Two-alternative 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.

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).

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.

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.

Absolute and relative stability of loss aversion across contexts.

Individuals' decisions under risk tend to be in line with the notion that "losses loom larger than gains." This loss aversion in decision making is commonly understood as a stable individual preference that is manifested across different contexts. The presumed stability and generality, which underlies the prominence of loss aversion in the literature at large, has been recently questioned by studies reporting how loss aversion can disappear, and even reverse, as a function of the choice context. The present study investigated whether loss aversion reflects a trait-like attitude of avoiding losses or rather individuals' adaptability to different contexts. We report three experiments investigating the within-subject context sensitivity of loss aversion in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Our results show that the choice context can shift people's loss aversion, though somewhat inconsistently. Moreover, individual estimates of loss aversion are shown to have a considerable degree of stability. Altogether, these results indicate that even though the absolute value of loss aversion can be affected by external factors such as the choice context, estimates of people's loss aversion still capture the relative dispositions toward gains and losses across individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating the effects of perceptual complexity versus conceptual meaning on the object benefit in visual working memory.

Previous research has demonstrated greater visual working memory (VWM) performance for real-world objects compared with simple features. Greater amplitudes of the contralateral delay activity (CDA)-a sustained event-related potential measured during the delay period of a VWM task-havealso been noted for meaningful stimuli, despite being thought of as a neural marker of a fixed working memory capacity. The current study aimed to elucidate the factors underlying improved memory performance for real-world objects by isolating the relative contributions of perceptual complexity (i.e., number of visual features) and conceptual meaning (i.e., availability of semantic, meaningful features). Participants (N = 22) performed a lateralized VWM task to test their memory of intact real-world objects, scrambled real-world objects and colours. The CDA was measured during both encoding and WM retention intervals (600-1000 ms and 1300-1700 ms poststimulus onset, respectively), and behavioural performance was estimated by using d' (memory strength in a two-alternative forced choice task). Behavioural results revealed significantly better performance within-subjects for real-world objects relative to scrambled objects and colours, with no difference between colours and scrambled objects. The amplitude of the CDA wasalso largest for intact real-world objects, with no difference in magnitude for scrambled objects and colours, during working memory maintenance. However, during memory encoding, both the colours and intact real-world objects had significantly greater amplitudes than scrambled objects and were comparable in magnitude. Overall, findings suggest that conceptual meaning (semantics) supports the memory benefit for real-world objects.

Intracranial electrophysiology of spectrally degraded speech in the human cortex.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are the treatment of choice for severe to profound hearing loss. Variability in CI outcomes remains despite advances in technology and is attributed in part to differences in cortical processing. Studying these differences in CI users is technically challenging. Spectrally degraded stimuli presented to normal-hearing individuals approximate input to the central auditory system in CI users. This study used intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to investigate cortical processing of spectrally degraded speech. Participants were adult neurosurgical epilepsy patients. Stimuli were utterances /aba/ and /ada/, spectrally degraded using a noise vocoder (1-4 bands) or presented without vocoding. The stimuli were presented in a two-alternative forced choice task. Cortical activity was recorded using depth and subdural iEEG electrodes. Electrode coverage included auditory core in posteromedial Heschl's gyrus (HGPM), superior temporal gyrus (STG), ventral and dorsal auditory-related areas, and prefrontal and sensorimotor cortex. Analysis focused on high gamma (70-150 Hz) power augmentation and alpha (8-14 Hz) suppression. Chance task performance occurred with 1-2 spectral bands and was near-ceiling for clear stimuli. Performance was variable with 3-4 bands, permitting identification of good and poor performers. There was no relationship between task performance and participants demographic, audiometric, neuropsychological, or clinical profiles. Several response patterns were identified based on magnitude and differences between stimulus conditions. HGPM responded strongly to all stimuli. A preference for clear speech emerged within non-core auditory cortex. Good performers typically had strong responses to all stimuli along the dorsal stream, including posterior STG, supramarginal, and precentral gyrus; a minority of sites in STG and supramarginal gyrus had a preference for vocoded stimuli. In poor performers, responses were typically restricted to clear speech. Alpha suppression was more pronounced in good performers. In contrast, poor performers exhibited a greater involvement of posterior middle temporal gyrus when listening to clear speech. Responses to noise-vocoded speech provide insights into potential factors underlying CI outcome variability. The results emphasize differences in the balance of neural processing along the dorsal and ventral stream between good and poor performers, identify specific cortical regions that may have diagnostic and prognostic utility, and suggest potential targets for neuromodulation-based CI rehabilitation strategies.

Measuring tactile sensitivity and mixed-reality-assisted exercise for carpal tunnel syndrome by ultrasound mid-air haptics.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common nerve entrapment neuropathy, which causes numbness and pain in the thumb, the index and middle fingers and the radial side of the ring finger. Regular hand exercises may improve the symptoms and prevent carpal tunnel surgery. This study applied a novel ultrasonic stimulation method to test tactile sensitivity in CTS and also a mixed-reality-assisted (MR-assisted) exercise program which measured hand movements and provided haptic feedback for rehabilitation. Twenty patients with mild unilateral CTS took part in the experiments. A mid-air haptics device (Ultrahaptics STRATOS Explore) was used to apply amplitude-modulated ultrasound waves (carrier frequency: 40 kHz) onto the skin to create tactile stimulation mechanically. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task for measuring tactile thresholds at 250-Hz modulation frequency. They were tested at the index fingers and the thenar eminences of both hands. Additionally, 15 CTS patients used an MR-assisted program to do hand exercises with haptic feedback. Exercise performance was assessed by calculating errors between target and actual hand configurations. System Usability Scale (SUS) was adopted to verify the practical usability of the program. Thresholds at the thenar eminences of the affected and healthy hands were not significantly different. While the thresholds at the healthy index fingers could be measured, those of the affected fingers were all higher than the stimulation level produced by the maximum output from the ultrasound device. In the exercise program, a significant positive correlation (ρ = 0.89, p < 0.001) was found between the performance scores and the SUS scores, which were above the criterion value established in the literature. The results show that thenar tactile sensitivity is not affected in mild CTS as expected from the palmar cutaneous branch of the median nerve (PCBm), but index finger threshold is likely to be higher. Overall, this study suggests that mid-air haptics, with certain improvements, may be used as a preliminary test in the clinical setting. Moreover, the device is promising to develop gamified rehabilitation programs and for the treatment follow-up of CTS.

Self-initiation enhances perceptual processing of auditory stimuli in an online study.

Understanding how the brain incorporates sensory and motor information will enable better theory building on human perception and behavior. In this study, we aimed to estimate the influence of predictive mechanisms on the magnitude and variability of sensory attenuation in two online samples. After the presentation of a visual cue stimulus, participants (Experiment 1: N = 224, Experiment 2: N = 84) compared the loudness of two consecutive tones in a two-alternative forced-choice task. In Experiment 1, the first tone was either self-initiated or not; in Experiment 2, the second tone was either self-initiated or not (active and passive condition, respectively). We further manipulated identity prediction (i.e., the congruence of pre-learned cue-sound combinations; congruent vs. incongruent), and the duration of the onset delay (to account for effects of attentional differences between the passive and active condition, 50 ms vs. 0 ms). We critically discuss our results within the framework of both classical (i.e., motor-based forward models) and contemporary approaches (i.e., predictive processing framework). Contrary to our preregistered hypothesis, we observed enhanced perceptual processing, instead of attenuation, for self-initiated auditory sensory input. Further, our results reveal an effect of fixed sound delays on the processing of motor and non-motor-based predictive information, and may point to according shifts in attention, leading to a perceptual bias. These results might best be captured by a hybrid explanatory model, combining predictions based on self-initiated motor action with a global predictive mechanism.

Disentangling sensory precision and prior expectation of change in autism during tactile discrimination

Predictive coding theories suggest that core symptoms in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may stem from atypical mechanisms of perceptual inference (i.e., inferring the hidden causes of sensations). Specifically, there would be an imbalance in the precision or weight ascribed to sensory inputs relative to prior expectations. Using three tactile behavioral tasks and computational modeling, we specifically targeted the implicit dynamics of sensory adaptation and perceptual learning in ASD. Participants were neurotypical and autistic adults without intellectual disability. In Experiment I, tactile detection thresholds and adaptation effects were measured to assess sensory precision. Experiments II and III relied on two-alternative forced choice tasks designed to elicit a time-order effect, where prior knowledge biases perceptual decisions. Our results suggest a subtler explanation than a simple imbalance in the prior/sensory weights, having to do with the dynamic nature of perception, that is the adjustment of precision weights to context. Compared to neurotypicals, autistic adults showed no difference in average performance and sensory sensitivity. Both groups managed to implicitly learn and adjust a prior that biased their perception. However, depending on the context, autistic participants showed no, normal or slower adaptation, a phenomenon that computational modeling of trial-to-trial responses helped us to associate with a higher expectation for sameness in ASD, and to dissociate from another observed robust difference in terms of response bias. These results point to atypical perceptual learning rather than altered perceptual inference per se, calling for further empirical and computational studies to refine the current predictive coding theories of ASD.

Coming to grips with reality: Real grasps, but not pantomimed grasps, resist a simultaneous tilt illusion

Investigations of grasping real, 3D objects subjected to illusory effects from a pictorial background often choose in-flight grasp aperture as the primary variable to test the hypothesis that the visuomotor system resists the illusion. Here we test an equally important feature of grasps that has received less attention: in-flight grasp orientation. The current study tested a variant of the simultaneous tilt illusion using a mirror-apparatus to manipulate the availability of haptic feedback. Participants performed grasps with haptic feedback (real grasps) and without it (pantomime grasps), reaching for the reflection of a real, 3D bar atop a background grating that induced a 1.1° bias in the perceived orientation of the bar in a separate sample of participants. Analysis of the hand's in-flight grasp orientation at early, late, and end stages of the reach showed that at no point were the real grasps biased by the illusion. In contrast, pantomimed grasps were affected by the illusion at the late and end stages of the reach. At each stage, the effect on the real grasps was significantly weaker than the effect of the illusion as measured by the mean point of subjective equality (PSE) in a two-alternative forced-choice task. In contrast, the effect on the pantomime grasps was statistically indistinguishable from the mean PSE at all three stages of the reach. These findings reinforce the idea that in-flight grasp orientation, like grasp aperture to pictorial illusions of target size, is refractory to pictorial backgrounds that bias perceived orientation.

Evidence for an age-related decline in feature-based attention

ABSTRACT Feature-based attention allows to efficiently guide attention to relevant information in the visual scene, but unambiguous empirical evidence on age-related effects is still limited. In this study, young and older participants performed a two-alternative forced choice task in which a response was selected based on a task-relevant number (=target) presented alone or with a task-irrelevant letter (=neutral distracter) or number (=compatible/incompatible distracter). Participants were required to select the target based on color. To compare the behavioral interference of the distracters between the age groups, data were modeled with a hierarchical drift-diffusion model. The results revealed that decreases in the rate at which information was collected in the conditions with versus without a distracter were more pronounced in the older than young age group when the distracter was compatible or incompatible. Our findings are consistent with an age-related decline in the ability to filter out distracters based on features.

Subjective and objective measures of visual awareness converge.

Within consciousness research, the most appropriate assessment of visual awareness is matter of a controversial debate: Subjective measures rely on introspections of the observer related to perceptual experiences, whereas objective measures are based on performance of the observer to accurately detect or discriminate the stimulus in question across a series of trials. In the present study, we compared subjective and objective awareness measurements across different stimulus feature and contrast levels using a temporal two-alternative forced choice task. This task has the advantage to provide an objective psychophysical performance measurement, while minimizing biases from unconscious processing. Thresholds based on subjective ratings with the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) and on performance accuracy were determined for detection (stimulus presence) and discrimination (letter case) tasks at high and low stimulus contrast. We found a comparable pattern of thresholds across tasks and contrasts for objective and subjective measurements of awareness. These findings suggest that objective performance measures based on accuracy and subjective ratings of the visual experience can provide similar information on the feature-content of a percept. The observed similarity of thresholds validates psychophysical and subjective approaches to awareness as providing converging and thus most likely veridical measures of awareness.

Speech With Pauses Sounds Deceptive to Listeners With and Without Hearing Impairment.

Communication is as much persuasion as it is the transfer of information. This creates a tension between the interests of the speaker and those of the listener, as dishonest speakers naturally attempt to hide deceptive speech and listeners are faced with the challenge of sorting truths from lies. Listeners with hearing impairment in particular may have differing levels of access to the acoustical cues that give away deceptive speech. A greater tendency toward speech pauses has been hypothesized to result from the cognitive demands of lying convincingly. Higher vocal pitch has also been hypothesized to mark the increased anxiety of a dishonest speaker. Listeners with or without hearing impairments heard short utterances from natural conversations, some of which had been digitally manipulated to contain either increased pausing or raised vocal pitch. Listeners were asked to guess whether each statement was a lie in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Participants were also asked explicitly which cues they believed had influenced their decisions. Statements were more likely to be perceived as a lie when they contained pauses, but not when vocal pitch was raised. This pattern held regardless of hearing ability. In contrast, both groups of listeners self-reported using vocal pitch cues to identify deceptive statements, though at lower rates than pauses. Listeners may have only partial awareness of the cues that influence their impression of dishonesty. Listeners with hearing impairment may place greater weight on acoustical cues according to the differing degrees of access provided by hearing aids. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24052446.

Face inversion effect on perceived cuteness of infant faces.

Research has demonstrated that attractiveness evaluations of adult faces were less accurate when faces were inverted than upright. It remains unknown, however, whether a similar effect applies to perceived cuteness of infants, which is assumed to be based on elemental facial features called the "baby schema." In this research, we studied the face inversion effect on perceived cuteness of infant faces in a rating task and a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task. We also examined beauty as a control dimension. Although the rating task revealed no inversion effect, the 2AFC task showed poorer discrimination performance with inverted faces than with upright faces in both evaluations. These results indicate that infant cuteness and beauty dimensions are correlated well with each other, and their perception not only relies on elemental features that are not strongly affected by inversion but is also affected by holistic facial configurations when a detailed comparison is required.

The Seven-parameter Diffusion Model: an Implementation in Stan for Bayesian Analyses.

Diffusion models have been widely used to obtain information about cognitive processes from the analysis of responses and response-time data in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. We present an implementation of the seven-parameter diffusion model, incorporating inter-trial variabilities in drift rate, non-decision time, and relative starting point, in the probabilistic programming language Stan. Stan is a free, open-source software that gives the user much flexibility in defining model properties such as the choice of priors and the model structure in a Bayesian framework. We explain the implementation of the new function and how it is used in Stan. We then evaluate its performance in a simulation study that addresses both parameter recovery and simulation-based calibration. The recovery study shows generally good recovery of the model parameters in line with previous findings. The simulation-based calibration study validates the Bayesian algorithm as implemented in Stan.

Sex-dependent noradrenergic modulation of premotor cortex during decision making.

Rodent premotor cortex (M2) integrates information from sensory and cognitive networks for action planning during goal-directed decision making. M2 function is regulated by cortical inputs and ascending neuromodulators, including norepinephrine (NE) released from the locus coeruleus (LC). LC-NE has been shown to modulate the signal to noise ratio of neural representations in target cortical regions, increasing the salience of relevant stimuli. Using rats performing a two-alternative forced choice task after administration of a β noradrenergic antagonist (propranolol), we show that β noradrenergic signaling is necessary for effective action plan signals in anterior M2. Loss of β noradrenergic signaling results in failure to suppress irrelevant action plans in anterior M2 disrupting decoding of cue related information, delaying decision times, and increasing trial omissions, particularly in females. Furthermore, we identify a potential mechanism for the sex bias in behavioral and neural changes after propranolol administration via differential expression of β2 noradrenergic receptor RNA across sexes in anterior M2, particularly on local inhibitory neurons. Overall, we show a critical role for β noradrenergic signaling in anterior M2 during decision making by suppressing irrelevant information to enable efficient action planning and decision making.

Using intonation to disambiguate meaning: The role of empathy and proficiency in L2 perceptual development

AbstractThe present study investigates the interplay between proficiency and empathy in the development of second language (L2) prosody by analyzing the perception and processing of intonation in questions and statements in L2 Spanish. A total of 225 adult L2 Spanish learners (L1 English) from the Northeastern United States completed a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task in which they listened to four utterance types and categorized them as either questions or statements. We used Bayesian multilevel regression and drift diffusion modeling to analyze the 2AFC data as a function of proficiency level and empathy scores for each utterance type. We show that learner response accuracy and sensitivity to intonation are positively correlated with proficiency, and this association is affected by individual empathy levels in both response accuracy and sentence processing. Higher empathic individuals, in comparison with lower empathic individuals, appear to be more sensitive to intonation cues in the process of forming sound-meaning associations, though increased sensitivity does not necessarily imply increased processing speed. The results motivate the inclusion of measures of pragmatic skill, such as empathy, to better account for intonational meaning processing and sentence comprehension in second language acquisition.