Andrea Scalabrini , Michelangelo De Amicis , Agostino Brugnera , Marco Cavicchioli , Yasir Çatal , Kaan Keskin , Javier Gomez Pilar , Jianfeng Zhang , Bella Osipova , Angelo Compare , Andrea Greco , Francesco Benedetti , Clara Mucci , Georg Northoff
{"title":"The self and our perception of its synchrony – Beyond internal and external cognition","authors":"Andrea Scalabrini , Michelangelo De Amicis , Agostino Brugnera , Marco Cavicchioli , Yasir Çatal , Kaan Keskin , Javier Gomez Pilar , Jianfeng Zhang , Bella Osipova , Angelo Compare , Andrea Greco , Francesco Benedetti , Clara Mucci , Georg Northoff","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103600","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The self is the core of our mental life which connects one’s inner mental life with the external perception. Since synchrony is a key feature of the biological world and its various species, what role does it play for humans? We conducted a large-scale psychological study (n = 1072) combining newly developed visual analogue scales (VAS) for the perception of synchrony and internal and external cognition complemented by several psychological questionnaires. Overall, our findings showed close connection of the perception of synchrony of the self with both internal (i.e., body and cognition) and external (i.e., others, environment/nature) synchrony being associated positively with adaptive and negatively with maladaptive traits of self. Moreover, we have demonstrated how external (i.e., life events like the COVID-19 pandemic) variables modulate the perception of the self’s internal-external synchrony. These findings suggest how synchrony with self plays a central role during times of uncertainty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381002300137X/pdfft?md5=6660f0685eb96ea7e9d9ebd74ee30801&pid=1-s2.0-S105381002300137X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134656083","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}
Silvia Serino , Melanie Bieler-Aeschlimann , Andrea Brioschi Guevara , Jean-Francois Démonet , Andrea Serino
{"title":"The effect of visual perspective on episodic memory in aging: A virtual reality study","authors":"Silvia Serino , Melanie Bieler-Aeschlimann , Andrea Brioschi Guevara , Jean-Francois Démonet , Andrea Serino","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103603","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The possibility of flexibly retrieving our memories using a first-person or a third-person perspective (1PP or 3PP) has been extensively investigated in episodic memory research. Here, we used a Virtual Reality-based paradigm to manipulate the visual perspective used during the encoding stage to investigate age-related differences in the formation of memories experienced from 1PP vs. 3PP. 32 young adults and 32 seniors participated in the study. Participants navigated through two virtual cities to encode complex real-life virtual events, from either a 1PP (as if from their egocentric viewpoint) or a 3PP, while actively controlling an avatar. While recognition accuracy was higher in young adults after encoding in 1PP compared to 3PP, there was no benefit in memory formation in 1PP for older adults. These findings are discussed in terms of both age-related changes in episodic memory functioning and self-referencing processes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381002300140X/pdfft?md5=333bb6964634da56f4af3d3e998f9653&pid=1-s2.0-S105381002300140X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134656084","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 impact of feedback on metacognition: Enhancing in easy tasks, impeding in difficult ones","authors":"Tieyong Luo, Cuizhen Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103601","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103601","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Metacognition refers to the ability to monitor and introspect upon cognitive performance. Abundant research suggests that individual metacognition is easily affected by feedback in daily life, but how feedback affects metacognition in perceptual decision-making remains unclear. Here we investigated how trial-by-trial feedback shapes perceptual metacognition in two experiments with either high (n = 82) or low difficulty (n = 90). Participants were randomly divided into a feedback group in which participants received trial-by-trial performance feedback or a no-feedback group. Results showed that, in the high-difficulty task, participants in the feedback group revealed inferior metacognitive performance than the no-feedback group, manifested as decreased metacognitive efficiency while controlling for performance sensitivity. In the low-difficulty task, however, participants in the feedback group had higher metacognitive efficiency than the no-feedback group. The distinct patterns of findings in the two experiments indicate that whether feedback promotes or impedes metacognition is adjusted by task difficulty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89720524","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 moment of awareness influences the content of awareness in orientation repulsion","authors":"Tomoya Nakamura , Ikuya Murakami","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103604","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Through the neurally evolving process of dynamic contextual modulation of perceptual contents, it remains unclear how the content of awareness is determined. Here we quantified the visual illusion of orientation repulsion, wherein the target appears tilted against the surrounding’s orientation, and examined whether its extent changed when the target awareness was quickened by a preceding flanker. Independently of spatial cueing, repulsion was reduced when the flanker preceded the target by 100 ms compared with when they appeared simultaneously. We confirmed that the preceding flanker quickened the awareness of a nearby target relative to distant ones by 40 ms. Furthermore, the preceding flanker that was greater than 7 degrees away from the target still evoked such reduction of repulsion. These findings imply that the content of awareness is determined by the temporal interaction of two distinct processes: one controls the moment of awareness, and the other represents the perceptual content.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810023001411/pdfft?md5=3e16a8d23275224d3a2af433a39396f1&pid=1-s2.0-S1053810023001411-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134656086","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":"Private speech improves cognitive performance in young adults","authors":"Xinqi Guo, Karen Dobkins","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103585","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103585","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The current study investigated the relationship between private speech usage and cognitive performance in young adults. Participants (n = 103, mean age = 20.21 years) were instructed to complete a visual-spatial working memory task while talking out loud to themselves as much as possible (Private Speech condition). We found that participants performed better on trials for which they produced a greater amount of private speech. To establish causality, we further found that participants performed better in the Private Speech condition than in a condition in which they were instructed to remain silent (Quiet condition). These beneficial effects of private speech were not moderated by task difficulty, which was manipulated by varying image labelability. However, participants who used more private speech during the task, as well as those who reported greater use of self-management private speech in everyday life, showed the greatest benefits. These findings have implications for real-world educational/instructional settings.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810023001228/pdfft?md5=0c3b2b86aa65cf148a41969c6ef5b599&pid=1-s2.0-S1053810023001228-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72016132","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":"Young children’s subjective and objective thresholds and emergent processes of visual consciousness using a backward masking task","authors":"Ryoichi Watanabe , Yusuke Moriguchi","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103605","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Visual consciousness studies in humans have primarily focused on adults. However, whether young children’s visual consciousness is similar to or different from that of adults remains unknown. This study examined young children’s and adults’ subjective awareness and objective discrimination for thresholds and emergent processes of visual consciousness in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 20 5–6-year-olds and 20 adults attempted a figure discrimination task using a square or a diamond as the target stimulus and responded, using a two-point scale, to a question on subjective awareness of the target stimulus with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) from 20 to 260 ms. In Experiment 2, 31 5–6-year-olds and 16 adults attempted the task and responded, using a four-point scale, to a question on subjective awareness with SOA from 50 to 550 ms. We measured the discrimination accuracy and the awareness scale with SOA and fit them to the sigmoid function. The results showed that the objective accuracy threshold of young children was larger than that of adults. Moreover, young children’s subjective awareness threshold was larger than that of adults in the four-point but not in the two-point scale responses. Finally, there were no age differences in the emergent process of consciousness. This study suggests that the emergent process of consciousness in young children is similar to that in adults, however, the threshold in young children is larger than that in adults.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134832657","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}
Parnian Jalalian, Marius Golubickis, Yadvi Sharma, C. Neil Macrae
{"title":"Learning about me and you: Only deterministic stimulus associations elicit self-prioritization","authors":"Parnian Jalalian, Marius Golubickis, Yadvi Sharma, C. Neil Macrae","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103602","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103602","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Self-relevant material has been shown to be prioritized over stimuli relating to others (e.g., friend, stranger), generating benefits in attention, memory, and decision-making. What is not yet understood, however, is whether the conditions under which self-related knowledge is acquired impacts the emergence of self-bias. To address this matter, here we used an associative-learning paradigm in combination with a stimulus-classification task to explore the effects of different learning experiences (i.e., deterministic vs. probabilistic) on self-prioritization. The results revealed an effect of prior learning on task performance, with self-prioritization only emerging when participants acquired target-related associations (i.e., self vs. friend) under conditions of certainty (vs. uncertainty). A further computational (i.e., drift diffusion model) analysis indicated that differences in the efficiency of stimulus processing (i.e., rate of information uptake) underpinned this self-prioritization effect. The implications of these findings for accounts of self-function are considered.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810023001393/pdfft?md5=a1d19555ca154efe9b313f0a570ab59a&pid=1-s2.0-S1053810023001393-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89720523","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":"Does walking/running experience shape the sagittal mental time line?","authors":"Yuewen Jiang , Fengxiao Hao , Zhenyi Huang , Ling Chen , Xiaorong Cheng , Zhao Fan , Xianfeng Ding","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103587","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103587","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A growing body of evidence suggested that time could be separately represented either on the lateral or sagittal axis. And the lateral mental time line has an origin associated with sensorimotor experience, e.g., reading/writing. However, it is still not clear whether the sagittal mental time line also originates from sensorimotor experience, e.g., walking/running. To address this question, we examined how the movement experience affected the space–time mapping on the lateral and sagittal axes using the virtual reality technique in two experiments. The results showed that the virtual movement experience had significant effects on the space–time mapping on the lateral axis (Experiment 1), but not on the sagittal axis (Experiment 2). This finding supported that the space–time mapping on the lateral axis does originate from sensorimotor experience, while the space–time mapping on the sagittal axis more likely originates from spatial metaphors in languages or other cultural experiences.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49693778","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":"Working memory capacity predicts focus back effort under different task demands","authors":"Hong He , Yunyun Chen , Xuemin Zhang , Qiang Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103589","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103589","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>According to the cognitive flexibility view, individuals with higher cognitive control ability are more flexible in experiencing on task or mind wandering during tasks with different loads. On the other hand, the resource-control theory posits that executive control is essential for allocating attentional resources between mind wandering and tasks. Focus back effort may reflect the adjustment of executive control in the resource-control theory. Here, 121 participants completed two span tasks, as well as high- and low-load tasks, while mind wandering and focus back effort were measured. Our findings indicated that mind wandering was influenced by working memory capacity (WMC) and focus back effort. Additionally, participants demonstrated a higher focus back effort during the higher load task. This effect was particularly pronounced in individuals with lower WMC, which was treated as a continuous variable. These findings integrate the cognitive flexibility view and resource-control theory to describe how individuals modulate mind wandering.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49684834","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":"Relative fluency (unfelt vs felt) in active inference","authors":"Denis Brouillet , Karl Friston","doi":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103579","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.concog.2023.103579","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>For a growing number of researchers, it is now accepted that the brain is a predictive organ that predicts the content of the sensorium and crucially the precision of—or confidence in—its own predictions. In order to predict the precision of its predictions, the brain has to infer the reliability of its own beliefs. This means that our brains have to recognise the precision of their predictions or, at least, their accuracy. In this paper, we argue that <em>fluency</em> is product of this recognition process. In short, to recognise fluency is to infer that we have a precise ‘grip’ on the unfolding processes that generate our sensations. More specifically, we propose that it is changes in fluency — from unfelt to felt — that are both recognised and realised when updating predictions about precision. <em>Unfelt fluency</em> orients attention to unpredicted sensations, while <em>felt fluency</em> supervenes on—and contextualises—unfelt fluency; thereby rendering certain attentional processes, phenomenologically opaque. As such, fluency underwrites the precision we place in our predictions and therefore acts upon our perceptual inferences. Hence, the causes of conscious subjective inference have unconscious perceptual precursors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51358,"journal":{"name":"Consciousness and Cognition","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41170307","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}