Abstract

Facial emotion is an important social cue for inferring emotional states of other people. Psychological research using facial emotions has focused on the perception of individual emotional faces. However, in the ordinary life we may infer a group level emotion from multiple faces in a group, but little has been known about what kinds of factors influence this process. In the current study, we investigate the response characteristics of the group emotion judgment for a group of emotional faces which are composed of individual faces in different emotional categories with different ratios. The group facial emotion stimuli are composed of 1) neutral and happy faces, 2) neutral and sad faces, and 3) sad and happy faces in the 8:0, 7:1, 6:2, 5:3, 4:4, 3:5, 2:6, 1:7, 0:8 ratios. By this way, the level of emotional intensity of the group is manipulated into 9 steps. Participants in each condition performed a two alternative forced choice task by judging the overall emotion of a group facial stimulus into one of two response categories (e.g., Neutral-Happy). Analysis of response times for the judgment of the group emotion showed that the response time for judging the overall emotion was slow down as faces in the two different emotion categories mixed together with a similar ratio. The response ratio data were analyzed by a nonlinear data fitting procedure using a psychometric function, and the point of subjective equality (PSE) and the precision of each participant in each condition were estimated. In results, the mean PSE in the Sad-Happy condition was almost same as a hypothetical mean (0.5) and the precision was high. On the contrary, the mean PSE of the happy response in the Neutral-Happy condition was lower than 0.5 but the mean PSE of the sad response in the Neutral-Sad condition was higher than 0.5. Moreover, participants’ PSE of the happy response was negatively correlated with participants’ positive emotion levels as well as happiness scores, whereas participants’ PSEs of the sad response were positively correlated with participants’ happiness scores. These results imply that the judgment of emotion for a group of faces is influenced by bottom-up factors such as how the group is comprised of what kinds of emotional faces, and by top-down factors such as observers’ emotional states and traits.

Abstract

Abstract

When planning a new product, product planner tries to differentiate the product from old ones by adding new features or innovative properties. Ironically, when consumers are making decisions about purchasing the product, they do not always consider newly added nonalignable property, which can be referred to as paradox of product planning. To explain this phenomenon, this study conducted two studies based on structure alignment model from cognitive psychology. To conduct the study, we organized two imaginary smart televisions with 12 properties, which consist of commonalities, alignable properties, and nonalignable properties. In the study, participants were asked to make an imaginary purchasing decision between two made-up smart televisions. In the first study, survey questions were given to the participants to rate the importance of 20 television related properties, so that we could manipulate and organize two different televisions, one with better alignable property score and the other with better nonalignable property score. The overall scores of both televisions were not significantly different. In the second study, participants showed a tendency of having more preference towards the product with better alignable properties.

Abstract

In contrast to the task-based fMRI, the resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) doesn’t require a specific task, since data are obtained during rest for a relatively short scan time (about 10 min). Therefore, rs-fMRI provides advantages in studying individual differences not associated with the task, and in obtaining data from a large population of various groups (clinical or normal healthy). In the current review, we introduced several analyzing techniques for rs-fMRI. These techniques allow us to identify the functional connectivity among specific regions (seed-based functional connectivity analysis, independent component analysis), a network pattern composed of nodes (graph-based network analysis), or the spontaneous activity pattern (regional homogeneity, analysis of low-frequency fluctuation) during rest. The individual differences found during rest with these techniques have been shown to be related to individual differences (e.g., personality traits) or clinical diseases, such as depression, Alzheimer’s diseases, and autism. Choosing an optimal research technique for a specific study question would be possible only with a deep understanding of these analysis techniques.

Abstract

On the relation between anxiety and memory, past studies using implicit memory tasks reported memory bias for emotional (threat) stimuli regardless of anxiety levels. However, the results from studies using explicit memory tasks are not converging. The present study investigated how memory bias for emotional stimuli in conscious level would be manifested depending on anxiety level, in addition to the past theory arguing the memory bias is originated by automatic processing. We classified our participants into four groups according to anxiety level (high/low) and processing level (perceptual/semantic) and administerd free recall test for two types of stimuli (threatening/neutral). Low-anxiety group exhibited memory bias for threatening stimuli only in the semantic processing condition. On the other hand, high anxiety group showed memory bias for threatening stimuli in both perceptual and semantic processing conditions. These results not only confirm the previous theory of memory bias for emotional stimuli by automatic processing, but also show memory bias can be measured in explicit processing, and suggest that these two mechanisms could work in different way depending on anxiety levels.

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of pattern complexity, in particular, the number of strokes involved in forming a syllable-based character, on the visual span in Korean Hangul reading. The visual span refers to the number of characters that can be accurately recognized without moving one’s eyes in reading and has been related to individual differences in reading speed. The concept of the visual span, however, has only been applied to English and Chinese scripts thus far. Korean Hangul writing system is quite unique, having alphabets combined into a syllable and each syllable written in a restricted space. This differs from both English alphabetic serial writing and Chinese logographic writing system. Due to its unique combinatorial nature of the script, the pattern complexity of Hangul can be affected by stroke frequency as well as by the type of alphabet combination (e.g., CV vs CVCC). Using a trigram presentation method, we found that participants who viewed characters with 2-7 stroke frequency had higher accuracy than those who viewed characters with 8-15 strokes only in their right visual field. No main overall difference or the difference in the left visual field was observed, suggesting that stroke frequency may not be a critical sensory limiting factor on the visual span for Hangul reading.

Abstract

One way to promote active learning is to have students think up questions on the subject matter. However, it has been repeatedly found that students in actual class setting, do not often ask questions and, if they do, usually ask superficial ones. This study was carried out to examine whether the number and quality of students’ questions improve if these questions are included in assessment and whether raising questions results in deeper understanding of the studied material. In Experiment 1, a 2 x 2 factorial design was used, in which two study conditions and two sets of directions were implemented. The two study conditions were listening to a lecture and self-studying. The two sets of directions were emphasis on raising questions and emphasis on comprehension. We compared the number and quality of questions and the level of comprehension among the four groups. Results revealed that the number and quality of questions were highest in self-study/question emphasis group. The level of comprehension was higher in question emphasis groups than in comprehension emphasis groups, regardless of the study conditions. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1 using more easy learning material in another domain. Implications of these results and directions for future research were discussed.

Abstract

It is important to understand causes of human errors and to predict errors in order to prevent various accidents in our daily lives and industrial fields. Although a previous study employing a fixed inter-trial interval (ITI) in a cognitive task successfully predicted errors, it is unlikely to generalize from the previous results to other situations. The current study sought to predict errors by reaction times, task conditions, and ITIs extracted from six consecutive trials preceding error trials, in the context of machine learning. The results showed that various types of errors could be observed and predicted. Especially, presence of repeated patterns or time-pressure chances in the ITI trends might be related to errors. This is interpreted that ITI variation is important to predict errors as well as related to participants’ mental states affecting errors. Therefore, this study suggests that various types of errors in a variety of situations can be predicted, in which those errors would be caused by various factors.

Abstract

Few studies have examined the influence of target memory load on focusing attention during visual search. The present study examined the effect of VWM load imposed according either to the number of potential target items or to the number of their features by measuring P3 component supposedly reflecting the intensity of focused attention during visual search. In each trial, participants reported presence or absence of a target on a search array after memorizing two colored orientation bars that were provided as target-informative cues ahead of the search array. Across the trials, either the orientations or the colors of the bars, or both were manipulated to be the same or different, and thus the memory load from the target-informative cues in each trial was assumed to increase from one to two items according to the number of cue items whereas one to four features according to the total number of features on the cue items. When compared between these two alternative assumptions, the increase in P3 amplitude was better explained according to the item-load than the feature-load assumption. The results indicate that increasing memory load for potential search targets can impair focusing of attention during visual search where the degree of memory load varies according to the number of potential target items rather than the total number of features in the targets.

Abstract

Motion repulsion is a visual illusion in which perception of moving dots is shifted away from its actual direction with the presence of another field of dots moving in a different direction. Kang et al. (2011) have demonstrated that the motion repulsion also occurs for the perceived field of dots when subjects hold another field of moving dots in working memory. Here, it was tested whether the perceptual shift induced by working memory is resistant to the demand characteristics, subjects’ tendency of conforming to the expected hypothesis of the experimenter. Subjects were tested over two separate days. On the first day of participation, they were presented with a sequence of two random-dot motion displays and performed a perceptual judgment task for the second motion display while holding the first display in their working memory. On the second day of participation, the same experiment was run; but the subjects were informed that their performance was inaccurate (inaccuracy instruction group) or judgments were shifted away from the direction of the other motion stimulus (repulsion instruction group). Despite these instructions, perceptual repulsion was robustly reproduced. This result indicates that our visual working memory representation robustly alters perception, providing converging evidence for a close relation between working memory and perception.

Abstract

Motion repulsion is a visual illusion in which perception of moving dots is shifted away from its actual direction with the presence of another field of dots moving in a different direction. Kang et al. (2011) have demonstrated that the motion repulsion also occurs for the perceived field of dots when subjects hold another field of moving dots in working memory. Here, it was tested whether the perceptual shift induced by working memory is resistant to the demand characteristics, subjects' tendency of conforming to the expected hypothesis of the experimenter. Subjects were tested over two separate days. On the first day of participation, they were presented with a sequence of two random-dot motion displays and performed a perceptual judgment task for the second motion display while holding the first display in their working memory. On the second day of participation, the same experiment was run; but the subjects were informed that their performance was inaccurate (inaccuracy instruction group) or judgments were shifted away from the direction of the other motion stimulus (repulsion instruction group). Despite these instructions, perceptual repulsion was robustly reproduced. This result indicates that our visual working memory representation robustly alters perception, providing converging evidence for a close relation between working memory and perception.