Vision in a cluttered scene is extremely inefficient. This damaging effect of clutter, known as crowding, affects many aspects of visual processing (e.g., reading speed). We examined observers' processing of crowded targets in a lexical decision task, using single-character Chinese words that are compact but carry semantic meaning. Despite being unrecognizable and indistinguishable from matched nonwords, crowded prime words still generated robust semantic-priming effects on lexical decisions for test words presented in isolation. Indeed, the semantic-priming effect of crowded primes was similar to that of uncrowded primes. These findings show that the meanings of words survive crowding even when the identities of the words do not, suggesting that crowding does not prevent semantic activation, a process that may have evolved in the context of a cluttered visual environment.
Cognitive control and memory are fundamentally intertwined, but interactions between the two have only recently received sustained research interest. In the study reported here, we used a novel paradigm to investigate how control influences memory encoding and, conversely, how memory measures can provide new insight into flexible cognitive control. Participants switched between classifying objects and words, then were tested for their recognition memory of items presented in this task-switching phase. Task switching impaired memory for task-relevant information but actually improved memory for task-irrelevant information, which indicates that control demands reduced the selectivity of memory encoding rather than causing a general memory decline. Recognition memory strength provided a robust trial-by-trial measure of the effectiveness of cognitive control that "predicted" earlier task-switching performance. It also revealed a substantial influence of bottom-up factors on between-task competition, but only on trials in which participants had to switch from one type of classification to the other. Collectively, our findings illustrate how cognitive control and bottom-up factors interact to simultaneously influence both current performance and future memory.
One of the reasons we (the authors) enjoy going to live college basketball games is to watch the antics of the student section. We love watching the students’ creativity in trying to pump up the home team and distract the visiting team, especially during free throws. Such escapades made us question whether manipulating what athletes see can influence their subsequent performance. Perception is clearly important for performance. For instance, when athletes look directly at a target without moving their eyes around—a pattern known as the quiet eye—they are more successful in making free throws, putting, and performing a variety of other tasks (e.g., Vickers, 1996, 2007). The quiet eye might lead to more successful performance by focusing attention on targets, and helping athletes to ignore distractors. Additionally, the quiet eye might change the way targets look. Targets presented in the fovea look bigger than those in the periphery (Newsome, 1972), so the quiet eye might lead athletes to perceive targets as bigger. Misperceiving a target as bigger could influence performance in one of three ways. It could disrupt performance because the observer might aim for a location that does not correspond with the target. In this case, the misperception would result in worse performance. However, actions and explicit perceptions may not be influenced by illusions to the same degree (Goodale Milner, 1992). That is, there may be dissociations between perceptions and visually guided actions such that illusions, which fool conscious perception, do not influence subsequent actions (e.g., Ganel, Tanzer, Goodale, 2008). In this case, misperceiving a target as bigger would not affect performance. A final alternative is that misperceiving a target as bigger could enhance performance. Bigger targets feel as if they should be easier to hit, so people may feel more confident when aiming for a bigger target. Given that increased confidence improves performance (e.g., Woodman Hardy, 2003), a perceptually bigger target may also lead to enhanced performance. Here, we report an experiment in which we tested these possibilities.
Children's achievement-related theories have a profound impact on their academic success. Children who adopt entity theories believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task--a belief that has well-documented adverse consequences for their achievement (e.g., lowered persistence, impaired performance). It is thus important to understand what leads children to adopt entity theories. In the experiments reported here, we hypothesized that the mere act of linking success at an unfamiliar, challenging activity to a social group gives rise to entity beliefs that are so powerful as to interfere with children's ability to perform the activity. Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.
Preschools may reduce inequalities in early academic achievement by providing children from disadvantaged families with higher-quality learning environments than they would otherwise receive. In this study, longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of more than 600 twin pairs were used to estimate the contributions of genes, the shared environment, and the nonshared environment to cognition and achievement scores in children enrolled versus not enrolled in preschool. Attending preschool at age 4 was associated with reductions in shared environmental influences on reading and math skills at age 5, but was not associated with the magnitude of shared environmental influences on cognition at age 2. These prospective effects were mediated by reductions in achievement gaps associated with minority status, socioeconomic status, and ratings of parental stimulation of cognitive development. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with lower rates of preschool enrollment, which suggests that the very children who would benefit most from preschools are the least likely to be enrolled in them.
One of the ways in which therapists treat anxiety disorders is to expose patients to a fear-evoking stimulus within a safe environment before encouraging more positive stimulus-related thoughts. In the study reported here, we adapted these psychotherapeutic principles of exposure therapy to test the hypothesis that imagining a positive encounter with a member of a stigmatized group would be more likely to promote positive perceptions when it was preceded by an imagined negative encounter. The results of three experiments targeting a range of stigmatized groups (adults with schizophrenia, gay men, and British Muslims) supported this hypothesis. Compared with purely positive interventions, interventions in which a single negative encounter was imagined just prior to imagining a positive encounter resulted in significantly reduced prejudice. Furthermore, reduced anxiety uniquely derived from the mixed-valence imagery task statistically explained enhanced intentions to engage positively with the previously stigmatized group in the future.
Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants' chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants' degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders--perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3)--were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders' responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs--that is, constructs that easily come to mind-regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.
Prior investigators have asserted that certain group characteristics cause group members to disregard outside information and that this behavior leads to diminished performance. We demonstrate that the very process of making a judgment collaboratively rather than individually also contributes to such myopic underweighting of external viewpoints. Dyad members exposed to numerical judgments made by peers gave significantly less weight to those judgments than did individuals working alone. This difference in willingness to use peer input was mediated by the greater confidence that the dyad members reported in the accuracy of their own estimates. Furthermore, dyads were no better at judging the relative accuracy of their own estimates and the advisor's estimates than individuals were. Our analyses demonstrate that, relative to individuals, dyads suffered an accuracy cost. Specifically, if dyad members had given as much weight to peer input as individuals working alone did, then their revised estimates would have been significantly more accurate.
What effect does economic inequality have on academic integrity? Using data from search-engine queries made between 2003 and 2011 on Google and state-level measures of income inequality and generalized trust, I found that academically dishonest searches (queries seeking term-paper mills and help with cheating) were more likely to come from states with higher income inequality and lower levels of generalized trust. These relations persisted even when controlling for contextual variables, such as average income and the number of colleges per capita. The relation between income inequality and academic dishonesty was fully mediated by generalized trust. When there is higher economic inequality, people are less likely to view one another as trustworthy. This lower generalized trust, in turn, is associated with a greater prevalence of academic dishonesty. These results might explain previous findings on the effectiveness of honor codes.