CognitionPub Date : 2024-08-13DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105911
Karl Halvor Teigen , Marie Juanchich
{"title":"Do claims about certainty make estimates less certain?","authors":"Karl Halvor Teigen , Marie Juanchich","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105911","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105911","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Predictions and estimates are sometimes qualified as <em>certain.</em> This epistemic marker occupies a privileged position at the top of scales of verbal probability expressions, reflecting probabilities close to 1. But such statements have rarely been compared to plain, unqualified statements in which certainty is not mentioned. We examined in nine studies (<em>N</em> = 2784) whether statements explicitly claimed to be certain are perceived as (1) more (or less) credible, (2) more (or less) precise, and (3) more (or less) strongly based upon evidence, compared to plain, unmarked declarative statements. We find, in apparent contrast with assumptions made by the standard scales, that “certain” are often judged to be less trustworthy, less reliable, and held with lower confidence than unmarked statements. Plain, declarative statements are further assumed to be more precise, while certainty implies that more extreme outcomes are possible. When it is certain that Henry made four errors, it is clear he did not commit less than four, but he might have committed five errors or more. Thus certainty can indicate lower bounds of an interval whose upper bounds are not defined, and certainty statements are consequently more ambiguous than estimates that do not mention certainty. At least-interpretations of certainty affect the interpretation of options in risky choice problems, where “200 lives will be saved” was deemed by a majority to mean exactly 200, while “it is certain that 200 will be saved”, could mean 200–600 lives. We also find that credibility is affected by type of certainty, with impersonal certainty (“it is certain”) perceived to be more accurate and persuasive than personal certainty (“I am certain”), especially in predictions of future events. Moreover, mentions of certainty can reveal that that a speaker's estimate is based on subjective judgments and guesswork rather than upon objective evidence. These findings have implications for communication. Estimates can appear more consensual when claims of certainty are omitted. To convey certainty it may be better not to mention that one is certain.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105911"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141979561","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 : 2024-08-10DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105916
Lettie Wareing , Lisa P.Y. Lin , Megan Rose Readman , Trevor J. Crawford , Matthew R. Longo , Sally A. Linkenauger
{"title":"Representations of the relative proportions of body part width","authors":"Lettie Wareing , Lisa P.Y. Lin , Megan Rose Readman , Trevor J. Crawford , Matthew R. Longo , Sally A. Linkenauger","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105916","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105916","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite our wealth of experience with our bodies, our perceptions of our body size are far from veridical. For example, when estimating the relative proportions of their body part lengths, using the hand as a metric, individuals tend to exhibit systematic distortions which vary across body parts. Whilst extensive research with healthy populations has focused on perceptions of body part length, less is known about perceptions of the width of individual body parts and the various components comprising these representations. Across four experiments, representations of the relative proportions of body part width were investigated for both the self and other, and when using both the hand, or a hand-sized stick as the metric. Overall, we found distortions in the perceived width of body parts; however, different patterns of distortions were observed across all experiments. Moreover, the variability across experiments appears not to be moderated by the type of metric used or individuals' posture at the time of estimation. Consequently, findings suggest that, unlike perceptions of body part length, assessed using an identical methodology, our representations of the width of the body parts measured in this task are not fixed and vary across individuals and context. We propose that, as stored width representations of these parts are not necessarily required for navigating our environments, these may not be maintained by our perceptual systems, and thus variable task performance reflects the engagement of idiosyncratic guessing strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105916"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027724002026/pdfft?md5=b8a00c798333407aaff1553351eec07c&pid=1-s2.0-S0010027724002026-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141917863","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 : 2024-08-09DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105865
Judy Sein Kim , Clara Colombatto , M.J. Crockett
{"title":"Goal inference in moral narratives","authors":"Judy Sein Kim , Clara Colombatto , M.J. Crockett","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105865","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105865","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We often form beliefs about others based on narratives they tell about their own moral actions. When constructing such moral narratives, narrators balance multiple goals, such as conveying accurate information about what happened (‘informational goals’) and swaying audiences' impressions about their moral characters (‘reputational goals'). Here, we ask to what extent audiences’ detection of narrators' reputational goals guide or prevent them from making moral character judgments intended by narrators. Across two pre-registered experiments, audiences read narratives written by real narrators about their own moral actions. Each narrator was incentivized to write about the same action twice while trying to appear like a morally good or bad person (positive and negative reputational goals). Audiences detected narrators' reputational goals with high accuracy and made judgments about moral character that aligned with narrators' goals. However, audiences were more suspicious toward positive than negative reputational goals, requiring more evidence of high informational goals. These results demonstrate how audiences' inferences of reputational goals can both support and hinder narrators: accurate goal recognition increases the chance that audiences will make judgments intended by narrators, but inferred positive reputational goals can lead to doubts about accuracy. More generally, this provides a novel approach to studying how moral information about people is transmitted through naturalistic narratives.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105865"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141914281","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 : 2024-08-09DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105903
Zhiqing Deng , Jie Gao , Toni Li , Yan Chen , BoYu Gao , Fang Fang , Jody C. Culham , Juan Chen
{"title":"Viewpoint adaptation revealed potential representational differences between 2D images and 3D objects","authors":"Zhiqing Deng , Jie Gao , Toni Li , Yan Chen , BoYu Gao , Fang Fang , Jody C. Culham , Juan Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105903","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105903","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>For convenience and experimental control, cognitive science has relied largely on images as stimuli rather than the real, tangible objects encountered in the real world. Recent evidence suggests that the cognitive processing of images may differ from real objects, especially in the processing of spatial locations and actions, thought to be mediated by the dorsal visual stream. Perceptual and semantic processing in the ventral visual stream, however, has been assumed to be largely unaffected by the realism of objects. Several studies have found that one key difference accounting for differences between real objects and images is actability; however, less research has investigated another potential difference – the three-dimensional nature of real objects as conveyed by cues like binocular disparity. To investigate the extent to which perception is affected by the realism of a stimulus, we compared viewpoint adaptation when stimuli (a face or a kettle) were 2D (flat images without binocular disparity) vs. 3D (i.e., real, tangible objects or stereoscopic images with binocular disparity). For both faces and kettles, adaptation to 3D stimuli induced stronger viewpoint aftereffects than adaptation to 2D images when the adapting orientation was rightward. A computational model suggested that the difference in aftereffects could be explained by broader viewpoint tuning for 3D compared to 2D stimuli. Overall, our finding narrowed the gap between understanding the neural processing of visual images and real-world objects by suggesting that compared to 2D images, real and simulated 3D objects evoke more broadly tuned neural representations, which may result in stronger viewpoint invariance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105903"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027724001896/pdfft?md5=fb7c903ff335e2e6e1d2792eba7e6a04&pid=1-s2.0-S0010027724001896-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141914282","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 : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105912
Nayoung Kwon , Patrick Sturt
{"title":"When social hierarchy matters grammatically: Investigation of the processing of honorifics in Korean","authors":"Nayoung Kwon , Patrick Sturt","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105912","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105912","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Korean grammar encodes relative social hierarchies among interlocutors in various ways. This study utilized honorific subject-verb agreement in Korean to investigate how social hierarchies are processed during sentence comprehension. The experimental results showed that honorific violations elicited processing difficulties. The use of an honorific verb with an unhonorifiable subject resulted in lower naturalness ratings, longer reading times, and elicited a P600, similar to effects observed with number, person, and gender agreement in Spanish or English. These findings suggest that social hierarchies have become integrated into grammar, constraining how native Korean speakers process sentences. However, the agreement between honorific subjects and verbs seems asymmetrical; the mismatch effect was smaller or absent when an honorifiable subject was not accompanied by an honorific verb, suggesting that while an honorific verb requires an honorifiable subject, the reverse is not necessarily true. The results indicate that the -<em>si</em> agreement in Korean is a form of morpho-syntactic agreement, despite its asymmetrical nature.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105912"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141908018","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}
{"title":"Learning a language with vowelless words","authors":"Georgia Zellou , Santiago Barreda , Mohamed Lahrouchi , Rajka Smiljanić","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105909","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105909","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Vowelless words are exceptionally typologically rare, though they are found in some languages, such as Tashlhiyt (e.g., <em>fkt</em> ‘give it’). The current study tests whether lexicons containing tri-segmental (CCC) vowelless words are more difficult to acquire than lexicons not containing vowelless words by adult English speakers from brief auditory exposure. The role of acoustic-phonetic form on learning these typologically rare word forms is also explored: In Experiment 1, participants were trained on words produced in either only Clear speech or Casual speech productions of words; Experiment 2 trained participants on lexical items produced in both speech styles. Listeners were able to learn both vowelless and voweled lexicons equally well when speaking style was consistent for participants, but learning was lower for vowelless lexicons when training consisted of variable acoustic-phonetic forms. In both experiments, responses to a post-training wordlikeness ratings task containing novel items revealed that exposure to a vowelless lexicon leads participants to accept new vowelless words as acceptable lexical forms. These results demonstrate that one of the typologically rarest types of lexical forms - words without vowels - can be rapidly acquired by naive adult listeners. Yet, acoustic-phonetic variation modulates learning.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105909"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027724001951/pdfft?md5=dc90163f816062321398142477c0a602&pid=1-s2.0-S0010027724001951-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141903274","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 : 2024-08-05DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105904
Gailt Yovel , Eden Bash , Sarah Bate
{"title":"Humans' extreme face recognition abilities challenge the well-established familiarity effect","authors":"Gailt Yovel , Eden Bash , Sarah Bate","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Classification performance is better for learned than unlearned stimuli. This was also reported for faces, where identity matching of unfamiliar faces is worse than for familiar faces. This familiarity advantage led to the conclusion that variability across appearances of the same identity is partly idiosyncratic and cannot be generalized from familiar to unfamiliar identities. Recent advances in machine vision challenge this claim by showing that the performance for untrained (unfamiliar) identities reached the level of trained identities as the number of identities that the algorithm is trained with increases. We therefore asked whether humans who reportedly can identify a vast number of identities, such as super recognizers, may close the gap between familiar and unfamiliar face classification. Consistent with this prediction, super recognizers classified unfamiliar faces just as well as typical participants who are familiar with the same faces, on a task that generates a sizable familiarity effect in controls. Additionally, prosopagnosics' performance for familiar faces was as bad as that of typical participants who were unfamiliar with the same faces, indicating that they struggle to learn even identity-specific information. Overall, these findings demonstrate that by studying the extreme ends of a system's ability we can gain novel insights into its actual capabilities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105904"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141898694","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 : 2024-08-03DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105902
Maria Pflüger , David Buttelmann , Birgit Elsner
{"title":"How children come to (not) detect and apply multiple functions for objects: Rethinking perseveration and functional fixedness","authors":"Maria Pflüger , David Buttelmann , Birgit Elsner","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105902","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105902","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Although humans acquire sophisticated and flexible tool-use skills rapidly throughout childhood, young children and adults still show difficulties using the same object for different functions, manifesting in, for example, perseveration or functional fixedness. This paper presents a novel model proposing bottom-up processes taking place during the acquisition of tool-use abilities through active interaction with objects, resulting in two kinds of cognitive representations of an object: a lower-level, action-centered representation and a higher-level, purpose-centered one. In situations requiring the use of an object to attain a goal, the purpose-centered representation is activated quickly, allowing for an immediate detection of suitable tools. In contrast, activation of the action-centered representation is slow and effortful, but comes with the advantage of offering wide-ranging information about the object's features and how they can be applied. This differential availability and activation of action-centered versus purpose-centered representations also contributes to a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying perseveration or functional fixedness during multifunctional tool use. When applied to the teaching and acquisition of tool use, the model indicates that the form in which object-related information is provided determines which of the two object representations is fostered, thereby either facilitating or complicating the flexible application of an object as a tool for different functions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105902"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141890586","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 : 2024-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105908
Jamie Greer , Amna Ali , Camille Laksman , Ringo Huang , Mason McClay , David Clewett
{"title":"Effortful retrieval of semantic memories induces forgetting of related negative and neutral episodic memories","authors":"Jamie Greer , Amna Ali , Camille Laksman , Ringo Huang , Mason McClay , David Clewett","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105908","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105908","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) experiments show that the act of retrieving some recently encoded items from a given conceptual category leads to greater forgetting of competing items from that same category. However, RIF studies using emotional stimuli have produced mixed results, perhaps due to the reinstatement of arousal or negative affect during retrieval practice. To induce forgetting of negative episodic memories more indirectly, we examined if retrieving neutral semantic memories leads to RIF of related negative memories. In two experiments, participants studied eight categorized lists comprised of an equal number of negative and neutral words (Experiment 1) or neutral words preceded by neutral or negative images (Experiment 2). To avoid re-exposing individuals to negative material during retrieval practice, participants then performed a semantic memory retrieval task in which they generated (i.e., completed word-stems for) new neutral words from half of the studied categories. We found that semantic retrieval, or word generation, induced forgetting of recently studied words irrespective of their emotional valence or original emotional context. Additionally, across both experiments, less successful word generation was associated with stronger RIF effects. In Experiment 2, the magnitude of RIF was also correlated with higher subjective ratings of retrieval effort during word generation. Together, these results suggest that even when retrieving neutral semantic memories, effortful retrieval may enhance inhibitory processes that lead to forgetting of both neutral and negative episodic memories.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105908"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141879642","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 : 2024-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105905
Fabienne Chetail
{"title":"Reading books: The positive impact of print exposure on written word recognition","authors":"Fabienne Chetail","doi":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105905","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105905","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Regular print exposure is thought to benefit reading and language processes: those who read more have a larger vocabulary and better spelling and comprehension skills. Yet, there is little or no direct evidence that exposure to print facilitates reading. Here, we used an ecologically valid design to test the impact of print exposure on the early stages of reading in skilled adult readers. Participants read a novel at their own pace. Reading was followed by a lexical decision task, in which the positive trials were words that were exposed in the novel, and matched controls not exposed in the novel. If exposure during reading had a positive impact on subsequent word recognition, exposed words would be processed more efficiently than not-exposed words (exposure effect). This effect was obtained in three experiments. In addition, the effect was not modulated by the amount of exposure (1 vs. 3 occurrences in the text; Experiment 1), or the timing between reading and the exposure test (immediately after reading vs. on the following day; Experiment 3). However, the effect was present only in low-frequency words (Experiment 3). Interpretations of the exposure effect in terms of activation threshold and lexical quality are discussed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48455,"journal":{"name":"Cognition","volume":"251 ","pages":"Article 105905"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141879643","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}