Cue Utilization Research Articles

Like Shooting Phish in a Barrel: Cue Utilization and Cognitive Reflection Aid Performance in Controlled, but Not Naturalistic Phishing Tasks

The study tested the role of cue utilization and cognitive reflection tendencies in email users’ phishing decision capabilities in both controlled and naturalistic settings. 94 university students completed measures of their phishing cue utilization and cognitive reflection, a phishing decision task, and a naturalistic simulated phishing campaign, in which they were sent simulated phishing emails to their personal inboxes. For the phishing decision task, results revealed that participants with lower cognitive reflection tendencies were more likely to misclassify genuine emails as phishing, compared to participants with higher cognitive reflection. Further, participants with higher cognitive reflection and lower cue utilization took the most time to diagnose emails, but participants low in both cue utilization and cognitive reflection demonstrated the shortest response latencies. These findings suggest that greater cognitive reflection can offset lower levels of cue utilization. For the naturalistic simulation, neither cue utilization nor cognitive reflection predicted an increased propensity to interact with a suspicious email. This result highlights a potential gap between phishing investigations conducted in controlled and naturalistic settings. The implications extend to future research, emphasizing the need for studies that employ naturalistic methodologies to better understand and address phishing threats in real-world environments.

A Demand-Driven Analysis of the Determinants of P2P Accommodation hosts’ Business Performance: Scale Development and Validation

ABSTRACT Hosts of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations often struggle to accurately assess guests’ perceptions of their performance due to the lack of valid measurement scales. This study aims to address this gap by developing and validating a 20-item scale to measure P2P hosts’ business performance as perceived by their guests. The scale encompasses five domains: living environment, authenticity, platform incentives, guests’ civility, and amenity quality. This study also examines the predictive validity of these dimensions by assessing their effects on customer satisfaction, which varies by traveling party. By enhancing the understanding of P2P accommodation performance measurement and extending cue utilization theory, this study provides valuable insights for future research on hospitality business performance and effective performance evaluation in the P2P accommodation sector.

How do cue utilization and value co-creation and future orientation affect the consumers’ choices of smart agricultural products?

Facing sustainability challenges and the demand for green and high-quality food, smart agriculture has become a key solution, and understanding consumer preferences for its products is crucial for sustainable development. By employing a structural equation model and using the sample data of an online survey conducted in China, this study investigated consumers’ intention to purchase smart agricultural products, thereby examining the effects of value co-creation, cue utilization, attitude, and future orientation. According to the results, cue utilization positively affects value co-creation and attitude. In addition, value co-creation and attitude can promote consumers’ purchase intention. Moreover, future orientation positively moderates the effect of attitude on purchase intention. These findings have substantial practical implications for formulating marketing strategies aimed at promoting the consumption of smart agricultural products. By strengthening the effects of cue utilization, value co-creation, and future orientation, marketers can specifically target consumers and facilitate the transition to more sustainable consumption patterns.

A common and specialized neural code for social attention triggered by eye gaze and biological motion

Humans appear to be endowed with the ability to readily share attention with interactive partners through the utilization of social direction cues, such as eye gaze and biological motion (BM). Here, we investigated the specialized brain mechanism underlying this fundamental social attention ability by incorporating different types of social (i.e., BM, gaze) and non-social (arrow) cues and combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a modified central cueing paradigm. Using multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we found that although gaze- and BM-mediated attentional orienting could be decoded from neural activity in a wide range of brain areas, only the right anterior and posterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS and pSTS) could specifically decode attentional orienting triggered by social but not non-social cues. Critically, cross-category MVPA further revealed that social attention could be decoded across BM and gaze cues in the right STS and the right superior temporal gyrus (STG). However, these regions could not decode attentional orienting across social and non-social cues. These findings together provide evidence for the existence of a specialized social attention module in the human brain, with the right STS/STG being the critical neural site dedicated to social attention.

Preferential use of full glottal stops in vowel-initial glottalization in child speech: Evidence from novel words.

Vowel-initial glottalization constitutes a cue to prosodic prominence, realized on a strength continuum from creaky phonation to complete glottal stops. While there is considerable research on children's early utilization of acoustic cues for stress marking, less is understood about the specific implementation of vowel-initial glottalization in American English. Eight sequences of function + novel words were elicited from groups of 5-to-8-year-olds, 8-to-11-year-olds, and adults. Children exhibit a similar rate of prevocalic glottalization to adults but differ in its phonetic implementation, producing a higher rate of glottal stops compared to creaky phonation with respect to adults.

B2C Cross-Border E-Commerce: Spillover Effects of Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities

ABSTRACT Although customers often participate in cross-border e-commerce (CBEC), little is known about how customers obtain and process the knowledge they seek regarding cross-border e-commerce websites. This research explores cross-platform spillover effects of knowledge sharing in virtual communities on customers’ perceived website quality and customer service of independent cross-border e-commerce websites and their subsequent purchase intentions. By applying cue utilization theory and expectation-disconfirmation theory, we develop a model that captures how CBEC-related knowledge sharing in virtual communities influences customers’ purchase intentions on CBEC websites that are independent of these virtual communities. A quantitative survey of customers with CBEC purchase experience was conducted with three top virtual communities without associated CBEC websites, yielding 521 responses. The results suggest that CBEC-related knowledge sharing in virtual communities has significant positive effects on customers’ perceptions of website quality and customer service, and, thereafter, their purchase intentions. This research demonstrates that spillover effects from virtual communities to independent CBEC websites indeed exist and identifies the underlying mechanisms that explain how these spillover effects move from virtual communities to CBEC websites.

Driving the future: How value retention rate shapes electric vehicle adoption

The government has been promoting the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in recent decades. However, challenges still exist in encouraging widespread use of EVs, which may impact potential buyers. Aside from the well-known barriers related to purchasing, the rate at which the value of EVs is retained over time may also influence consumers’ decisions. This article presents a model based on cue utilization theory to understand how consumers respond to the value retention rate when considering purchasing an EV. The model also examines how perceived quality and two intrinsic cues - brand reputation and the frequency of new product releases - influence this response. The findings indicate that the value retention rate influences consumers’ assessments and purchase decisions, particularly when the intrinsic cues are absent or insufficient. These findings have implications for government policies, EV manufacturers’ promotion strategies, and operational management.

Consonant and vowel production in children with cochlear implants: acoustic measures and multiple factor analysis

IntroductionThe acoustic limitations of cochlear implants (CIs) can lead to perceptual limitations and consequently to imprecise phonological representations and production difficulties. The aim of the study is to document the phonological and phonetic skills of children with CIs and their typically hearing peers. Phonetically, three types of segments were targeted, each characterized by contrasting acoustic information: nasal/oral vowels, fricative segments, and voiced/voiceless stops.MethodsForty-seven typically hearing children (TH) and 23 children with CIs performed a picture-naming task. Productions were analyzed to obtain phonological measures (percentages of correct phonemes, types of errors), and various acoustic measures were collected to characterize the productions on the three types of segments investigated. Multiple factor analyses were conducted to study productive profiles on the various acoustic measures, and the dimensions were correlated with phonological measures.ResultsThe results showed lower performance in lexical (target word retrieval) and phonological (percentages of correct phonemes) skills among children with CIs (CI group), although with better performances among children exposed to CS. Acoustically, children in the CI group exhibited productions significantly different from those of the TH group in terms of the distinction of fricative consonants, marking nasalization through nasal resonance cues, and in the production of voiceless stops. However, the CI group demonstrated compensatory strategies (lengthening of VOT for voiced stops, marking of nasalization through oropharyngeal configuration cues).ConclusionsThe results indicate that children with CIs are at risk of experiencing difficulties in both phonetic and phonological domains. However, there are opportunities for compensation through the exploitation of acoustic cues better coded by the CI and/or through perceptual means (utilization of visual cues).

Similar Quality of Visual Working Memory Representations between Negative and Positive Attentional Templates.

Visual working memory (VWM) plays an important role during visual search, with some theories suggesting an equivalence between working memory representations and guidance from attentional templates. However, recent work has shown that participants can also use 'negative templates', the foreknowledge of distractor-features stored in VWM, to guide attention away from distractors during visual search. These negative templates must also be represented in working memory, but the question remains whether the quality of the working memory representations underlying negative and positive templates are similar, in spite of their opposite impacts on attention. In this study, participants (N = 33) engaged in a visual search task for a shape-defined target after receiving a positive cue (target color), negative cue (distractor color) or neutral cue (non-informative). In 20% of the trials, a color-wheel probe was presented instead of a search array to measure the quality of the cue representation stored in VWM. Our results revealed that participants were more likely to guess in response to neutral cues than negative cues. Yet, the comparison between positive and negative cues showed no significant differences. However, we found no difference in memory precision for the three cue types. More interestingly, the more the VWM quality is boosted by the negative cue, the greater the ability to guide attention away from distractors. Such a pattern of results might map to recent evidence of between-individuals differences in utilization of negative cues. These findings highlight the distinction between attentional templates and simple maintenance in working memory.

‘LinkedIn, LinkedIn on the screen, who is the greatest and smartest ever seen?’: A machine learning approach using valid LinkedIn cues to predict narcissism and intelligence

AbstractRecruiters routinely use LinkedIn profiles to infer applicants' individual traits like narcissism and intelligence, two key traits in online network and organizational contexts. However, little is known about LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential to accurately infer individual traits. According to Brunswik's lens model, accurate trait inferences depend on (a) the presence of valid cues in LinkedIn profiles containing information about users' individual traits and (b) the sensitive and consistent utilization of valid cues. We assessed narcissism (self‐report) and intelligence (aptitude tests) in a sample of 406 LinkedIn users along with 64 LinkedIn cues (coded by three trained coders) that we derived from trait theory and previous empirical findings. We used a transparent, easy‐to‐interpret machine learning algorithm leveraging practical application potentials (elastic net) and applied state‐of‐the‐art resampling techniques (nested cross‐validation) to ensure robust results. Thereby, we uncover LinkedIn profiles' predictive potential: (a) LinkedIn profiles contain valid information about narcissism (e.g. uploading a background picture) and intelligence (e.g. listing many accomplishments), and (b) the elastic nets sensitively and consistently using these valid cues attain prediction accuracy (r = .35/.41 for narcissism/intelligence). The results have practical implications for improving recruiters' accuracy and foreshadow potentials and limitations of automated LinkedIn‐based assessments for selection purposes.

(Relative) size matters: a content analysis of front-of-packaging cue proportions and hierarchies

PurposeFront-of-packaging (FOP) is a critical branding tool that uses “cues” to communicate product attributes and establish distinct brand images. This paper aims to understand how food brands utilize cues and their relative proportions to hierarchically communicate brand image and belonging to particular subcategories.Design/methodology/approachA content analysis is used for analysing 543 food FOPs sold in Australia (breakfast cereals, chips, snack bars). Samples are collected and classified into product sub-categories defined by ingredients, consumer-audience and retail placement. A novel 10 × 10 coding grid is applied to each FOP to objectively analyse cue proportion, with statistical comparison undertaken between sub-categories.FindingsResults reveal intrinsic cues are favoured over extrinsic cues, except for those in the eatertainment sub-category. Hierarchies are evidenced that treat product and branding cues as primary, with health cues secondary. Statistically significant differences in cue proportions are consistently evident across breakfast cereals, chips and snack-bar FOPs. Clear differentiation is evidenced through cue proportions on FOP for health/nutrition focused sub-categories and eatertainment foods.Originality/value“Cue utilization theory” research is extended to an evaluation of brand encoding (not consumer decoding). Design conventions reveal how cue proportions establish a dialogue of communicating brand/product image hierarchically, the trade-offs that occur, a “meso-level” to Gestalt theory, and achieving categorization through FOP cue proportions. Deeper understanding of packaging design techniques provides inter-disciplinary insights that extend consumer behaviour, retailing and design scholarship.

Branding in a Budding Industry: The Influence of Visual Cues on Consumer Behavior in the Cannabis Market

This study investigates the impact of visual branding cues on consumer responses in the cannabis market. Visual communication plays a critical role in shaping consumer behavior and perception. However, limited research exists on how consumers evaluate visual branding cues in the context of cannabis products. This study focuses on the effects of branded versus unbranded cannabis packaging for edible and inhalable products. It explores consumer product trust, product attitude, purchase intention, and willingness to pay in relation to visual branding cues. By investigating the impact of visual branding cues in the cannabis market, this study contributes new insights into the applicability of cue utilization theory and the theory of reasoned actions through this novel context.

The Impact of Color Cues on the Learning Performance in Video Lectures.

This study explores the learning effects of color cues in video lectures and their underlying mechanisms. With the rapid growth of online education, lifelong learning, and blended learning, video lectures have become integral to teaching and learning. Color, a crucial element in visual design, directs attention, organizes content, and integrates information. Evaluating 78 college students, we assessed learning performance by comparing video content with no-color, single-color, and multi-color cues using eye-tracking technology and cognitive load scales. Results indicate that students viewing videos with color cues demonstrated better retention and transfer test performance, while absence or excess of color cues increased cognitive load. These findings have practical implications for video producers and provide a theoretical foundation for enhancing learners' viewing experience and overall effectiveness. This study not only offers an in-depth analysis of color cue utilization in video lectures, highlighting their positive impact on learning outcomes but also introduces fresh perspectives for educational technology and cognitive psychology research. Future investigations should consider color cue effects in diverse cultural contexts and subject areas, exploring varied strategies to optimize the learning experience.

The isolation between part-set cues and social collaboration in episodic memory is dependent: Insight from ongoing and post-collaboration.

It has been demonstrated that both part-set cues and social interaction can produce detrimental effects on memory. Specifically, part-set cues lead to part-set cueing impairment, while social interaction can result in collaborative inhibition. However, there is less evidence on whether these factors have isolated or comparable impacts on memory. Additionally, it is still unknown whether the effects behave similarly on item memory and source memory, whether the effects are comparable between ongoing and post-social collaboration, and whether stimulus features influence their respective roles. To address these issues, we conducted the current experiment where participants were exposed to gender stereotype-consistent or -inconsistent words, categorized as positive, neutral, or negative. The words were read out by either a male or a female. Two recall sessions were conducted: Recall 1 was carried out either individually or collaboratively, whereas Recall 2 was always collaborative. Some participants performed Recall 1 under the part-set cued condition while others were under the no-cued condition. Both item memory and source memory were assessed in both recall sessions. The results have three implications. First, during the ongoing collaborative session, two effects were observed on item memory: part-set cueing impairment and collaborative inhibition. Further, the contributions elicited by part-set cues and social collaboration are isolated. The part-set cueing impairment was influenced by both emotional valence and stereotypical consistency. Second, post-collaboration analysis indicated that both the utilization of part-set cues and collaboration itself enhanced item memory, resulting in the part-set cueing enhancement and post-collaborative memory benefit. Additionally, there was evidence indicating that the mechanisms prompted by these two factors intertwined when emotional valence and stereotypical consistency were considered. Third, in both ongoing and post-collaboration scenarios, the detrimental and beneficial effects on item memory and source memory exhibited different patterns, thereby supporting the dual-process models. These findings enhance our comprehension of the insolation and the interplay between part-set cues and collaboration in memory.

Trajectories of Hearing From Childhood to Adulthood.

The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study provides a unique opportunity to document the progression of ear health and hearing ability within the same cohort of individuals from birth. This investigation draws on hearing data from 5 to 13 years and again at 45 years of age, to explore the associations between childhood hearing variables and hearing and listening ability at age 45. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to assess associations between childhood hearing (otological status and mid-frequency pure-tone average) and (a) age 45 peripheral hearing ability (mid-frequency pure-tone average and high-frequency pure-tone average), and (b) age 45 listening ability (listening in spatialized noise and subjective questionnaire on listening experiences). Sex, childhood socioeconomic status, and adult IQ were included in the model as covariates. Peripheral hearing and listening abilities at age 45 were consistently associated with childhood hearing acuity at mid-frequencies. Otological status was a moderate predicting factor for high-frequency hearing and utilization of spatial listening cues in adulthood. We aim to use these findings to develop a foundational model of hearing trajectories. This will form the basis for identifying precursors, to be investigated in a subsequent series of analyses, that may protect against or exacerbate hearing-associated cognitive decline in the Dunedin Study cohort as they progress from mid-life to older age.

Signaling safety and fostering fairness: Exploring the psychological processes underlying (in)congruent cues among Black women.

Exposure to an organizational diversity cue may help attract Black women to professional spaces. The cue transfer framework contends that because intergroup attitudes co-occur, both cues congruent or incongruent with one's minoritized identity signal an environment that welcomes all minoritized persons. Critically, the utility of such cues had yet to be explored among Black women. Integrating cue transfer with social identity complexity theory, across six studies (N = 2,167), we tested the novel prediction that Black women utilize a racial dominance identity structure and investigated the benefits of organizational diversity cues congruent and incongruent with Black women's identities. We also drew from stigma solidarity and examined whether perceiving an outgroup associated with an incongruent cue as experiencing similar bias (i.e., shared discrimination) facilitated cue efficacy. Ultimately, only racially congruent cues encouraged organizational safety (Studies 1, 2, and 6) and procedural fairness (Studies 2, 4, and 6), while cues aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or Latino individuals (Studies 1-4) were ineffective. Moreover, despite reporting greater shared discrimination with Latino than lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender persons (Study 4), shared discrimination was inconsequential for cue efficacy (Study 3). Black women's lay theories revealed that although they perceived negative intergroup attitudes as co-occurring, positive attitudes toward other minoritized groups were seen as unrelated to attitudes toward Black individuals (Studies 5a/5b). Finally, racially (but not gender) congruent cues mitigated organizational invisibility (Study 6). Collectively, the present investigation supports our assertion that Black women adopt a racial dominance lens and, more broadly, underscores the necessity of an intersectional framework when examining cue efficacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring the role of the service provider in sharing economy services

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the role of the service provider in determining customer satisfaction in sharing economy services. The authors sought to examine how the intrinsic and extrinsic cues along with their interactions influence customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses a mixed-methods design to test the hypotheses. Study 1 uses secondary data from Inside Airbnb. Study 2 uses a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design.FindingsBoth studies support the confirmation bias perspective over the expectancy-confirmation perspective in explaining the interplay among different cues in determining customer satisfaction. In the context of Airbnb, in the absence of a Superhost badge, if hosts adopt a reactive communication style, physical presence has a greater impact on customer satisfaction compared to virtual presence.Originality/valueThis study extends the services marketing literature and cue utilization theory by investigating the dynamic interactions among multiple intrinsic and extrinsic service cues. It shed new light on how a combination of these cues may become additive or redundant in determining customer satisfaction. This study contributes to the services marketing literature by addressing the interactive nature of sharing economy services and the neglected role of service providers.

The roles of phishing knowledge, cue utilization, and decision styles in phishing email detection

This study investigated the roles of phishing knowledge, cue utilization, and decision styles in contributing to phishing email detection. Participants (N = 145) completed an online email sorting task, and measures of phishing knowledge, email decision styles, cue utilization, and email security awareness. Cue utilization was the only factor that uniquely predicted the capacity to discriminate phishing from genuine emails. Phishing knowledge was associated with greater phishing detection and a bias towards classifying all emails as phishing. A preference for intuitive decision making predicted lower detection of phishing emails, driven by a greater tendency to classify emails as genuine. These findings support the proposition that cue utilization is a distinct cognitive process that enables expert performance. The outcomes indicate that, in addition to increasing phishing knowledge and developing safe behavioral patterns, anti-phishing training needs to provide opportunities for trainees to develop meaningful cue associations.

The who and the where: Attention to identities and locations in groups.

While it is widely accepted that the single gaze of another person elicits shifts of attention, there is limited work on the effects of multiple gazes on attention, despite real-world social cues often occurring in groups. Further, less is known regarding the role of unequal reliability of varying social and nonsocial information on attention. We addressed these gaps by employing a variant of the gaze cueing paradigm, simultaneously presenting participants with three faces. Block-wise, we manipulated whether one face (Identity condition) or one location (Location condition) contained a gaze cue entirely predictive of target location; all other cues were uninformative. Across trials, we manipulated the number of valid cues (number of faces gazing at target). We examined whether these two types of information (Identity vs. Location) were learned at a similar rate by statistically modelling cueing effects by trial count. Preregistered analyses returned no evidence for an interaction between condition, number of valid faces, and presence of the predictive element, indicating type of information did not affect participants' ability to employ the predictive element to alter behaviour. Exploratory analyses demonstrated (i) response times (RT) decreased faster across trials for the Identity compared with Location condition, with greater decreases when the predictive element was present versus absent, (ii) RTs decreased across trials for the Location condition only when it was completed first, and (iii) social competence altered RTs across conditions and trial number. Our work demonstrates a nuanced relationship between cue utility, condition type, and social competence on group cueing.

The Effects of Price Context and Prior Product Knowledge on Consumers’ Product Evaluations

This research examines how consumers rely on price and prior product knowledge in product quality evaluations. To understand the interaction effects of price context and prior product knowledge on quality evaluations, a conceptual framework based on cue utilization theory and information processing theory was developed. It is proposed that low knowledgeable consumers are more likely to use price as a quality indicator in a low-priced context; moderate knowledgeable consumers tend to rely on their knowledge to make product evaluations; high knowledgeable consumers are more likely to use their product knowledge in a high-priced context. Experimental studies were conducted using student subjects to test the proposed hypotheses. Results of the experiments showed significant interaction effects between price context and prior knowledge on quality evaluations. A significant quadratic relationship between the use of price and the level of prior product knowledge was observed only in a low-priced context, providing support for the proposed hypotheses in the conceptual model.