Forced-choice Task Research Articles

Value-based decision-making in regular alcohol consumers following experimental manipulation of alcohol value

BackgroundDevaluation of alcohol leads to reductions in alcohol choice and consumption; however, the cognitive mechanisms that underpin this relationship are not well-understood. In this study we applied a computational model of value-based decision-making (VBDM) to decisions made about alcohol and alcohol-unrelated cues following experimental manipulation of alcohol value. Method: Using a pre-registered within-subject design, thirty-six regular alcohol consumers (≥14 UK units per week) completed a two-alternative forced choice task where they chose between two alcohol images (in one block) or two soft drink images (in a different block) after watching videos that emphasised the positive (alcohol value), and separately, the negative (alcohol devalue) consequences of alcohol. On each block, participants pressed a key to select the image depicting the drink they would rather consume. A drift–diffusion model (DDM) was fitted to reaction time and choice data to estimate evidence accumulation (EA) processes and response thresholds during the different blocks in each experimental condition. Findings: In the alcohol devalue condition, soft drink EA rates were significantly higher compared to alcohol EA rates (p = 0.04, d = 0.31), and compared to soft drink EA rates in the alcohol value condition (p = 0.01, d = 0.38). However, EA rates for alcoholic drinks and response thresholds (for either drink type) were unaffected by the experimental manipulation. Conclusions: In line with behavioural economic models of addiction that emphasise the important role of alternative reinforcement, experimentally manipulating alcohol value is associated with changes in the internal cognitive processes that precede soft drink choice.

The temporal dynamics of task processing and choice in a novel multitasking paradigm.

This study investigated the temporal dynamics of task performance and voluntary task choice within a multitasking paradigm in which the task-related processing outcomes themselves determined the to-be-performed task. In the novel forced-no-go trials, the stimulus for one task required an overt response, but the stimulus for the other task was associated with a no-go response. Task performance results showed that participants often processed the no-go task's stimulus before switching to the go-task. Dual-task interference effects and switch costs indicated various forms of multitasking interference, with their underlying causes appearing to overlap, as engagement in parallel processing seemed to be limited by switch-related reconfiguration processes. Intermixing free-choice trials, where both stimuli were associated with overt responses, revealed costs associated with switching between processing modes, providing new evidence that the distinctions between free and forced task goals stem from differences in their internal representations rather than alterations in processing due to different presentations in the environment. Task choice results align with this perspective, demonstrating a preference for repeating a free- over a forced-choice task. Furthermore, these free-choice results illuminate the interplay of cognitive (task-repetition bias) and environmental constraints (first-task bias) in shaping task choices: It appears that task-specific information increases goal activations for both task goals concurrently, with participants favoring central processing of the second- over the first-presented task to optimize their behavior when shorter central processing is required (task repetition). Overall, this study offers new insights into the dynamics of task processing and choice in environments requiring the balance of multiple tasks.

Synchrony or asynchrony: development of facial expression recognition from childhood to adolescence based on large-scale evidence.

The development of facial expression recognition ability in children is crucial for their emotional cognition and social interactions. In this study, 510 children aged between 6 and 15 participated in a two forced-choice task of facial expression recognition. The findings supported that recognition of the six basic facial expressions reached a relatively stable mature level around 8-9 years old. Additionally, model fitting results indicated that children showed the most significant improvement in recognizing expressions of disgust, closely followed by fear. Conversely, recognition of expressions of happiness and sadness showed slower improvement across different age groups. Regarding gender differences, girls exhibited a more pronounced advantage. Further model fitting revealed that boys showed more pronounced improvements in recognizing expressions of disgust, fear, and anger, while girls showed more pronounced improvements in recognizing expressions of surprise, sadness, and happiness. These clear findings suggested the synchronous developmental trajectory of facial expression recognition from childhood to adolescence, likely influenced by socialization processes and interactions related to brain maturation.

The Role of Uniform Textures in Making Texture Elements Visible in the Visual Periphery.

There are important differences between central and peripheral vision. With respect to shape, contours retain phenomenal sharpness, although some contours disappear if they are near other contours. This leads to some uniform textures to appear non-uniform (Honeycomb illusion, Bertamini et al., 2016). Unlike other phenomena of shape perception in the periphery, this illusion is showing how continuity of the texture does not contribute to phenomenal continuity. We systematically varied the relationship between central and peripheral regions, and we collected subjective reports (how far can one see lines) as well as judgments of line orientation. We used extended textures created with a square grid and some additional lines that are invisible when they are located at the corners of the grid, or visible when they are separated from the grid (control condition). With respects to subjective reports, we compared the region of visibility for cases in which the texture was uniform (Exp 1a), or when in a central region the lines were different (Exp 1b). There were no differences, showing no role of objective uniformity on visibility. Next, in addition to the region of visibility we measured sensitivity using a forced-choice task (line tilted left or right) (Exp 2). The drop in sensitivity with eccentricity matched the size of the region in which lines were perceived in the illusion condition, but not in the control condition. When participants were offered a choice to report of the lines were present or absent (Exp 3) they confirmed that they did not see them in the illusion condition, but saw them in the control condition. We conclude that mechanisms that control perception of contours operate differently in the periphery, and override prior expectations, including that of uniformity. Conversely, when elements are detected in the periphery, we assign to them properties based on information from central vision, but these shapes cannot be identified correctly when the task requires such discrimination.

Navigating accent bias in German: children's social preferences for a second-language accent over a first-language regional accent

Spoken language conveys rich sociolinguistic information about a speaker's language background. Previous research indicates that both monolingual and bilingual children use this information when making social decisions. They prefer local speakers whose accent or variety matches their own over speakers of foreign languages or second-language speakers. What remains unclear is how exposure to diverse linguistic communities affects children's preferences for non-local accents. This study examines social preferences for a regional and a second-language accent as a function of prior exposure to diverse accents and languages, measured on a continuous scale. German-speaking primary-school children (aged 7–10) were asked to choose stickers in a forced-choice task using animated cartoon characters. We replicated the observed social preferences for one's local accent. Interestingly, when the local accent was absent, children socially preferred a second-language accent (American) over a first-language regional accent (Bavarian), even though both accents were equally intelligible and relatively unfamiliar to the children, as determined through a sentence repetition task and a geographical classification task. Children's choices were not explained by continuous measures of accent or bilingual exposure. The results suggest a complex interaction of various factors not limited to the speakers' first- or second-language status.

Exploring individual differences in native phonetic perception and their link to nonnative phonetic perception.

Adults differ considerably in their perception of both native and nonnative phonemes. For instance, when presented with continua of native phonemes on two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) or visual analog scaling (VAS) tasks, some people show sudden changes in responses (i.e., steep identification slopes) and others show gradual changes (i.e., shallow identification slopes). Moreover, some adults are more successful than others at learning unfamiliar phonemes. The predictors of these individual differences and the relationships between them are poorly understood. It also remains unclear to what extent different tasks (2AFC vs. VAS) may reflect distinct individual differences in perception. In two experiments, we addressed these questions by examining the relationships between individual differences in performance on native and nonnative phonetic perception tasks. We found that shallow 2AFC identification slopes were not related to shallow VAS identification slopes but were related to inconsistent VAS responses. Additionally, our results suggest that consistent native perception may play a role in promoting successful nonnative perception. These findings help characterize the nature of individual differences in phonetic perception and contribute to our understanding of how to measure such differences. This work also has implications for encouraging successful acquisition of new languages in adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Modeling human observer detection for varying data acquisition in undersampled MRI for two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) and forced localization tasks.

Undersampling in the frequency domain (k-space) in MRI enables faster data acquisition. In this study, we used a fixed 1D undersampling factor of 5x with only 20% of the k-space collected. The fraction of fully acquired low k-space frequencies were varied from 0% (all aliasing) to 20% (all blurring). The images were reconstructed using a multi-coil SENSE algorithm. We used two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) and the forced localization tasks with a subtle signal to estimate the human observer performance. The 2-AFC average human observer performance remained fairly constant across all imaging conditions. The forced localization task performance improved from the 0% condition to the 2.5% condition and remained fairly constant for the remaining conditions, suggesting that there was a decrease in task performance only in the pure aliasing situation. We modeled the average human performance using a sparse-difference of Gaussians (SDOG) Hotelling observer model. Because the blurring in the undersampling direction makes the mean signal asymmetric, we explored an adaptation for irregular signals that made the SDOG template asymmetric. To improve the observer performance, we also varied the number of SDOG channels from 3 to 4. We found that despite the asymmetry in the mean signal, both the symmetric and asymmetric models reasonably predicted the human performance in the 2-AFC experiments. However, the symmetric model performed slightly better. We also found that a symmetric SDOG model with 4 channels implemented using a spatial domain convolution and constrained to the possible signal locations reasonably modeled the forced localization human observer results.

What Does That Mean? Complementizers and Epistemic Authority.

A core goal of research in language is to understand the factors that guide choice of linguistic form where more than one option is syntactically well-formed. We discuss one case of optionality that has generated longstanding discussion: the choice of either using or dropping the English complementizer that in sentences like I think (that) the cat followed the dog. Existing psycholinguistic analyses tie that-usage to production pressures associated with sentence planning (Ferreira & Dell, 2000), avoidance of ambiguity (Hawkins, 2004), and relative information density (Jaeger, 2010). Building on observations from cross-linguistic fieldwork, we present a novel proposal in which English that can serve to mark a speaker's "epistemic authority" over the information packaged within the embedded clause; that is, it indicates that the speaker has more knowledge of the embedded proposition compared with their addressee and thus has a perspective that they believe their addressee doesn't share. Testing this proposal with a forced-choice task and a series of corpus surveys, we find that English that is keyed to the use of embedded speaker (first-person) subject pronouns and occurs in sentences containing newsworthy information. Our account of that-optionality takes into account why that is associated with both (i) a dense information signal and (ii) semantic-pragmatic content, as well as extending to cases of non-optionality in subject/sentence-initial clauses (e.g., *(That) the cat is following the dog, I already know) and fragment answers (e.g., What do you already know? *(That) the cat is following the dog), where that is required.

The processing of spatial frequencies through time in visual word recognition

This study examined the temporal profile of spatial frequency processing in a word reading task in 16 normal adult readers. They had to report the word presented in a 200 ms display using a four-alternative forced-choice task (4AFC). The stimuli were made of an additive combination of the signal (i.e. the target word) and of a visual white noise patch wherein the signal-to-noise ratio varied randomly across stimulus duration. Four spatial frequency conditions were defined for the signal component of the stimulus (bandpass Butterworth filters with center frequencies of 1.2, 2.4, 4.8 and 9.6 cycles per degree). In contrast to the coarse-to-fine theory of visual recognition, the results show that the highest spatial frequency range dominates early processing, with a shift toward lower spatial frequencies at later points during stimulus exposure. This pattern interacted in a complex way with the temporal frequency content of signal-to-noise oscillations. The outcome of individual data patterns classification by a machine learning algorithm according to the corresponding spatial frequency band further shows that the most salient spatial frequency signature is obtained when the time dimension within data patterns is recoded into its Fourier transform.

The impact of visually simulated self-motion on predicting object motion.

To interact successfully with moving objects in our environment we need to be able to predict their behavior. Predicting the position of a moving object requires an estimate of its velocity. When flow parsing during self-motion is incomplete-that is, when some of the retinal motion created by self-motion is incorrectly attributed to object motion-object velocity estimates become biased. Further, the process of flow parsing should add noise and lead to object velocity judgements being more variable during self-motion. Biases and lowered precision in velocity estimation should then translate to biases and lowered precision in motion extrapolation. We investigated this relationship between self-motion, velocity estimation and motion extrapolation with two tasks performed in a realistic virtual reality (VR) environment: first, participants were shown a ball moving laterally which disappeared after a certain time. They then indicated by button press when they thought the ball would have hit a target rectangle positioned in the environment. While the ball was visible, participants sometimes experienced simultaneous visual lateral self-motion in either the same or in the opposite direction of the ball. The second task was a two-interval forced choice task in which participants judged which of two motions was faster: in one interval they saw the same ball they observed in the first task while in the other they saw a ball cloud whose speed was controlled by a PEST staircase. While observing the single ball, they were again moved visually either in the same or opposite direction as the ball or they remained static. We found the expected biases in estimated time-to-contact, while for the speed estimation task, this was only the case when the ball and observer were moving in opposite directions. Our hypotheses regarding precision were largely unsupported by the data. Overall, we draw several conclusions from this experiment: first, incomplete flow parsing can affect motion prediction. Further, it suggests that time-to-contact estimation and speed judgements are determined by partially different mechanisms. Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, there appear to be certain compensatory mechanisms at play that allow for much higher-than-expected precision when observers are experiencing self-motion-even when self-motion is simulated only visually.

Differential contributions of body form, motion, and temporal information to subjective action understanding in naturalistic stimuli.

We investigated the factors underlying naturalistic action recognition and understanding, as well as the errors occurring during recognition failures. Participants saw full-light stimuli of ten different whole-body actions presented in three different conditions: as normal videos, as videos with the temporal order of the frames scrambled, and as single static representative frames. After each stimulus presentation participants completed one of two tasks-a forced choice task where they were given the ten potential action labels as options, or a free description task, where they could describe the action performed in each stimulus in their own words. While generally, a combination of form, motion, and temporal information led to the highest action understanding, for some actions form information was sufficient and adding motion and temporal information did not increase recognition accuracy. We also analyzed errors in action recognition and found primarily two different types. One type of error was on the semantic level, while the other consisted of reverting to the kinematic level of body part processing without any attribution of semantics. We elaborate on these results in the context of naturalistic action perception.

Perceptual adaptation to unfamiliar dialects in an eye-tracking task

Variation in pronunciation of vowels across American English dialects often creates the strongest distinctions between dialects and leads to lexical ambiguity between minimal pairs within dialects. This lexical ambiguity is stronger for listeners with lifetime exposure to multiple dialects than to a single dialect. In the current study, we investigated the influence of brief, in- lab dialect exposure on lexical competition and perceptual adaptation. Midwestern American English participants were first presented with a familiarization short story told in one of two unfamiliar dialects (Southern American English or a novel accent) and then completed a visual-world eye-tracking task containing both acoustically ambiguous and non-ambiguous words from each dialect in a forced-choice task. The results showed evidence of greater lexical competition for target dialect minimal pairs following familiarization. This pattern of results is consistent with previous work suggesting greater lexical competition following lifetime exposure to dialect variation among geographically mobile listeners, suggesting similarities in the effects of brief in-lab and lifetime exposure to dialect variation on lexical competition and processing.

Musical timbre with varied amplitude envelope improves efficacy in auditory alarms

Current alarm standards used in safety critical environments (e.g., medical alarms used in hospitals) suffer from a myriad of complications with detectability, annoyance, and alarm fatigue affecting the wellbeing of patients and staff. To a large extent, these are based on the same simplistic, temporally invariant tones. Here we explore how insights from the acoustic properties of the musical triangle can aid in detection, reducing overall levels hence reducing annoyance ratings. Two tones are used, (1) a standard tone similar to those used in current medical devices, and (2) a tone synthesized based on the spectral-temporal structure of a concert triangle. We conducted a detection experiment where participants indicated if the auditory stimulus is heard when presented a range of signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios and a two-alternative force choice task to measure annoyance ratings. Although reductions in SNRs reduced detectability for the standard tone, similar deductions had no meaningful effect on detectability of tones modeled off the musical triangle. Crucially, we identified a number of triangle inspired tones which are both less annoying and more detectable than standard tones. This suggests that these more complex sounds can reduce annoyance without harming detection, offering useful insight to medical device sound design.

A stimulus exposure of 50 ms elicits the uncanny valley effect

The uncanny valley (UV) effect captures the observation that artificial entities with near-human appearances tend to create feelings of eeriness. Researchers have proposed many hypotheses to explain the UV effect, but the visual processing mechanisms of the UV have yet to be fully understood. In the present study, we examined if the UV effect is as accessible in brief stimulus exposures compared to long stimulus exposures (Experiment 1). Forty-one participants, aged 21–31, rated each human-robot face presented for either a brief (50 ms) or long duration (3 s) in terms of attractiveness, eeriness, and humanness (UV indices) in a 7-point Likert scale. We found that brief and long exposures to stimuli generated a similar UV effect. This suggests that the UV effect is accessible at early visual processing. We then examined the effect of exposure duration on the categorisation of visual stimuli in Experiment 2. Thirty-three participants, aged 21–31, categorised faces as either human or robot in a two-alternative forced choice task. Their response accuracy and variance were recorded. We found that brief stimulus exposures generated significantly higher response variation and errors than the long exposure condition. This indicated that participants were more uncertain in categorising faces in the brief exposure condition due to insufficient time. Further comparisons between Experiment 1 and 2 revealed that the eeriest faces were not the hardest to categorise. Overall, these findings indicate (1) that both the UV effect and categorical uncertainty can be elicited through brief stimulus exposure, but (2) that categorical uncertainty is unlikely to cause the UV effect. These findings provide insights towards the perception of robotic faces and implications for the design of robots, androids, avatars, and artificial intelligence agents.

Syntax and semantics of laisser in causative constructions

The French verb laisser (‘to let’) allows for two different syntactic constructions, an Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) construction and a Faire-Infinitive (FI) construction with a postverbal Causee, and for two different interpretations, authorize and not-intervene. According to previous studies (e.g. Kayne 1975), constructions are related to interpretations: the ECM can express intentionality, the FI cannot. In this paper, we explore a different hypothesis: the ECM construction is underspecified and allows for both interpretations, while the FI is restricted to the not-intervening interpretation. We provide empirical evidence from three distinct forced choice tasks in which participants had to match constructions and interpretations. The results reveal that, contrary to both early observations and our initial hypothesis, both constructions may allow for both interpretations, and variation depends less on the syntactic configuration than on semantic and pragmatic factors, namely on the lexical inferences triggered by the embedded verb and the authority relation between Causer and Causee expressed in the contexts.

Associative Visuomotor Learning Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Induces Stimulus-Response Interference.

Classical conditioning states that the systematic co-occurrence of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus can cause the neutral stimulus to, over time, evoke the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. On a neural level, Hebbian learning suggests that this type of learning occurs through changes in synaptic plasticity when two neurons are simultaneously active, resulting in increased connectivity between them. Inspired by associative learning theories, we here investigated whether the mere co-activation of visual stimuli and stimulation of the primary motor cortex using TMS would result in stimulus-response associations that can impact future behavior. During a learning phase, we repeatedly paired the presentation of a specific color (but not other colors) with a TMS pulse over the motor cortex. Next, participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task where they had to categorize simple shapes and we studied whether the shapes' task-irrelevant color (and its potentially associated involuntary motor activity) affected the required motor response. Participants showed more errors on incongruent trials for stimuli that were previously paired with high intensity TMS pulses, but only when tested on the same day. Using a drift diffusion model for conflict tasks, we further demonstrate that this interference occurred early, and gradually increased as a function of associated TMS intensity. Taken together, our findings show that the human brain can learn stimulus-response associations using externally induced motor cortex stimulation. Although we were inspired by the Hebbian learning literature, future studies should investigate whether Hebbian or other learning processes were also what brought about this effect.

Distinct Cortical Correlates of Perception and Motor Function in Balance Control.

Fluctuations in brain activity alter how we perceive our body and generate movements but have not been investigated in functional whole-body behaviors. During reactive balance, we recently showed that evoked brain activity is associated with the balance ability in young individuals. Furthermore, in PD, impaired whole-body motion perception in reactive balance is associated with impaired balance. Here, we investigated the brain activity during the whole-body motion perception in reactive balance in young adults (9 female, 10 male). We hypothesized that both ongoing and evoked cortical activity influences the efficiency of information processing for successful perception and movement during whole-body behaviors. We characterized two cortical signals using electroencephalography localized to the SMA: (1) the "N1," a perturbation-evoked potential that decreases in amplitude with expectancy and is larger in individuals with lower balance function, and (2) preperturbation β power, a transient rhythm that favors maintenance of the current sensorimotor state and is inversely associated with tactile perception. In a two-alternative forced choice task, participants judged whether pairs of backward support surface perturbations during standing were in the "same" or "different" direction. As expected, lower whole-body perception was associated with lower balance ability. Within a perturbation pair, N1 attenuation was larger on correctly perceived trials and associated with better balance, but not perception. In contrast, preperturbation β power was higher on incorrectly perceived trials and associated with poorer perception, but not balance. Together, ongoing and evoked cortical activity have unique roles in information processing that give rise to distinct associations with perceptual and balance ability.

Exploring Heading Direction Perception in Cervical Dystonia, Tremor, and Their Coexistence.

Dystonias, characterized by excessive muscle contractions resulting in involuntary postures and movements, impact 3 million people globally, making them the third most common movement disorder. Often accompanied by tremors, dystonias have epidemiological links and non-motor features shared with isolated tremor, such as essential tremor. Both dystonia and tremor present with balance dysfunction and abnormal involuntary movements, potentially linked to abnormal cerebellar function. This study explores the perception of one's own linear movement, heading, particularly discrimination of heading direction, in isolated cervical dystonia, isolated tremor, and their combination. We compare such perception behavior in visual and vestibular domains, predicting that visual heading perception would be superior to vestibular heading perception. Following the focus on the perception of heading direction, we used psychophysics techniques, such as two-alternative-forced-choice task, to examine perception of direction of one's own movements as they see isolated visual star-cloud movement (visual heading perception) and en bloc body movement (vestibular heading perception). We fitted a sigmoidal psychometric function curve to determine the threshold for visual or vestibular heading perception in our participants. Nineteen participants underwent a two-alternative forced-choice task in the vestibular and visual domains. Results reveal elevated vestibular heading perception thresholds in cervical dystonia with or without tremor, and isolated tremor compared to healthy controls. Vestibular heading perception threshold was comparable in cervical dystonia with tremor and isolated tremor, but it was even worse in isolated cervical dystonia. Visual heading perception, however, remained less affected all three conditions-isolated cervical dystonia, isolated tremor, and their combination. These findings indicate shared deficits and distinctions in the perception of linear translational heading across movement disorders, such as isolated cervical dystonia, tremor, or their combination, offering insights into their pathophysiology, particularly the involvement of cerebellum regions responsible for vestibular processing.

Same name, different representational levels? Misalignment of indirect parent-reported and direct alternative forced choice measures of emotion word comprehension in preschool children.

This study assessed the relationship between preschoolers' directly and indirectly assessed emotion word comprehension. Forty-nine two-to-five-year-old Norwegian children were assessed in a tablet-based 4-alternative forced choice (AFC) task on their comprehension of six basic and six complex emotions using facial expression photographs. Parents reported emotion word comprehension and production of the same words. Parent-reported emotion word production interacted with age to predict preschoolers' performance, with a parent-child alignment only observed for older children. Parent-reported word comprehension did not significantly predict accuracy. The results suggest that, in preschoolers, direct and indirect assessments might address distinct representational levels of emotion word comprehension.

Audiovisual integration in the McGurk effect is impervious to music training.

The McGurk effect refers to an audiovisual speech illusion where the discrepant auditory and visual syllables produce a fused percept between the visual and auditory component. However, little is known about how individual differences contribute to the McGurk effect. Here, we examined whether music training experience-which involves audiovisual integration-can modulate the McGurk effect. Seventy-three participants completed the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) questionnaire to evaluate their music expertise on a continuous scale. Gold-MSI considers participants' daily-life exposure to music learning experiences (formal and informal), instead of merely classifying people into different groups according to how many years they have been trained in music. Participants were instructed to report, via a 3-alternative forced choice task, "what a person said": /Ba/, /Ga/ or /Da/. The experiment consisted of 96 audiovisual congruent trials and 96 audiovisual incongruent (McGurk) trials. We observed no significant correlations between the susceptibility of the McGurk effect and the different subscales of the Gold-MSI (active engagement, perceptual abilities, music training, singing abilities, emotion) or the general musical sophistication composite score. Together, these findings suggest that music training experience does not modulate audiovisual integration in speech as reflected by the McGurk effect.