Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-12-09eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1694055
Justin M Palmer, Aidan Rhodes, Lee Ryan
{"title":"The need for details for object discrimination and mnemonic discrimination.","authors":"Justin M Palmer, Aidan Rhodes, Lee Ryan","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1694055","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1694055","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Both mnemonic discrimination and object recognition tasks rely on the utilization of subtle visual details. Successful mnemonic discrimination utilizes the subtle details of an event to orthogonalize highly similar episodic memories, whereas object discrimination is a memory-free skill that utilizes details in order to distinguish between similar stimuli simultaneously presented. Additionally, neuroimaging studies have implicated areas of the medial temporal lobe as important for both mnemonic discrimination and object discrimination, further suggesting that performance on these two tasks are related. However, relatively limited data assessing the relationship between these two processes exist in the literature. Seventy-one cognitively normal participants completed both the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) and an object discrimination task used previously by our lab. The MST displayed common objects on a white background and participants identified if the object presented was old, similar, or new compared to objects previously seen in the task. For the object discrimination task, participants were shown a pair of stimuli (blobs or squares) that varied in difficulty (hard or easy). Outcome measures included correct responses to similar objects on the MST (mnemonic discrimination) and proportion of correct matches for hard and easy blobs and squares (object discrimination). Mnemonic discrimination for similar objects were correlated only with hard blobs after correcting for age, sex, and performance on easy trials (<i>r</i> = 0.24). These results might suggest that difficulty with effectively using the subtle details to discriminate between similar objects likely have downstream consequences on mnemonic discrimination that also require the integration of multiple visual details.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1694055"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281223/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-12-02eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1715617
Valentina Bandiera, Silvia Primativo, Roberta Daini, Marialuisa Martelli, Lisa S Arduino
{"title":"The role of top-down and bottom-up factors in parafoveal reading.","authors":"Valentina Bandiera, Silvia Primativo, Roberta Daini, Marialuisa Martelli, Lisa S Arduino","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1715617","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1715617","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recently we have shown that, while reading two words presented simultaneously, one in the fovea and one in the parafovea, participants are more accurate and faster when the two words are semantically related. The present study confirmed and supported the previous results by using the same Rapid Parallel Visual Presentation Paradigm (RPVP) and by changing the relative proportions of unrelated vs. semantically related word pairs. Indeed, differently from other studies where semantically unrelated and related word pairs were equally represented (50% each), in the present study only 30% of word pairs were semantically related. Results showed again an advantage when the two words were semantically related and we interpreted these findings in terms of automaticity between lexical/sublexical units processing and semantic access.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1715617"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281145/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148311075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-12-01eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1439439
Yetta Kwailing Wong, Jiaqi Fion Fang
{"title":"Learning and teaching of fluent musical note recognition: the visual perceptual perspective.","authors":"Yetta Kwailing Wong, Jiaqi Fion Fang","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1439439","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1439439","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Musical notation enables communications between composers, performers, music learners and music lovers. However, learning and teaching of fluent musical note recognition is often thought to be highly challenging. This paper aimed to summarize the current understanding of development of musical note recognition, explain its pedagogical bottleneck, and propose a pedagogical tool to address this problem. Review of the psychology and neuroscience literature identified eight psychological factors associated with fluent recognition of musical notes at both behavioral and neural levels. Many of the identified factors involve specialized visual perceptual mechanisms that are automatic, implicit and without conscious effort. Since classroom teaching heavily relies on verbal explanation, which cannot efficiently address these visual perceptual mechanisms, musical note recognition becomes difficult to teach and learn. We propose that visual perceptual training can serve as an innovative pedagogical tool to efficiently relax the visual bottleneck and enhance fluency in recognizing musical notes. We discuss why theoretically it works, the empirical basis for its effectiveness, its advantages, and potential concerns of adopting this tool by the music education community. In sum, visual perceptual training can directly facilitate development of fluency in recognizing musical notes in an efficient and personalized manner. This will encourage music exposure, learning and participation, and may therefore widely benefit the music learning community.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1439439"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281086/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-11-28eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1705976
Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster, Daniel H Spitz, Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, Roni Granot
{"title":"How experiencing eudaimonic emotions through music shapes prosocial and altruistic behavior: introducing a Unified Model of Music-Listening-Induced Eudaimonia (UMMIE).","authors":"Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster, Daniel H Spitz, Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, Roni Granot","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1705976","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1705976","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper introduces the Unified Model of Music-Listening Induced Eudaimonia (UMMIE), which offers an integrated novel theoretical framework to explain how music listening promotes prosocial and altruistic outcomes. Drawing on communication and psychology research, UMMIE maintains that elicitation of eudaimonic emotions can be appraised inwards, towards oneself, and thus contribute to the individual's personal growth, wellbeing, and development, or outwards, by connecting to something bigger than oneself, to humanity in general, which could possibly then lead to enhanced prosocial and altruistic attitudes and behaviors. The model specifies musical, situational, and individual variables that serve as moderators and increase the likelihood of experiencing inwards or outwards effects of music listening. In this way, the current article organizes and synthesizes existing literature and offers a novel blueprint for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1705976"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281109/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-11-24eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1632885
Raymond M Klein, Brett B T Feltmate
{"title":"The vigilance decrement: its first 75 years.","authors":"Raymond M Klein, Brett B T Feltmate","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1632885","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1632885","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The first major laboratory studies of vigilance by Mackworth in 1948 and later revealed a decline in the probability of detecting brief targets as the time on task increases. Whether referred to as a vigilance decrement or something else (e.g., a failure of sustained attention), because such failures have great applied significance (e.g., in road safety, radiology, air-traffic control, civil defense, etc.), understanding the vigilance decrement and discovering ways to avoid it are important goals for psychological science. The purpose of this historical review is to provide a picture of the extensive scientific literature exploring the nature(s) of the vigilance decrement, with an emphasis, but not exclusionary focus, on the signal detection theory framework. Beginning in the early 1960s, researchers started to interpret this decline in target detections using signal detection theory, wherein a decrease in detections can be attributed to a decrease in sensitivity of the observer to the difference between targets and non-targets, a conservative shift in the observer's response criterion, or, of course, both. Some early investigators suggested that which of these two causes of the decline in detections is operating may depend on the rate at which events (targets and non-targets combined) are presented: When the event rate is slow, criterion shifts dominate detection failures, whereas declines in sensitivity become more pronounced as event rates increase. Nevertheless, the contribution of sensitivity declines has been recently challenged. One source of the challenge is the relatively low false-alarm rate in so many studies on the vigilance decrement. Another is the possibility that for a variety of reasons, the observer in a relatively long vigil may stop attending to the source of the task-relevant signals. Some recommendations are offered based on our reading of the ~75 years of vigilance research.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1632885"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281068/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148311036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-11-20eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1692578
Abdullah Mosabbir, Jed A Meltzer, Arkady Uryash, Erika L Beroncal, Ana C Andreazza, Lee Bartel
{"title":"Cognitive rehabilitation among long COVID patients using vibratory and auditory treatment (VAT) is linked to BDNF.","authors":"Abdullah Mosabbir, Jed A Meltzer, Arkady Uryash, Erika L Beroncal, Ana C Andreazza, Lee Bartel","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1692578","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1692578","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cognitive dysfunction occurs in around 40% of long COVID (LC) patients, and in many cases appears second only to fatigue in prevalence. Vibratory and auditory treatment (VAT) within the gamma range has demonstrated improvements in symptoms associated with cognition and fatigue. In this open-label pilot study, we tested the effects of VAT on measures of cognition and fatigue in LC. Twenty patients were randomly divided into a treatment and a control group. Symptoms were monitored remotely through mobile apps and in-person visits before and after the treatment period. The treatment group received a device generating 40 Hz of VAT to take home and use every day from Monday to Friday for 4 weeks (i.e., 20 sessions over 28 days), whereas the control group did not use any device but followed the same data collection procedures. This study found that after 4 weeks of VAT, participants with LC exhibited increased performance in selective attention and response inhibition, an increased amount of circulating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and a reduced resting heart rate. We propose that VAT may be a useful rehabilitative tool for LC as well as other targeted populations that seek improvements in cognition or general health but are compromised immunologically or physically.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1692578"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281226/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-11-11eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1668316
Chen Tiferet-Dweck, Steven Zamora-Romero, Kerstin Unger
{"title":"Limits on selecting multiple items from working memory: the role of context and item competition.","authors":"Chen Tiferet-Dweck, Steven Zamora-Romero, Kerstin Unger","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1668316","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1668316","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To support goal-directed behavior, working memory (WM) must allow flexible and efficient access to its contents. While much research has examined how individual items are selected from WM, less is known about the principles guiding the simultaneous selection of multiple contents. Prior work has shown that multi-item access is slower and more error-prone than single-item access. The present study aims to clarify the mechanisms underlying this cost. Specifically, we examine whether the performance decline identified in our prior work reflects increased competition among memory items, among the context representations that guide selection, or both. To distinguish between these possibilities, we used a spatial retrocuing paradigm in which we independently manipulated (1) the number of cued locations (i.e., spatial contexts) and (2) the number of to-be-selected memory items. Across five experiments, we consistently found that cueing two spatial locations-compared to one-substantially delayed selection, even when the number of relevant items was held constant. By contrast, relevant set size had a smaller and less consistent effect on selection speed. These results suggest that the bottleneck in multi-item WM selection arises from the need to use multiple contexts to retrieve the associated memory contents.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1668316"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281070/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-11-04eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1576987
Margaret M Doheny, Nelson A Roque, Nichole R Lighthall
{"title":"Effects of maximum and minimum offers on reciprocity and trust perceptions during economic decision-making.","authors":"Margaret M Doheny, Nelson A Roque, Nichole R Lighthall","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1576987","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1576987","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Although it is understood that previous betrayals affect future trust decisions, the degree to which this is true remains unclear in terms of frequency and severity. Additionally, it is currently unknown whether this relationship between the frequency and magnitude of received actions and subsequent trust decisions is mirrored when individuals experience acts of generosity. Prospect theory proposes that losses are weighed more heavily than gains, but the comparison between frequent, minor losses or gains and infrequent major losses or gains has yet to be explored.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The current study (n = 123) utilizes an adapted version of an economic trust game to examine the effects of minimum and maximum offerings on both reciprocations and perceptions of trust. Participants played the game with two partners: one who offered a maximum or minimum offer (extreme) and one who did not (stable), in either a high or low offer condition where all offers from the stable partner were above or below the median amount, respectively.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The results align with prospect theory in that minimum offers had a greater impact on both behavior and perceptions than equivalent gains (maximum offers).</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>This study highlights complexities between trust, reciprocity, and perceptions of fairness, with implications for understanding social behavior in real-world settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1576987"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281041/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148311061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-10-17eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1683207
Marco Fabbri, Monica Martoni
{"title":"How chronotype, sleep-wake cycle, subjective time experience influence retrospective, and prospective memory functioning.","authors":"Marco Fabbri, Monica Martoni","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1683207","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1683207","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The sleep-wake cycle and chronotype are key contributors to memory consolidation. Emerging evidence also highlights their role in shaping the subjective experience of time, which, in turn, can influence cognitive performance, particularly memory. This study investigated how sleep-wake quality, circadian typology, and subjective time perception relate to failures in retrospective and prospective memory.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A total of 666 participants (73% female; M = 37.83 years, SD = 14.65) completed the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ), Mini-Sleep Questionnaire (MSQ), Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), Subjective Time Questionnaire (STQ), and <i>ad hoc</i> questions about sleep habits during weekdays and weekends.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Results indicated that evening-types reported later sleep and wake times, more pronounced sleep-wake disturbances, greater memory lapses, and stronger experiences of time expansion/boredom. Correlational analyses showed that both time pressure and time expansion/boredom were negatively associated with PRMQ scores, leading to increased memory errors. The regression models showed that memory performance was generally predicted by wake factor, time pressure and time expansion/boredom. Then, mediation models revealed that eveningness was associated with greater wake problems, which were positively related to altered time perception (i.e., time pressure and time expansion/boredom), which in turn predicted more frequent retrospective and prospective memory failures.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>These findings suggest that circadian typology, wake-related disturbances, and subjective time perception interactively contribute to memory performance, and propose a model linking biological rhythms and temporal experience to memory functioning, suggesting a possible influence of attention and arousal.</p>","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1683207"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281119/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frontiers in CognitionPub Date : 2025-10-08eCollection Date: 2025-01-01DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1695413
Jeanine Lee McHugh Skorinko, Kimberly Schweitzer, Andre Kehn
{"title":"Editorial: Applying cognitive and social psychology to the legal system: what we know today and what is next.","authors":"Jeanine Lee McHugh Skorinko, Kimberly Schweitzer, Andre Kehn","doi":"10.3389/fcogn.2025.1695413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcogn.2025.1695413","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":94013,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Cognition","volume":"4 ","pages":"1695413"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13281150/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}