and how they are processed. Consistent with our predictions, data from seven pre-registered video-sentence matching experiments, each conducted in English and German (total <em>N</em> = 674), show that people draw temporal inferences based on this difference: States precede events. Our findings not only arbitrate between different theories of temporal language comprehension; they also advance theoretical models of how two different cognitive capacities - event cognition and language - integrate to form a mental representation of time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105975"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142478035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105986
Shaonan Wang , Songhee Kim , Jeffrey R. Binder , Liina Pylkkänen
{"title":"Unlocking the complexity of phrasal composition: An interplay between semantic features and linguistic relations","authors":"Shaonan Wang , Songhee Kim , Jeffrey R. Binder , Liina Pylkkänen","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105986","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105986","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Understanding the computational operations involved in conceptual composition is fundamental for theories of language. However, the existing literature on this topic remains fragmented, comprising disconnected theories from various fields. For instance, while formal semantic theories in Linguistics rely on type-driven interpretation without explicitly representing the conceptual content of lexical items, neurolinguistic research suggests that the brain is sensitive to conceptual factors during word composition. What is the relationship between these two types of theories? Do they describe two distinct aspects of composition, operating independently, or do they connect in some way during interpretation by our brain? To probe this, we explored how the mathematical operations explaining the combination of two words into a phrase are affected by the semantic content of items and the formal linguistic relations between the combining items. For six phrase types that varied properties relevant to type-driven interpretation such as modification vs. argument-saturation and modifier context sensitivity, we collected human ratings of experiential semantic features both for the phrases and for all the individual words within the phrases. We then compared the ability of different computational combination rules to explain the phrase ratings based on the individual word ratings. Our results indicate that composition operations are not one-size-fits-all but rather depend on both feature type and linguistic relation. For example, in intersective Adjective-Noun phrases, addition is used to merge attention-related features, while color features are predominantly determined by the first word's ratings. In the case of social features, the verb chiefly guides interpretation in Verb-Noun phrases, whereas in Noun-Noun phrases, the model employs multiplication to combine the social features of the nouns.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105986"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142478036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105962
Corina Strößner, Ulrike Hahn
{"title":"Learning from conditional probabilities","authors":"Corina Strößner, Ulrike Hahn","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105962","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105962","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Bayesianism, that is, the formal capturing of belief in terms of probabilities, has had a major impact in cognitive science. Decades of research have examined lay reasoners’ learning and reasoning with probabilities. The bulk of that research has concerned the response to new evidence. That response will depend on the conditional probabilities a reasoner assumes, yet little research has addressed the question of how reasoners respond when they are provided with new conditional probabilities. Furthermore, there are not just open empirical questions as to how lay reasoners actually respond, there are also open questions as to how they <em>should</em> respond. This is illustrated by philosophical debate about the so-called Judy Benjamin Problem. In this paper, we present experiments on belief revision problems in which the new information is a conditional probability. More specifically, we investigate two versions of these problems: one where basic probability theory (as the core of what it means ‘to be Bayesian’) provides a single correct answer, and one where that answer is under-constrained. The former provide a new type of evidence on the longstanding question of human probabilistic reasoning skill. The latter informs debate on how to expand the Bayesian toolbox to deal with the issues raised by the Judy Benjamin Problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105962"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142478034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105980
Iqra Shahzad , Valeria Occelli , Eléonore Giraudet , Elena Azañón , Matthew R. Longo , André Mouraux , Olivier Collignon
{"title":"How visual experience shapes body representation","authors":"Iqra Shahzad , Valeria Occelli , Eléonore Giraudet , Elena Azañón , Matthew R. Longo , André Mouraux , Olivier Collignon","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105980","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105980","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We do not have a veridical representation of our body in our mind. For instance, tactile distances of equal measure along the medial-lateral axis of our limbs are generally perceived as larger than those running along the proximal-distal axis. This anisotropy in tactile distances reflects distortions in body-shape representation, such that the body parts are perceived as wider than they are. While the origin of such anisotropy remains unknown, it has been suggested that visual experience could partially play a role in its manifestation. To causally test the role of visual experience on body shape representation, we investigated tactile distance perception in sighted and early blind individuals comparing medial-lateral and proximal-distal tactile distances of stimuli presented on the ventral and dorsal part of the forearm, wrist, and hand. Overestimation of distances in the medial-lateral over proximal-distal body axes were found in both sighted and blind people, but the magnitude of the anisotropy was significantly reduced in the forearms of blind people. We conclude that vision does not drive the emergence of tactile distance anisotropies, but visual experience can however modulate its expression on some specific body parts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105981
Louisa Huff, Tindaya Déniz, Linda Gronem, Sebastian Grueneisen
{"title":"Children recognize and reject favoritism in norm enforcement","authors":"Louisa Huff, Tindaya Déniz, Linda Gronem, Sebastian Grueneisen","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105981","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105981","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The impartial enforcement of norms and laws is a hallmark of fair societies, yet partial, unequal norm enforcement is common, for example as a result of corruption. While children condemn norm violations and value impartiality in resource allocation contexts, children's understanding of unequal norm enforcement is currently underexplored. In three vignette studies, we investigated 4- to 8-year-old's (<em>N</em> = 192) developing recognition and condemnation of unequal norm enforcement, which presupposes a sensitivity to impartiality as a meta-norm. Children evaluated the actions of characters who enforced different norms equally or unequally. From age 5, children disapproved of unequal norm enforcement but approved of unequal treatment when justified (Study 1). Children of all ages accepted a lack of punishment when applied equally to all transgressors, suggesting that their negative evaluations of unequal norm enforcement were specifically guided by the element of partiality and not the desire to see transgressors sanctioned (Study 2). Further, children aged 6 years and older were sensitive to the reasons behind unequal punishment, condemning instances of favoritism while accepting selective leniency due to mitigating circumstances (Study 3). The findings show that, from around 5 to 6 years of age, children condemn unequal sanctions for equal transgressions, thereby demonstrating a deep appreciation of impartiality as a foundational principle of fair norm enforcement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105981"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105978
Fiona Laura Rosselet-Jordan , Marlène Abadie , Stéphanie Mariz Elsig , Pierre Barrouillet , Valérie Camos
{"title":"Recollective and non-recollective processes in working memory retrieval","authors":"Fiona Laura Rosselet-Jordan , Marlène Abadie , Stéphanie Mariz Elsig , Pierre Barrouillet , Valérie Camos","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105978","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105978","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of the processes involved in working memory (WM) retrieval by distinguishing between recollective (direct access) and non-recollective (reconstruction) recall. To this end, the trichotomous theory of recall (Brainerd et al., 2009) was applied to young adults' recall performance in a complex span task in which word lists were presented in three successive study-test trials. In three experiments, factors known to affect WM performance were manipulated, such as the cognitive load (CL) of the concurrent task and the involvement of long-term memory (LTM) knowledge through the associative relatedness of the memory items and the temporally spaced presentation of memory lists. The application of the trichotomous theory of recall proved effective and established that both recollective and non-recollective processes support WM recall, though recollective processes are predominant. The detrimental effect of increased CL on recall performance appeared to result from a reduction in direct access, while leaving reconstruction unaffected. Two manipulations aimed at increasing the involvement of LTM in recall had different effects on retrieval processes. Associative relatedness favored direct access, while spaced presentation reduced it. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationships between LTM and WM and for WM theories are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Motivational context determines the impact of aversive outcomes on mental effort allocation","authors":"Mahalia Prater Fahey , Debbie M. Yee , Xiamin Leng , Maisy Tarlow , Amitai Shenhav","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105973","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105973","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>It is well known that people will exert effort on a task if sufficiently motivated, but how they distribute these efforts across different strategies (e.g., efficiency vs. caution) remains uncertain. Past work has shown that people invest effort differently for potential positive outcomes (rewards) versus potential negative outcomes (penalties). However, this research failed to account for differences in the context in which negative outcomes motivate someone - either as punishment or reinforcement. It is therefore unclear whether effort profiles differ as a function of outcome valence, motivational context, or both. Using computational modeling and our novel Multi-Incentive Control Task, we show that the influence of aversive outcomes on one's effort profile is entirely determined by their motivational context. Participants (N:91) favored increased caution in response to larger penalties for incorrect responses, and favored increased efficiency in response to larger reinforcement for correct responses, whether positively or negatively incentivized.</div></div><div><h3>Statement of relevance</h3><div>People have to constantly decide how to allocate their mental effort, and in doing so can be motivated by both the positive outcomes that effort accrues and the negative outcomes that effort avoids. For example, someone might persist on a project for work in the hopes of being promoted or to avoid being reprimanded or even fired. Understanding how people weigh these different types of incentives is critical for understanding variability in human achievement as well as sources of motivational impairments (e.g., in major depression). We show that people not only consider both potential positive and negative outcomes when allocating mental effort, but that the profile of effort they engage under negative incentives differs depending on whether that outcome is contingent on sustaining good performance (negative reinforcement) or avoiding bad performance (punishment). Clarifying the motivational factors that determine effort exertion is an important step for understanding motivational impairments in psychopathology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105973"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142438380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-14DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105979
Alina Schaffer , Alvaro L. Caicoya , Anja Widdig , Ruben Holland , Federica Amici
{"title":"Quantity discrimination in 9 ungulate species: Individuals take item number and size into account to discriminate quantities","authors":"Alina Schaffer , Alvaro L. Caicoya , Anja Widdig , Ruben Holland , Federica Amici","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105979","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105979","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ability to discriminate quantities is crucial for humans and other animals, by allowing individuals to maximize food intake and successfully navigate in their social environment. Here, we used a comprehensive approach to compare quantity discrimination abilities (i.e. ability to compare sets with different quantities of identical items, reliance on item size and spatial distribution, existence of irrational biases) in 9 different species of ungulates and provide novel insight into the socio-ecological conditions that might favor their emergence. We tested a total of 37 captive subjects including goats (<em>Capra aegagrus hircus)</em>, llamas (<em>Lama glama)</em>, guanacos (<em>Lama guanicoe)</em>, Grevy's zebras (<em>Equus grevyi),</em> Chapman's zebras (<em>Equus burchelli chapmanni)</em>, rhinos (<em>Diceros bicornis michaeli)</em>, giraffes (<em>Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi)</em>, bison (<em>Bison bonasus)</em> and buffalos (<em>Syncerus caffer nanus</em>). Our results revealed that subjects were able to discriminate quantities when presented with two sets of food items that could differ in number, size and partially density. When presented with sets containing a different number of identical food items, subjects successfully selected the set with more items, with performance overall decreasing when sets had higher ratios (e.g., 1:3 vs 1:5). In addition, subjects could successfully maximize their food intake when both sets had the same number of items, but items had different sizes. However, performance decreased at chance levels when varying both the number of items and their size or distribution. Giraffes performed better than other species in most conditions, and we found no evidence for an irrational bias toward sets with more, smaller items or denser distributions. Overall, our study provides a first comparative assessment of quantity discrimination skills in several ungulate species.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105979"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142433553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CognitionPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105972
Elaine Kearney , Katie L. McMahon , Frank Guenther , Joanne Arciuli , Greig I. de Zubicaray
{"title":"Revisiting the concreteness effect: Non-arbitrary mappings between form and concreteness of English words influence lexical processing","authors":"Elaine Kearney , Katie L. McMahon , Frank Guenther , Joanne Arciuli , Greig I. de Zubicaray","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105972","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105972","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do we represent and process abstract and concrete concepts? The “concreteness effect”, in which words with more concrete meanings are processed more quickly and accurately across a range of language tasks compared to abstract ones, suggests a differential conceptual organization of these words in the brain. However, concrete words tend to be marked by specific phonotactic features, such as having fewer syllables and more phonological neighbours. It is unclear whether these non-arbitrary form-meaning relationships that systematically denote the concreteness of a word impact language processing. In the current study, we first establish the extent of systematic mappings between phonological/phonetic features and concreteness ratings in a large set of monosyllabic and polysyllabic English words (i.e., concreteness form typicality), then demonstrate that they significantly influence lexical processing using behavioural megastudy datasets. Surface form features predicted a significant proportion of variance in concreteness ratings of monomorphemic words (25 %) which increased with the addition of polymorphemic forms (43 %). In addition, concreteness form typicality was a significant predictor of performance on visual and auditory lexical decision, naming, and semantic (concrete/abstract) decision tasks, after controlling for a range of psycholinguistic variables and concreteness ratings. Overall, our results provide the first evidence that concreteness form typicality influences lexical processing. We discuss theoretical implications for interpretations of the concreteness effect and models of language processing that have yet to incorporate non-arbitrary relationships between form and meaning into their feature sets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"254 ","pages":"Article 105972"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142401640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}