Research In Cognitive Psychology Research Articles

Testing memory of a VR environment: comparison with the real environment and 2D pictures

In recent years, there has been a growing trend in cognitive psychology research towards recreating experimental situations in virtual reality (VR). VR settings are thought to have higher ecological validity than laboratory settings using digital, two-dimensional (2D) pictures. Some studies have shown cognitive performance in VR settings to follow that of the real world. However, other studies obtained controversial results. The present study tested the memory performance of three groups of participants who were exposed to the same environment (a room) through different modalities: in real life, in VR, and through 2D pictures. The results highlighted that participants who were exposed to the target room in real life had an overall better memory performance, compared to participants who saw the room in VR or through 2D pictures. On the other hand, no differences in memory performance emerged between the VR and 2D picture groups, except for the non-suggestive verbal task. The results suggest that future research should be careful in assuming that performance in VR settings is comparable to real life and that VR is more ecological than traditional 2D media.

Human and AI collaboration in the higher education environment: opportunities and concerns

In service of the goal of examining how cognitive science can facilitate human–computer interactions in complex systems, we explore how cognitive psychology research might help educators better utilize artificial intelligence and AI supported tools as facilitatory to learning, rather than see these emerging technologies as a threat. We also aim to provide historical perspective, both on how automation and technology has generated unnecessary apprehension over time, and how generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT are a product of the discipline of cognitive science. We introduce a model for how higher education instruction can adapt to the age of AI by fully capitalizing on the role that metacognition knowledge and skills play in determining learning effectiveness. Finally, we urge educators to consider how AI can be seen as a critical collaborator to be utilized in our efforts to educate around the critical workforce skills of effective communication and collaboration.

EZ-CDM: Fast, simple, robust, and accurate estimation of circular diffusion model parameters.

The investigation of cognitive processes that form the basis of decision-making in paradigms involving continuous outcomes has gained the interest of modeling researchers who aim to develop a dynamic decision theory that accounts for both speed and accuracy. One of the most important of these continuous models is the circular diffusion model (CDM, Smith. Psychological Review, 123(4), 425. 2016), which posits a noisy accumulation process mathematically described as a stochastic two-dimensional Wiener process inside a disk. Despite the considerable benefits of this model, its mathematical intricacy has limited its utilization among scholars. Here, we propose a straightforward and user-friendly method for estimating the CDM parameters and fitting the model to continuous-scale data using simple formulas that can be readily computed and do not require theoretical knowledge of model fitting or extensive programming. Notwithstanding its simplicity, we demonstrate that the aforementioned method performs with a level of accuracy that is comparable to that of the maximum likelihood estimation method. Furthermore, a robust version of the method is presented, which maintains its simplicity while exhibiting a high degree of resistance to contaminant responses. Additionally, we show that the approach is capable of reliably measuring the key parameters of the CDM, even when these values are subject to across-trial variability. Finally, we demonstrate the practical application of the method on experimental data. Specifically, an illustrative example is presented wherein the method is employed along with estimating the probability of guessing. It is hoped that the straightforward methodology presented here will, on the one hand, help narrow the divide between theoretical constructs and empirical observations on continuous response tasks and, on the other hand, inspire cognitive psychology researchers to shift their laboratory investigations towards continuous response paradigms.

On the computational complexity of ethics: moral tractability for minds and machines

Why should moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and machine ethicists care about computational complexity? Debates on whether artificial intelligence (AI) can or should be used to solve problems in ethical domains have mainly been driven by what AI can or cannot do in terms of human capacities. In this paper, we tackle the problem from the other end by exploring what kind of moral machines are possible based on what computational systems can or cannot do. To do so, we analyze normative ethics through the lens of computational complexity. First, we introduce computational complexity for the uninitiated reader and discuss how the complexity of ethical problems can be framed within Marr’s three levels of analysis. We then study a range of ethical problems based on consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, with the aim of elucidating the complexity associated with the problems themselves (e.g., due to combinatorics, uncertainty, strategic dynamics), the computational methods employed (e.g., probability, logic, learning), and the available resources (e.g., time, knowledge, learning). The results indicate that most problems the normative frameworks pose lead to tractability issues in every category analyzed. Our investigation also provides several insights about the computational nature of normative ethics, including the differences between rule- and outcome-based moral strategies, and the implementation-variance with regard to moral resources. We then discuss the consequences complexity results have for the prospect of moral machines in virtue of the trade-off between optimality and efficiency. Finally, we elucidate how computational complexity can be used to inform both philosophical and cognitive-psychological research on human morality by advancing the moral tractability thesis.

Managerial decision-making: exploration strategies in dynamic environments

PurposeWe argue that a fundamental issue regarding how to search and how to switch between different cognitive modes lies in the decision rules that influence the dynamics of learning and exploration. We examine the search logics underlying these decision rules and propose conceptual prompts that can be applied mentally or computationally to aid managers’ decision-making.Design/methodology/approachBy applying Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) modeling to simulate agents’ interaction with dynamic environments, we compared the patterns and performance of selected MAB algorithms under different configurations of environmental conditions.FindingsWe develop three conceptual prompts. First, the simple heuristic-based exploration strategy works well in conditions of low environmental variability and few alternatives. Second, an exploration strategy that combines simple and de-biasing heuristics is suitable for most dynamic and complex decision environments. Third, the uncertainty-based exploration strategy is more applicable in the condition of high environmental unpredictability as it can more effectively recognize deviated patterns.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to emerging research on using algorithms to develop novel concepts and combining heuristics and algorithmic intelligence in strategic decision-making.Practical implicationsThis study offers insights that there are different possibilities for exploration strategies for managers to apply conceptually and that the adaptability of cognitive-distant search may be underestimated in turbulent environments.Originality/valueDrawing on insights from machine learning and cognitive psychology research, we demonstrate the fitness of different exploration strategies in different dynamic environmental configurations by comparing the different search logics that underlie the three MAB algorithms.

Watching videos of a drawing hand improves students' understanding of the normal probability distribution.

Understanding normal probability distributions is a crucial objective in mathematics and statistics education. Drawing upon cognitive psychology research, this study explores the use of drawings and visualizations as effective scaffolds to enhance students' comprehension. Although much research has documented the helpfulness of drawing as a research tool to reveal students' knowledge states, its direct utility in advancing higher-order cognitive processes remains understudied. In Study 1, qualitative methods were utilized to identify common misunderstandings among students regarding canonical depictions of the normal probability distribution. Building on these insights, Study 2 experimentally compared three instructional videos (static slides, dynamic drawing, and dynamic drawings done by a visible hand). The hand drawing video led to better learning than the other versions. Study 3 examined whether the benefits from observing a hand drawing could be reproduced by a dynamic cursor moving around otherwise static slides (without the presence of a hand). Results showed no significant learning difference between observing a hand drawing and a moving cursor, both outperforming a control. This research links the cognitive process of drawing with its educational role and provides insights into its potential to enhance memory, cognition, and inform instructional methods.

Illiteracy and cognitive sciences: A psycholinguistic perspective

This text emphasises the importance of considering literacy and nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) in cognitive psychology research, highlighting their significant impact on language acquisition and cognitive abilities. Inclusion of diverse populations is crucial to avoid overgeneralizations and gain a comprehensive understanding of these influences.

提升大学英语听说能力的智慧化学习系统构建及其应用研究

This study seeks to investigate the development and implementation of an intelligent learning system designed to enhance college students’ English listening and speaking skills. By integrating theories of language acquisition, cognitive psychology, and educational technology research, a smart college English audio-visual and oral learning system has been created. This system allows students to assess their listening and speaking capabilities, identify areas for improvement through automated evaluation, receive real-time feedback, and access personalized learning recommendations. Empirical research findings indicate that intelligent learning systems can significantly enhance students’ listening and speaking skills, leading to improved pronunciation accuracy, fluency, and grammatical correctness.

Standard experimental paradigm designs and data exclusion practices in cognitive psychology can inadvertently introduce systematic “shadow” biases in participant samples

Standard cognitive psychology research practices can introduce inadvertent sampling biases that reduce the reliability and generalizability of the findings. Researchers commonly acknowledge and understand that any given study sample is not perfectly generalizable, especially when implementing typical experimental constraints (e.g., limiting recruitment to specific age ranges or to individuals with normal color vision). However, less obvious systematic sampling constraints, referred to here as “shadow” biases, can be unintentionally introduced and can easily go unnoticed. For example, many standard cognitive psychology study designs involve lengthy and tedious experiments with simple, repetitive stimuli. Such testing environments may 1) be aversive to some would-be participants (e.g., those high in certain neurodivergent symptoms) who may self-select not to enroll in such studies, or 2) contribute to participant attrition, both of which reduce the sample’s representativeness. Likewise, standard performance-based data exclusion efforts (e.g., minimum accuracy or response time) or attention checks can systematically remove data from participants from subsets of the population (e.g., those low in conscientiousness). This commentary focuses on the theoretical and practical issues behind these non-obvious and often unacknowledged “shadow” biases, offers a simple illustration with real data as a proof of concept of how applying attention checks can systematically skew latent/hidden variables in the included population, and then discusses the broader implications with suggestions for how to manage and reduce, or at a minimum acknowledge, the problem.

Information visualization and strategic problem comprehension as drivers of strategic decisions

Despite its practical relevance for strategic decision processes in organizations, research on strategic cognition has thus far largely ignored the impact of information visualization. This is surprising as research in the fields of cognitive psychology and medicine shows quite consistently that visual aids have positive effects on decision makers’ comprehension of the issues at hand and – consequently – their decision outcomes. In this paper, we build on cognitive psychology and strategic cognition research to introduce strategic problem comprehension as a concept that links information visualization and strategic decision outcomes. We hypothesize that information visualization leads to higher levels of strategic problem comprehension, as it fosters the integration and comparison of relevant information, which subsequently improves strategic decision outcomes. Furthermore, we identify overconfidence as a boundary condition for the effect of information visualization on strategic problem comprehension Two vignette-based decision experiments involving 62 graduate-level management students and 79 executives, respectively, confirm our hypotheses. Our study contributes to strategic cognition research by specifying the important impact of information visualization as well as strategic problem comprehension for strategic decision-making.

Study Smarter: Applying the Science of Learning to Radiology

Lifelong learning is critical to a successful career in radiology, but many learners use inefficient or ineffective studying strategies developed from personal experience. Decades of cognitive psychology research have identified several techniques that consistently improve knowledge consolidation and retrieval. To improve their knowledge and ultimately patient care, radiologists should strive to understand and adopt these learning techniques. The first part of this article reviews several evidence-based learning principles, including active retrieval and the testing effect, spaced repetition, interleaving, deliberate practice, and growth mind-set. The second part provides practical suggestions on how to incorporate these principles into radiology learning, both during training and beyond.

Are there dominant response tendencies for social reactions? Trust trumps mistrust-evidence from a Dominant Behavior Measure (DBM).

The question of whether individuals are more prone to trust or to mistrust has increasingly interested economists and psychologists in recent years. To investigate whether people have an initial response tendency to trust versus mistrust, we developed a novel paradigm-the Dominant Behavior Measure (DBM). Capitalizing on decades of meticulous research in basic cognitive psychology (i.e., bilingual studies, Stroop paradigm), we designed a task to measure the dominance of reactions in the social realm. Participants engaged in a series of trust games that involved switching between trusting and mistrusting two trustworthy counterparts and two untrustworthy counterparts, identified by color (while ignoring a distractor name) or by name (when no color was presented). Like other dominant response tendencies (e.g., participant's first language), trust is faster, harder to switch to, and more interfering/facilitating than mistrust (Experiments 1-7). The dominance of trust holds in various social contexts-certainty of counterpart's un/trustworthiness (Experiments 4a-4c), unfamiliar counterparts (Experiments 5 and 6), counterparts from one's in-group versus out-group (Experiment 6), and negative framing of trust (Experiment 7)-showing that the dominant tendency to trust people (but not nonsocial objects, Experiment 8) is context-independent and robust. We rule out alternative explanations such as asymmetric payoff (Experiments 2 and 4b), familiarity and strength of association (Experiments 5 and 6), demand characteristics (Experiment 7), and positivity bias (Experiment 8). Introducing the DBM as a novel paradigm, we show that trust dominates mistrust and discuss the potential of this paradigm to determine dominant responses in manifold social domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Enfoque holístico al paciente neurológico: el aporte de Oliver Sacks

La obra de Oliver Sacks es bien conocida y muy destacada en la literatura de divulgación médica y ha contribuido al conocimiento de la enfermedad neurológica por el público en general. Desde el punto de vista de la neurología literaria sus escritos han sido analizados por muchos autores. El presente artículo examina desde la perspectiva de un neurólogo clínico algunos elementos de la obra de Oliver Sacks que podrían ser de gran beneficio en el abordaje diagnóstico y terapéutico del paciente neurológico y un valioso aporte a la práctica clínica de la neurología. Se exploran también algunas nuevas contribuciones hechas por la investigación en neurociencias y por la psicología cognitiva al abordaje holístico del paciente en medicina y se discuten los beneficios de este abordaje en la recuperación de la enfermedad neurológica.

TouchScope: A Passive-Haptic Device to Investigate Tactile Perception Using a Refreshable Braille Display.

The sense of touch is underrepresented in cognitive psychology research. One of the reasons is that controlling the timing of stimulus presentation, which is a hallmark of cognitive research, is significantly more difficult for tactile stimuli than visual or auditory stimuli. In the present work, we present a system to display tactile stimuli (braille cells) and collect response time with the capability for static and dynamic (passive haptic) stimuli prsentation that will contribute to the development of tactile research. While the system requires some construction, it can be put together with commercially available materials. Here, we present the step-by-step instructions for constructing the tool, the code used to control it, and some basic experiments to validate it. The data from the experiments show that the device can be used for a variety of tactile perception experiments.

Relația dintre modalitățile de tratare a informațiilor şi potențialul de învățare

The relationship between information treatment modalities and learning potential. Neuropsychological research (Flessas and Lussier, 2001) focused on the simultaneous and sequential treatment of verbal or nonverbal information and developed the constructivist pedagogical theory and the interactive methodology for the acquisition of knowledge by pupils with learning disabilities in inclusive schools (Shimamura, 2008). Research in cognitive psychology (Kurtz, Borkowski, 1984; Nelson, Narens, 1990) explored metamemory and metacognition skills in relation to information treatment modalities and to the role of the pedagogical interactive methodology in developing the learning potential.

Why using “consciousness” in psychotherapy? Insight, metacognition and self-consciousness

Since its early development, clinical psychology has questioned the impact of “consciousness” on the determination of human responsibility across psychiatric disorders. In recent years, specific clinical approaches have focused on “consciousness” work that could play a key role in psychotherapy. We focused our research on clinical psychology's consciousness-related concepts of insight, self-consciousness, and metacognition. Insight and metacognition, for example, have prompted increased interest in schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder (BD), and, more recently, borderline personality disorder (BPD) treatments as representative of the latest advances in the cognitive and behavioral therapy field. Here we review cognitive, social, and clinical psychology research measuring “consciousness” in BPD, SZ, and BD, exploring the implications of different conceptualizations of consciousness-like concepts for treatment adherence, symptom evolution, and related aspects of psychotherapy. Our results show the overall relevance of using measures of clinical and cognitive insight, emphasizing the more central role of cognitive insight and metacognition in psychotherapy, as it appears that consciousness can remain useful if understood as a cognitive skill. The inclusion of a conceptualization of self-consciousness is important in order to address the social component of psychotherapy, as it does in biopsychosocial approaches. We discuss the implications of such results for global efficacy, for the relevance of the “consciousness” concept to clinical psychology, and for the potential need to keep operationalizing different conceptualizations of it in psychotherapy. We open the debate on the definition of consciousness to motivational aspects of change and to general considerations of both legal and ethical aspects.

Implicit Evaluation Mechanisms in Marketing Research: an Overview of Formation and Measurement of Implicit Attitude

For a long time, examining the subtle and unintended effects of people's social environments on their thoughts and behaviors has been a central goal of social psychology researchers. Advances in social psychology have proven the importance of studying not only the conscious mechanisms of humans but also the "implicit" and "automatic" ones. Researchers in social psychology distinguish explicit attitudes, evaluations resulting from an introspective effort, from implicit attitudes, automatic evaluations of which the individual may not be aware. Cognitive psychology researchers have already proven that implicit beliefs are much more important in decision-making than explicit beliefs even in what might be considered rational and/or scientific realms. Greenwald and Banaji (1995) introduced the term implicit social cognition to describe cognitive processes that occur outside of human consciousness. Implicit social cognitions were initially applied to psychology, but they are beginning to be introduced in other disciplines, notably in marketing. This article aims to provide a conceptual framework of the implicit attitude and its measurement tools through a multidisciplinary theoretical exploration. Therefore, the research method used in this paper is the analysis of the classic literature. This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of implicit mechanisms in the marketing field. This review theoretically proves that the study of implicit social cognitions is a field of research with many challenges, particularly related to consumer behavior analysis because it allows marketers to understand influences unknown to the subject himself.

Cognitive adaptability’s impact on entrepreneurial intent: The mediating roles of entrepreneurial passion and efficacy

Entrepreneurial intent is central to understanding the psychology behind starting new ventures. However, there is limited knowledge of its cognitive antecedents. We integrate insights from entrepreneurship and cognitive psychology research to illustrate the role of cognitive adaptability in predicting individuals’ likelihood of business venturing. In addition, we explain the mechanism underlying this relationship by outlining the role of entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. We employ structural equation modeling to test our predictions. Results based on primary data from 182 respondents support our theorizing. Our findings contribute to understanding the entrepreneurial mindset. We conclude by offering future research suggestions and outlining the practical implications of our findings.

Self and Others: Empirical and Neuropsychoanalytic Considerations of Superego and Conscience

Freud's mature theorizing about human morality entrenched the functioning of the superego in anxiety stemming from the fear of punishment, a view with which many later psychoanalysts took issue, producing a debate as to the distinction between superego and conscience. This debate would later be mirrored more broadly in academic psychology concerning distinctions between shame and guilt. This is an area where the clinical observations and theoretical discussions of psychoanalysis have subtly guided research in cognitive psychology and the cognitive and affective neurosciences. These areas, in turn, have both clarified and supported psychoanalytic theory and practice without negating the rich phenomenological and theoretical basis on which psychoanalysis rests.

I Feel Where You’re Coming From: Power, Emotional Contagion, and the Mediating Role of Attention

This paper examines how attention plays a role in the relationship between power and emotional contagion. In two separate studies, we hypothesize and test that the relationship between power and emotional contagion is mediated by attention. In Study 1, data were collected from participants (N = 120) in a controlled laboratory setting, and we draw upon cognitive psychology research to develop a novel behavioral measurement of attention. Results marginally supported the hypothesized mediation of attention but only for negative affect contagion. In Study 2, a longitudinal survey method was employed (N = 221) where respondents indicated their attention to, and emotional contagion from, someone at their workplace with a different level of power. Results from our second study support our hypotheses for both positive and negative affect contagion. Implications for theory on power and social influence, emotion, as well as organizational and leadership practices are discussed.