Implicit Task Research Articles

A Study of Formal Model of Interactive Behaviour in the Whole System for Implicit Action and Context

Formal techniques have been used to analyze a variety of properties of interactive behaviour in a number of systems. To have a better understanding of the implicit of the interactive behaviour, it is necessary to find a general method to describe the task. In this study, we proposed a formal model to illustrate the implicit task. We validated the effect of this model by an experiment in the simulated coach bus station by receiving transition information by the holder held device. This paper analyses the whole system, the rooms, the public displays, the mobile devices and the timeliness of information in the system. The model made the interactive process clearer and provided a basic framework to study the related issues of orientation in the interactive system in the future.

Political Partisanship Alters the Causality Implicit in Verb Meaning

This research adapted the implicit causality task from psycholinguistics to investigate the politics of attribution during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Results showed that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supporters judged their preferred candidate as causal for positive events and their nonpreferred candidate as causal for negative events, indicating an important role for political candidate support in causal attribution, alongside lexical semantics. The findings demonstrate the social psychological utility of the implicit causality task and contribute to our understanding of broadly shared and largely untracked extralinguistic influences on causal attribution.

P61-F Implicit and explicit emotional modulation of visual ERPs in female patients with major depressive disorder

Background We aimed at searching for the ERP characteristics that may differentiate the patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) from healthy controls (HC). Changes in ERP components due to the implicit and explicit emotion recognition were explored. We also took into account the growing evidence of gender specificity in MDD. Materials and methods Only female participants took part in our study: 30 non-medicated patients with MDD and 54 HC. Participants had to sort 160 photographs: first as humans or animals (Implicit task), and then as neutral or aggressive (Explicit task). Half of the photographs were neutral, and half were showing angry/aggressive people or animals. We recorded 128-channel EEG and analyzed the ERPs elicited by human images. The difference (p Results Robust EM in N170 component was found in both groups and both tasks; the amplitude changes (voltage increase for angry faces) and the scalp topography of EM were similar in HC in both tasks, but in MDD they were seen in a lesser degree in Explicit task. The EM in components peaking around 300–350 ms was also showing group and task specificity. The components in the range of 400–600 ms showed EM mostly in central (in HC) and fronto-central (in MDD) areas. Conclusions The study of implicit emotional processes and their comparison to the explicit processes seems to be a promising direction in our search for the biomarkers to distinguish healthy and pathological brain activity.

The relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes to British accents in enhancing the persuasiveness of children’s oral health campaigns

Abstract This paper seeks to improve the persuasiveness of oral health campaigns by investigating the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes to British accents. Forty-seven participants from Tayside, East Scotland, first completed an implicit task which asked participants to judge the truth value of 120 trivia statements, divided into six different accents, as quickly as possible. This was complimented by an identical written task at the end of the experiment in less pressurised conditions. Both audio and written responses to the statements were analysed using signal detection theory, which revealed that Estuary English was more persuasive than the local accent, Dundee English (p = 0.039), and the stigmatised multi-ethnolect, Multicultural London English (p = 0.002). Participants also completed an explicit task involving two matched-guise tests with the same six accents in a neutral and dental context. Results update our knowledge of explicit attitudes to British accents in a modern linguistic landscape, and shed light on correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes. Using Bassili and Brown’s (2005) Potentiated Recruitment Framework, it is argued that the relationship is mediated by participants’ self-presentation concerns and the perceived social penalties of expressing bias. Sociolinguistic implications of implicit measurement procedures are discussed regarding the development of oral health campaigns.

Why can some implicit Theory of Mind tasks be replicated and others cannot? A test of mentalizing versus submentalizing accounts.

In the last 15 years, Theory of Mind research has been revolutionized by the development of new implicit tasks. Such tasks aim at tapping children’s and adults’ uninstructed, largely automatic mental state ascription, indicated in spontaneous looking behavior when observing agents who act on the basis of false beliefs. Studies with anticipatory looking, in particular, have suggested that basic ToM capacities operate from very early in life and remain in unconscious operation throughout the lifespan. Recently, however, systematic replication attempts of anticipatory looking measures have yielded a complex and puzzling mixture of successful, partial and non-replications. The present study aimed at shedding light on the question whether there is a system to this pattern. More specifically, in a set of three preregistered experiments, it was tested whether those conditions that could previously be replicated and those that could not differ in crucial conceptual respects such that the former do not strictly require ToM whereas the latter do. This was tested by the implementation of novel control conditions. The results were complex. There was generally no unambiguous evidence for reliable spontaneous ToM and no effect of the number of passed familiarization trials. Neither was there any unambiguous evidence that the previous mixed patterns of (non-)replications could be explained (away) by the sub-mentalizing account tested in the new control conditions. The empirical situation remains puzzling, and the question whether there is some such thing as implicit and spontaneous ToM remains to be clarified.

Approach–avoidance tendencies towards food: Measurement on a touchscreen and the role of attention and food craving

Automatic approach tendencies are often assessed with joystick-based approach–avoidance tasks (AATs). In line with similar studies, we have previously shown that individuals show an approach bias towards palatable food only when picture valence (i.e., the content of the picture) is relevant for task performance. In the current study, we adapted this joystick-based AAT for implementation on a touchscreen, which required participants to perform more naturalistic approach–avoidance movements. One-hundred and seven participants (73% female) were instructed to pull or push pictures of chocolate-containing food and non-edible objects either based on picture content (content group, n = 36), frame color (frame group, n = 35), or a symbol superimposed in the center of each picture (symbol group, n = 36). No approach bias towards food was detected in either group. However, trait chocolate craving and a general preference for chocolate related to higher approach bias scores only in the content group, but not in the frame or symbol group. In addition, only participants in the content group reported increases of current chocolate craving throughout the task. While this touchscreen-based AAT did not replicate results from its joystick-based equivalent, results are in line with suggestions that explicit task instructions may be preferred over implicit task instructions (i.e., when participants have to respond to valence-irrelevant features). Future studies may examine if and how touchscreen-based AATs can be implemented for modifying approach tendencies towards unhealthy food and, ultimately, reducing consumption of these foods.

Implicit Approach Biases for Physically Active Lifestyle Cues

The current studies aimed to measure and modify approach biases for physically active lifestyle cues. In Study 1, 136 participants who, on average, met physical activity guidelines completed an implicit association task (IAT) to measure approach bias for words representing a physically active or inactive lifestyle. Approach bias scores were positive overall, indicative of an implicit motivation to approach physically active lifestyle cues. Study 2 explored whether pre-existing approach biases could be increased using approach training (pairing active words mostly with approach words) or decreased using avoid training (pairing active words mostly with avoidance words). The sample consisted of 73 participants who self-identified as being insufficiently active and, on average, reported levels of physical activity that were below recommended guidelines. Approach bias for physically active lifestyle cues was stronger for the approach group than the avoid group at post-training. However, training effects were moderated by the strength of the pre-existing approach bias; the group difference in approach bias was more apparent among participants with either a moderate or a strong pre-existing approach bias. The results are consistent with dual-process models which highlight the importance of non-conscious processes in health behaviour and intervention, and suggest that cognitive bias modification may be a useful pathway for promoting physical activity engagement.

Auditory affective processing requires awareness.

Recent work has challenged the previously widely accepted belief that affective processing does not require awareness and can be carried out with more limited resources than semantic processing. This debate has focused exclusively on visual perception, even though evidence from both human and animal studies suggests that existence for nonconscious affective processing would be physiologically more feasible in the auditory system. Here we contrast affective and semantic processing of nonverbal emotional vocalizations under different levels of awareness in three experiments, using explicit (two-alternative forced choice masked affective and semantic categorization tasks, Experiments 1 and 2) and implicit (masked affective and semantic priming, Experiment 3) measures. Identical stimuli and design were used in the semantic and affective tasks. Awareness was manipulated by altering stimulus-mask signal-to-noise ratio during continuous auditory masking. Stimulus awareness was measured on each trial using a four-point perceptual awareness scale. In explicit tasks, neither affective nor semantic categorization could be performed in the complete absence of awareness, while both tasks could be performed above chance level when stimuli were consciously perceived. Semantic categorization was faster than affective evaluation. When the stimuli were partially perceived, semantic categorization accuracy exceeded affective evaluation accuracy. In implicit tasks neither affective nor semantic priming occurred in the complete absence of awareness, whereas both affective and semantic priming emerged when participants were aware of the primes. We conclude that auditory semantic processing is faster than affective processing, and that both affective and semantic auditory processing are dependent on awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Explicit and implicit timing in aging

Explicit and implicit measures of timing were compared between young and older participants. In both tasks, participants were initially familiarized with a reference interval by responding to the second of two beeps separated by a fixed interval. During the subsequent testing phase, this inter-stimulus interval was variable. In the explicit task, participants were instructed to judge interval duration, whereas in the implicit task they were told to respond as quickly as possible to the second beep. Cognitive abilities were assessed with neuropsychological tests. Results showed that in both explicit and implicit timing tasks, temporal performance peaked around the reference interval and did not differ between young and older participants. This indicates an accurate representation of duration that did not decline with normal aging. However, some age-related differences were observed in performance depending on the task used. In the explicit timing task, the variability of duration judgments was greater in older than young participants, though this was directly related to older participants' lower attentional capacity. In the implicit timing task, young participants' reaction times (RTs) were slower to targets appearing either earlier or later than the trained interval. Conversely, while older participants RTs were also slowed by early targets, their RTs to late targets were as fast as those to targets appearing at the trained interval. We hypothesize that with age, and irrespective of cognitive ability, there is increasing reliance on temporal information conveyed by the probability of target appearance as a function of elapsing time (“hazard function”) than that conveyed by the statistical likelihood of previously experienced temporal associations.

Team Decision-Making and People-Organization Matching—Based on the Adjustment of Implicit Coordination and Task Interdependence

Talents are the core competitiveness of enterprises. In high-tech enterprises with team work as the mainstay, the recruitment and selection of team members has always been a concern of enterprises. As the first module of human resource management, recruitment is an important task of human resource management and development. Whether a company can recruit the people it needs is the key to the success or failure of the company. This paper analyzes 300 valid samples using stepwise regression analysis, and analyzes team work characteristics to study team self-determination within the team. The recruitment effect is measured in this paper using human-organization matching. The research results show that team independent decision-making positively affects human-organization matching. Task interdependence and implicit coordination have a significant positive adjustment effect on the relationship between the two. The research provides a new way for enterprise personnel recruitment.

The implicit soul: Factors between the representation of death and dehumanization of patients.

Spiritual approaches in healthcare settings proved effective in reducing the negative outcomes of dehumanization processes impacting health professionals and patients. Although previous literature focused on explicit measures of spirituality, the present research explored the role of implicit components of spirituality and their effects on the humanization of patients in two healthcare contexts. Professionals from hospices and nursing homes completed an implicit task to assess whether the diverse representation of death as physical or spiritual led to perceive patients with more uniquely human traits. Results showed that only for hospice participants, implicit and explicit spirituality predicts more humanness attribution to patients. This article discusses palliative care models and death education as a resource for reducing dehumanization.

Wealthy Whites and poor Blacks: Implicit associations between racial groups and wealth predict explicit opposition toward helping the poor

The current research investigates whether automatic associations between race and social class predict deliberative attitudes toward wealth redistribution policies. In three studies, we found that participants were significantly more likely to associate African Americans (vs. White Americans) with the concept of poor in an implicit task. In addition, we found that this implicit association between poor and African Americans predicted explicit attitudes toward wealth redistribution (Study 1)—an effect mediated by the belief that redistributive policies benefit African Americans over White Americans (Study 2). Further, these associations held when controlling for implicit affective associations and explicit prejudice. Manipulating people's metacognitive beliefs about the validity of their implicit associations shifted whether implicit Black-poor associations predicted support for wealth redistribution (Study 3). Overall, these findings suggest race/class associations are well-learned, spontaneously activated, and may predict explicit policy attitudes toward wealth redistribution above and beyond implicit or explicit affective prejudice.

Transcranial static magnetic stimulation over the primary motor cortex alters sequential implicit motor learning

Transcranial static magnetic stimulation (tSMS) is a recently introduced noninvasive brain stimulation technique that can modulate brain excitability. Here, we investigated a hypothesis that motor learning would be altered by tSMS applied to the primary motor cortex (M1). For motor task, we chose a serial reaction time task consisting of sequential trials and random trials in which the visual cue doesn’t play out a repeating pattern of positions to evaluate an implicit motor learning, where the M1 is a key structure for skill acquisition and early consolidation. Forty-four healthy right-handed volunteers participated in the present study. TSMS was placed over the right M1 or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The control group received Sham stimulation over the right M1. Reaction times (RTs) of left hand were analyzed before (Pre session) and after (Post session) practice to examine online learning, and were also assessed 24 h later to examine offline learning (Cons session). The results showed that the RTs became faster in Post than Pre session regardless of the stimulation location. Interestingly, the RTs were significantly faster with the M1 stimulation than the DLPFC or Sham stimulation in Cons session. There was not significant difference in error rate among sessions or stimulation locations. These findings suggest that the modulation of the M1 using tSMS can enhance offline motor learning in an implicit task.

Reduced activity and connectivity of left amygdala in patients with schizophrenia treated with clozapine or olanzapine

Obsessive–compulsive symptoms (OCS) in patients with schizophrenia are a common co-occurring condition, often associated with additional impairments. A subgroup of these patients develops OCS during treatment with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs), most importantly clozapine and olanzapine. So far, little is known about possible neural mechanism of these SGAs, which seem to aggravate or induce OCS. To investigate the role of SGA treatment on neural activation and connectivity during emotional processing, patients were stratified according to their monotherapy into two groups (group I: clozapine or olanzapine, n = 20; group II: amisulpride or aripiprazole, n = 20). We used an fMRI approach, applying an implicit emotion recognition task. Group comparisons showed significantly higher frequency and severity of comorbid OCS in group I than group II. Task specific activation was attenuated in group I in the left amygdala. Furthermore, functional connectivity from left amygdala to right ventral striatum was reduced in group I. Reduced amygdala activation was associated with OCS severity. Recent literature suggests an involvement of an amygdala–cortico–striatal network in the pathogenesis of obsessive–compulsive disorder. The observed differential activation and connectivity pattern of the amygdala might thus indicate a neural mechanism for the development of SGA-associated OCS in patients with schizophrenia. Further neurobiological research and interventional studies are needed for causal inferences.

Reduced neural sensitivity to rapid individual face discrimination in autism spectrum disorder.

BackgroundIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social communication and interaction. Although difficulties at processing social signals from the face in ASD have been observed and emphasized for many years, there is a lot of inconsistency across both behavioral and neural studies.MethodsWe recorded scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in 23 8-to-12 year old boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing boys using a fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm, providing objective (i.e., frequency-tagged), fast (i.e., few minutes) and highly sensitive measures of rapid face categorization, without requiring any explicit face processing task. We tested both the sensitivity to rapidly (i.e., at a glance) categorize faces among other objects and to individuate unfamiliar faces.OutcomesWhile general neural synchronization to the visual stimulation and neural responses indexing generic face categorization were undistinguishable between children with ASD and typically developing controls, neural responses indexing individual face discrimination over the occipito-temporal cortex were substantially reduced in the individuals with ASD. This difference vanished when faces were presented upside-down, due to the lack of significant face inversion effect in ASD.InterpretationThese data provide original evidence for a selective high-level impairment in individual face discrimination in ASD in an implicit task. The objective and rapid assessment of this function opens new perspectives for ASD diagnosis in clinical settings.

Concrete and abstract word processing in deep dyslexia

Abstract The purpose of this case study was to test the failure of inhibition theory of deep dyslexia (FIT; Buchanan, McEwen, Westbury, & Libben, 2003) with concrete and abstract words. FIT proposes that in deep dyslexia, errors to abstract words are the result of an impairment in phonological output lexicon selection rather than a semantic deficit for abstract words. FIT also proposes a dissociation between explicit phonological lexicon production (can be compromised) and implicit access of representations (is intact). With such assumptions it follows that in phonologically implicit tasks where controls demonstrate either concreteness or abstractness effects, a participant with deep dyslexia would similarly show concreteness or abstractness effects. However, for explicit tasks where production is involved, a participant with deep dyslexia would only show concreteness effects due to difficulty with abstract word production, indicative of their difficulty with phonological output lexicon selection which is more compromised for abstract words because semantic content cannot guide the selection. Experiments 1–3 used phonologically implicit tasks (i.e., concrete categorization task, semantic relatedness task, and iconicity judgment task) and Experiment 4 used an explicit task (i.e., oral word-reading task). The results supported the hypotheses and are consistent with FIT as an explanation for the locus of impairment in deep dyslexia.

Testing the Role of Verbal Narration in Implicit Theory of Mind Tasks

ABSTRACTTheory of Mind (ToM), the ability to attribute mental states to agents, has usually been measured with explicit verbal tasks and found to develop slowly during the preschool years. New implicit ToM measures have lately revolutionized the field by suggesting that ToM may be present much earlier in development. However, recent replication studies of implicit ToM present a complex pattern of failed, partial and successful attempts. The big challenge is to identify an underlying system to this pattern that can explain why some tasks replicate while others do not. The rationale of the present study was to address this challenge by investigating one potential factor that may explain patterns of (non-)replications of implicit measures, namely elements of verbal narration in anticipatory looking tasks. Sixty-seven 4- to 5-year-old children completed modified versions of two different anticipatory looking implicit false belief tasks which recently proved difficult to replicate. The main modification was that verbal narration was added to the original stimulus videos. Results revealed that original looking patterns could still not be replicated. There was no improvement in one task, while a slight improvement was observed in the other task. In conclusion, adding verbal narration does not necessarily improve the replicability of anticipatory ToM tasks, suggesting either that these measures might not be sufficiently sensitive to tap implicit ToM, or that other factors are crucial for successful replications.

Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?

Selective visual attention is a primary cognitive function, which allows the selection of the most relevant stimuli in the environment by prioritizing their processing. Several studies showed that this process can be influenced by both social signals, such as gaze direction (i.e., the Gaze Cueing Effect, GCE) and by the motivational valence of gratifying stimuli, such as monetary rewards. The aim of this study was to explore whether GCE could be modulated by a monetary reward. To this end, we created an experiment in which participants performed a gaze cuing task before and after an implicit learning task aiming to induce an association between gaze direction and monetary reward (experimental condition), or after a perceptual task (control condition). Statistical analyses were conducted following both a frequentist and a Bayesian approach. Results supported previous findings showing the presence of the GCE, i.e., faster responses in congruent trials when the target appeared in the gazed-at location. Interestingly, our results did not reveal significant differences among the conditions. Therefore, contrary to what was reported by previous attentional orienting studies with non-social stimuli, monetary reward does not seem to be able to modulate (or interfere with) the orienting of attention mediated by gaze direction as measured by the GCE. Taken together our results suggest that social signals such as gaze direction have a greater impact than monetary reward in orienting selective attention.

A touching Sight: EEG/ERP correlates for the vicarious processing of affectionate touch

Observers can simulate aspects of other people's tactile experiences. We asked whether they do so when faced with full-body social interactions, whether emerging representations go beyond basic sensorimotor mirroring, and whether they depend on processing goals and inclinations. In an EEG/ERP study, we presented line-drawn, dyadic interactions with and without affectionate touch. In an explicit and an implicit task, participants categorized images into touch versus no-touch and same versus opposite sex interactions, respectively. Modulations of central Rolandic rhythms implied that affectionate touch displays engaged sensorimotor mechanisms. Additionally, the late positive potential (LPP) being larger for images with as compared to without touch pointed to an involvement of higher order socio-affective mechanisms. Task and sex modulated touch perception. Sensorimotor responding, indexed by Rolandic rhythms, was fairly independent of the task but appeared less effortful in women than in men. Touch induced socio-affective responding, indexed by the LPP, declined from explicit to implicit processing in women and disappeared in men. In sum, this study provides first evidence that vicarious touch from full-body social interactions entails shared sensorimotor as well as socio-affective experiences. Yet, mental representations of touch at a socio-affective level are more likely when touch is goal relevant and observers are female. Together, these results outline the conditions under which touch in visual media may be usefully employed to socially engage observers.

COMPUTATIONAL METHOD FOR THE ANALYSIS OF DISSEMINATION OF SURFACE POLLUTION IN HYDROTECHNICAL RAMPARTS

The conducted researches served as the basis for obtaining difference scheme for numerical realization of the two-dimensional model of mass transfer of a pollutant in the aeration zone of the soil of the agrolandscape with a piecewise smooth surface under the condition of instantaneous deposition of the pollutant onto the surface (as an example, Cs137 was taken as a pollutant on the basis of its passive behavior in the ground and the availability in the considered ground areas of agricultural uses due to the Chernobyl accident). The properties of differential operators of the model and their difference analogues were studied, which allowed to substantiate the cost-effective difference scheme for the numerical solution of the problem of pollutant migration for given agrolandscape. The correctness and efficiency of the constructed two-layer implicit difference scheme is shown. This allowed to switch to the use of a chain of one-dimensional implicit tasks, in which the transition from one layer to another occurs in two steps. Obtained general computing costs allowed to assert that the proposed schemes are cost-effective difference schemes. In turn, the use of an economical difference scheme made it possible to construct a method for the practical determination of the presence of a process of water erosion in the system of hydraulic rampart-terrace.