Effects Of Contextual Cues Research Articles

Контекстуальная опосредованность когнитивной деятельности

<p>The article presents an analysis of the effect of context in cognitive activity. Contextual influences are expressed in changes of productivity and time of problem solving under the influence of actual irrelevant information or previously formed knowledge structures. The importance of studying contextual <strong>variables</strong> stems from their fundamental role in cognitive processes. Examples of contextual mediation are the effects of dependence of perception of an object (figure) on the perceptual environment (background), priming effects, effects of awareness of multivalued information, effects of context-dependent memory, effects of contextual cues, effects of functional fixation in solving thinking tasks, etc. By analogy with types of memory it is proposed to differentiate ultra-short-term, short-term and long-term (stable) contexts. A prospect in the study of contextual influences can become the study of types and character of interaction of contexts having different characteristics. The latter include: "homogeneity/heterogeneity" of the context, "relevance/irrelevance" to the task, "power" - the integration of local contexts in a single context, "congruence/dissociation" as the correspondence/dissimilarity of different contexts to each other.</p>

Red biases sex categorization of human bodies.

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). However, little has been known on the effect of color on sex recognition of human bodies. This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex, and the effect of contextual information. Visual stimuli were created using body silhouettes varying along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male shapes. These stimuli were presented in conjunction with red, green, and gray colors, which were used either as body color (Experiment 1) or background color (Experiment 2). Participants were instructed to categorize the sex of the body stimuli as either male or female by pressing labeled keys. The results showed that when red was used as a body color, it induced a bias toward feminine body perception, while when used as a background color, it induced a bias toward masculine body perception. Thus, the color red influenced the sex categorization of human bodies, which being modulated by contextual information. These findings provided novel insights into the effect of contextual color cues in sex recognition of human bodies.

Weighing up the Effect of Contextual Cues in Learning English Phrasal Verbs: Is Context the Answer to Avoidance?

Research on English phrasal verbs indicates that these lexical units are problematic and hence difficult to deal with by EFL learners. Thus, one common strategy learners use when encountering phrasal verbs is avoidance: i.e. simply to avoid decoding them in spoken or written content as well as avoid using them in their own speech or writing. This study examines whether contextual cues, i.e. written or spoken context surrounding phrasal verbs, could be of any help to EFL learners in dealing with such lexical units both in receptive and productive tasks. A total of 60 English majors at King Abdulaziz University sat at two separate testing sessions in which they were tested on their recognition as well as recall of 30 preselected unknown English phrasal verbs. Using a between-groups design, the subjects were randomly allocated to three intact groups based on the amount of phrasal verb contextual cues they were exposed to during the first testing session: no contextual cues (control group), sentential-level cues (treatment group 1), and paragraph-level cues (treatment group 2). A receptive multiple-choice test on the target phrasal verbs was conducted during the first session followed by a productive fill-in-the-blank cloze test on the second session. The results of one-way between-groups ANOVA indicate that the paragraph-level cues group outperformed both the no contextual cues group as well as the sentential-level cues one on the receptive measure. However, none of the three groups exhibited any significant differences in their performance on the productive measure. These findings emphasize the role of contextual cues in decoding English phrasal verbs in the receptive mode (i.e. during listening or reading tasks) but call for exploring alternative routes to contextual cues in aiding EFL learners’ use of these lexical units in the productive mode (i.e. during speech or writing tasks).

Using a checklist-based electronic calculation aid and contextual cues to assist medication dose calculation and calculation resumption after interruptions

ObjectivesTo examine whether (1) the use of a checklist-based electronic calculation aid enhanced medication dose calculation and reduced the negative effects of interruptions on calculation, and (2) the use of contextual cues facilitated the resumption of calculation after an interruption. MethodsSixty students in healthcare majors participated in two computer-based laboratory experiments. Experiment 1 examined the effects of the calculation aid and interruptions on calculation error rate, calculation completion time, and perception outcomes. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of contextual cues on resumption error rate, calculation error rate, calculation completion time, and perception outcomes. ResultsIn Experiment 1, calculation error rates were lower for participants who received the calculation aid versus those who did not, and for uninterrupted calculations versus interrupted calculations, although the differences were not statistically significant.The participants spent significantly less time completing the calculation task with the use of the calculation aid than without the use of the calculation aid, and in the case without interruptions than in the case with interruptions. In Experiment 2, the use of contextual cues associated with previous actions significantly reduced the resumption error rate and the completion time of the medication dose calculation. Both experiments showed that the use of the calculation aid and contextual cues was associated with positive attitudes toward the aid and cues, reduced mental effort, and/or higher confidence in task performance. ConclusionsThe use of the checklist-based electronic calculation aid and contextual cues facilitated medication dose calculation and resumption after interruptions and thus has the potential to improve medication safety and work efficiency in healthcare.

Effects of Contextual Cues on Learning

The problem of the present study was to investigate whether there is any effect of contextual cues on learning. Literature review indicated a lack of a reliable previous answer to the problem. The purpose of the study was to test whether any connection is created for contextual cues in the brain. It was hypothesized that each contextual cue creates a distinguished connection in the brain. If contextual cues remain identical throughout both practice and revision sessions, learning will enhance. Purposively drawing 36 students from class V, we randomly assigned them under two conditions, namely control and experimental groups. The results showed that the mean scores of control and experimental groups were 9.56 and 14.83 consecutively, which differ significantly at the p < .001 (t = -6.752) level. Since experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group, it was concluded that contextual cues play an important role on learning. Dhaka Univ. J. Biol. Sci. 31(2): 303-307, 2022 (July)

In robot we trust? The effect of emotional expressions and contextual cues on anthropomorphic trustworthiness

Following the evolution of technology and its application in various daily contexts, social robots work as an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system to interact with humans. However, limited research has been done to discuss the role of emotional expressions and contextual cues in influencing anthropomorphic trustworthiness, especially from the design perspective. To address this research gap, the current study designed a specific robot prototype and conducted two lab experiments to explore the effect of emotional expressions and contextual cues on trustworthiness via a combination of subjective ratings and physiological measures. Results showed that: 1) positive (vs. negative) emotional expressions enjoyed a higher level of anthropomorphic trustworthiness and visual attention; 2) regulatory fit was expanded in parasocial interaction and worked as a prime to activate anthropomorphic trustworthiness for social robots. Theoretical contributions and design implications were also discussed in this study.

The effect of incongruous contextual cues on pictorial metaphor processing.

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of incongruous contextual cues, both perceptual and conceptual, on pictorial metaphor processing. In a metaphoricity decision task, 38 participants independently viewed a total of 36 pictures equally divided into three different conditions: metaphoric pictures (MP), anomalous literal pictures (ALP) with perceptual congruity, and congruous literal pictures (LP). By initiating the midway condition ALP, the effect of contextual cues of conceptual incongruity were distinguished from that of perceptual incongruity. The eye movement data during each picture viewing were collected before the participant made a decision whether the picture was metaphorical or not. The behavioral results showed that the more abundant incongruous contextual cues were there, the more likely the pictures would be judged as metaphors. It took longer for the participants to make decisions on the literal pictures, be them in congruous or incongruous condition. The results of eye-tracking statistics showed that the perceptual incongruity cues were detected earlier than the conceptual ones. The perceptual-conceptual incongruity cues evoked more fixations and longer duration than the perceptual incongruity alone. The processing of conceptual incongruity proceeded after that of perceptual incongruity. The overall result of the study supports the contextual cues of perceptual incongruity as triggers for pictorial metaphor processing, whereas the contextual cues of conceptual incongruity play a decisive role in the metaphoric interpretation, which in turn renders the processing of MP more mental effort consuming than that of ALP or LP. The present findings have vital implications in revealing the triggering and determining mechanisms of pictorial metaphor processing, which are significant in exploring human cognition and have great impacts on various facets of social and cultural communications.

Preschoolers’ comprehension of exhaustive focus: The role of contextualization

Previous research has uncovered that, despite the omnipresence of focus in utterances, children typically do not compute the exhaustivity inference associated with cleft(-like) syntactic focus constructions at adult-like levels before 7 years of age. Children’s comparable limitations with lexically triggered scalar implicatures, inferences with an essentially identical logical structure, have been argued to stem not from the lack of their competence to compute the implicature itself, but from their immature contextualization abilities to identify relevant scalar alternatives. We address the question whether the same extraneous factor may underlie preschooler’s difficulties with focus exhaustification in a comprehension study of 5- to 6-year-old Hungarian children which investigated the effect of contextual cues on their focus interpretation. It was found that while the presence of an explicit Question Under Discussion significantly raises children’s accuracy in identifying the focus and its alternatives (sub-experiment 1), it fails to induce a similar increase in the proportion of exhaustive interpretations (sub-experiment 2). These results indicate that, in contrast to the case of scalar implicatures, children’s low rate of exhaustification of focus reflects a deeper, less context-dependent difference from adult-like comprehension, possibly rooted in the linguistic representation of focus exhaustivity.

The Effects of Contextual Cues and Visual Clarity in Sponsorship Disclosures on the Interpretive Process: Processing Fluency

This study explored whether the clarity-enhancing elements and contextual cues in sponsorship disclosures would help (or impede) consumers’ recognition and information processing of native advertising and, if so, which elements would affect them more or less. A lab experiment using an eye-tracking device was conducted. Various features of the sponsorship disclosure were drawn from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) disclosure guidelines (e.g., disclosure language, location, repetition, and prominence, including font style, size, color, effects, and background). Findings implied that clear labeling is strongly related to recognition of the commercial nature of the content, whereas clarity enhancers are related to information processing backed by perceptual fluency. In addition, complying with FTC’s disclosure guidelines may increase pleasant processing fluency and recognition of the sponsorship disclosure. A recommendation is made for advertising practitioners, publishers, and regulators to avoid an unnecessary stigma toward native advertising.

Effects of traffic context on eHMI icon comprehension

External human–machine-interfaces (eHMIs) might support the interaction between automated vehicles and pedestrians. The messages conveyed by eHMIs need to be understood quickly and correctly by their addressees. If implemented in the future, pedestrians will repeatedly encounter eHMIs in situations that feature different traffic context. So far, little is known about the influence of contextual cues like regulatory elements or (presumed) model behavior of fellow road users on the comprehension of eHMIs. In order to investigate possible effects of such contextual cues on comprehension, we conducted a picture-based online study among German residents (N = 175). Participants repeatedly interpreted three eHMI icons (“you can cross”, “do not cross”, and “pedestrian detected”) either without any context (control group) or within varying degrees of relevant context (experimental group). Context facilitated comprehensibility in terms of accuracy and subjective certainty. Relevant context was especially beneficial at first encounter. As soon as an icon’s meaning was internalized, the necessity of relevant context decreased. The effect of context should therefore be considered in future eHMI research as real-world comprehension might be underestimated otherwise.

The Effect of the Expressed Anger and Sadness on Online News Believability

ABSTRACT Emotional expressions have been widely used in online news. Existing research on the perception of online news has primarily focused on the effect of contextual cues on readers’ reasoning and deliberation behavior; the role of discrete emotions such as anger and sadness, however, has been overlooked. This paper addresses this research gap by investigating the influence of angry and sad expressions in online news on readers’ perception of the news. Drawing on the emotions as social information (EASI) theory and the appraisal-tendency framework (ATF), we find that expressions of anger in online news decrease its believability. However, sad expressions do not trigger the same effect. A further test reveals that the effect of angry expressions can be explained by the readers’ perception of the author’s cognitive effort: readers perceive that expressions of anger in the headlines denote a lack of cognitive effort of the author in writing the news, which subsequently lowers the believability of the news. We also show that news believability has downstream implications and can impact various social media behaviors including reading, liking, commenting, and sharing. This research extends current knowledge of the cognitive appraisals and interpersonal effects of discrete emotions (i.e., anger, sadness) on online news. The results also offer practical implications for social media platforms, news aggregators, and regulators that need to manage digital content and control the spread of fake news.

Proactive and reactive metacontrol in task switching

While cognitive control enables the selection of goal-relevant responses, metacontrol enables the selection of context-appropriate control operations. In task switching, metacontrol modulates task-switching efficiency by retrieving the associations between a contextual cue and a particular cognitive control demand. While the automatic retrieval of cognitive control is appealing due to its time and energy efficiency, the effects of different contextual cues have been shown in separate studies and appear to have different characteristics. Here, we devised a single task-switching paradigm to test whether we can observe both list-wide and item-specific metacontrol within subjects. In two experiments, we demonstrated reduced switch costs in lists associated with a high probability of switching as compared with lists with a low probability of switching (i.e., a list-wide switch probability [LWSP] effect). Similarly, we observed an analogous item-specific switch probability (ISSP) effect such that items associated with a high probability of switching incurred smaller switch costs as compared with items associated with a low probability of switching. We also confirmed that both list-wide and item-specific switch probability effects were not dependent on lower-level stimulus-response associations. However, the LWSP and the ISSP effects were uncorrelated, suggesting a lack of dependence. Together, these findings suggest that there are two distinct modes of metacontrol that are deployed in a context-sensitive manner in order to adapt to specific cognitive demands.

Self‐construal priming modulates the influence of receptacles on food perception

AbstractWe conducted a study to investigate how self‐construal priming can modulate the influence of receptacles on people's food perception. Self‐construal refers to how an individual views the self, with interdependent or independent self‐construal describing the self as a context‐embedded or context‐independent entity, respectively. After reading an essay containing either interdependent or independent pronouns, each of 112 Chinese participants viewed photos of Asian noodles served on plates of different sizes and colors and rated their feelings about and willingness to pay for these foods. Compared to independent self‐construal priming, priming with the interdependent self‐construal elicited a greater influence of plate size on the participants' willingness to pay for the noodles as well as the pleasantness ratings of the noodles served on red plates. Collectively, these findings suggest that the consumers' processing of and sensitivity to contextual information can be modulated by self‐construal priming when they are evaluating food products.Practical applicationsPrevious research demonstrated that people from varied cultural backgrounds are differently susceptible to the influence of contextual cues, such as the receptacles in which foods or drinks are served. The results of this study suggested that priming with the interdependent self‐construal could strengthen the influence of plate size on the participants' judgments and decisions about foods. These findings provide insights into how the nudging effects of contextual cues may vary as a function of the consumers' self‐construal. Moreover, the findings of this study suggest that consumers' susceptibility to immediate contextual cues may be temporarily modulated via presenting verbal materials, which has direct implications in the practice of sensory nudging in the process of selling or serving foods. For example, advertisements or menus may be skillfully designed to contain cues that can prime self‐construal in customers to subtly modulate the influence of contextual cues on their judgment and decisions about foods.

The role of non-connective discourse cues and their interaction with connectives

AbstractThe disambiguation and processing of coherence relations is often investigated with a focus on explicit connectives, such asbutorso. Other, non-connective cues from the context also facilitate discourse inferences, although their precise disambiguating role and interaction with connectives have been largely overlooked in the psycholinguistic literature so far. This study reports on two crowdsourcing experiments that test the role of contextual cues (parallelism, antonyms, resultative verbs) in the disambiguation of contrast and consequence relations. We compare the effect of contextual cues in conceptually different relations, and with connectives that differ in their semantic precision. Using offline tasks, our results show that contextual cues significantly help disambiguating contrast and consequence relations in the absence of connectives. However, when connectives are present in the context, the effect of cues only holds if the connective is acceptable in the target relation. Overall, our study suggests that cues are decisive on their own, but only secondary in the presence of connectives. These results call for further investigation of the complex interplay between connective types, contextual cues, relation types and other linguistic and cognitive factors.

Eye-tracking the time course of distal and global speech rate effects.

To comprehend speech sounds, listeners tune in to speech rate information in the proximal (immediately adjacent), distal (nonadjacent), and global context (further removed preceding and following sentences). Effects of global contextual speech rate cues on speech perception have been shown to follow constraints not found for proximal and distal speech rate. Therefore, listeners may process such global cues at distinct time points during word recognition. We conducted a printed-word eye-tracking experiment to compare the time courses of distal and global rate effects. Results indicated that the distal rate effect emerged immediately after target sound presentation, in line with a general-auditory account. The global rate effect, however, arose more than 200 ms later than the distal rate effect, indicating that distal and global context effects involve distinct processing mechanisms. Results are interpreted in a 2-stage model of acoustic context effects. This model posits that distal context effects involve very early perceptual processes, while global context effects arise at a later stage, involving cognitive adjustments conditioned by higher-level information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Inhaled Lavandula angustifolia essential oil enhances extinction learning and inhibits memory updating in mice submitted to the contextual fear conditioning

Ethnopharmacological relevanceLavender (Lavandula angustifolia) essential oil (EO) has a long history of use in emotional illness, including anxiety disorders. Cognitive mechanisms of learning and memory play a pivotal role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety since exposure to cues related to aversive situations induces high arousal and anticipatory anxiety. Memory become labile after its reactivation and can be modulated by reconsolidation or extinction. Inhibition of memory reconsolidation or facilitation of memory extinction may be effective in preventing or minimizing the effect of contextual cues on anticipatory anxiety. Aim of the studyWe investigated the effect of Lavandula angustifolia EO in the memory updating of conditioned contextual fear. Materials and methodsAdult male C57Bl6 mice were submitted to fear conditioning. Two days after conditioning the mice underwent a reactivation session in a hybrid context and were then immediately exposed to vaporized water or essential oil at concentrations of 1%, 2.5% or 5% for 3 h. Two days later, the mice were tested in the original or an altered context and their freezing behavior was measured. In addition, mice were subjected to a fear memory recovery protocol followed by a reinstatement session. ResultsIn the contextual fear test, 1% essential oil, but not 2.5% or 5%, reduced the freezing behavior response, whereas after a reinstatement session, exposure to 1% essential oil increased the freezing behavior response. ConclusionsThese results suggest that Lavandula angustifolia essential oil enhances memory extinction and, consequently, inhibits memory updating.

The effect of alcohol consumption and contextual cues on the evaluation of new brands of alcoholic beverages at the POS

As per ELM, consumers' motivation and ability influence the route through which they process new information. A higher magnitude of these two factors leads to systematic information processing whereas a lower level leads to peripheral information processing. This research manipulated consumers' motivation by varying the contextual cues like bundle partner's brand image and functional relationship between the items whereas their ability was manipulated by alcohol administration to test its impact on the quality perception of a new brand of alcoholic beverage and the purchase intention of the bundle. A lower magnitude of motivation and ability increases the chances of adopting a categorisation approach to evaluate the new brand, and subsequently, the entire bundle. Therefore, a bundle's contextual cues dictate the evaluation of the new brand. Additionally, the alcohol priming effect leads to a greater propensity to try new brands of alcoholic beverages even if their quality is perceived to be inferior.

The Effect of Contextual Cues on the Effective Deployment of Humor in Intercultural Communication

The Effect of Contextual Cues on the Effective Deployment of Humor in Intercultural Communication

Sentence recognition for native and non-native English listeners in quiet and babble: Effects of contextual cues.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference between English-native (EN) listeners and Chinese-native (CN) listeners using contextual cues to perceive speech in quiet and four-talker babble in English. Three types of sentences served as speech stimuli: high (semantic and syntactic cues), low (syntactic cues), and zero predictability. Results showed that CN listeners primarily relied on semantic information when perceiving speech, whereas EN listeners used both semantic and syntactic cues more equally. Moreover, the four-talker babble enlarged the group difference similarly across the three types of sentences, indicating that non-native listeners' greater-than-native difficulty in noise depended on speech materials.

Semantic processes in preferential decision making.

This article examines how semantic memory processes influence the items that are considered by decision makers in memory-based preferential choice. Experiments 1A through 1C ask participants to list the choice items that come to their minds while deliberating in a variety of everyday choice settings. These experiments use semantic space models to quantify the semantic relatedness between pairs of retrieved items and find that choice item retrieval displays robust semantic clustering effects, with retrieved items increasing the retrieval probabilities of related items. Semantic clustering can be disassociated from the effect of item desirability and can lead to inefficiencies such as the consideration and evaluation of undesirable items early on in the decision. Experiments 2A through 2C use a similar approach to study the effects of contextual cues on item retrieval and find that decision makers are biased toward retrieving choice items that are semantically related to the choice context. This effect is usually strongest early on in deliberation and weakens as additional items are retrieved. Overall, the results highlight the role of semantic memory processes in guiding the generation of memory-based choice sets, and illustrate the value of semantic space models for studying preferential decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).